For the Wolf (The Wilderwood Books Book 1)

The court set out at sunrise, packed into lacquered carriages for the short trip to the Wilderwood. Red’s led the way. Other than the driver, she rode alone.

One scuffed leather bag sat at her feet, packed to the brim with books. Red wasn’t sure why she’d brought them, but they sat against her like an anchor, keeping her tethered to her aching muscles and still-beating heart. Other than the clothes on her back, the bag was the only thing she was taking into the Wilderwood. At least she’d be prepared on the off chance she survived long enough to read.

She’d slipped into the library to pack as the sun rose, pulling her favorite novels and poetry books from the shelf. As she worked, her nightgown’s sleeve fell back from her arm.

The Mark was small. A thread of root beneath the skin, delicately tendriled, circling just below her elbow. When she touched it, the veins in her fingers ran green, and the hedges outside the library window stretched toward the glass.

The pull was subtle, beginning just as her eyes registered the Mark snaking over her arm. Gentle, but inexorable— like a hook was dug into the back of her chest, tugging her gently northward. Reeling her into the trees.

Red squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands to fists, pulling in breath after aching breath. Each one tasted like grave dirt, and that’s what finally made her cry. Wrung out, lying on the floor with books piled around her like a fortress, Red sobbed until the dirt taste turned instead to salt.

Now her face was scrubbed clear, the Mark hidden by the sleeve of the white gown she wore beneath her cloak.

White gown, black sash, red cloak. They’d been delivered to her door last night by a cadre of silent priestesses. She’d thrown the pile into the corner, but when Red woke up this morning, Neve was there, laying them out one by one on the window seat. Smoothing the wrinkles with her palm.

Silently, Neve helped her dress— handing her the white gown to tug over her head, tying the black sash around her waist. The cloak came last, heavy and warm and colored like blood. When every piece was in place, they’d stood still and quiet, staring at their reflections in Red’s mirror.

Neve left without a word.

In the carriage, Red pulled the edges of the cloak tighter around herself. She couldn’t keep her sister close, but she could keep this.

The world rolled past her window. Northern Valleyda was hills and valleys and open vistas, as if the Wilderwood allowed no trees but its own. When she and Neve stole the horses and fled north the night of their sixteenth birthday, she remembered being awed by the emptiness. She’d felt like a falling star on a clear night, pelting through the dark and the cold.

There were villagers by the road sometimes, quietly watching the procession pass. She was probably supposed to wave, but Red stared straight ahead, the world cut to the edges of her scarlet hood. The Mark thrummed on her arm, the tug of it making all her insides feel unstable and shaky.

The road stopped well before the Wilderwood— none but the Second Daughter could enter, and no one else would want to try, so there was no reason to make the way easy. A bump as the carriage wheels rolled into frosted grass, crossing into some borderland belonging to neither Red nor the Wolf.

Red’s limbs moved nearly of their own accord. She gathered her skirts, slung her bag of books over her shoulder. She stepped down carefully. She didn’t cry.

The driver turned the horses around as soon as Red was free of the carriage, without a second glance. A strange hum emanated from the edge of the forest, repellent and beckoning at once. Pulling her forward, warning everyone else to stay back.

The array of carriages behind her ringed the road like beads on a necklace, the line of them almost reaching the village. Everyone who’d traveled to see the tithe paid, waiting silently for the job to be done.

Ahead, the Wilderwood towered, casting shadows on the frost-limned ground. Bare branches stretched into fog, so tall she couldn’t see their endings. Trunks bent and twisted like frozen dancers, and the bits of sky caught between them seemed darker than they should, already shaded twilight. The trees grew in a straight, exact line of demarcation from side to side as far as the eye could see, a firm boundary between there and here.

She’d been given no instruction on what to do next, but it seemed simple enough. Slip between the trees. Disappear.

Red took a step before she had the conscious thought, the forest drawing her like a leaf on a current. A sharp breath as she planted her feet. The Wilderwood would have her in moments, but shadows damn her, she’d set the terms of her own surrender.

“Red!”

Neve’s voice cracked the quiet. She climbed from her carriage, almost stumbling on the hem of her black gown. Sunlight caught the edge of the silver circlet in her hair as she marched over the field, determination blazing on her face.

