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

Eammon held another glass in his hand, half filled with deep burgundy. He set it where the mug had been. “In case you need something stronger than tea.” A brief smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. “Lyra told me to warn you it’s not Meducian. Valdrek makes his own wine at the Edge, and I’m half convinced he waters it down before selling it to me.”

She tried to answer his smile, but her lips barely lifted.

Gingerly, Eammon sat in the chair before the desk, hands clasped between his knees. The quiet hung thick in the air, broken only by the crackle of flame, but it was comfortable.

Red drained the tea, stared into the dregs. “Now we know the mirror works. I suppose that’s a good thing.”

“I’m so sorry, Red.” He said it to the floor, like he didn’t think eye contact would be welcome. “Did she look . . . was your sister . . .”

“She looked tired. Tired and . . . and sad.” Red tried to shrug, but the movement was stilted. “I don’t know if Neve is ready to be Queen. To take our mother’s place.”

“I don’t think we’re ever ready to take on what our parents leave us.” Eammon studied his knotted hands. “The places left rarely fit.”

White knuckles belied his nonchalance, translating his statement into a language they both knew. His parents’ shadows, cast long and dark. The legacy of a Wolf and a Second Daughter neither of them had chosen.

“I’m more worried about Neve than I am sad about my mother.” A confession, shame-scraped. “How awful is that?”

“Not awful. Grief is strange.”

Red’s relationship with Isla was a fraught and layered thing, not easily explained. But her absence, the gaping place left, made her want to try. The only absolution she could give her. “We . . . my mother and I . . . we were never close.”

His knuckles blanched, hands still clasped between his knees. “Because of . . .” One hand came free, waved in the space between them.

“Not just that.” Red shook her head. “She wasn’t overly close with Neve, either, though I think she wanted to be.” She studied the loose threads in the blanket, both of them keeping their eyes carefully from the other. “She needed an heir. She got two daughters in the bargain, and one she couldn’t keep. It was easier for her to pretend I didn’t exist. Especially after . . .” She trailed off, but she didn’t really need an ending. The shard of the Wilderwood’s magic in her center bloomed upward, the vague taste of earth on her tongue.

Eammon’s shoulders sank, like guilt was something physical. Her fingers itched to settle on them, to smooth them back to straightness. To run them into his hair and make them both think of other things.

Red clenched her mug instead. She was well acquainted with guilt, and how it took more than warm hands or even warm mouths to banish it.

Guilt. It kept circling back to that.

“I know you didn’t see everything that happened that night.” She shifted on the bed. “But did you see me?”

“No more than your hands. I just . . . sensed you.” A fall of dark hair hid his eyes; he pushed it back with a scarred knuckle. “I felt the Wilderwood rushing for something, though I didn’t know what, not at first. But once it touched you, I felt your pain. Your panic. It drowned out everything else.”

Her lips pressed bloodlessly together.

“I tried to stop it.” He braced his forearms on his thighs. “Clearly, I wasn’t as successful as I should’ve been. I couldn’t keep all of it from you. But even though the Wilderwood gave you a piece of its power, I thought, maybe, I could keep you from being called. If I kept the forest strong, maybe your Mark would never show up. Maybe the cycle could break.” He swallowed. “I wasn’t successful at that, either.”

Eammon had been trying to save her for years, pushing her away until he couldn’t anymore. Until the Wilderwood decided it would have its due, no matter how much of himself the Wolf gave up.

A deep breath, and Red sat up straight, dropping her knees to sit cross-legged on the threadbare coverlet. She’d never recounted the whole of what happened that night she and Neve ran to the Wilderwood, not to anyone. Their attackers were dead; Neve had blocked it out. The memory was a wound, and she’d covered it up, never letting it breathe, never letting it heal.

It hadn’t occurred to her before now that the memory wasn’t only her own— parts of it belonged to Eammon, too. Another shared hurt, another mirrored mark. A burden that might lessen if they bore it together.

“It was our sixteenth birthday.” Red spoke to the mattress, though she was painfully aware of Eammon’s puzzled eyes on her. If she looked at him, it might break the spell, break the cadence that made this a story and therefore easier to speak. “There was a ball.”

As if sensing what she needed, Eammon stayed silent. He sat still, waiting for her to go on, firelight playing over the angles of his face.

“It was . . . unpleasant. That was the first night I really noticed just how different Neve and I were. How different our lives would be.” She paused. “My mother barely spoke to me.”

Eammon’s fists tightened between his knees.

“After, Neve found me crying. She asked me what she could do. I told her nothing, unless she knew a way to get rid of the Wilderwood. So that’s what we tried.” Red snorted. “Everyone was half drunk, so stealing horses was far easier than it should’ve been. We ran them all the way to the border.”

The horses had lathered quickly, their breaths screaming in the cold night air. Red remembered thinking their northward flight hadn’t taken enough time. She’d wanted to run under the star-strewn sky with her sister forever.

“The matches