“Red!” She felt the slither of roots over her ankles, the piercing of the Wilderwood in her chest as Eammon tried to garner its broken pieces into power.
“Say goodbye to your Wolf.” Kiri’s hands tightened on Red’s neck. “He’ll be joining you soon enough.”
Then— hands wrenching at the priestess’s arms, opening her fingers to let air back into Red’s lungs. Solmir cursed mildly, grabbing Red’s arm in a bruising grip and pulling her toward the ragged tree line.
Distantly, over the sound of her gasps, Red heard running footsteps, heard Eammon’s bellow.
“More trouble than you’re worth, maybe,” Solmir muttered, hauling her by her arm so her feet fell out from under her and her knees slid in the dirt, “but more useful alive than dead.”
Red opened her mouth to curse, to shout for Eammon. But Solmir pulled her over the border, and every fiber, every nerve exploded in burning, all-consuming pain. All thought of anything else washed from her mind in the flare, her scream reverberating through the Wilderwood.
The trees bowed in mourning.
Chapter Thirty-Three
R ed’s knees skimmed over the dead grass of a late Valleydan autumn as Solmir wrenched her forward. Her chest felt like a broken cage, roots reaching for home— if she looked down, surely she’d see branches breaking through her skin, rimed with viscera, her body made a sepulcher. An awful keening echoed in her head, and she didn’t know where it came from, in too much pain to know if her mouth was open or her vocal cords in use.
Vines tried for her ankles, for Solmir’s, but they were weak and skittering, made brittle by a dying forest. Branches clustered, reached as far as they could before snapping back like a spent bowstring. “Red!” Eammon’s scream scoured his throat. “Red!”
Valdrek and Lear stopped in their careful prowling through the field, Eammon’s voice cracking through the still night air. Raffe broke into a run, disappearing into the twisted grove. Valdrek cut his hand at Lear, gesturing for him to follow the other man. As Lear disappeared between the trees, figures in white shimmered into view, like they’d been hidden in the center of the grove until this moment.
Priestesses. Five of them that Red could count, through the strange, shivery clarity that hovered above her pain. Something about the number seemed portentous, awful in a way she couldn’t quite put together yet.
She thrashed in Solmir’s grip, but he held on vise-tight. Kiri walked beside them, smooth and unhurried, hands tucked primly into her sleeves.
A strained roar— Eammon, lurching across the Wilderwood’s border, pain blanching his face and raising tendons in his neck. His dagger slashed out, but Solmir jerked easily away. Kiri stepped aside with a small sound of distaste, as if Eammon was a minor inconvenience, a gnat that needed swatting.
Another lunge, but something snapped Eammon back, as if he’d hit an invisible wall. His neck twisted toward his shoulder, so far it looked like it might break, and Red’s scream had nothing to do with the way Solmir threw her aside like a cloak he’d grown tired of wearing.
“It’s to be this, then?” He sounded nearly weary. “Pointless heroics?”
Teeth bared, Eammon launched at him. One punch landed on the King’s chin, the grind of Solmir’s jaw audible as his head snapped up. The dagger in Eammon’s fist flipped sideways in his grip, then slashed out, opened Solmir’s arm.
But Solmir just stood there. Like he was waiting.
Eammon tried to lash out again, when a spasm racked through his whole body. His spine locked, bent almost backward. Strained silence, like he was holding it back, then an agonized scream burst from behind his teeth.
Vines slithered from the Wilderwood and hooked around Eammon’s arms, his ankles, his boots leaving runnels in the dirt as they dragged him backward. He called Red’s name through a throat that sounded razored, fought himself forward, but the Wilderwood pulled his thrashing body back and back and back, toward the border of the ruined forest.
Something almost like pity lit Solmir’s face. “It’s too tangled in you to let you go,” he said quietly. “The Wilderwood protects itself first.”
“Like what happened to my mother?” Eammon snarled, straining against the border and the Wilderwood’s hold. Vines wound around his legs, branches bent like fingers on his shoulders. Gentle, but inescapable. “When she tried to open the Shadowlands for you?”
Solmir’s eyes were unreadable. “Exactly.”
Kiri was halfway to the twisted grove now, a smear of white against the night-colors of the field. Something glittered in her hand. A dagger.