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

Red slept alone, woke alone. The only sign Eammon had been there was his crumpled bedding in the corner, and his habit of leaving the wardrobe doors open. Red always closed them.

Some days, she didn’t see him at all. He was in the library, or off in the Wilderwood. He didn’t keep her same hours— no one did— and sometimes she’d wake to his nest of blankets completely undisturbed.

Every once in a while, there’d be a note on the desk in that messy, slanting handwriting, directing her to the tower. The magic she worked with his help was small, nothing so perilous as taking a wound— she’d grown the ivy in the pot and made the buds on a branch open into leaves with middling success. It wasn’t as easy to direct as it had been the night she healed him, but it could be controlled, if she kept her memories in check and thought of Eammon, letting their bond of marriage and forest smooth her magic into something easy to grasp. Physical proximity seemed to help, too, but the thought of mentioning that to him felt vulnerable in a way she didn’t want to examine too closely, so she kept it to herself.

Red shivered, the bare skin of her calves rising in goose bumps. In addition to being scandalous, Eammon’s shirts did little to cut the constant chill of the Wilderwood. It had been Lyra’s idea to go ranging for old clothes, and they’d checked every storage closet still standing in the Keep before finding them.

“I could lend you something,” Lyra said, leaning against the wall. She cleaned her nails with a dagger, feigning nonchalance. “If you want.”

Since she’d been at the Keep, Lyra had been quicker to friendliness than Fife, but still standoffish in her own way. In the past week or so, though, she’d made more overtures of friendship— telling Red about the shadow-creatures she saw in the forest, stories about her and Fife and Eammon’s strange existence in the Wilderwood. Red’s favorite so far was the time Eammon decided he was going to learn to cook and sent Fife to the Edge with a list as long as his arm of ingredients. Apparently, he’d nearly caught the kitchen on fire. Fife managed the food after that.

It made Red wonder about the other Second Daughters, how their time here had looked before the Wilderwood killed them, drained them. She supposed it was a vote of confidence that Lyra would try to reach out. It meant she thought Red would be around awhile.

Red leaned around the closet’s open door, raising a deliberate eyebrow at Lyra’s frame, much thinner than her own. “Trying to wear your clothes might end up more scandalous than wearing Eammon’s.”

Lyra shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

The gowns were folded on the bottom shelf. Red sifted through the smooth silk and sumptuous brocade carefully, half afraid they might crumble in her fingers. They came in all different sizes, in styles she’d seen only in history books, and the weight of centuries packed into the fabric made them seem heavier than they should.

Lyra’s head poked around the door, brows raised. The closet was behind the staircase, and pale light from the solarium window above turned her tightly coiled curls to a copper-threaded halo. “Well?”

The dress Red held was forest green, embroidered with golden vines along the sleeves and hem. “This looks promising.”

Fife and Eammon were nowhere to be seen, so Red changed behind the staircase. The dress was tight in the chest and hips, but mostly fit. She held her hands out to her sides. “Suitable?”

“Suitable.” There was a strange, half-uneasy light in Lyra’s eyes that her smile couldn’t shake.

Red picked at the embroidery. “Do you know whose it was?”

“Merra, I think.”

Merra. The Second Daughter before Red. The fabric felt strange on her skin.

Lyra hitched at the strap that held her tor, checked the small bag at her waist to make sure it was stocked with blood. “I’m off to patrol. Wish me no monsters.” She slipped through the door into the twilight.

Merra’s green skirts slid over Red’s bare legs, the sleeves itching her arms. She turned, headed for the staircase down to the library. If the day was hers, she planned to spend it reading.

Her eyes flicked over the corridor, a quick surveillance that had become part of her routine. The sentinels hadn’t moved since the night the Wilderwood came for her— on the days they practiced using its magic, Eammon diligently checked her hands for wounds before she touched anything, and once made her bandage a papercut— but Red kept a wary eye out, just in case.

Her gaze carefully combed through the churn of roots and vines. Still, it took her a moment to realize what was wrong, the hole in the haunted tableau she’d grown so used to.

The sentinels were gone.

Panic iced her limbs; Red whirled, searching the shadows, sure the white trees had moved farther into the Keep, maybe preparing to come for her again. Nothing stirred but dust.

Slowly, Red crept to the precise line where Eammon had cut off the forest. Husks of leaves and thin roots littered the floor, still and silent.

A smear of blood marked one of the dead leaves. Crimson, green-threaded. Once she’d seen it, more bloodstains were easy to spot— on the moss, on the branches.

Fife checked the sentinels daily, stabilizing them with his own blood as much as he could. Thus far, they’d stayed clear of shadow-rot, fine to be left until Eammon had the strength to move them. But if he’d felt the need to bleed for them now, all at once . . .

Then it was getting worse. Still getting worse, despite her using the forest’s magic, despite their thread bond. Still taking pieces of Eammon, whether let from a vein or a change in his body.

Red chewed her lip, made a split-second decision, and headed for the door.

In the courtyard, fog eddied over the ground. It cleared over an out-of-place shape in the landscape before hiding