For the first time she could remember, Red prayed, prayed to Gaya or the Five Kings or whoever might be listening. “Help her,” she muttered through numb lips. “Help her to move on.”

Whatever remained of Red’s life waited beyond the trees, but Neve’s was here. The thought was sharp and strange-shaped, that for the first time since their conception, she and her twin would both be alone.

Another figure emerged from the carriage behind Neve. Red’s stomach dropped, thinking it’d be Arick or Raffe, the three of them launching one last effort to change the unchangeable. But when the figure made its slow way around the carriage, head held high, it wasn’t Arick.

Mother.

Red favored her mother in appearance. The same honey-gold hair, the same sharp cheekbones, a breadth to their hips and breasts that twig-slender Neve didn’t share. Watching her mother cross the frost-covered field was almost like looking in a mirror, watching her own sacrifice.

The thought felt like it should mean something.

Neve reached her before their mother did, her breath the rattle of a sob tenuously caged. She pulled Red close, thin hands gripping her shoulders.

“I’ll see you again,” she whispered. “I’ll find a way. I promise.”

Her tone waited for an answer. But Red didn’t want to lie.

Their mother’s shadow fell over them, darker than the shadows of the trees. “Neverah. Return to the carriage, please.”

Neve didn’t turn to look at Isla. “No.”

A pause. Then Isla inclined her head, as if in concession. “Then we’ll say our goodbyes together.”

This should be a moment, Red knew. Merra’s mother had been so distraught when they sent her daughter to the Wilderwood, she’d nearly abdicated. Sayetha’s mother had to be sedated for days after. Kaldenore’s had to be sedated before, going half mad when the Mark appeared on her child’s arm, when it was finally discovered that all Second Daughters born to Valleydan queens were bound by Gaya’s bargain with the forest.

But goodbyes were reserved for people who knew each other, and Isla had never bothered to know Red.

The Queen’s arms twitched beneath her cloak. “I know you think me cruel.” The whisper plumed from her mouth like a ghost. “Both of you.”

Neve said nothing. Her eyes flickered to Red.

Years of silence dammed in Red’s throat, years of wanting emotion she could never quite hold. “I would’ve preferred cruel,” she said, knowing the words meant she owned the cruelty now. “At least cruel would’ve been something.”

Isla stood corpse-still. “You never belonged to me, Redarys.” A tendril of gold escaped the black net holding the Queen’s hair, long enough to nearly brush Red’s cheek. “From the moment you were born, you belonged here. And they never let me forget.”

The Queen turned, striding toward her carriage. She didn’t look back.

Slowly, Red faced the trees, following the gentle, insistent tug of her Mark. Leaves rustled, dim on the edge of her hearing, though she should be too far away for the sound to carry. Deep in her chest, her splinter of magic, the Wilderwood’s twisted gift, opened like a flower to the sun.

Neve turned with her, peering into the forest with fear and unveiled hatred. “It’s not fair.”

Red didn’t respond. She squeezed Neve’s hand. Then she started toward the Wilderwood.

“I promise, Red,” Neve called as she walked away. “I’ll see you again.”

Red looked back over her shoulder. She wouldn’t stoke the embers of things that couldn’t happen, but she could speak a truth uncolored by them. “I love you.”

The answer, the end. The tears in Neve’s eyes spilled over. “Love you.”

With one last look at her sister, Red tugged up her scarlet hood, muffling every sound but the beat of blood in her ears. She stepped forward, and the trees swallowed her up.

It was colder in the Wilderwood.

The temperature dropped instantly, cool enough to make her glad of her cloak. As Red crossed the tree line, pressing into that infernal hum, bruising pressure built against her skin. It was almost enough to make her stumble onto the forest floor, almost enough to make her cry out—

But the pressure and the hum were gone as soon as she settled both feet beyond the forest’s border, leaving her in leaves and deep, undisturbed silence. The only thing that moved was the fog, a sinuous crawl over the ground.

Beneath the sleeve of her gown and the heavy crimson of her cloak, the Mark gave one more twinge. Then the feeling of that subtle pull was gone. Red rubbed at it absently.

