For the Wolf (The Wilderwood Books Book 1)

There were no priestesses in the gardens as Neve walked to the Shrine. She’d expected to fight her way through a throng of them, white-robed and mealymouthed, waiting to see if their sacrifice finally brought back their gods. Official vigils for the Five Kings’ return started at midnight, she knew, so she had some time, but she was still surprised at the garden’s emptiness.

Her fingers arched like claws, her teeth clamping so hard into her lip she nearly broke the skin. It was probably good none of them were here. She might do something unbecoming of a First Daughter.

Her feet barely made a sound over the cobblestones, the moonlight soaked up by the dark fabric of her gown. It was different from the one she’d worn for the procession, less ornate, but still the black of absence. She didn’t know when she might bring herself to wear a different color.

Truly, Neve didn’t know why she’d bothered coming here. She’d never been one to take solace in prayer, though there’d been a time when she tried. Right at sixteen, after . . . after what happened with Red, she’d tried religion on for size for a week or two, to see if it smoothed the rough edges of her thoughts, made them harder to cut herself on. Her sister was a pawn, a piece to be moved— send her to the Wilderwood, and maybe this time, the Five Kings would come back. At the very least, she’d keep the fabled monsters away. There was nothing either of them could do to change it, and maybe there was comfort to be had there, if she could feign piety. A balm for the ache of it.

There wasn’t. The Shrine was nothing but a stone room full of candles and branches. No comfort. No absolution.

And the way Red looked at her, those two weeks she’d tried religion. Like she was watching the digging of her own grave.

So now, as she stalked toward the Shrine in her mourning black, she knew it was pointless. Any words she could say, any candles she could light, would do nothing to fill the gnawing empty place her twin had left. But grief was like gravel in her slipper, and she felt it more when she was standing still.

The Shrine would at least give her a private place to cry.

Neve walked beneath the flowered arbor into the shadows of the stone room beyond. Then she stopped, eyes wide and glassy, the sobs she’d wanted to let free frozen in her throat.

Not empty. Three priestesses stood around the statue of Gaya, red prayer candles guttering in their hands. Still in their customary white robes, but no cloaks. Those were only for the ceremony that blessed Red as a sacrifice.

The priestess closest to the wall carved in Second Daughters saw her first. Some muted emotion flickered across her face— pity, but a faint kind, like one might have for a child who’d lost a pet.

Neve’s fingers balled into fists at her sides.

Gently, the priestess placed her candle by Gaya’s feet, anchoring it in the already-puddled wax of other prayers. She clasped her hands before her as she approached. “First Daughter.”

A gentle accent, her r’s touched with a burr. Ryltish, probably, one who’d trekked across the sea for the privilege of praying here, of seeing the historic sacrifice of a Second Daughter. Neve said nothing, her nails pressing crescents into her palms.

The other two priestesses exchanged glances before turning back to their prayer candles. Smart. They could read the wish on Neve’s face, the hope that one of them would say something to stoke the fire in her chest to a blaze.

If the Ryltish priestess realized the error she’d made in approaching, she didn’t show it. The faint pity on her face deepened, pulling down her lips. “It’s a great honor, Highness,” she said quietly. An ember of fervor shone in her green eyes. “For your sister to go to the sacred wood, to appease the Wolf and bring us safety from his monsters. We have great hopes she’ll be the one to make him release the Kings. And an honor for you, too, to one day rule over a land that shares the sacred wood’s border. The Queen of Valleyda is the Queen most loved by our gods.”

Neve couldn’t stop her snort, loud and undignified in this place of stone and quiet flames. “An honor,” she repeated, her brow arching incredulously. “Yes, what a great honor, that my sister was murdered for the possible return of the Kings you’ve decided are gods.” The snort became a laugh, half-mad and sharp, bursting from between her teeth and making her breath come short. “How blessed I am, to hold sway over a barren, frozen land on the edge of a haunted forest.”

The Ryltish priestess seemed to finally recognize her mistake. Her eyes were wide, pretty face frozen and pale. Behind her, the other two priestesses stood still as the statue they prayed to, wax dripping over motionless hands.

