The thing broke apart, scattering bones; the shards feathered into smoke before they hit the forest floor. Still, that laugh reverberated, making the very trees shudder, and it spoke again in a hissing, fading voice as the pieces dissolved. “Only a matter of time.”
Then the shadow-creature was gone, the only sign of it a burn mark scored into the earth.
The Wolf stood there a moment, staring down at the ground. Sweaty strands of black hair had escaped their queue, sticking to the side of his neck. The cuts on his hands looked inflamed, and he held them gingerly by his side as he staggered toward the gate, an opening blooming for him as soon as he touched the metal.
“Is bleeding the only way to kill them?” The question came out shaky, to match the tremor in Red’s limbs. “Because Lyra said— What are you doing?”
He’d dropped to his knees and grabbed her ankle, twisting it this way and that as if looking for wounds. “I could ask you the same thing.” Apparently satisfied, he released her, like touching her skin was as welcome as slicing his hand had been, a necessary unpleasantness. “What about last night made you think approaching anything beyond the gate would be a good idea?”
“I thought it was different. I didn’t hear the breach—”
“You wouldn’t have, unless you were there when it opened.” Eammon jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the gate. Blood dripped sluggishly down his wrist. “Nothing in this forest is safe, especially not for you. I assumed that was abundantly clear.”
Red rubbed her ankle, banishing the ghost of his touch. “It looked . . .” Now it seemed ridiculous, but damn if she was going to tell him that. “It looked like someone I knew.”
“You thought someone you knew came traipsing through the Wilderwood and made it all the way to my gate? Really, it’s remarkable you—”
“It looked human. More human than the thing last night.” Red stood, glaring up at him. His dark hair had come fully unbound, falling messily over his shoulders, shadowing his burning eyes. “I know it was foolish to think it was. But it looked like him.”
“Him.” Quiet, stern.
Red swallowed. “Him.”
Silence. Finally, Eammon sighed, hands hung on his hips, head angled toward the ground. “It was convincing,” he conceded. “That shadow-creature had time to make a decent mask before it reached the Keep. I don’t . . . I don’t fault you for being fooled.”
Well. That was unexpected. Red crossed her arms and worried at a loose thread in her sleeve. “Would it have gone away if I bled on it? Like you and Lyra and Fife?”
“I thought I was clear about you bleeding.”
“Answer the question.”
His jaw worked before he swiped a hand over his mouth and looked away. “No.”
Not the truth. Not the whole of it, anyway, between what Fife asked in the corridor and the shift of Eammon’s eyes. She’d known him for only two days, but the Wolf was bad at lying.
“The Wilderwood can’t last much longer like this.” Eammon reached up, began retying his hair. “Sentinels are uprooting and coming to the Keep in droves, too quickly for me to heal before the rot sets in. Breaches stay open for days. I used to be able to keep them in check, but I can’t anymore.” A tense pause, a thread set to snap. “Not alone.”
Red’s stomach twisted in on itself.
Hair now bound, Eammon’s hands dropped. He kept his gaze turned away, toward the gate. “If you use your magic—”
“I can’t use it.” Every time she entertained the thought, the memories crashed up on the shore of her mind. Branches, blood, Neve. Violence that nearly killed her sister, and all of it her fault. “I’d rather bleed. There has to be a way—”
“There isn’t.” Warmth and library scent as Eammon stepped forward, his voice strangely apologetic, eyes raised to hers through clear effort. “Believe me, Redarys. The magic is the easiest way.”
Her eyes pressed closed. Red shook her head.
“Why are you so determined to think yourself helpless?” His voice cracked over the word, like it was something he could punish. “You can’t afford that luxury—”
“Luxury? You think this is a luxury?”
“It’s a luxury to ignore it,” he snapped. “To decide you’d rather pretend it doesn’t exist, and damn everyone else.”
“It seems to me like we’re all damned anyway!”
His expression shifted, tangled, too many emotions for her to make sense of. Red’s pulse ticked in her throat. They stayed like that, bent like bowstrings, neither willing to be the first to look away.