The trees were strange. Some were short and gnarled, but others grew tall and straight, their bark unnaturally white until it met the forest floor. There it bent and twisted, dark rot standing out in ropes like corroded veins. Some of the trees had the rot only around the roots, but on others, the corrosion stretched up taller than Red.

The white trees had limbs only at the crown, swoops of graceful bone-like bark. Just like the branch shards in the Shrine.

One white tree stood just inside the forest’s border. Black rot grew over halfway up its trunk. Even the ground around it seemed dark, and smelled somehow cold. The nearby trees, brown-barked and thatched with irregular branches, had no rot on them at all.

Other than the trees, Red was alone.

With deep, shaky breaths, she willed her heart out of her throat. Her unwanted magic curled through her ribs, a languid unfurling, a subtle hint of green etching her veins. She expected it to riot, to race for release, and she clenched her teeth in anticipation of every tree in the damn forest reaching for her.

But her power stayed docile. Almost like it was waiting for something.

Still, there was an awareness here. Red was seen, Red was marked. The trees knew her, they remembered— her blood on the forest floor, a terrible rushing, a gift of power she didn’t want and couldn’t control.

For a brief, blinding second, Red wished for a match, even though it’d do her no good. Sayetha’s mother tried to burn down the Wilderwood, and so had Neve. It did nothing.

The back of her wrist pressed against her teeth, a hissing breath pulled through her nose. She didn’t want the Wilderwood to see her cry.

When the threat of tears passed, Red tightened her grip on her bag of books and peered into the gloom. No use prolonging the inevitable.

“I’m here!” It reverberated, echoing and distorting, tuned to minor keys by space and silence. Then the mad specter of a laugh in her throat: “Am I acceptable?”

Nothing happened. Fog drifted silently, tangling and curling through branches, dead leaves.

Frustration drove her teeth together, the despair of seconds ago transmuting into fierce anger. She felt roots arching toward her under her feet, felt bone-colored boughs stretching over her head. Instinct told her to fight the magic down, but this was the Wilderwood, where it belonged. Where it’d been born. “I’m here, shadows damn you!” she screamed into the gloom. “Come collect your sacrifice, Wolf!”

The Wilderwood seemed to bend toward her. Anticipating. Like she had something it wanted.

The recklessness was gone as soon as it came. Spots spun in Red’s eyes as she gasped, fists closing, or trying to— her fingers were held straight by the forest floor beneath them.

Her brow furrowed at the sight of her hands against the ground. She didn’t remember kneeling, didn’t remember pressing them to the dirt.

Before she had a chance to stand, her hands began to sink.

In an instant soil covered her arms to the wrist, her fingers dropping deep to tangle in thready roots. They brushed against her hands like sentient things, searchingly prodding at her knuckles, the creases of her palms. A sharp prick at her nailbed, the slithering feeling of a root trying to work its way into her skin.

Red’s heart ratcheted, panic closing her throat as she desperately tried to work free, wrenching her hands in the dirt to escape that probing root. Branches brushed against her scalp, tangled in her hair. Laying claim.

The magic in her center reached forward, slow but implacable, a vine growing through a summer that counted days in her quickened heartbeat. It felt like it would reach right out of her skin to meet the forest that made it.

No.

Her teeth cracked together. Red forced her magic down, swallowing that dirt-taste, pressing until she thought she might collapse from the effort of folding a part of herself up and hiding it away. Sweat stood out on her brow when her magic was finally contained, coiled back into the places she’d made for it. Her wrists burned green with power she wouldn’t let loose.

Red yanked her hands from the forest floor. Broken root tendrils slithered away as she wiped her palms on her knees, like snakes going back to burrow.

Three white trees bent toward her, all seeming closer than they had a moment ago. Their graceful, swooping branches dipped low, a hand frozen right before it reached to caress.

A soft sound boiled and spilled over— for a moment, it almost sounded like a voice, like a word. But it broke apart before Red could make sense of it, fading into nothing but breeze and rustling leaves.

In the following silence, three blossoms dropped from the same bough of a flowering bush, one of many dotting the forest floor. The small white blooms were brown and withered before they hit the ground.

It gave Red the unsettling impression of a price being paid.

