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

It wasn’t much. There’d been no weapons in her room, so Red just worked at a hangnail until she’d torn it off, squeezing her finger to drip the scant blood into the vial.

Just enough to see if it made a difference. Just enough to see if there was any other recourse than trying to use the magic that had almost killed her sister.

The memory of the Wilderwood chasing her after the thorn cut her cheek still made her pulse thunder. But, she rationalized, that blood had been straight from the vein— the only way the Wilderwood would accept blood from the Wolf, according to Lyra. And Eammon was part of the forest, tangled up in it . . . maybe giving blood the same way he did was what made the Wilderwood come for her, what made it try to worm its way beneath her skin. If she bled first into the vial, there’d be no wound for the forest to try to invade.

And she had to do something. Eammon was clearly at the end of a fraying rope; the thought of shadow-creatures breaking free of the forest was unconscionable.

Her magic wasn’t something that could be used, of that she was convinced. Fear drowned her, fear had its claws deep in her heart. Magic was a dead end, but surely there was something else she could do. There had to be.

Red stopped in front of the sentinel farthest from the gate. Mossy rock shored around its roots, mist tangled like ribbon in the thin beginnings of its branches. She didn’t touch it, but she drew closer than she had to any of the other sentinels she’d seen, and something about being close made the atmosphere change. The air seemed to hum against her skin, strange but not unpleasant, and when she blinked, she saw golden light behind her eyelids.

A deep breath. A straightened spine. It took her a couple of tries to uncork the vial, and when she did, the coppery scent of blood seemed stronger than it had right to. With a steady hand, Red held it over the roots of the sapling.

“What are you doing?”

His voice was soft. She looked over her shoulder.

Eammon stood just behind her, fog eddying around his boots and in the tendrils of his loose, too-long hair. His face betrayed nothing, eyes dark and inscrutable, full lips slightly parted.

The vial stayed steady in her hand, but she didn’t pour it out. “I think you were lying to me before,” Red said. “I think my blood can kill shadow-creatures and heal the sentinels. If Fife’s and Lyra’s and yours can because of the Mark, then so can mine, no matter how . . . how different I am from the other Second Daughters.”

She expected him to refute her again, to stick by his lie. But Eammon didn’t move, other than the tic of his throat as he swallowed. “It’s not quite that simple, but you’re right. Your blood can do those things.” Still soft-voiced, still calm and stoic as the trees around them. “But the price is more than I’m willing to let you pay, Redarys. If you give the Wilderwood blood, it won’t stop there. It can’t.”

The shadow-creature forming itself into Merra’s corpse, roots spilling from her ripped stomach. Gaya, dead and forest-tangled. The other Second Daughters, disappearing into the trees, called into the darkness. Tied to the Wilderwood, but in a different way than Red was. A difference Eammon wouldn’t fully explain, other than it had to do with the awful, destructive power growing in her bloodstream like a vine.

This ends in roots and bones.

Red glared at him, the hand holding the vial beginning, slightly, to tremor. “Maybe I’m willing to pay it. Maybe I’d rather bleed on your trees and face whatever the consequences are than try to use this damn magic.”

Incredulity in his tone now, but also a sadness that plucked at a chord in her middle and made her hand shake more. “You fear yourself that much?”

“You were there.” It was nearly a whisper. “You saw how terrible it made me.”

“I only saw part. I was concentrated on . . . on other things. But I know this power is volatile, especially at first. Whatever happened, I’m sure it’s not as terrible as you remember it.” A tentative step forward, a scarred hand stretching toward her. “You aren’t terrible.”

Their eyes locked across the moss-and-fog-covered ground. Finally, slowly, Red let the hand holding the vial drop to her side. Then she reached out, placed it in his outstretched palm. Her eyes stung, her breath came with a sharp sound, but the Wolf was kind enough to pretend not to notice.

His fingers brushed hers as he took the vial, scars rough against her skin. “Is that why you were so insistent on staying here? Because of that night, what happened?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to fit words into the space between them.

Eammon sighed, pocketing the vial of her blood and running a hand through his hair. “I’ve been trying to think of alternatives. Something else we could do, something that would—”

Bound.

A quiet rustle of underbrush, a clatter of branches shaping a word. On one of the rocks near Red’s foot, moss browned, withered.

Must be bound. Must be two. Like before.

More moss dying, curling into brittle tangles. The Wilderwood’s price for speech.

Two. Gaya and Ciaran. A Wolf and a Second Daughter, bound together.

Magic is stronger when there are two.

This came quieter, like the forest was tired. Grass died beneath Red’s feet, went brittle. Quickly, she backed away, and almost knocked into Eammon.

His hand landed on her shoulder, steadying and warm, scored by cuts that weren’t quite healed yet. Red’s feet felt clumsy as she stepped back, crossing her arms to stave off a chill.

He looked at her, eyes made dark by the shadow of his hair, mouth pressed to a line. His hand hung in the air for an abbreviated moment, still where