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

whisper was a cut. “I thought I could . . . it doesn’t matter what I thought. This was a mistake.”

Red crossed her arms, hunched over them like she could hide, make herself smaller. The three-fold scar on her stomach, his wound she’d healed so long ago, twinged for the first time in weeks. Somehow, sorry hurt more than mistake did.

Something brushed her arm. Red glanced to the other end of the table. The branch she’d directed her magic at was huge, the silver-painted bands at least a foot away from the central bough. Green leaves sprouted from the ends of the twigs, summer-verdant.

She must’ve made a noise, because Eammon turned slightly, worry in his face like he thought he might find her crying. His eyes widened when he saw the branch.

“Told you I could do more.” Her voice was hollow. The tears he worried for hung in her throat and grew sharp.

Dark hair feathered over Eammon’s shoulders as he hung his head. He ran a scarred hand over his face. “I wish things could be different. But they just . . . they can’t. I can’t hold it back from you if I . . .” He trailed into silence. Took a breath. “Keeping the Wilderwood from coming for you takes everything I have,” he said, the words clipped and measured. “All my concentration, all my strength. Everything. There isn’t anything left. And the forest is so tied in me, so close to the surface . . .” A short, sharp gesture to the encroaching growth around them. “When I get close to you, it does, too. And I won’t let it trap you here, Red. I won’t.”

There’s not much of me left to give to another person.

There’s not much of me left.

He’d told her to trust him, yesterday, when he broke off their kiss and went about his business as if it never happened. But instead they’d pushed, breaking through the thin barriers they’d set up between themselves. The pieces were too jagged to put back together.

Whatever they’d just shattered, it was the only thing they could have.

Red slipped off the table. “I wish things could be different, too.”

She ducked down the stairs so he couldn’t see the tears start.

Chapter Twenty-Three

R ed closed the Keep door with more force than necessary, pressing her back against it like a barricade. Her tears had been short-lived, thankfully, a benefit of living a life that gave her little opportunity to spill them. Still, her face was blotched and her eyes felt heavy.

The front door pushed open, Fife and Lyra tumbling in. She was laughing, a palm pressed to her stomach, and Fife’s hands flew as he shaped some story in the air, the most animated she’d ever seen him. Red stood quiet, watching. Things between them were complicated, Fife had said, but it was clear they loved each other uniquely. Simply.

It made her chest ache.

Fife held a canvas bag similar to the one they’d brought from Asheyla’s yesterday, the top drawstring half open and spilling a length of scarlet. When Lyra caught sight of Red, she hurriedly grabbed the fabric and stuffed it back in the bag. “Red!”

She pasted on a smile, rubbed at her eyes, and hoped the dim light would be enough to obscure the vestiges of tears. “Back from the Edge?”

“Picking up the last of the supplies.” Lyra opened her own canvas bag, pulling out a bottle of wine to wag in the air. “Valdrek claims this isn’t watered. I’m inclined to believe him, since you and Eammon saved his son-in-law.” She said it nonchalantly, but curiosity flashed across her delicate features, and she looked at Red like she saw everything she’d tried to hide behind a false smile and quick-scrubbed eyes.

Red looked away. “What’s in the other bag?”

Fife glanced at Lyra, an unspoken conversation. “Well, he’s not here to give it to her,” Fife finally said. He offered Red the bag. “Your cloak.”

Their behavior seemed odd, for it to be nothing but her mended cloak, but Red didn’t have the energy to think too hard about it. She took the bag and slung it over her shoulder without looking inside. “Thanks.”

Another wordless glance between Fife and Lyra. “Eammon around?” Fife asked as he turned toward the dining room, disappearing beneath the arch.

“We’ll find him later. He’s probably translating until he’s cross-eyed again.” Lyra gave Red a gentle look, one that invited confidence if it was needed. “You can come with us, if you want. I’m making Fife brew tea.”

Red bent her mouth to a semblance of a smile but shook her head. “Thanks anyway.” Mud and blood spattered Lyra’s leggings, and the edge of her tor looked like it’d been hastily wiped down. “Did you run into something?”

“A few more shadow-creatures.” Lyra huffed a laugh, but it was thin. “It was a good thing Fife was there. He spotted one before I did. Managed to toss a vial of blood at it before it made itself a body.”

“I didn’t know he patrolled, too.”

“It’s not really patrolling, I guess.” She shrugged, a shade of sadness flitting across her dark eyes. “He just wants to see if there are any weak spots.”

Like the villagers, pressing forward from the Edge. So many people caught in the Wilderwood’s tangle, so many people wanting to escape.

Red chewed on the corner of her lip, thinking of the conversation she’d overheard the day of the mirror, the day she found out about Isla’s death. How Eammon said she could leave if she wanted. How he and Fife and Lyra were too bound to the Wilderwood for it to be an option. “Are there weak spots? Truly?”

The vials of blood in Lyra’s bag clinked together as she shifted on her feet. “Honestly? I don’t think so. Not on the Valleydan border, and not weak enough to let us out. The Wilderwood has its teeth in too deep.” A pause. “I don’t think Fife really believes he’s going to find anything.