Red made an involuntary gulping sound. “Are you all right? Kings, how are you walking?”
Lyra looked confused for a moment, then followed Red’s gaze. “Oh, that. Don’t worry, Eammon is the only one who slices himself up on the spot— he’s the Wolf, all tangled up in the Wilderwood, so it likes his blood straight from the vein. It isn’t as picky about the rest of us.” Lyra tugged a small vial from her pocket. Deep-scarlet liquid sloshed as she wiggled it in the air. “I used at least five of these,” she said, like it was an explanation of some kind. “Lots of shadow-creatures out today. I needed to come back and replenish my supply.” She grimaced, starting toward the broken archway and the sunken room beyond. “Probably change clothes, too.”
Confusion replaced Red’s alarm, drawing her brows together. She followed Lyra into the room. “That’s your blood?”
“Of course.” Lyra shrugged. “Might be Fife’s, actually. We both have the Mark, so blood from either of us will work on a shadow-creature.” She pushed open the small door at the back of the room, revealing a tiny kitchen. “Our blood can hold saplings steady for a day or so and slightly help with rotting sentinels, too, but it won’t do shit for breaches.”
Weathered-looking wooden cabinets lined the back wall, with a small woodstove in the corner and a scuffed table. Lyra went to the cabinet nearest the stove and pulled it open. Inside, rows upon rows of glass vials, all filled with blood. Deep crimson with no trace of green, not like Eammon’s.
Red sank into one of the chairs at the table, her thoughts snaring, knotted as old thread. Last night, when Eammon fought the corpse-bone-forest-thing . . . shadow-creature, monster of legend, Kings, it’s all real . . . his blood had been what finally brought it down. Apparently, Lyra— and Fife, whoever that was, presumably the other voice she’d heard— could use their blood to fight shadow-creatures, too.
But when Red bled in the Wilderwood, it attacked her. Those white trees became predators. Was it because she was a Second Daughter, something about her blood and the bargain it was tangled with making the forest treat her differently?
And who were Fife and Lyra, anyway? The myths didn’t mention anyone else living in the Wilderwood.
“You said you have a Mark?” Her question interrupted the clink of vials as Lyra stuck handfuls of them in her bag.
“Anyone who’s bargained with the Wilderwood has one.” Lyra paused in her packing to push up her sleeve. There, in the same place as Red’s— a tiny ring of root, just beneath the skin. It was smaller than Red’s Mark, the tendrils not reaching quite so far, but unmistakably the same.
Lyra tugged her sleeve back down. “A tiny piece of the Wilderwood. That’s why my blood and Fife’s work against shadow-creatures— the power of the forest cancels out the power of the Shadowlands.”
“And the Wolf’s blood, too?”
“The Wolf’s blood, certainly.” A laugh, but rueful. Lyra grabbed one more vial, then closed the cabinet, clipping the bag to her belt as she moved toward the door. “Though his piece of the Wilderwood could never be called tiny.”
As strange as the idea of bleeding into vials was, there was comfort in it, relief. Eammon wanted her to learn to use the magic the forest had saddled her with, seemed to think that would keep the sentinel trees in check. But surely it wasn’t the only solution when magic and blood ran so congruently here. Her not bleeding where the trees could taste it was his first rule, but maybe it would be different if the blood came from a vial instead of a vein.
And Red would rather bleed goblets full than try to use that damn magic.
“So is there a knife around?” she asked. “Something I can use to bleed into—”
“No.” Lyra spun away from the door, dark eyes narrowed. “I mean, I don’t . . . I’m not . . .” Lyra stopped, sighed. “Ask Eammon. He’ll know.” She pulled her shirt out from her middle, made a face. “I’ve really got to go change. I’ll see you around.”
Red watched her go, still slumped over the scuffed table. Again, that sense of untetheredness, of unreality, of not being sure what to do or how to move.
Books. The thought was a beacon, something to cling to. I brought books.
Too bad she’d left them in the library. Red didn’t know what hours Eammon kept— the unchanging twilight made night and day unclear— but it seemed safe to assume he’d be there.
Ask Eammon, Lyra had said. But Eammon would just talk about using magic again, turning that piece of the forest coiled around her bones toward her will.