Swallowing hard, she stood, hitching her bag over her shoulder. “I suppose I’ll have to find you, then.”

She set off into the woods.

Red didn’t know how long she’d been walking when the thicket rose before her, grown up around one of the white trees. Short, scrubby bushes wrapped the trunk, thorns pointed outward at wicked angles. Through the close growth, Red could barely see the black rot spreading up the tree, crawling toward the clustered branches at the top.

A thorn caught in her hood as she tried to skirt around the thicket, one she’d swear hadn’t been there before. The crimson fabric pulled back from her face. Another dagger-sharp thorn drew a bloody line down her cheekbone.

Red clapped her hand to the wound, but the damage was done. A bead of blood rolled slowly down the thorn, coming to its end and dropping to another, ever closer to the dark-ravaged trunk of the white tree.

If she tried to reach through the tangle and smear it away, she’d only catch more thorns, spill more blood. So Red stood, and watched, and waited, dread roiling beneath her ribs.

Her blood touched the white trunk, hesitated. Then the tree absorbed it, took it in like water to parched soil.

Tripping over leaves, Red backed away from the tree until she collided with another, this one also thin and pale, also twisted with black rot. Underbrush tangled in her skirts, and Red tore herself away, the rip unnaturally loud in the silent forest.

That sound again, reverberating up from the forest floor, rustling leaves and stretching vines and clattering twigs cobbling themselves into something like a voice, something she didn’t so much hear as feel. It boiled up from her center, from the shard of magic she kept lashed down through white-knuckle effort.

Finally.

It’s been only one for so long.

A tree limb broke from a trunk, fell to the forest floor. It shriveled at once, years of decay packed into seconds, leaving nothing but a desiccated husk.

Red’s teeth hummed, the hairs on her arms standing on end. Branches arched toward her, roots slithered beneath her feet, and she stood frozen as a deer in the path of an arrow.

This was what she’d prepared for, in the deepest parts of her mind, the places she didn’t have to look at too closely. She’d denied it to Neve, saying they didn’t know what happened to the Second Daughters who crossed the border. But she’d known there could be nothing here but death, and she thought she’d prepared for it.

Now that it waited, shaped like clawed branches and twisted roots, she realized that preparation wasn’t acceptance. All the quiet acquiescence she’d swallowed over twenty years erupted, spilled over, drove her teeth together not in fear but in rage. She wanted to live, and damn the things that said she shouldn’t.

So Red ran.

Vines swung for her, the leaf-strewn ground buckling to trip her feet. The white trees bent and arched as if fighting against invisible bonds, screaming for release.

Like the forest was an animal desperate for her blood, and something held it back.

Finally, Red reached a clearing. White trees ringed it, quivering, but she ran to the center, where the ground was only moss and dirt. Her knees hit the soil, her breath rasped, skirt in tatters and twigs in her hair.

The moment of calm shattered with a sound of splintering wood. One of the white trunks, slowly splitting, like a smile cutting from one side of a mouth to the other.

The trunk opened wider, gleaming with sap-dripping fangs. One by one, smiles cut across the other trunks, smiles full of teeth, smiles that wanted blood.

Red lurched up on shaky legs, started running again. Her feet were numb, a stitch pulled at her side, but she ran on and on.

Eventually, her knees gave out, vision narrowed to a pinprick. Red collapsed in a pile of leaves, forehead pressed to the ground.

Maybe this was the fulfilling of the bargain. The stories of Gaya’s body, riddled with root and rot— maybe the Wolf wouldn’t decide whether or not she was an acceptable sacrifice until after his Wilderwood consumed her like it’d consumed Gaya in the end, waiting to see if it spat out the Kings in return. Maybe he’d been the one holding it back as she ran, whetting its appetite with the chase to unleash it when she was spent.

Red’s eyes closed against the expectation of teeth in her neck.

A minute. Two. Nothing happened. Sweat sticking her hair to her face, she looked up.

An iron gate rose from the ground. Double her height, it stretched from side to side, curving around before disappearing into the gloom. Pieces of a castle showed through gaps in the metal— a tower, a turret. A ruin, half consumed by the forest around it, but it was something.

Red stood on shaky legs. Slowly, she pressed her hands to the gate.