A deep breath, squared shoulders. If he asked her about it, she’d tell him she hadn’t decided yet. She would find her books and retreat to her room and try to numb her mind for a few hours before she had to think about any of this again.
The wood-shard candles in the library were all lit with their strange, flickerless flames, illuminating the stacks in strobing light and shadow. Red closed the door behind her as soundlessly as possible. The same mug perched on the same stack of books near the door, empty this time. She eyed it for a moment before purposefully untangling her hands from her skirt and striding between the shelves.
There was no sign of the Wolf himself, but his clutter remained. One book left open amid a sea of papers and pens, another stack piled by the desk, left in shadow by the wood-shard candle.
Red crept toward the desk cautiously. Eammon would be none too pleased to see her paging through his notes, but curiosity overrode her unease. She peered at the scribbled-over paper.
It looked like . . . a shopping list? Things like bread and cheese were scrawled in slanting, messy handwriting, some crossed out. Ask Asheyla about boots was written near the bottom, and, ink still gleaming, new coat.
She grimaced. Her attention turned from the list to the open book.
The visible page was a table of contents. No title, but she recognized some of the chapter names— “The Great Plague,” “A Taxonomy of Lesser Beasts,” “Rites of the Old Ones.” It was tempting to sit and flip through, but Eammon’s things looked as though he’d left in a hurry. He could be back any moment.
Red turned to resume her search, but the stack of books by the desk caught her eye. Something about them seemed strange, the proportions wrong. She took a step closer, then reared back.
Legends sat at the top of the stack, the book she’d smeared with her blood the day before. And the Wilderwood had half consumed it.
Thin, snaking roots wormed their way in through the cracks in the stone wall, slithering out to latch onto the spot of blood on the cover. They stretched through the canvas, through the pages, seeping down the rest of the stack like it was the soil they were planted in.
Cursing hoarsely, Red stumbled away. But the roots were still, as if momentarily satisfied, and her heart slowly migrated back behind her ribs.
Her books. That’s why she was here. Her books, not the one she’d inadvertently marked with blood, another thing lost to this cursed, encroaching forest.
The leather bag was on the other side of the desk, hidden just outside the ring of unflickering candlelight. Red looped the strap over her shoulder, hurrying to the door.
She crouched before she pushed it open to riffle through the bag. After all that running on her twentieth birthday, she wasn’t sure if all her books had made it. One, in particular, she wanted to make sure hadn’t been lost.
A sigh of relief as her fingers closed over the familiar leather binding. Red pulled it from the bag, running her palm over the flaking gilt. A book of poems. The only gift she could ever remember receiving from her mother.
She’d been ten, already a voracious reader. It was days past her birthday when Isla entered her room, alone, no retinue to accompany her. “Here.” It hadn’t been wrapped, and Isla hadn’t quite met her eye. “This seemed like something you would like.”
It hadn’t been. Not at first. But when Isla left, nearly as soon as Red closed her hands on the book, she’d sat down at her window and read the whole thing through twice.
The poems were childish, and she knew them by heart now. She hadn’t opened the book to actually read it in years. But she liked to keep it close. Proof of one moment of warmth.
Red packed the books back in her bag and started up the stairs.
She stopped short at the sight of the figure in the hall.
A shock of reddish hair was his most identifying feature, and vaguely familiar. He knelt before the sapling she’d noticed that morning, peering at its roots. One white-skinned hand he kept tucked close to his middle, marked with violent lines of scar tissue.
This must be Fife, then.
He muttered a quiet curse, tugging something from his pocket— another vial of blood— and reached toward the tree.
“Careful!” The sight of flesh so near something she’d seen bare its teeth pulled the warning out of her before she could call it back. He lived in the Wilderwood, of course he knew he should be careful.
The figure froze before turning his head, arm still outstretched. A ginger brow raised.
Red shifted on her feet. “Sorry, I just . . . they bite, sometimes.”
The brow climbed higher. “They only bite you, Second Daughter.”