A fraction of a second, then the sting of the cut was gone. Red didn’t realize she’d closed her eyes until she opened them again.
There, on the Wolf’s cheekbone, a wound the mirror image of hers. She lifted her fingers disbelievingly to her face. Still tacky with blood, but the skin was whole.
The Wolf knelt quickly, ducking his head to gather his books again, but not quite fast enough to hide his eyes. The whites of them were threaded with green, a verdant corona blooming around the amber-brown irises.
“The benefits of being bound to the Wilderwood are few.” Books in hand, Eammon rose, turning to stride back into the stacks. He seemed taller than before, quite the feat when his previous height was already considerable. There was a strange quality to his voice, too— a slight echo, a resonance that reminded her of leaves caught in the wind. “That’s one of them.”
For a moment Red stood still, fingers resting against her unmarked skin. Then she started after him. Thank you hovered in the back of her throat, but something about the set of his shoulders said he neither needed nor wanted it.
“The rules here are simple.” Eammon shoved a book into its place on the shelf. “The first: Don’t go beyond the gate.”
The odd, echoing quality was gone from his voice now— the Wolf sounded only gruff and tired, with no echo of falling leaves.
“Easily done,” Red muttered. “Your forest is less than hospitable.”
His frown deepened at that. “Second rule.” Another book slammed home. “The Wilderwood wants blood, especially yours. Don’t bleed where the trees can taste it, or they’ll come for you.”
Her fingers curled, still copper-scented with blood. “Is that what happened to Gaya and the other Second Daughters?”
The Wolf froze, another book halfway pushed into place, expression stricken. It took Red a moment for her mind to catch up with what she’d said, and when it did, she wanted to sink into the floor. Reminding him of his mother’s death. What a wonderful way to start their cohabitation.
But Eammon recovered without comment, though he pushed the book the rest of the way onto the shelf with perhaps more force than necessary. “More or less, yes.”
Arms now emptied, Eammon stalked to the library door. When he reached it, he turned, peering at her down his crooked nose. “Third rule.” The new cut on his face leaked too-dark blood, deep crimson with a thread of green that looked almost like a root tendril, but his eyes were normal again, no longer haloed emerald. “Stay out of my way.”
Red tightened her crossed arms over her chest like they could be a shield. “Understood.”
“There’s a room you can use in the corridor.” Eammon pushed open the door and gestured her out. “Welcome to the Black Keep, Redarys.”
The door shut behind her, and Red was alone.
It wasn’t until she sank onto the bottom step that she realized where she’d seen his hands, why their shape and scarring looked so familiar.
The night of her sixteenth birthday, when Red had cut her hand on a rock and accidentally bled in the forest— when the Wilderwood splintered its damning magic into her bloodstream by way of her cut palm— she’d seen something, painted on the canvas of her closed eyes. A vision. Hands that weren’t her own, large and scarred and thrust into the dirt, just as hers were. A sense of rushing, blinding fear that mirrored hers but wasn’t hers.
It was only a panicked flash, vague and unclear, shrouded in branch-shaped shadows. Up until this moment, she’d almost thought she’d imagined it. But now . . .
Now she’d seen them in the flesh. Now she knew whom those hands belonged to, and knew no part of that night had been imagined.
The hands she’d seen were the Wolf’s.
Chapter Six
R ed gripped at the roots of her hair until her fingers felt numb, forehead pressed against the heels of her hands. That night still etched in her mind with crystal clarity, at least up to a point. Once the thieves who’d followed them attacked and the bloodshed began, she’d blocked parts of it out.
But the flash behind her eyelids of something happening elsewhere, of scarred hands and immediate panic . . . she remembered that, now, remembered it with such detail she couldn’t believe she’d once thought it imagined. A moment of connection to someone other than herself, and that someone had been the Wolf.
He’d been there, somehow— been there when magic rioted out of the Wilderwood, when it climbed through the wound in her palm and made its home in her chest. Was it his fault, then? Had the forest shattered magic into her at his direction?
Gently, she laid her fingertips against her cheek, still blood-smeared from the wound he’d taken. If the Wolf had given her this damn power on purpose, surely he wouldn’t have tried to send her back? Wouldn’t have given her rules that were supposed to keep her safe from his forest?
Red groaned against her palms.
She was tempted to stay seated on the staircase until Eammon deigned to emerge from his library, to see if she could wrench more answers out of him. But Red was weary, and the floor was cold, and the idea of waiting for someone who explicitly wanted to avoid her was exhausting.
He’d told her not to leave the Keep, so logically, the Keep was safe. And it was her new home. As unwieldy as that thought felt, she might as well explore it.
Wearily, Red stood and started back up the long, root-threaded staircase.
There was light at the top of the stairs, as if someone had come along and reignited the fires jeweling the unburning vine in the foyer. Red paused on the landing, peering at the strange, makeshift sconce.
The flames were anchored on the vine. It should
