Red frowned up at her predecessor. It was a deft bit of work, what made Gaya revered and the Wolf reviled, a delicate filling-in of unknown history. The Five Kings had disappeared in the Wolf’s territory, therefore he was to blame. No one quite knew what he was supposed to be accomplishing by trapping the Kings— more power, maybe. Perhaps he was just doing as monsters do, having become one himself as the forest he was tied to twisted and darkened. The Order said that Gaya had been killed trying to rescue the Kings from wherever Ciaran had hidden them, but there was really no way to know, was there? All they knew was that the Kings were gone, and Gaya was dead.
Stuttering scarlet prayer candles—scarlet for a sacrifice; I guess prayer counts— provided the only light, and it wasn’t enough to read by. But Red knew the words by heart.
The First Daughter is for the throne. The Second Daughter is for the Wolf. And the Wolves are for the Wilderwood.
The candlelight flickered over the carvings on the wall. Five figures to her right, vaguely masculine— the Five Kings. Valchior, Byriand, Malchrosite, Calryes, and Solmir. Three figures on the left-hand wall, carved with a more delicate hand. The Second Daughters— Kaldenore, Sayetha, Merra.
Red brushed her fingers over the blank space next to Merra’s rough outline. Someday, when she was nothing but bones in the forest, they’d carve her here.
A breeze filtered through the open stone door, ruffling the gauzy black veil behind Gaya’s statue. The second room of the Shrine. Red had been there only once before— a year ago, her nineteenth birthday, kneeling as the Order priestesses prayed that her Mark would appear quickly. She found little reason to linger in places of worship.
Still, a year hadn’t been enough to dim the memory of the white branches lining the walls, cuttings from Wilderwood trees cast in stone to stand upright. The pale, dead limbs never moved, but Red remembered the strange sense of them reaching for her, like ferns and growing things did when she couldn’t keep her splintered magic lashed down and tightly controlled. She’d tasted dirt the whole time the priestesses were praying.
Her fingers picked nervously at the wrinkled fabric of her skirt. She was supposed to enter the second room, supposed to spend this time readying herself to enter the Wilderwood, but the thought of being among those branches again made her blood run winter-cold.
“Red?”
A familiar figure stood in the doorway to the garden, outlined in morning glow against the Shrine’s gloom. Neve hurried toward her, a newly lit prayer candle guttering in her hand.
Confusion bloomed in Red’s chest, though it was chased with no small amount of relief. “How did you get in here?” She looked over Neve’s shoulder. “The priestesses—”
“I told them I wouldn’t enter the second room. They didn’t seem happy about it, but they let me through.” A tear broke from Neve’s lashes. She swiped it roughly away. “Red, you can’t do this. There’s no reason for it beyond words on shadow-damned bark.”
Red thought of riding headlong through the night, hair whipping, her sister at her side. She thought of thrown rocks and a fierceness that made her chest ache.
And then she thought of blood. Of violence. Of what coiled beneath her skin, a seed waiting to grow.
That was her reason. Not monsters, not words on bark. The only way to keep her sister safe was to leave her.
There were no words of comfort. Instead she pulled her twin forward, Neve’s forehead notching into her collarbone. Neither of them sobbed, but the silence was almost worse, broken only by hitched breathing.
“You have to trust me.” Red murmured it into her sister’s hair. “I know what I’m doing. This is how it has to be.”
“No.” Neve shook her head, black hair matting against Red’s cheek. “Red, I know . . . I know you blame yourself for what happened that night. But you couldn’t have known we were being followed—”
“Don’t.” Red squeezed her eyes shut. “Please don’t.”
Neve’s shoulders stiffened beneath Red’s arms, but she went quiet. Finally, she pulled back. “You’ll die. If you go to the Wolf, you’ll die.”
“You don’t know that.” Red swallowed, trying unsuccessfully to level the knot in her throat. “We don’t know what happened to the others.”
“We know what happened to Gaya.”
Red had no response for that.
“Clearly, you’re determined to go.” Neve tried to raise her chin, but it trembled too much. “And clearly, I can’t stop you.”