He backpedaled when he saw her, his hands once again rising like she was something to be warded off. The Wolf’s eyebrows slashed downward. “Eavesdropping is rude.”
“You’re one to talk about rude.” She matched his narrowed eyes. “I repeat, what’s breached?”
His hands, still held defensively between them, slowly fell. Eammon stared at her for a minute, some internal debate weighing his gaze. Then he tried to shoulder past. “None of your concern.”
Red turned with him. “I beg to differ.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Is it the monsters?”
He froze, hand half outstretched for the coat hanging on the knob of the moss-covered stair railing. “What do you know about the monsters?”
“I know they came from the forest before Kaldenore went in, and they disappeared afterward.” To say she knew that seemed strange, after so many years of thinking it little more than a tale to frighten children. But in the past day she’d spent here, old doubts had been scrubbed away with the same speed as new ones had surfaced. “I know that you supposedly would’ve unleashed them on the world again if I hadn’t arrived.”
He’d blanched at the mention of Kaldenore’s name, those long, scarred fingers falling back to his thigh as he turned to face her. “I didn’t send the monsters.” He swallowed, a visible tic in his throat. “They weren’t . . . they weren’t on purpose.”
One more thing she didn’t know how to make sense of— this hulking, scarred man who seemed just as horrified by his forest as she was. “So that story is true?”
“That story is true.” He turned away, ran a hand through his long, dark hair. “But rest assured, it won’t happen again. Regardless of whether you’d come or not, I’ll never purposefully unleash anything from this damn forest, and in fact work quite hard to keep it all contained.”
Cold comfort, especially hedged by purposefully. “So where are you going, then?”
“To do Wolf-things.” Eammon grabbed the coat and swung it over his shoulders in one motion, turning toward the door.
The decision was split-second and out of her mouth before she could give it too much thought. “I’m coming with you.”
The Wolf rounded on her, teeth glinting in the light of the flames along the unburnt vine. “You most certainly are not.”
“Then give me a better answer than Wolf-things.”
Eammon’s hands tensed into knots by his sides. His mouth worked as if looking for that better answer; he swallowed whatever he found. “It’s not safe for you,” he said finally. “You know that.”
“Safe around here seems a relative concept at best. And I’d like to see for myself that you’re holding up your end of the bargain. That no monsters will be leaving the confines of your forest.”
The dim light caught his eyes, emphasized both their color and the depth of the shadows beneath. “You could just trust me.”
Her chin tipped up. “Give me a reason to.”
They stared at each other, Red and the Wolf. It could’ve been a contest of wills, if it felt like something either of them could win.
“I promise not to bleed,” Red said softly. “That’s the only way it will come for me, right? If I bleed?”
He didn’t answer. Eammon’s gaze pinned her in place, unreadable. Then he jerked his chin toward the corridor. “Go get boots. You can’t traipse through the Wilderwood barefoot.”
Her mud-caked boots were right inside her room’s door. Red knocked off the worst of the muck and laced them quickly, half convinced the Wolf would change his mind if she dallied too long. She thought of grabbing her scarlet cloak from the wardrobe, but it had suffered enough indignities today.
When she came back into the main hall, Eammon had shrugged off his coat. He held it out like an offering but didn’t meet her eyes. “It’s cold.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she took the proffered coat, swung it over her shoulders. It hung to her knees, smelled of old books and coffee and the cinnamon-bite of fallen leaves, still warm from where he’d worn it.
Brows drawn down, Eammon opened the door and stalked into the fog.
Chapter Eight
T he sky dimmed toward violet, casting the Wilderwood around them in shades of black and deep blue. The yellow light from within the Keep extended only inches into the gloom before being swallowed by shadow, like the forest wouldn’t permit too much illumination.