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

But hope, you know? It’s like a boot that won’t break in. Hurts to walk in it, hurts worse to go barefoot.”

Red knew hope and its burn like she knew the scent of Neve’s hair, the pattern of scars on the back of Eammon’s hands. “Would you want to find a weak spot, if it was there to find? Would you leave?”

It sounded deceptively simple, for how layered a question it was. Lyra’s long eyelashes flickered down to brush her cheeks as she sighed. “I don’t know. The world . . . it’s been so long since I was in it, and it would be so different, and who knows what would happen to us once we left the forest, and I . . . I just don’t know.” She rubbed at her forearm. “The Mark is what binds us here, not the borders, so even if we found a weak place it’d probably be useless. But if we did, and it let us go . . .” Her hand dropped. “If Fife went, I would, too. We stay together, him and me.”

The ache in Red’s chest sharpened.

Another tiny smile. “The tea is a standing invitation,” Lyra said, turning toward the dining room to join Fife. “Just let me know, and I’ll bully Fife into baking something, too.”

Red gave her a halfhearted smile, then mounted the stairs. Their voices were a hush as she climbed up to her and Eammon’s room, carrying the bag with her mended cloak.

The bed was rumpled, just as she left it. Red sat with a sigh, dropping the bag, burying her face in her hands.

She should leave. That was the plan, wasn’t it? Go back to Valleyda, stop Neve, do what little she could to keep the Wilderwood strong. Still, the idea of leaving Eammon didn’t sit well. She might be hurt and angry— and sad, and embarrassed, and a whole host of other emotions she couldn’t even name— but leaving him felt wrong, strange-shaped and rough-edged in her chest. Not just because of what she felt for him, but because of the power and connection they shared, the ties that bound them to the forest and each other. She was meant for the Wilderwood, and abandoning it tore at her, almost physically.

He wouldn’t stop any of them from leaving. She knew that. If she could go to Valleyda and stay there, if Lyra and Fife could find a weak spot in the Wilderwood’s defenses and slip free, Eammon would all but chase them out. Send them away while he withered in the shadows.

Determined to suffer alone.

Shaking her head, Red loosened the drawstring of Fife’s bag. A glint of gold shone among the scarlet; frowning, she pulled the mended cloak from the bag, breath catching in her chest.

Her cloak was more than mended. It was remade.

A changing forest spread from crimson shoulder to crimson shoulder, embroidered in golden thread— summer on the left, trees lush-leaved, autumn and winter in the center, with those leaves falling, and flowering spring on the right. The trees ran from branch to root, knotting in intricate loops, before becoming an image of a wolf leaping toward the hem.

Red pressed her knuckles against her lips until she could feel her teeth behind them. A bridal cloak.

It was an ancient Valleydan wedding tradition, one she never thought she’d take part in. The bride would wear a cloak embroidered with depictions of her new spouse’s lands and estates, a symbol of the new home they would build. Generally, bridal cloaks were white and embroidered in silver. But her cloak was still scarlet, the thread golden, rare and rich.

The symbol of her sacrifice, made into something that represented the new life she’d made. A future sewn together from the tatters she’d been left with.

She could still feel the bruise of Eammon’s kiss on her mouth.

Red pulled off her clothes and climbed beneath the cloak. Heedless of the time, whether dusk or day or midnight, Red let the warmth of her bridal cloak and the scent of leaves and libraries lull her to sleep.

She woke alone.

Groggily, Red pushed away the heap of blanket and cloak, swept back her unkempt hair. Someone had set a fire in the grate, blazing merrily, but Eammon’s blanket was still folded between the bed and the hearth. Her eyes narrowed.

If he expected to avoid a goodbye, he was mistaken. Red wouldn’t go quietly. Damn his reasons, he couldn’t kiss her like that—twice— and expect her to go quietly.

Her clothes lay in a heap on the floor; she pulled them on, boots and all. After a moment, she slung her new bridal cloak over her shoulders.

She was halfway to the stairs before her legs buckled.

The thorn-and-leaf darkness of a vision closed in immediately, this time an encroachment of forest that drove her to her knees. Red gasped, fingers pressing into her temples, deep-green magic blooming out of her chest to weave through her veins.

The connection between her and Eammon flared to life, even stronger than it had the day with Bormain.

Hands, again. Scarred and rough, sinking into the dirt. Veins running emerald, bark closing where skin should be. A forest between bones reached for a forest outside them, because this body had given everything else, and the barrier between man and wood was almost gone.

Her throat—Eammon’s throat— gagged up dirt. Sentinels grew around him in a perfectly circular ring, bone white and clear of rot. One stood taller, a strange, rectangular scar across its bark, like something had been stripped from it. And around its roots, a tangle of something gleaming—

The vision was gone, perception wrenched back into her own body. Red’s heart jackknifed against her ribs.

Eammon had done . . . something. Bled himself out, until only magic was left.

And the Wilderwood was taking him over.

She skidded down the stairs without a thought for trying to find Fife and Lyra— there was no time, not when Eammon was . . . was unmaking, unraveling. Red shoved open the