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

frame the bruises around Eammon’s eyes, the tightness of his jaw. “Tired.”

“We’re all tired.” Fife grabbed an apple with his uninjured hand, and again Red’s eyes caught on the thin band of root around his arm. The skin under her sleeve itched— she’d kept her Mark covered ever since it appeared, other than showing it to Eammon that first day in the library.

“Did he take some vials with him, do you think?” she asked, thinking of the wounds in his hands and how they seemed to leak more sap than blood. How the bleeding was to stave off the forest from changing him. “In case he . . . runs out, needs more?”

“He won’t. My and Lyra’s blood is next to useless compared with his.”

“Why do you two keep bleeding, then?”

“Terms of the bargain.” He tapped his Mark. “When you bargain for a life, your end of the deal isn’t fulfilled until you’ve spent a certain amount of blood in the Wilderwood’s service. Apparently, I haven’t bled enough yet.”

Again, resentment, simmering under the surface of his voice like a killing current. Red reached for an apple, mostly for something to do with her hands. “What did you bargain for, Fife?”

The hitch in the air between them made her think he wouldn’t answer. Then his eyes flicked to hers, guarded. “How much do you know about treating with the Wilderwood?”

“Not as much as I probably should, considering.”

Fife arched an incredulous brow, then shrugged. “Every bargain bore a price. You know the smaller ones, the lost teeth and the bundled hair. But bargaining to save a life was different. The Wilderwood marked you, and the Wilderwood could call you in. No one knew what for. I made my bargain, got my Mark, and didn’t know what it would do to me until the forest called me back, reeled me in like a damn fish and bled me like one, too.” He tossed his spent apple core into the hearth. The uncharring wood hissed. “Lyra and I were the only two who ever tried bargaining for a life. Foolish of us.”

“Or brave,” Red offered quietly.

“Her, maybe. Not me.” Fife sat back, withered hand held tight against his middle, and fell silent. Red didn’t pick at the quiet.

“There was a girl,” he said after a moment, almost to himself. “She was in an accident. Leg smashed in a stone mill. The wound suppurated, she grew fevered. Death was inevitable. So I bargained. My life for hers.” Reddish hair feathered across his freckled brow as he shifted in his seat. “She married someone else, but it was probably for the best. The Wilderwood closed up only two years after that, and it called Lyra and me in before it did, fools with Bargainer’s Marks and a debt to a forest. I would’ve left her a widow.”

Red twisted at the stem of her mostly uneaten apple. “Is that what happened to your hand, too? Part of your bargain?”

His face shuttered, and his hand twitched like he might try to hide it. But then Fife sighed, looking down at the mass of scar tissue. Lurid lines marked him from knuckle to wristbone, most heavily concentrated around the veins of his wrist. “No. This happened when I tried to meet the terms all at once— spill all the damn blood the forest wanted. Didn’t work, obviously. All I did was sever a few tendons and pass out for three days.” He shrugged. “I’ve never seen Lyra so angry. Or Eammon so quiet. Took a bit for things to go back to normal after that.”

That thick scarring, concentrated over his wrist . . . pity contracted her heart, but Red kept it from her face, knowing it was the last thing he’d want. “I’m so sorry, Fife.”

“Don’t be.” Gruff, but not angry. “If I hadn’t bargained, I wouldn’t have met Lyra.”

The stem of Red’s apple broke off. “Are you two . . .”

“No,” he answered quickly. “Well. Not like that, not really. It’s complicated.” Fife tapped his unwounded fingers against the back of his chair, searching for words. “Lyra isn’t one for romance. Never has been. But she’s the most important person in my life, and has been for centuries now. That’s enough.”

Red nodded, sensing she shouldn’t pry further. He’d already spoken more to her in the past five minutes than he had in her whole time at the Keep. “What did Lyra bargain for?”

“Not my story to tell.” Fife reached for another apple. “It’s longer and more noble than mine.”

They lapsed into silence, still somewhat chilly, but more comfortable than before. Red lifted her apple to take a bite, but before it reached her mouth, something . . . faltered in her vision. A flash of green shadows, shaped like leaves and branches.

It reminded her of that night. When the Wilderwood rushed her, as if her sliced palm was something it could seep into. When she first saw Eammon’s hands, the connection between them forged in branch and blood.

Her brow furrowed as she shook her head. She hadn’t had a vision like that in four years; no reason to think she’d have another now. Across the table, Fife was oblivious, crunching an apple and staring into space, lost in thought.

She pressed her lips to a white line.

When the strange faltering came again, it was nothing so subtle as forest-shadows. This was a lightning strike behind her eyes, completely washing out the tower to show her something else entirely. The potted ivy on the table stretched green fingers toward her, the withered apples plumped and blushed scarlet.

Fife cursed, jumping from his seat, but Red didn’t hear him. Red didn’t see the tower anymore, nor anything in it. Instead, like the night of her sixteenth birthday, she saw hands.

Scarred hands, holding a dagger, palms running with green-threaded blood.

And beyond them— a creature, a monster. Vaguely man-shaped, but as if a man had been taken and twisted in ropes of shadow, the form bent to wrong angles and painted in dripping