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

Her rough braid fell over her shoulder; Red plucked out a split-ended strand and held it up. “This, then?”

Eammon nodded, arms crossed and jaw tense. “I’ll be right here,” he said, stern once again. “If something feels strange, in any way, I’m pulling you out.”

Red made an absent noise of agreement, all her attention on the matte surface of the mirror. Carefully, she wound the long strand of her hair through the swirls of the frame. Then she stepped back, stared into its darkness, and waited.

Five heartbeats, six. Nothing. Disappointment tasted bitter in the back of Red’s throat, and she was about to turn away, when something glimmered in the depths of the mirror.

The light of it caught her, reeled her in, a speck of silver in the gray. The longer she stared, the larger and more brilliant it grew, smoke billowing across its shine, growing and growing until it filled her vision entirely.

A blast of soundless light, like an exploding star, smoke whirling into dark cosmos.

And when the smoke cleared, there was Neve.

Chapter Eighteen

I t was like looking through a window. No, not quite— like being trapped in a window, folded into the glass. She tried to move and couldn’t, couldn’t sense her limbs at all. Her awareness was stretched thin, diffused and refracted into mirror-light.

Neve stood in the Shrine, behind the statue of Gaya. Her figure was smudged, but still Red could see she was thinner than before, her cheeks gaunt. A bandage wrapped around her left hand.

Red tried to scream for her, forgetting it would be fruitless, that this mirror was one-way and only for seeing. Distantly, she felt the work of vocal cords, but there was no sound, nothing.

Still, her shout seemed to spark something, like her desire strengthened the magic that made the mirror. Gradually, Neve’s image cleared, grew solid.

“We’ve been doing this for a month now, and she hasn’t returned.” Her sister was turned to the side, brows drawn down, dark eyes narrowed. Her lip disappeared between her teeth, an anxious tell she and Red shared. “Why hasn’t she escaped?”

Red couldn’t make out whomever Neve spoke to— they were blurred, shadowed. This mirror was built to show the First Daughter, and it did no more than that.

“It will take time.” The voice came muffled, barely clear enough to hear. “Great things often do. Patience, Neverah.”

“Is there no way to hurry things along?” Neve’s arms crossed over her thin chest. When her head lifted, firelight caught on the silver circlet in her hair. More ornate than the one she usually wore. Familiar in a way that tugged at the back of Red’s mind, that seemed somehow off.

“Perhaps.”

“Tell me what we need, Kiri.” Neve was no stranger to a commanding tone, but there was some new strength in it now. The voice of someone who knew beyond a doubt she’d be obeyed. “Tell me what we need, and I will make sure it happens.”

The pause stretched uncomfortably long. The line of Neve’s jaw tremored, once. She reached up and touched the circlet, adjusting it on her brow.

“I suppose you can do that with no restraint now, can’t you?” There was something sly in the muffled voice. Something that pricked at the entire length of Red’s spine. “Now that Isla is dead. Now that you are Queen.”

Queen.

Even in her strange and suspended consciousness, Red felt the air leave her lungs, felt the breathy half-cry crawl its way up her throat.

In the mirror, Neve flinched, just barely.

Red felt Eammon’s hands on her shoulders, knew he’d heard her, sensed something was wrong. His touch drew her from the vision, smoke and silver-bright eclipsing Neve’s image, but not before she heard one last thing from that muffled voice.

“You could always offer more blood.”

Then— the sharp bite of floor into her knees, the paper-and-coffee scent of Eammon bent over her. “Red?” His voice was calm but laced with barely leashed panic. “Red, what’s wrong?”

“My mother is dead,” she murmured, eyes wide. “My mother is dead.”

Steam curled from the rapidly cooling mug of tea on the desk. Red couldn’t quite summon the energy to reach for it. She sat on the bed, arms looped around her knees, and watched the steam twist silently into the air. The book of poems sat next to it. She hadn’t realized she’d brought it with her from the tower until Eammon gently took it from her hands and laid it aside.

The murmurs at the bottom of the stairs were barely hidden by the pop of flames in the grate. “Are we sure it was real?” Lyra asked. “That mirror is ancient.”

“She saw her sister.” Eammon’s voice. “That’s what it was built for.”

“But its power is from the Wilderwood.” This from Fife, wary. “And things with the Wilderwood aren’t going well lately. How can you be sure it showed the truth?”

“I just know, Fife.” She could almost see Eammon rubbing at his dark-shrouded eyes. Then a sharp, brittle laugh. “Her mother is dead, and her sister is alone, and she’s in this shadows-damned forest when she has no reason to be.”

“No reason other than to help you,” Fife said.

Silence from Eammon.

When Lyra spoke, it was hushed. “Eammon, you aren’t thinking . . .”

“If she asked,” Eammon said, “I wouldn’t tell her no.” Heavy silence, just for a moment. Then, quiet: “I should’ve made her go when she first arrived. The Wilderwood has no hold on her, not enough to keep her here. Not like the others.”

There was no surprise in the resulting pause. Fife and Lyra had known something was different about Red, known it from that first day.

“So her being here doesn’t do much, anyway,” Fife murmured.

The low, rough sound of Eammon’s sigh. “No.”

Red squeezed her eyes shut.

Footsteps on the stairs. Eammon appeared, hair tangled around his shoulders. He frowned. “You’re still awake.”

“Can’t sleep.” Red reached over to the desk, took the now-lukewarm mug. The tea smelled pleasant, all spice and clove, and when she took