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

of unwanted thoughts loomed too large to ignore. “Raffe, I have to do this. If it can free Red—”

“Red isn’t here.” His whisper was fierce, and Neve pressed her forehead farther into his, like she could drown it out. “You can’t bring her back. She’s gone.”

Her fingers dug into his back, and she kissed him again, not gently. A kiss to swallow things. For a moment, he let her, then he broke away, his fingers winding in her hair.

“Neve.” He pulled back enough to look in her eyes. “There is nothing you could do to make me stop loving you, no matter how terrible. You know that, right?”

The word was a thud in her heart, heavy and light at once. The first time he’d told her, and it was under the pall of this.

Kiri’s words echoed in the garden—perhaps we were too hasty in the making of your reign.

When she spoke, it was barely sound. “What do you think I’ve done, Raffe?”

“I have truly awful timing, don’t I?”

Raffe released her, stepping back like she was a coal that could burn. Neve turned in a whirl, nerves and inexplicable guilt twisting in her stomach.

Arick stood in the doorframe, a smile with no warmth on his face. The look in his eyes wasn’t anger, exactly, but they held a strange light as he looked from Neve to Raffe. “It’s good to find you here, Raffe. I’ve been meaning to speak with you.”

“It’s been a while.” Raffe lifted his chin. “You’ve been busy.”

“Both of us have.” Arick dipped his head toward Neve, indicating the other half of both. “Kind of you to help your Queen relax.”

Moonlight reflected on Raffe’s bared teeth, but it was Neve who stepped forward. “Arick. Don’t.”

He stopped mid-stride, a momentary flicker of surprise on his face. The bright moonlight gave his eyes a strange blue cast. “Apologies.”

Fraught silence. When had it become like this with the three of them? Furtive and secret and harsh, when it had been easy once?

Neve swallowed against a bladed throat.

“You said you needed to speak with me,” Raffe said finally. “Speak.”

Arick’s grin was lazy, but his eyes were sharp. “What are you doing here?”

A beat of surprise. Then Raffe sighed. “Look, I understand that you and Neve—”

“Not that.” It didn’t sound entirely true, like there were waiting emotions that had to do with the kiss he’d interrupted, but Arick wasn’t addressing them now. “What are you doing in Valleyda, Raffe?”

Raffe’s eyes narrowed.

“You’ve known all there is to know about trade routes for years now. Your family is eager to have you home.” Arick shrugged. “Don’t you want to see them?”

No answer at first, Raffe’s eyes flickering between Arick and Neve. “Of course I do,” he said quietly. “But I wanted to be here for Neve, after . . . after everything.”

“You’ve certainly done that.” Arick was so different lately, but the three of them had known one another long enough that she recognized his pain when she heard it.

Her puzzled gaze darted to him, made shadowless by the wash of moonlight. He looked almost as taken aback by that pain as she was.

Raffe looked to Neve, swallowed hard. “We’ll speak later. Remember what I said, Neve.” He spared one final glance for Arick, then walked out. The door closed behind him.

Neve slumped into her desk chair, forehead in her palm.

There was something almost unsure in the way Arick held himself, lingering in the center of the room. The discomfort looked odd on his frame, usually languid and nonchalant. “You should eat.”

“Not hungry.”

He didn’t press. From the corner of her eye, Neve saw him cross his arms. “What was he asking you to remember?”

A strange slant to his voice, as if he both wanted and didn’t want her to answer.

She didn’t. Instead, she asked a question of her own, giving words to the dark thing in her head, the suppositions that kept her awake. “Arick, what happened to my mother?”

A moment of lead-heavy silence. “Why would you ask that?”

And that was an answer in itself.

Neve’s head sank lower. A low, pained sound escaped from behind her teeth. She should’ve known. Isla’s sickness, how it came on so fast . . . she should’ve known.

The worst part was that a piece of her had. Had recognized that something strange was happening, and ignored it, because it got her closer to what she wanted.

Her sister, home. Some Kings-damned control.

She heard Arick’s footsteps cross to her, felt the shift in the atmosphere as he reached out a hand. He didn’t touch her, as if he knew that would be a bridge too far, but she felt his desire to. A deep, begrudging ache to comfort.

“And the High Priestess?” She stared at her hands, interwoven like vines, bloodlessly clutched. “Her, too?”

“Yes.”

Not twists of fate. Not proof she was right. Murders. “Who else knows?”

“Only Kiri.” A pause. “Kiri killed them both.”

Kiri, with her disapproving mouth, her smugness. There from the beginning, orchestrating the fall.

She heard him swallow. “My plan didn’t include so much death, but it . . . it served its purpose. I didn’t tell you because it wouldn’t have made a difference.” His hand finally moved, landing lightly on hers. It was cold, but she didn’t pull away. “We do what we have to do.”

An echo of the night after Isla died. Not the night everything changed, but the night they crested the hill of it and began careening down the other side. She’d set the wheel in motion, and now she had to hold on until the end was reached.

A deep breath. Numb lips. “We do what we have to do.”

All this death had to pay for something.

“You are an extraordinary woman, Neve.” He used her shortened name so rarely these days. Every time he did, it came out like something he wasn’t sure he was allowed to say. “You’ve risen to every challenge, you’ve held up under burdens no one should have to bear. You are a better Queen than this place deserves.” His thumb twitched