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

Sunlight. How long had it been since she’d seen the light of a full day, not couched in dusk?

Eammon glanced at her, like he could read the thought on her face. The corner of his mouth quirked to smile-shaped, but something sorrowful pulled down its edge. “The forest ends up ahead.”

It was still strange to her that the Wilderwood was something with an end. It was a geographic anomaly. None could catalog where it stopped, so they assumed it simply didn’t. Explorers had tried to map it— riding up the eastern border where Valleyda met the frozen expanse of the Alperan Wastes, and sailing along the western side, where it met the sea. None returned.

Now Red knew why. The Kings disappeared and the Wilderwood closed, and those who’d made their way behind it, through the sea or up the Wastes, were trapped there. She thought of Bormain and Valdrek, the people dressed in green and gray. The descendants of those lost adventurers, cut off from the world for generations.

“They have a sky,” she said softly, looking up. “The regular sky, I mean. With the sun.”

Another half smile, another darted glance with something slightly wounded in it. “They do.” Eammon started forward, shafts of thin gold cutting the fog and burnishing his hair. Sunlight looked good on him. “Endless twilight, fortunately, only plagues the Wilderwood.”

Red followed Eammon to the tree line, slipping between the trunks and out into the light beyond. She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath in expectation of pain until it didn’t come. There was a slight pop of pressure, a soap bubble breaking against her skin, but nothing like the crushing vise she’d felt when she first crossed into the Wilderwood, the strange hum against her bones. It reminded her of what Fife told her, that day with Bormain— the borders on the northern side weren’t closed up so tightly. The Wilderwood, it seemed, felt the need for such protection only from the rest of the continent.

Still, Eammon paused next to her, a muscle feathering in his jaw, a swallow working down his throat. Pain carved lines beside his mouth and made his shoulders stiff— the roots knotted around his spine tightening, pulling him back toward the gloom of his forest. It might let him go, on its northern border, but it wouldn’t let him forget where he belonged.

Her lip worked between her teeth.

A few yards away, a large wooden wall rose up from the ground, carved with swirls and arabesques, set with massive double doors. From within, the faint sounds of a city— laughter and shouting, hawking merchants, livestock. Smoke twisted into a sky that faded from lavender to bright blue. Miles away to the west, a line of fog began on the horizon. It looked almost like an approaching storm, but as Red watched, it didn’t move.

Eammon followed her gaze. “The sea is that way,” he said. “The fog is so thick you can’t see more than two inches from your eyes. Apparently, anyone who sails in it gets hopelessly lost, turned around in circles.”

“Has anyone tried?”

“Not in ages.” He jerked a finger over his shoulder in the opposite direction. “Same thing to the east, it’s just too far away to see. Endless fog.”

“And you can’t pass through that, either?”

Eammon shook his head. “The Wilderwood was very thorough, after the Kings wounded it. Everyone unlucky enough to be stuck back here has no way to get out.” His hand pressed against his side, mouth thinning as he turned to stride toward the city walls. “Come on. We need to make this quick.”

Red watched him go with a line between her brows, the rigid way he moved at odds with his usual stalking grace. Bones wrapped in vines, a tether pulling him back. Another reminder— much as he might look human, he wasn’t.

Still, her hand was warm where he’d held it.

Eammon rapped against the wooden doors. Red winced, used to the crushing quiet of the Wilderwood, but against the backdrop of village noises, Eammon’s knock was barely heard.

The door creaked open, just a crack. A scrutinizing blue eye peered out. “Name?”

“Who do you think it is, Lear?” Eammon rolled his eyes, but it was with a grin. “I brought a guest.”

The gatekeeper’s eyes widened, as did the crack. Beyond, Red could see a bustling village, not unlike the Valleydan capital.

“My lady.” The man had hair the dark auburn of autumn leaves and a handsome, clean-shaven face. She recognized him— he’d been in the forest the day she saw the vision and came after Eammon.

Lear pushed the door open wide. “Welcome, Wolves.”

Chapter Twenty

T he cacophony was deafening after weeks of near-silence in the Wilderwood. Children ran and shouted, donkeys brayed, sheep bleated. Dirt roads branched off the stone-paved main path, leading to earthen huts with grass roofs, the wooden lintels carved with the same graceful arabesques as the gates. They’d called it a village, but this was a city, almost as large as the Valleydan capital. Centuries of explorers’ descendants, trying to make their own world since they couldn’t get into the one beyond the Wilderwood.

Beyond the thoroughfare, Red could glimpse fields full of crops, distant grazing animals. It appeared the cold and barren soil that made Valleyda difficult to farm wasn’t as much of a problem here. She wondered if it was some facet of magic, the Wilderwood making the land fruitful since it had them trapped here with no way to trade, relying only on what they could grow themselves.

No one seemed fazed by Eammon’s presence, but Red drew their attention. Women whispered behind their hands as they passed; children stopped in their games to watch with wide eyes. All of them wore old-fashioned clothes, in shades of mist and forest and earth.

“They’re looking at me like I have three heads,” Red murmured.

“You’re the first person from beyond the Wilderwood they’ve seen in a century,” Eammon replied. “Something with three heads would be less conspicuous.”

In a