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

Neve brought didn’t work,” she continued quietly. “The Wilderwood can’t be burned, we’d always heard that, but neither of us believed it until then. It scared her, I think, to see the proof of it— that the forest wasn’t just a forest, that it was something more. Neve probably would’ve left after that, and that would’ve been the end. But I found a stone.”

She’d picked up the rock, hurled it wildly between the trees. The sound it made wasn’t loud enough for her, just a muffled thud in the underbrush. So she’d screamed, and once she started, she couldn’t stop. Red had picked up rock after rock, throwing them blindly, getting closer and closer to the edge of the trees. She remembered how the hum pressed against her skin, vibrated in her bones. The forest allowing her closer when it wouldn’t let anyone else.

Neve found her own stone, threw it at the Wilderwood, getting as near to it as she could. Her screams joined Red’s, two lost girls on the edge of the world they knew, shrieking and throwing rocks because there was nothing else they could do, and they had to do something.

“One of the rocks sliced my palm,” Red said, the memory playing on the back of her eyelids like a shadow show. “And I tripped as I threw it. I tried to stop the fall with my cut hand, landed just inside the border.”

“And the Wilderwood came for you.” Eammon’s voice was rough and hushed, like he’d been silent for hours instead of minutes.

“And you stopped it,” Red added smoothly. She didn’t open her eyes; she knew it’d make her lose her nerve. But she felt Eammon look at her, felt his regard as heavy as an arm on her shoulder.

She paused for a moment before picking up the story again. “All that screaming attracted attention, and so had two girls on fine horses tearing down the road. I don’t know how long they lay in wait, how long they watched us. But they got Neve, after she pulled me away from the forest by my leg. Held a knife to her throat. And I . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. “I let it go.”

There’d been a moment of stillness, she remembered. A moment when the magic left splintered in her center had paused, nearly stunned, like vines stretched taut and sliced off. The veins in her wrists blazed verdant, traveling up her arms, through her chest, toward her heart. A bloom of golden light behind her eyes.

And her shard of splintered magic erupted.

A trunk had exploded through the ground and impaled one of the thieves, shooting out of his mouth covered in gore and viscera, spreading branches that broke bones. Vines slithered from the ground and ensnared another, pulling tight around his neck until his face bloated, turned purple, burst like a popped bubble.

The man holding Neve had stumbled backward, letting her fall to the ground in a dead faint. A root rose behind him, tripped him, and a thicket of thorns grew up in an instant. They’d ripped through his skin like paper, shooting out of his mouth, his eyes.

But the worst was Neve. She’d lain there, and thorns had sprouted from the ground around her, just one more body caught in the maelstrom Red had created. One more thing her chaotic forest magic might kill.

That was the first time Red cut off her power, a wrenching that felt like ripping her own spine from her skin. She’d cut it off, and fell to her knees, and screamed and screamed and screamed.

“I killed them.” Her voice was a quick monotone now, tripping over words in the rush to get them out. “I killed them all. I nearly killed Neve, but I cut it off in time.”

“That’s why you said you had to stay here,” Eammon said, fitting the pieces together. “When I tried to make you go.”

Red nodded. She couldn’t speak on that anymore, couldn’t think of it too hard or the pain and guilt might close her throat. “After I made it stop, the forest . . . retracted. The vines and trees and thorns all sank back into the ground, and only the bodies were left.” Bodies in pools of blood, so much dead meat, and her throat itched with a scream even now. A shudder started in her shoulders, and it didn’t stop. “Neve fainted before she saw anything. She doesn’t remember what I did. And when the guards finally arrived— hours later, it felt like— I told them the thieves had all turned on one another. But it was me. All of it was me.”

Her voice dwindled, growing quieter and quieter, until the last words were a whisper. She didn’t realize she was crying until she tasted salt, and she didn’t realize Eammon had come to sit next to her until his rough palms cupped her face.

His thumbs brushed over her cheeks, obscuring tear tracks. Slowly, her shuddering faded, faded until she was still. When his hands dropped, she had to fight not to reach for them.

“You saved her.” Eammon’s voice was low, earnest. “None of it was your fault.”

“I don’t even think of it in terms of fault anymore.” Red hunched over her crossed arms. “It happened. I have to live with it.” Her eyes flickered toward him. “And before you taught me how to control this power, how to use it, I had to live with the fear that I might do it again.”

Eammon’s face was unreadable. “You’ll go back now, then?” It was quiet, like he was afraid to give it too much sound. “Now that you know you can control it?”

“Of course not.” Nearly sharp, incredulous he’d even ask. “You need me here.”

His eyes widened, just by a fraction, and that slice of a second was enough for Red to wish the words were a physical thing she could stuff back in her mouth and swallow down.

But Eammon didn’t refute her.

Red sighed, pushing her