The thing pooled into the spongy, rotten dirt. Eammon kept his hand pressed against it as it shrank down, jaw clenched like holding it there took monumental effort, the rot on the ground disappearing at the same rate as the white tree behind him grew. Finally, the creature disappeared into the earth, and Eammon’s hand touched only the forest floor. The cuts on his palms didn’t drip when he lifted them away from the now-healed breach.
Still kneeling, Eammon looked up, met Red’s eyes. For a moment that felt like years, they stared across the gulf between them, and neither had the words to fill it.
Eammon stood on shaking legs. He edged past her, careful not to touch, and stalked into the Wilderwood.
Red stood gape-mouthed, staring at the now-healed tree. The rot was gone, chased out by Eammon’s blood. But when she looked down at the roots cutting through the ground, she thought she could see minuscule threads of darkness already creeping back up the pale bark. The Shadowlands, pressing through again.
She whirled, following the Wolf into the gloom.
He didn’t speak, their silence growing colder the longer it lingered. Red pulled his coat around her again, wafting the scent of books and coffee and leaves. “Who was that?”
“A shadow-creature. The breach got big enough for it to slip through. Ten minutes, and that sentinel tree would’ve shown up as a sapling at the Keep, and it would’ve needed far more blood to send it back to where it’s supposed to be. Healing them before they move is far easier, if you can catch them.”
He was rambling, trying to change the nature of her question by overwhelming it with other answers. “You know what I mean.” Red picked at the hem of his coat. “I recognized Merra. Who were the others?”
A long moment of silence, long enough to make her wonder if he’d answer her true question at all. When he did, his voice was clarion-clear and stripped of emotion. “Kaldenore,” he said, finally. “Then Sayetha. Then Gaya. Then Ciaran.”
A parade of death. Red bit her lip. “The Second Daughters, and . . . and Gaya . . . the Wilderwood drained them.”
He nodded, one jerk of his chin.
“What about Ciaran?” She kept it to names, not titles. If Eammon avoided saying mother and father, she assumed it best if she did, too.
The Wolf pushed aside a branch from the path, harshly enough that it nearly cracked. “Wilderwood drained him, too.”
The gate rose out of the fog; Eammon laced his fingers through the bars, nearly leaning against them as the opening bloomed. He paused for a moment when the iron swung inward, as if he had to gather the energy to step forward. Too much blood, he’d said before, and he moved like it.
When the gate was safely sealed behind them, Eammon turned, eyes glinting. “Back there,” he said carefully. “When the Wilderwood . . . came for you. How did you make it stop?”
“The same way I’ve been doing for four years.” She wanted it to come out accusing, but it was thin and hollow in the cold air. Red avoided his eyes, staring instead at a hole one of the thorns had torn in the sleeve of his coat.
“The Wilderwood had you. I didn’t get to you in time.” She couldn’t tell if he meant it as a confession or an accusation. “It’s desperate enough that it should’ve drained you in moments, but it didn’t, because
you stopped it. You’re going to have to give me specifics, Redarys.”
“I don’t know specifics! Ever since my sixteenth birthday, when I came here and cut my hand and bled in the forest, I’ve had this . . . this thing, inside, like a piece of power I’m not supposed to have, something that makes plants and growing things act strange around me. Sometimes I can hold it back, but sometimes I can’t, and when I can’t, bad things happen!”
“Plants and growing things. Things with roots, under the Wilderwood’s influence.” Eammon’s face was drawn into pale, tight lines, his voice canted low, as if he was working through some difficult equation aloud. A thoughtful hand rubbed over his jaw; he looked up, addressing her again. “When you first entered the forest today,” he said, words strung as deftly as beads on a bracelet, “you said a thorn cut your cheek. Did you mean—”
“When I crossed the border, I ended up with my hands in the dirt. I don’t know how, I don’t remember doing it, but it clearly had something to do with this power.” Even saying it now made Red shiver, thinking of movements she didn’t choose to make. “But I stopped whatever it was trying to do. I didn’t let the magic out, I kept it contained, and it stopped. That’s all I did this time, too. Keep it contained.”