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

broke apart, leaves fluttering to the ground only slightly touched with shadow on the edges.

“Got to it quick enough.” But she still didn’t sheath her tor. “Eammon will have to—”

The next one cobbled itself together quickly, like it’d learned a lesson from its slow-moving counterpart. A whirl of dead twigs and leaves and pulled-up bones, not bothering to make a humanoid shape, bursting up from the ground and hurtling toward them.

They both acted on instinct. Red curled her fingers, pulling at magic, sending vines whipping out from the underbrush. They passed through the half-formed shadow-creature enough to break it apart, slow it down, but it hurled itself back together in their wake.

Lyra was ready. Another unstoppered vial, poured along the edge of her blade in a graceful arc, then she launched herself at the shadow-creature.

The curved shine of the tor bit through the dim light, spinning blood and sap. The sword was an extension of Lyra herself, the curve of it like a dancer’s arm as she twirled in the gloom. Red’s vines kept whipping through the thing, breaking it into pieces, and Lyra went after each bit, slicing with her bloodied blade so the parts that made it fell uselessly to the forest floor. It took only seconds, then the shadow-creature was gone, nothing but a mess of rotting, dark-touched detritus on the ground.

They both stood still for a moment, breathing hard. Red straightened her hands, and vines slithered back into the underbrush. She swallowed the taste of dirt as her veins ran from green to blue again. It was the most successful wielding of Wilderwood magic she’d managed since helping Eammon fight off the worm-like beast on the way back from the Edge, but it didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment. They couldn’t close the breach, and as long as it stayed open, any victory was temporary.

A moment of silence, both of them waiting to see if the breach would birth something else. Then Lyra sheathed her tor, not bothering to wipe it clean. “This breach is small. The shadow-creature won’t have time to reanimate before Eammon can get to it. Hopefully.” She turned, heading back through the forest again. “I would bloody it up, but I don’t want to waste what I have. It wouldn’t make a difference, anyway.”

Red lingered a moment longer, staring at the pit of shadow, dark and rotten on the ground. Cursing softly, she spun to follow Lyra.

The trees thinned as they grew closer to the border. Thick fog served almost as a wall between the Wilderwood and the outside world, but shards of a blue sky shone through the haze. Valleyda, close enough to touch, and the only emotions Red felt were apprehension and preemptive homesickness.

Too soon, they’d reached the tree line. “Three days,” Red announced, just as she’d told Eammon, like the Wilderwood could hear her and mark the time as well as he could. “This shouldn’t take longer than three days. Then I’ll be back.”

The snatches of sunlight between the branches caught copper strands in Lyra’s tight-coiled hair as she nodded. “Three days.” She headed back into the fog, back toward the Keep. Back toward home.

“Look after him,” Red murmured. “Please.”

“Always have.” Lyra looked over her shoulder, dark eyes honeyed in the dim. “Remember what I said.”

Red nodded. Forest magic bloomed in her chest, waiting.

When Lyra was gone, Red faced the trees she’d slipped through on her twentieth birthday. With a deep breath, she slipped through again.

Daylight was a physical weight on her shoulders, a knife-shine in her eyes. For a moment she stood there, blinking, a woman in crimson on the edge of the world. Autumn painted the sky a crisp blue, and she caught the scent of bonfire smoke on the wind.

Behind her, a murmur. Red turned, peering into the shadows of the Wilderwood as it whispered in its strange language of leaf and thorn.

We will wait for your choice.

A branch broke away from a trunk, dried and desiccated as it tumbled to the forest floor. A thicket of small bushes withered, curled in like a dying beetle.

But we’ll have him, if we must.

Her jaw clenched against the rattle of the words in her bones, the sharp-splinter piece of the Wilderwood’s power she carried speaking into her hollow places. “Fuck you,” she muttered.

The Wilderwood didn’t respond.

She hurried down the grassy slope, toward the road and the village beyond. Her lungs buzzed, like the air outside the forest was different from what she’d been breathing, and it made her head too light.

When Red reached the road, she stopped, squinting. A tall, spindly structure stood at the edge of the village, just close enough to make out. A guard tower.

Red allowed herself only a moment to puzzle over it, mind overtaken by practical concerns. It was half a day’s ride by carriage to the capital, and she didn’t have money for a horse. Walking would—

A high, sharp whistle interrupted her thoughts, loud enough to make her wince. Distant shouts rang around the hills, a sound like thundering hoofbeats. A cloud of dust rose near the guard tower.

Panic dropped her stomach, but it was momentary. The tower must be watching the Wilderwood— there was nothing else to see in this direction. Which meant they’d seen her, which made it pointless to hide.

Instead Red stood at the turn of the road, chin tilted upward, scarlet cloak on her shoulders. She didn’t cringe away when the band of riders reached her, out of breath, swords drawn.

One of them pointed his blade in her direction, over bright in daylight she wasn’t used to.

Red raised her hands in a posture of surrender. “I understand your alarm, but—”

“Don’t come any closer.” The blade shivered, broadcasting his shudder.

“Hold.” Another guard, with the silver stripe of a commander across his shoulder, held up his hand. He leaned forward, frowning at Red’s face. “I know you.”

“You should.”

His gaze followed the folds of her cloak, then widened. “Second Daughter.”

She wasn’t in a position to be particular. Still, Red’s lips