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

worried swallow and the flicker of a gaze at Lyra. “I checked the one in the corridor this morning. No shadow-rot.”

“I don’t think it had anything to do with shadow-rot.” A slight echo in Eammon’s voice, but it faded before he’d finished speaking. Bandages covered the wounds on his stomach, and new green-threaded blood seeped slowly through the fabric. He looked to Red, then away, rubbing between his now-only-amber eyes with thumb and forefinger. “It’s getting worse,” he murmured. “It’s never been like this.”

Lyra glanced at Fife, worry in the line of her mouth. Neither of them spoke.

Red let herself be helped up by Fife’s good hand. “Are you hurt?” he asked brusquely.

She shook her head.

Concern twisted the elfin angles of Lyra’s face, lips pursed as her eyes flickered over Eammon. Containing the Wilderwood’s magic had given him only about an inch more in height, but it still hadn’t gone away, a fact that seemed to unnerve her. “There’s a linen closet somewhere,” she said finally, turning to Red. “We can make a pallet in my room—”

“Neither of you is sleeping on the floor.” Eammon still looked at the corridor, at the ruin the forest had made it. A tremor went through his hand; he closed it to a fist.

“There are four of us and three beds. Someone will have to.”

“And it will be me.” Eammon didn’t meet anyone’s eyes as he turned toward the stairs. “She can have my bed. I’ll sleep in the hall.”

His tone brooked no argument. Lyra’s lips quirked, gaze flicking from Eammon’s retreating back to Fife’s face in an unspoken conversation. “Well. Pleasant dreams, I guess.”

“That seems awfully optimistic,” Fife muttered, but he was abruptly silenced by Lyra’s elbow in his ribs.

Eammon was halfway up the stairs and hadn’t looked back once. With a deep breath, Red placed her foot on the bottom step. The moss that had grown into a wall to keep her away now smoothed out in welcome.

Mouth set in a determined line, Red balled her cloak in her arms and followed the Wolf.

Chapter Sixteen

T he forest growth petered out at the top landing, scraps of green fading to bare stone beneath her feet. It felt strange, after more than a week of moss, and cold enough to numb her toes.

When they reached the balcony, Eammon turned to the right and pushed open a wooden door, revealing another, smaller set of stairs. Warm light from above flickered over his back as he climbed, slightly hunched over the slashes in his middle. His Bargainer’s Mark seemed darker than before, its deep-green color stark as ink against his skin.

The Wolf’s room was the very top of the tower, circular beneath a vaulted ceiling crisscrossed with wooden beams. An open wardrobe stood next to the staircase, but clothes were scattered across the floor in messy piles. Eammon kicked them under the wardrobe. “Kings,” he swore, pressing a hand to his stomach.

Opposite the stairs, a stone fireplace cut into the wall, the source of the warmth and flickering light. Next to it, a bed was shoved between two large, glassless windows, the sheets tangled and the coverlet half on the floor. Books and empty mugs were piled around the bed, and the desk against the wall by the wardrobe overflowed with marked-up papers, an open inkwell, a leaking pen.

Eammon stumbled to the desk, one hand on his middle while the other tried to straighten the piles.

“You don’t have to do that.”

No response, but Eammon stopped his fruitless organizing, turning to face her with an unreadable expression. His eyes flickered to the cloak, still balled in her hands. “You went back for that?”

She nodded.

A line drew between his brows. “I can’t say I understand why.”

“It . . .” But she wasn’t sure how to finish, how to put it into words. “It’s mine.”

He didn’t press her for further explanation. They stood frozen, gazes locked, neither knowing quite how to move.

Eammon broke away first, looking instead at his still-cluttered room. With a sigh, he bent to gather the fallen coverlet. “I’ll sleep at the base of the stairs. If you need—shit.”

He dropped the blanket, hand pressing hard against his stomach. Blood welled through the bandage, more green than crimson, dripping down the plane of pale, scarred skin.

Red strode forward, put her hands on his shoulders, pushed him to sit against the wall. “You’ve reopened the wound.”

“I’m aware.”

“Do you have more bandages?”

“Top drawer.”

She crossed the room to the desk and rummaged through the noted drawer, past shredded bits of paper and broken pens. “Bandages are more effective when they’re kept clean.”

“They’ve worked fine thus far.” Eammon shifted, cursed. “If you haven’t noticed, I get sliced up rather often.”

It reminded her of what Lyra said before. Eammon is used to bleeding. Her mouth firmed, and she dug through the mess with renewed determination.

Finally, she found them, buried beneath a scribble-covered notebook and a layer of pencil shavings. Fist full of gauze, Red came back over and crouched next to him, peeled away the sodden bandage as another curse hissed through Eammon’s teeth. Three deep strikes scored his skin, bisecting chest and stomach. Tiny green tendrils curled from the ragged edges, almost too fine to see, flecked with fragile leaves.

Her eyes flicked from the carnage to Eammon’s face, stricken with sudden worry. “It’s not shadow-rotted, is it?”

“Can’t be.” Eammon’s jaw clenched tight. “Too much Wilderwood in me to let in anything else.”

Too much Wilderwood, indeed. His height still hadn’t lessened from the magic he’d harnessed as the corridor collapsed. Barely an inch, but it felt portentous to Red, made nerves spark along the back of her neck.

There was a tiny scar on his cheek. One she hadn’t noticed before, too faint to see from afar. A thin white line across his cheekbone, the same place where he’d taken her cut that first day in the library.

A scar he’d gained for her.

Their closeness sparked her power, like it had before in the clearing, making Red sharply, painfully