For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten (freda ebook reader .txt) 📕

part that wished for something to cling to, for stable ground in this sea of guilt and uncertainty. That was what a mother should be, wasn’t it? Stable ground, even once you were grown? But Isla’s role in this was indelible, her complicity shaped as a missing daughter in a red cloak and violence she quietly accepted as collateral damage.

Neve loved her mother, but her mother deserved to flinch.

Her throat was a knife-ache, her fingers arched like claws on her knees beneath the table. Silence stretched, and she wished soundlessly for her mother to fill it with something. Anything.

When Isla finally moved, it was minuscule, a slump in her shoulders as she sighed. For one moment, the mask slipped, the icy Queen suddenly tired and hollow. But then her eyes rose to Neve’s, her composure reassembling itself. “This reminds me,” she said, as if they were having a normal conversation. “We should begin wedding preparations.”

Neve’s mouth hung partially open, the change in topic so abrupt her mind had to catch up. When it did, it was a white-hot riot, and her reply was truth stripped free of politeness or preamble. “I don’t want to marry Arick. You know that.”

“And you know it doesn’t matter.” Isla straightened, eyes reflecting candle-flames. “You think I wanted to marry your father? A man twice my age who only remained in court long enough to make an heir, and died before he knew he’d made two? The First Daughter’s marriage is always political. There are precedents. You are not the exception.” Isla drained the rest of her wine. “Neither of you could be the exception.”

“Arick is in love with Red.” Neve wanted to throw it down like a gauntlet, but it came out too brittle to be a weapon.

Still, some chord seemed to strike in her mother, drumming beneath her veneer of indifference. Isla’s eyes closed, her hands slackened on the tablecloth. The breath she pulled in was shallow.

Then her eyes opened, trained on empty air. “He’s more foolish than I thought, then.” She stood, slowly, like every movement was an effort. “That could be good for you, Neverah. Foolish men are easy to rule.”

The Queen left, gliding out the door with her ice-blue skirts trailing over the marble floor. She moved stiffly, but no one other than Neve would notice. She’d been trained in that same glide, the one that spoke of graceful power, and she could see the fault lines where it cracked.

A full wine bottle sat in the center of the table, uncorked and ready for pouring. Neve didn’t bother, drinking straight from the neck.

When nothing was left but lees, she stood on unsteady legs. The room pitched and spun, but no one offered an elbow for her to genteelly clasp— the dining hall was empty, and no servants waited just outside to attend to any royal needs. She must’ve scared them off with her unqueenly manners, her uncouth conversation.

In her inebriated state, it was almost funny.

Neve walked slowly out into the hall, hand tensed to steady herself on a wall if the need arose. She didn’t know the hour, other than it was late; the paned windows were velvet-dark, scattered with stars.

The windows faced north, toward the Wilderwood. With a motion made sloppy by too much wine, Neve spit on the floor in front of the glass.

Something caught her eye, disappearing around a corner. A flash of red and white, familiar in a way that would probably be obvious if she weren’t drunk. Brows knit, Neve walked forward, around the corner where whatever it was had disappeared.

Priestesses. Maybe two dozen, a few more than she’d seen when she argued with Raffe yesterday. Each of them held a candle, which wasn’t odd in itself— Order priestesses often carried scarlet prayer candles. At first, Neve thought the candles in their hands were black, like she’d stumbled on some late-night funerary procession or leave-taking rite.

Her eyes narrowed. No, not black. These candles were colored light charcoal. The same gray as a shadow.

The group glided silently down the hall, headed toward the gardens. Leading them, the red-haired priestess. Kiri.

Of course.

“You!”

Neve barely recognized the voice as hers at first. Even the single exclamation was somehow slurred, which probably should’ve been embarrassing, if she could muster the feeling.

The priestesses’ shoulders went rigid, each one, like children caught stealing sugar cubes. They looked to Kiri for instruction, but she seemed unbothered. Slowly, she turned around, the movement made syrupy in Neve’s wine-addled perception. Her small branch-shard pendant swung from her neck, the strands of darkness on the white bark nearly invisible in the gloom.

They stared at each other a moment. Then Kiri glanced at one of the others, nodded. A small, sharp smile turned up the corner of her lip.

Cool blue eyes flicked to Neve as the rest of the priestesses continued soundlessly down the corridor. “Can I help you, Your Highness?”

Her momentary ire had cooled, smothered by the strangeness of the priestesses in the dark, their silence and shadow-colored candles. “I saw you yesterday,” Neve murmured, more curious now than angry. “You were talking to Arick.”

“I was.” The flickering light twisted the lines of Kiri’s face.

“What did he want?”

The priestess’s face remained implacable, the flame from her shadow-gray candle dancing in her eyes. “The same thing you did, that night in the Shrine.”

A shiver rolled through Neve’s shoulders. “You told him how to save her.”

No answer. Just silence, just jittering shadows on the wall from Kiri’s gray candle.

“But how do you know?” Her voice sounded so small in the dark. “How do you know what happened to Red, how do you know how to get her back?” A shaky swallow. “Why didn’t you tell me first?”

Kiri’s hand reverently closed around her branch-shard pendant. “Since I was a child,” she said quietly, “long before I joined the Order, I have served the Kings. I have been guided by them to seek clarity, to know the true ways of things. It is not everyone who can be trusted with