She didn’t realize she’d advanced a step until the priestess lurched backward, trying to keep distance between them. Neve’s lips curled back from her teeth. “You have it so easy,” she murmured. “All you Order priestesses from far away. Safe behind your borders, miles from your sacred wood.”

The Ryltish priestess almost lost her balance when her calf bumped against Gaya’s stone feet. Crimson wax marred her hem. Still, her eyes didn’t leave Neve’s, and her cheeks were nearly the same color as her robe.

“It’s almost pathetic.” Neve cocked her head, the barest curve of an acidic smile touching her mouth but not her eyes. “Your religion asks nothing of you. You throw a girl in white and black and red into the Wilderwood every few centuries, when a Second Daughter comes around, but nothing you do is enough to bring back the Kings. Maybe they don’t want to come back to such cowardly penitents, who never do anything but send pointless sacrifices and light pointless candles.”

All three priestesses watched her silently, three pairs of wide eyes fixed on her face. The wax dripping down their fingers had to be scalding, but it wasn’t enough to make them move, wasn’t enough to break them from the terrible spell of her sadness and how it made her cruel.

Neve forced her fingers straight, uncurling them from fists. “Get out.”

They obliged without a word, taking their prayer candles with them.

Finally alone, Neve slumped, like her anger had been the only thing holding her up. She caught herself right before she leaned on Gaya’s statue. She refused to look for any kind of comfort there.

Instead, Neve walked through the dark gauzy curtain behind the stone effigy into the second room of the Shrine.

She’d been here only once before. When she was officially named as the heir to the throne on her tenth birthday, they’d wrapped her in the coronation cloak, embroidered with the names of the former Valleydan queens, and brought her here to be prayed over. To her child’s eyes, the white branches had seemed tall as trees themselves, casting needle-edged shadows on the stone walls.

That’s what she expected when she walked through the curtain— a forest like the one that had devoured her sister. But it was only a room. A room filled with branches cast in marble bases, most no higher than her shoulders. A Wilderwood in miniature. Nothing like what she’d seen when she and Red raced toward its border four years ago. Nothing like what Red had just disappeared into.

Neve’s chest burned, too heavy and hollow all at once. She couldn’t hurt that Wilderwood.

But she could hurt this one.

The limb of a branch was in her hand before she had the conscious thought, before her mind caught up with her body. She wrenched her fist to the side, and it came off the main bough with the crack of rending bone.

Neve paused for only a moment. Then, with a fierce snarl and teeth bared, she wrenched off another, relishing the snap it made as it came away, the feel of the wood giving beneath her hands.

She didn’t know how many branches she tore into before she felt a presence behind her. Neve turned with splintered wood held in her two fists like daggers, her dark hair waving against her face with the force of her breath.

A red-haired, white-skinned priestess stood in the doorway, face implacable. She looked vaguely familiar— from the Valleydan Temple, then. Neve wondered if that would matter. The vagaries of heresy weren’t something she was familiar with, but wrecking the Shrine would probably make an easy case for it. What would that punishment be for a First Daughter, the one meant for the throne? Neve tried to care, but couldn’t quite find the energy.

And yet, the priestess did nothing. She stood there, silently, cool blue eyes surveying the damage before rising to Neve.

Slowly, Neve’s breathing returned to normal. She released her fists, the two branch shards she’d held clattering down to the stone floor.

Neve and the red-haired priestess stared at each other. There was something like a dare in each gaze, a measuring of mettle, though Neve didn’t know what she was measuring for.

Finally, the priestess stepped farther into the room, picking deftly over white wooden splinters. “Come,” she said, in a voice that was brusque though not unpleasant. “If we clean up, no one will ever notice.”

It took Neve a moment to understand what she was saying, so far was it from what she expected. But the priestess bent down, gathering white splinters in her hands, and after a moment, Neve joined her.

A small pendant swung from the priestess’s neck, circling like a pendulum. It looked like a shard of wood, like the leavings of Neve’s rampage scattering the floor. The only difference was the color; where the branches were the pure, shining white of bleached bone, the priestess’s pendant was threaded through with black.

