Her husband, the Wolf. Scarred for her, scarred for everyone else, locked in a constant fight with a forest that was part of him.
“Downstairs,” she ventured, turning her gaze to the flames so he wouldn’t catch her staring. “You said it’s never been this bad before.”
Nothing from Eammon. After a moment, he sighed. “It hasn’t.”
“Is it my fault?”
“No, Red.” For all his clear reticence to discuss this, the rebuttal was immediate. “None of this is your fault.”
“But if it’s only gotten worse since I came—”
“Your situation is unique. Your connection to the Wilderwood— I’ve never seen anything like it before.” His shadow moved over the floor as he came to stand beside her. Eammon’s mouth worked, eyes unreadable, like he could call up the exact words he wanted from the flames if he stared at them hard enough. “The others were bound to the forest, but not like this.”
Red curled further into her knees. “They were bound in ways that killed them.”
It was hard to tell in the dim, but she thought his face blanched. “Yes,” he said quietly. “But you aren’t. You won’t be. And yes, because it’s so different, everything has been . . . difficult to navigate. But I promise you, we will figure it out.”
Together. It went unspoken, but the ghost of it hovered in the air. We’ll figure it out together.
Eammon turned, bending with a minor grimace to gather the coverlet. “I’ll sleep downstairs. If you need—”
“It’s freezing down there.”
“Thus, the blanket.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
He shrugged, walking toward the stairs.
“You know, sharing a room is not an unheard-of thing for married people to do.”
He froze, glanced back at her. Red closed her mouth, biting her lip to keep more foolish words from escaping. Her pulse thrummed in the wounds they shared.
She stood, crossed her arms, suddenly vulnerable in his amber-eyed scrutiny. “Do you snore?”
“Used to.” Eammon turned his attention to the blanket in his hands. “It’s been a while since someone was in a position to tell me if the issue persists.”
“Well,” Red said, shoring up false confidence, “I’ll let you know.”
The corner of his mouth flicked up, dropped again. After a moment, Eammon walked to the other end of the room and spread his blanket next to the wall. He stretched out on his back, hissing as his shoulder jostled against the floor.
Red sat gingerly on the bed, setting the sheets to rights. They smelled like him, paper and coffee. Exhaustion weighed her eyelids when she slid between them, but the awareness of Eammon across the room chased sleep out of reach.
She hadn’t shared a room since she and Neve were small. They’d stay up too late, telling stories, arguing, playing dress-up with clothes in the wardrobe. Her chest felt iron-banded. “Who told you that you snore?”
His small movements paused, just for a moment. “Someone I used to share a room with,” he answered finally.
Before today, before she’d felt his blood under her hands, she might’ve left it at that. As it stood . . . “Really?”
In the dim light, Red couldn’t see him, but she could imagine him— the bandage on his middle a square of white, hands behind his rumpled head. “Her name was Thera,” he said finally. Softly.
Thera. “Not another Second Daughter?”
“No.” A quick cut of an answer. “The Second Daughters and I . . . there was nothing like that, not with any of them.”
Red’s hands tightened over her stomach, lacing over new wounds. “Who was she, then?”
“A girl from one of the villages beyond the border,” Eammon murmured. “From before the Kings wounded the Wilderwood. Before it closed in on itself. Gaya and Ciaran were still alive. I wasn’t the Wolf yet. Young and stupid.”
“You still look rather young, to be honest, though I won’t comment on the stupid part.”
“Another Wilderwood benefit. I guess I age like a tree.”
“Better-looking than a tree. Slightly.”
A huff of hoarse laughter. Red quirked a tiny grin in the dark.
“All told,” Eammon continued, “my life was fairly normal before I was the Wolf. Other than having fairy-tale characters for parents. I could leave.”
Once, he could leave. That made it almost worse. “What happened?”
“I’d been staying with Thera, in the village. We fought— she wanted to get married, I didn’t—”