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

aware of every growing thing in the Keep below them, in the courtyard outside. Magic bloomed, arched toward her fingertips, as if the sight of his wound and the bond between them pulled it forward. “You have to let me try to fix it.”

Eammon leaned his head back against the wall. “Not a good idea.” His words were scaled back and stilted; he could force only so many up his throat. “Too much.”

Too much pain, and it had to go somewhere. Her bent hands hovered over his skin, conviction sharpening the edges of her voice. “I can do it.”

“Why?” Dark hair shadowed Eammon’s eyes, where she read everything he didn’t say. Why was she so determined to try healing him, when before the idea of using her power was met with such resistance?

Red wasn’t sure how to answer. The only thing she was sure of, when it came to Eammon, was that she wanted him safe. She cared. The caring was a complicated, layered thing, but that was the only kind of caring she knew.

“Because I have a vested interest in you not dying.” Then, somewhat softer, “And I owe you.”

Eammon’s eyes searched hers. Finally, he nodded, grimacing as he shifted against the wall, spelling out clipped instructions. “Focus your intention. Connect to the forest’s power in you. Touch the wound. Draw it in.” His mouth went suddenly fierce, brows drawn low, and when he spoke it was sure and strong. “Not all of it, Redarys. Promise me.”

She swallowed against a dry throat. Nodded. Then, fighting to keep her hands steady, she placed them against his skin.

Eammon was always warm, but this heat was fevered, sickly. His green-and-scarlet blood lined her fingers, pricked with leaves, and Red had to close her eyes to concentrate, to guard against the fear that mounted in her head at the sight of him hurt so badly.

But even the fear had its purpose. Something about it— something about it being for Eammon— made her power easier to wield, easier to shape. Her caring, magnified by their shared splinter of magic and the marriage they’d made, fashioned the chaotic power into something she could use.

It still scared her, how unexplainable it was. The connection between them forged in forest. Earlier, when she tried to grow the ivy, she’d been thinking of Neve and violence, of carnage she couldn’t control. But then there’d been the vision, proof that the way she and Eammon had tied themselves together made her stronger. And now, when the task before her was meaningful— when she wanted him safe, both because of that strange caring and because she feared what might happen to all of them if he wasn’t— she could treat her magic like a tool to be used rather than something to contain.

Intention clear, Red took hold of her power, opened herself to it. And she didn’t drown.

It flowed, rich and heady, deep green. A thin tendril, winding through muscle and bone like a root snaking toward the sun, waiting for her will.

The wounds burned under her hands. Slowly, carefully, Red let them in.

If there was pain, she didn’t feel it. The beat of power was steady, sure, a flow that matched her pulse. For the first time, this felt right, and the feeling was intoxicating. She took a little, then a little more, pushing herself—

“Red, stop!”

Her hands were empty. Red’s eyes opened, face sweaty and breath labored.

Eammon’s hand hovered above her cheek. He pulled back as her eyes opened, cold air replacing his warmth.

“You took too much.” His eyes were clearer than they’d been since the breach. “Dammit, Red.”

She looked down. Crimson bloomed across her abdomen, barely visible through the thin fabric of her nightgown. A wound, but not nearly as awful as his had been— she’d taken only part, not the whole. Still, as if the sight sparked her nerves to working, pain seared across the cuts, brought a hiss to her teeth. “Shit.” She sat back, hand pressed against her stomach. “You’ve lived with this all day? More than this?”

Eammon pushed off the wall, brow furrowed, legs shaky. “That was too much,” he said again, almost to himself.

“But it worked.” After the initial burn, the wounds weren’t so bad. Pain had to go somewhere, yes, but it seemed to come in a quick flare, all of it at once. Gingerly, Red lifted her hand from her middle, noticing as she did that her veins were traced in brilliant emerald, not just her wrists, but all the way up her arm. They faded almost immediately, ran blue again. “You’re . . . well, not good as new. But better. No more mangled insides.”

Eammon hung his hands on his hips, glowering down at her. Triple stripes of faint red with white-scarred lines in their centers marked his chest and stomach. “Less mangled.” Then, lower: “Thank you.”

Silence fell, their fragile camaraderie overshadowed by awkwardness. Eammon unhooked a poker from over the hearth and halfheartedly stirred up the embers, banishing the chill from the open windows. “You can put your cloak in the wardrobe,” he said to the fire. “If you want.”

The tattered fabric lay on the floor where she’d dropped it, distracted by Eammon’s bleeding. She picked it up, padded across the room. There was plenty of space in the wardrobe, since most of Eammon’s clothes seemed to live on the floor. The clothes that had made it inside were darkly colored and scented like leaves. Red tucked her scarlet cloak next to a stack of Eammon’s shirts.

She crossed back to the fireplace and sat on the floor, wrapped her arms around her knees. “It made you taller,” she said after a moment, quietly. “I mean, it made you taller, and then it didn’t go away.”

Eammon stiffened, pausing a moment in his stirring of the fire. His eyes flickered down, as if taking stock of himself, before closing. “So it did.”

“Has that happened before?” She kept her arms around her knees and her voice lightly conversational, but worry gnawed at