Neve frowned at it. Strange, for a priestess to wear jewelry— it wasn’t exactly forbidden, but none of them did it, going about clad only in their white robes with no further adornment.

The priestess saw her looking. A small smile tugged up her mouth as she caught the pendant, rolled it between her fingers. “Another piece of the Wilderwood,” she said, by way of explanation. “It breaks more easily than you’d think, with the right pressure. The right tools.”

Neve’s brows drew together. The priestess watched her as if she saw the shape of her questions and wanted to draw them out. Neve shut them behind her teeth.

For all her destruction, the mess she’d made fit easily in their four fists. The priestess made a bowl of her full white skirt, gathering all the shards before bundling the fabric in her hand like a pocket. “I’ll dispose of this.”

“You mean make more jewelry out of it?” Neve couldn’t keep the bite from her voice. She was tired, so tired of keeping her composure. Of pretending all of this didn’t bore beneath her skin and scour her out.

“Oh, no.” Despite the flippancy of the response, those blue, implacable eyes watched her carefully. “These aren’t right for that. Not yet.”

Disquiet thrummed under Neve’s ribs.

The red-haired priestess stood still, managing to look regal despite the awkward way she held her robe to contain the wood shards. “You’re here because of your sister?”

“Why else would I be here?” Neve wanted it to come out fierce, but it was quiet and thin. She’d spent all her fierceness. “I have no interest in praying.”

The priestess nodded, taking Neve’s blasphemy in stride. “Would you like to know what happened to her, when she crossed into the Wilderwood?”

It struck Neve silent for a moment, such a heavy question asked in such a casual manner. “You . . . you know?”

“So do you.” The priestess shrugged like they were discussing something as benign as the weather. “Your sister is tangled in the forest. Like Gaya was, like all the others. She went to the Wolf, and he bound her to it, just as he is bound.”

Neve knew the story. The Wolf bringing Gaya’s forest-riddled corpse to the edge of the wood, a macabre token of the tithe he then demanded. It made sense, that the other Second Daughters would be bound similarly. That the Wolf somehow wove the Wilderwood into their bones, knit them into its foundations, ensuring they couldn’t escape.

“But she’s alive.” A bare rasp of sound in the quiet, and Neve didn’t inhale as she waited for the answer.

The priestess nodded, turning toward the door. “But she’s alive.”

On legs that felt numb, Neve followed the red-haired priestess back through the Shrine out into the dark gardens. She took a few steps forward, passing the other woman to inhale cold, bracing air.

Midnight was close. Soon all the priestesses who’d come to see Red sacrificed would gather here, to pray throughout the night that she would be deemed acceptable by the Wolf, that he would finally free the Five Kings from their unjust imprisonment.

When Neve closed her eyes, she could still see that scarlet cloak disappearing into the gloom between the trees.

She’s alive.

“You’ll keep this quiet.” Neve meant it as an order, but it came out more like a question.

“Of course.” A pause, heavy. “You have the right idea, First Daughter.”

It was enough to make her eyes open, to make her gaze snap over her shoulder. The priestess stood still and placid behind her, face revealing nothing.

“The Wilderwood won’t let her go.” Her red hair fell over her shoulder as she tipped her head, as if in deference to Neve’s grief. “It has weakened, this past century, but not enough. She couldn’t escape even if she tried.” Moonlight caught her eyes, made them glitter. “At least, not right now.”

Something toothed and hopeful leapt in Neve’s chest. “What do you mean?”

The priestess lightly touched her odd wood-shard necklace. “The forest is only as strong as we let it be.”

Neve’s brow knit. The night air chilled them into a frozen tableau.

“Your secrets are safe with me, Neverah.” The priestess gave a small bow then glided away, her pale robe disappearing into the dark garden.

Cool breeze on her arms, the scent of early-summer flowers heady in her nose. Neve concentrated on these things, grounded herself with them. In her head, a scarlet cloak flickered in and out of a dark, dark forest.