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.
ORBIT
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Orbit
Copyright © 2021 by Hannah Whitten
Quote on p. vii excerpted from Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. New York: Riverhead Books (Berkley), 1996.
Excerpt from The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner Copyright © 2021 by Rena Rossner
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-356-51635-6
Orbit
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
www.hachette.co.uk
www.orbitbooks.net
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Valleydan Interlude I
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Valleydan Interlude II
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Valleydan Interlude III
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Valleydan Interlude IV
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Valleydan Interlude V
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Valleydan Interlude VI
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Valleydan Interlude VII
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
To those who hold anger too deep to extricate, to those who feel too knife-edged to hold something soft, to those who are tired of holding up worlds.
You run like a herd of luminous deer, and I am dark,
I am forest.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
To escape the will of the Kings, they fled into the far reaches of the Wilderwood. They pledged that were the forest to offer them shelter, they would give all they had for as long as their line continued, let it grow within their bones, and offer it succor. This they pledged through blood, willingly given, their sacrifice and bond.
The Wilderwood accepted their bargain, and they stayed within its border, to guard it and hold it fast against the things bound beneath. And every Second Daughter and every Wolf to come after would adhere to the bargain and the call and the Mark.
Upon the tree where they made their pledge, these words appeared, and I have saved the bark on which it is written:
The First Daughter is for the throne.
The Second Daughter is for the Wolf.
And the Wolves are for the Wilderwood.
—Tiernan Niryea Andraline, of House Andraline, First Daughter of Valleyda, Year One of the Binding
Chapter One
T wo nights before she was sent to the Wolf, Red wore a dress the color of blood.
It cast Neve’s face in crimson behind her as she straightened her twin’s train. The smile her sister summoned was tentative and thin. “You look lovely, Red.”
Red’s lips were raw from biting, and when she tried to return the smile, her skin pulled. Copper tasted sharp on her tongue.
Neve didn’t notice her bleeding. She wore white, like everyone else would tonight, the band of silver marking her as the First Daughter holding back her black hair. Emotions flickered across her pale features as she fussed with the folds of Red’s gown— apprehension, anger, bone-deep sadness. Red could read each one. Always could, with Neve. She’d been an easy cipher since the womb they’d shared.
Finally, Neve settled on a blankly pleasant expression designed to reveal nothing at all. She picked up the half-full wine bottle on the floor, tilted it toward Red. “Might as well finish it off.”
Red drank directly from the neck. Crimson lip paint smeared the back of her hand when she wiped her mouth.
“Good?” Neve took back the bottle, voice bright even as she rolled it nervously in her palms. “It’s Meducian. A gift for the Temple from Raffe’s father, a little extra on top of the prayer-tax for good sailing weather. Raffe filched it, said he thought the regular tax should be more than enough for pleasant seas.” A halfhearted laugh, brittle and dry. “He said if anything would get you through tonight, this will.”
Red’s skirt crinkled as she sank into one of the chairs by the window, propping her head on her fist. “There’s not enough wine in the world for this.”
Neve’s false mask of brightness splintered, fell. They sat in silence.
“You could still run,” Neve whispered, lips barely moving, eyes on the empty bottle. “We’ll cover for you, Raffe and I. Tonight, while everyone—”
“I can’t.” Red said it quick, and she said it sharp, hand falling to slap against the armrest. Endless repetition had worn all the polish off her voice.
“Of course you can.” Neve’s fingers tightened on the bottle. “You don’t even have the Mark yet, and your birthday is the day after tomorrow.”
Red’s hand strayed to her scarlet sleeve, hiding white, unblemished skin. Every day since she turned nineteen, she’d checked her arms for the Mark. Kaldenore’s had come immediately after her birthday, Sayetha’s halfway through her nineteenth year, Merra’s merely days before she turned twenty. Red’s had yet to appear, but she was a Second Daughter— bound to the Wilderwood, bound to the Wolf, bound to
