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

do.” He paused, next words quieter. “There’s not much of me left to give to another person.”

Red worked her thumbnail against the weave of his sheet.

“And you?” Hushed, but with genuine curiosity. “Surely there was someone, in the twenty years before you came here.”

When she closed her eyes and tried to remember Arick’s face, all she could see was the twisted thing from the gate, built of darkness and malice. “One.”

Silence, shatter-ready. “If you didn’t have to be here,” Eammon began, barely above a whisper. “If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?”

The question felt more complicated than it should’ve. Red’s whole life was under the shadow of the Wilderwood. Considering anything else hurt too much, so she just . . . didn’t. Now that there were options, now that a life stretched before her tied to the man across the room, she wasn’t exactly sure what wanting looked like.

“If I could do anything I wanted,” she answered, “I would let my sister know I’m safe.”

Eammon’s sigh was shaky. “I’m sorry, Red.”

She sat up on her elbow, peered through the ember glow to where Eammon lay, one hand pushing back his hair and the other on his chest. Dim light revealed only his edges— broad shoulders, crooked nose. He turned, and their gazes locked.

“I’m sorry, too,” she breathed.

The permanent line between Eammon’s brows softened. Wordlessly, he nodded.

Red lay back, rolled on her side. After a moment, she heard Eammon do the same, and his breathing slowed, evened out.

Eventually, so did hers.

Valleydan Interlude V

O rder funerals were morbid affairs. And since this one was for the High Priestess, it seemed even more somber than usual.

Neve’s black veil blanketed everything in shadow, made the pyre and the priestesses and the gathered courtiers look like they moved through thick fog. Nerves twisted in her stomach. This had happened too fast, too quickly for her plans to be fully woven. It felt like holding tight to the reins of a runaway horse.

Zophia’s body lay prostrate on the pyre, wrapped to her chin in the black cloak corpses wore for burning. The dark cloth was covered in tokens from all over the continent to signify the Order’s unity— each country with its own Temple, each Temple with its own High Priestess.

The value of the tokens the other Temples had sent for this burning was staggering. Olive oil from Karsecka, pounds of fragrant blooms from Cian, bottles of dark liquor brewed with gold flecks shipped over from the Rylt. There was far too much to actually include on the pyre, most of it packed away in the Temple’s stores with the prayer-taxes. A happy coincidence, really— the sum Belvedere had ended up paying Alpera to reroute the grain was truly astronomical, and some of the riches brought for the funeral could offset the costs.

Though the expense was vast, the grain had arrived safely. The story of Kiri and Arick’s prayers clearing the mouth of the bay were nothing but rumbles, whispered rumors in hushed tones. At first, that had puzzled Neve, but it was apparently how Kiri preferred it. A folktale of a miracle, she said, would prove more useful to them than something proclaimed by the Temple. Support from the bottom up would be more useful than from the top down. She’d clutched her wood-shard pendant as she said it, face carefully blank, like she was reciting something she’d heard rather than explaining thoughts of her own. It’d made Neve’s insides feel twitchy, and made her glad she’d never actually worn the pendant Kiri had given her. But she nodded along.

From her place behind the pyre with the other candidates for the High Priestess’s replacement, Kiri glanced over, blue eyes glinting ice. The slightest bend of a cold smile, then she looked away.

A torch passed. Neve’s part of the plan began now.

Zophia’s possible successors walked in a circle around the pyre, their seventh and final lap ending in a line behind it. As one, they turned to Neve and Isla. The Queen and the First Daughter had the front row to themselves.

Isla looked worse. She’d been on a steady decline in the week since the trade meeting. Today cosmetics made her cheeks less pale and her eyes less listless, but there was no mistaking her thinness, the slump of her shoulders. Her health had been one of the things delaying Neve in trying to change her mind on the High Priestess’s heir. She’d gone to visit her mother nearly every day, but the silence of her sickroom was oppressive, and Isla had usually been asleep, anyway.

Then Zophia died, with Tealia still selected to replace her. But there was a loophole. One Neve would be exploiting as soon as the call went out for the useless, ceremonial vote.

A tiny prayer, murmured in her mind, the scrap of faith she’d unexpectedly found in all her heresy. Make her listen.

A warm hand landed on Neve’s shoulder, there and then gone, and she almost jumped out of her skin. A quick glance back— just Raffe. He gave her a fleeting smile, squeezed her shoulder once.

It should’ve been comforting. Instead, Neve’s heartbeat sped.

The red rose petal in her hand was limp and crumpled, creased with sweat. The other courtiers in the room made great shows of looking from their petals to the gathered priestesses, as if this vote actually counted for something.

Next to Raffe, Arick’s brows drew low, his petal turning between his fingers. Dark circles marked the skin under his eyes. The meeting in the Shrine last night had run late. He had a new bandage on his hand, unbloodied, though a speck of black still marked the center of his palm. She’d been concerned the first time she saw him bleed from it, but no one else seemed to be, so she kept quiet.

According to Kiri, it was working. The Wilderwood was weakening, loosening its hold on Red. That was what mattered. Everything else, they could figure out later.

She darted another