Merra’s green skirts slid over Red’s bare legs, the sleeves itching her arms. She turned, headed for the staircase down to the library. If the day was hers, she planned to spend it reading.
Her eyes flicked over the corridor, a quick surveillance that had become part of her routine. The sentinels hadn’t moved since the night the Wilderwood came for her— on the days they practiced using its magic, Eammon diligently checked her hands for wounds before she touched anything, and once made her bandage a papercut— but Red kept a wary eye out, just in case.
Her gaze carefully combed through the churn of roots and vines. Still, it took her a moment to realize what was wrong, the hole in the haunted tableau she’d grown so used to.
The sentinels were gone.
Panic iced her limbs; Red whirled, searching the shadows, sure the white trees had moved farther into the Keep, maybe preparing to come for her again. Nothing stirred but dust.
Slowly, Red crept to the precise line where Eammon had cut off the forest. Husks of leaves and thin roots littered the floor, still and silent.
A smear of blood marked one of the dead leaves. Crimson, green-threaded. Once she’d seen it, more bloodstains were easy to spot— on the moss, on the branches.
Fife checked the sentinels daily, stabilizing them with his own blood as much as he could. Thus far, they’d stayed clear of shadow-rot, fine to be left until Eammon had the strength to move them. But if he’d felt the need to bleed for them now, all at once . . .
Then it was getting worse. Still getting worse, despite her using the forest’s magic, despite their thread bond. Still taking pieces of Eammon, whether let from a vein or a change in his body.
Red chewed her lip, made a split-second decision, and headed for the door.
In the courtyard, fog eddied over the ground. It cleared over an out-of-place shape in the landscape before hiding it again. Something tall and straight beyond the tower, by the gate.
Another sentinel.
And next to it, on his knees— Eammon. The sharp edge of the dagger in his hand caught the dim lavender light.
“Wait!” Red gathered Merra’s skirts and rushed barefoot over the moss, the beat of her pulse a reminder of the blood on the floor. “Eammon, wait!”
His head shot up, shoulders straightening like she’d caught him at some forbidden thing. The blade angled toward his palm for a second longer before he pulled it back. When he stood, it was slow, as if his bones were too heavy for his muscles to lift.
Red stopped when she reached him, chest heaving. The sentinel sapling stood just inside the iron gate, stretching half again as tall as Eammon, the knobby beginnings of branches at its pale crown. “I saw the corridor,” she said between breaths. “Why did you move them all at once?”
“I had to.” Eammon’s fingers curled inward, as if to cover the slashes on his palm, leaking sap. “Fife checked them this morning. Shadow-rotted, halfway up the trunks.” He ran a tired hand over his face, left a streak of scarlet and green on his brow. “If I didn’t move them back to their places now, I wouldn’t have been able to at all. They would’ve rotted away where they stood. And I can’t . . . the Wilderwood can’t manage having that many weak spots.”
The shadow-infected sentinel stood thin and pale in the unnatural twilight, stretching toward the starless sky like it could escape the ground.
“I don’t understand. I’m using the magic. We got married.” Her fingers curled to a fist, like she’d strike the bone-white bark. “Why isn’t that enough?”
Eammon’s eyes traced her face, something sorrowful in them. He didn’t answer.
Red set her teeth. She took a tentative step forward, closing the fog-covered distance between them, and reached for the dagger in his hand.
Eammon snatched it back. “No.”
“What else am I supposed to do? My blood is the only thing that’s made any damn difference so far!”
His eyes flashed, grip tightening on the dagger. “No,” he repeated, the word like a shield.
“There has to be something else we can try, then. Something without blood.” Her lip worked between her teeth, eyes flickering up to his. “What about the magic?”
Eammon looked away, almost a flinch. A hunch in his shoulders, as if he was suddenly hyperaware of that extra inch of height that had never gone away.
The changes scared him. And he was ashamed. Of the alterations the Wilderwood made, or of his fear of them, she wasn’t sure.
“Maybe the changes won’t linger,” Red murmured.