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

The priestess noticed. Long-fingered white hands picked up the bark shard, dangled it in the shaft of sunlight. “Familiar, I’m sure. Twisted up in you like rot in a corpse.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” But the splinter of magic in her, the shard of the Wilderwood, twined and bloomed around her bones.

The High Priestess— Kiri, Red remembered now, the name she’d heard Neve say in the mirror— flicked the corner of a cold smile, letting the pendant drop back against her chest. Slowly, she approached, close enough that Red had to fight the urge to step back. The priestess’s gaze was searching, like if she looked hard enough she could see into Red, into the hollow places between her organs.

“You arrival might derail us,” she said, nearly speaking to herself. “But perhaps you’ll be a useful pawn.”

Red’s brow furrowed, genuine confusion eclipsing the manufactured kind. “I don’t understand—”

But before she could finish, Kiri’s hands shot up, crooking into tortured shapes, and icy cold slammed into Red’s body.

Red’s own hands rose, like the invasion was something she could fight off, but all the power she’d learned to control was nowhere to be found. Whatever the High Priestess was doing, lacing ice through her veins, seemed to make her own power wither and hide, canceled out. It felt like being crushed, ground under some cold heel— the Wilderwood’s magic, taken and inverted, crawling through her as if searching for something.

It made a twisted sort of sense. Freeing Red would’ve been cause enough for Neve to weaken the forest, but not the Order. They had to have more of a reason, more of a reward.

This cold, awful magic must be it.

When the icy onslaught was done, Red was on her knees. She didn’t remember falling. Breath rattled in her lungs, and her throat felt thorned with frost. Blood dripped from her nose to pool on the marble.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Noruscan flinch.

The veins on the High Priestess’s wrist were ink-dark, wet with crystals of melting frost. One long finger dipped into the blood on the floor, brought it to the light.

“Scarlet,” the priestess whispered. “Only scarlet.” Sunlight flashed off bared teeth. She looked to the commander. “Leave us.”

Noruscan slid his gaze between them, almost regretful, before turning toward the door. It closed with a sound like a sepulcher.

When Red wiped her mouth, her hand was shaking. “I just want to see Neve.” The tremble in her voice wasn’t artifice. She felt like she’d been turned inside out, every secret thing beneath her skin bared to terrible light. “Just take me to the Shrine, and let me see Neve.”

She had to see what was in the Shrine. She had to see what Neve had done, and figure out how to fix it.

Especially if it birthed this power, this twisted darkness that made her weak, made the Wilderwood in her recoil. What would it do to Eammon, if it did this to her?

Kiri eyed the blood on her finger. “You’ll see the Queen when I deem it safe.” She stood, wiping a red streak on her white robe. “There’s something there, some remnant of the forest’s binding. You’re just hiding it. Rest assured it will be found.”

“I don’t understand.” Red sat back on her heels. “I’m here. You weakened the Wilderwood for me. Isn’t this what you were working toward?”

“Stupid girl. This is so much bigger than you and your foolish sister.” The High Priestess circled like a carrion bird. “You’ve served one purpose. Perhaps you’ll serve another. It’s not for me to decide.”

Red swallowed. Neve and Kiri had two different perspectives on what was happening here, she was sure of it. Their methods might align, but their objectives didn’t. At least, not completely.

She hoped.

“Neverah is beginning to understand,” Kiri continued thoughtfully, almost to herself. “She knows she needs me to disentangle you fully.” A thoughtful pause. “Something could always go wrong. She wouldn’t know.”

A shiver worked its way down Red’s spine.

“Red?”

The High Priestess’s hands, once again crooked in preparation for cold magic, instead disappeared into her sleeves. Stumbling to her feet, Red whirled toward the door.

Neve, thinner than Red remembered, black hair held by a silver crown. Neve, rushing toward her, hands outstretched. Neve, solid and real.

“I did it.” Neve wavered on her feet, her face a mix of joy and awe and, almost, fear. “I did it.”

Red collapsed into her like a rag doll, breathing her sister’s rain-and-roses scent, clutching her like someone returned from the dead. “Neve,” she murmured, and couldn’t make herself say anything else. “Neve.”

“I knew it.” Neve’s arms held her with strength their thinness belied. Tears ran warm onto Red’s brow. “I knew you’d come back. I knew you’d escape.”

The word escape coiled uneasily in her stomach, but Red ignored it. She pulled Neve closer, letting her spine go crooked, letting the tears gathered behind her eyes fall into her sister’s hair.

It was almost enough to make her forget why she’d come.

Neve leaned away and tucked Red’s hair behind her ear. She wound their fingers together, turning toward the High Priestess. “Kiri. I hope you’ve greeted my sister properly.”

Something odd in her voice, something hidden. The High Priestess bent another slight edge of a smile. “As properly as time allowed,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll get better acquainted.”

Neve tightened her fingers around Red’s. “Quite.” She shifted on her feet. “You’ll tell the others, then? Let them know that all our work has come to fruition?”

An unreadable expression flickered across Kiri’s features. “Not full fruition,” she said quietly. “Our work is not yet done. Majesty.”

The honorific was clearly an afterthought, meant to convey more in tone than words. Red’s brow arched.

“I’m aware, Kiri,” Neve murmured, something dark flickering in her eyes. “But let me enjoy one victory before we plug away at another, please.”

Apprehension tempered Red’s joy at seeing Neve again, the reason she was here staring her stark in the face. Neve against the Wilderwood. Neve caught up in schemes