The note she’d left for Eammon about wanting the bed back still sat on his desk, like he’d carefully placed it right back where he’d found it. Red flipped it over, scrawled new words. I’m in the clearing. Then, with a wry twist of her mouth: Wolf-things.
The sky was pale lilac instead of lavender, like it strove for daybreak, and the Wilderwood stood in silent reverence as Red moved through it. The path to the clearing where she’d saved Eammon wound through the forest outlined in golden leaves; her boots crunching over them was the only sound.
The sentinel with the Second Daughters’ bones clustered around its roots stood taller than the others, its branches already green-leafed. The scar on the bark was still there, where something had been cut away. She’d put together what it meant— this was the tree where Gaya and Ciaran made their bargain. Where they became Wolves. Whether the other Second Daughters had been drawn to the tree to die or their bones appeared there through some strange Wilderwood magic, she wasn’t sure. But it seemed fitting.
The site felt holier than the Shrine ever had.
Three skulls sat at equidistant points along the sentinel’s trunk. Kaldenore, Sayetha, Merra. Three women the Wilderwood had taken and drained in desperation. Three women Eammon had tried to save.
The growth around the skulls had vague bone-shapes, as if parts of the Second Daughters had become forest as they lay here. Roots twined through gaps in rib cages, flowers bloomed on vertebrae. Red pressed her hand against her stomach, wondering if that’s what it looked like beneath her skin.
Leaves rustled, an isolated breeze sending a whirl of gold that ruffled her hair. There were no dearly bought words in it— they were beyond that now, she and the Wilderwood— but Red understood all the same.
“Fear makes us all do foolish things,” she breathed.
Beside her boot, a thin stem poked through the ground. It grew slowly, blooming until a wide white flower touched Red’s palm.
Red brushed her fingers over the petals. She didn’t speak, but she nodded, and that seemed enough for the forest.
She felt him before she saw him, her body attuned to every movement of his. Eammon stepped slowly forward until he stood beside her, staring at the bones wreathed around the tree. He brushed a finger over the flower, then clasped her hand.
“This will never happen again,” he said, low and fierce.
Another fall of leaves, another creaking twig. The Wilderwood’s acquiescence.
Moving on instinct, Red stepped forward. Eammon squeezed her hand once before letting go, a silent mourner watching her benediction.
Red laid her hand on the first skull. Kaldenore, she somehow knew. She’d attended only a handful of funerals, and never paid close attention to any of them. So when Red spoke, it was simple. “Be at peace,” she murmured. “It’s over.”
Almost without thinking, she pulled forward the golden forest magic within her. So easy to do, now, like flexing her finger or arching her back. It flowed through her palm, into what was left of Kaldenore. Washing the horror away, drowning it in light.
When her eyes opened, her hand touched dirt. The skull had sunk into the ground, the Wilderwood soaking up the last of the woman who’d been its sacrifice. Obeying Red’s word to finally lay these bones to rest.
She moved through the others, giving them the same blessing— Sayetha, then Merra. When Merra’s skull was gone, she walked back to Eammon, blinking against the burn in her eyes. He wrapped his arms around her, surrounding her in his paper-coffee-leaves scent, and when her breath broke on the end, his embrace only tightened.
“Eammon!”
Lyra pelted through the autumn-bright forest, grinding to a halt with her hands on her knees. Her breath was a harsh whistle, and worry etched in her flawless face. “Fife met me at the gate and told me to come find you. Someone’s at the Keep.”
Eammon’s fingers tightened around Red’s. “The forest let someone through?”
“Well, yeah.” Her thin fingers gestured wryly at the autumn glow around them. “He said his name was Raffe.”
Raffe and Fife had no idea what to do with each other. When Red threw open the door, out of breath from her headlong sprint through the forest, the two men stood on either side of the staircase, eyeing each other warily. Fife held a wooden spoon across his chest like a shield, dripping soup, but the fierce light in his eyes made it look sinister rather than ridiculous. Raffe’s hand hovered over the hilt of a dagger at his belt.
Red’s brow climbed. “Raffe?”