For the Wolf Read online

  Red stood, and watched, and waited, dread roiling beneath her ribs.

  Her blood touched the white trunk, hesitated. Then the tree absorbed it, took it in like water to parched soil.

  Tripping over leaves, Red backed away from the tree until she collided with another, this one also thin and pale, also twisted with black rot. Underbrush tangled in her skirts, and Red tore herself away, the rip unnaturally loud in the silent forest.

  That sound again, reverberating up from the forest floor, rustling leaves and stretching vines and clattering twigs cobbling themselves into something like a voice, something she didn’t so much hear as feel. It boiled up from her center, from the shard of magic she kept lashed down through white-knuckle effort.

  Finally.

  It’s been only one for so long.

  ORBIT

  First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Orbit

  Copyright © 2021 by Hannah Whitten

  Quote on p. vii excerpted from Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. New York: Riverhead Books (Berkley), 1996.

  Excerpt from The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner Copyright © 2021 by Rena Rossner

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-356-51635-6

  Orbit

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.hachette.co.uk

  www.orbitbooks.net

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Valleydan Interlude I

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Valleydan Interlude II

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Valleydan Interlude III

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Valleydan Interlude IV

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Valleydan Interlude V

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Valleydan Interlude VI

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Valleydan Interlude VII

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  To those who hold anger too deep to extricate, to those who feel too knife-edged to hold something soft, to those who are tired of holding up worlds.

  You run like a herd of luminous deer, and I am dark,

  I am forest.

  — Rainer Maria Rilke

  To escape the will of the Kings, they fled into the far reaches of the Wilderwood. They pledged that were the forest to offer them shelter, they would give all they had for as long as their line continued, let it grow within their bones, and offer it succor. This they pledged through blood, willingly given, their sacrifice and bond.

  The Wilderwood accepted their bargain, and they stayed within its border, to guard it and hold it fast against the things bound beneath. And every Second Daughter and every Wolf to come after would adhere to the bargain and the call and the Mark.

  Upon the tree where they made their pledge, these words appeared, and I have saved the bark on which it is written:

  The First Daughter is for the throne.

  The Second Daughter is for the Wolf.

  And the Wolves are for the Wilderwood.

  —Tiernan Niryea Andraline, of House Andraline, First Daughter of Valleyda, Year One of the Binding

  Chapter One

  T wo nights before she was sent to the Wolf, Red wore a dress the color of blood.

  It cast Neve’s face in crimson behind her as she straightened her twin’s train. The smile her sister summoned was tentative and thin. “You look lovely, Red.”

  Red’s lips were raw from biting, and when she tried to return the smile, her skin pulled. Copper tasted sharp on her tongue.

  Neve didn’t notice her bleeding. She wore white, like everyone else would tonight, the band of silver marking her as the First Daughter holding back her black hair. Emotions flickered across her pale features as she fussed with the folds of Red’s gown— apprehension, anger, bone-deep sadness. Red could read each one. Always could, with Neve. She’d been an easy cipher since the womb they’d shared.

  Finally, Neve settled on a blankly pleasant expression designed to reveal nothing at all. She picked up the half-full wine bottle on the floor, tilted it toward Red. “Might as well finish it off.”

  Red drank directly from the neck. Crimson lip paint smeared the back of her hand when she wiped her mouth.

  “Good?” Neve took back the bottle, voice bright even as she rolled it nervously in her palms. “It’s Meducian. A gift for the Temple from Raffe’s father, a little extra on top of the prayer-tax for good sailing weather. Raffe filched it, said he thought the regular tax should be more than enough for pleasant seas.” A halfhearted laugh, brittle and dry. “He said if anything would get you through tonight, this will.”

  Red’s skirt crinkled as she sank into one of the chairs by the window, propping her head on her fist. “There’s not enough wine in the world for this.”

  Neve’s false mask of brightness splintered, fell. They sat in silence.

  “You could still run,” Neve whispered, lips barely moving, eyes on the empty bottle. “We’ll cover for you, Raffe and I. Tonight, while everyone—”

  “I can’t.” Red said it quick, and she said it sharp, hand falling to slap against the armrest. Endless repetition had worn all the polish off her voice.

  “Of course you can.” Neve’s fingers tightened on the bottle. “You don’t even have the Mark yet, and your birthday is the day after tomorrow.”

  Red’s hand strayed to her scarlet sleeve, hiding white, unblemished skin. Every day since she turned nineteen, she’d checked her arms for the Mark. Kaldenore’s had come immediately after her birthday, Sayetha’s halfway through her nineteenth year, Merra’s merely days before she turned twenty. Red’s had yet to appear, but she was a Second Daughter— bound to the Wilderwood, bound to the Wolf, bound to an ancient bargain. Mark or no Mark, in two days, she was gone.

  “Is it the monster stories? Really, Red, those are fairy tales to frighten children, no matter what the Order says.” Neve’s voice had edges now, going from cajoling to something sharper. “They’re nonsense. No one has seen them in nearly two hundred years— there were none before Sayetha, none before Merra.”

  “But there were before Kaldenore.” There was no heat in Red’s voice, no ice, eit
her. Neutral and expressionless. She was so tired of this fight.

  “Yes, two damn centuries ago, a storm of monsters left the Wilderwood and terrorized the northern territories for ten years, until Kaldenore entered and they disappeared. Monsters we have no real historical record of, monsters that seemed to take whatever shape pleased the person telling the tale.” If Red’s voice had been placid autumn, Neve’s was wrecking winter, all cold and jagged. “But even if they were real, there’s been nothing since, Red. No hint of anything coming from the forest, not for any of the other Second Daughters, and not for you.” A pause, words gathered from a deep place neither of them touched. “If there were monsters in the woods, we would’ve seen them when we—”

  “Neve.” Red sat still, eyes on the swipe of wound-lurid lip paint across her knuckles, but her voice knifed through the room.

  The plea for silence went ignored. “Once you go to him, it’s over. He won’t let you back out. You can never leave the forest again, not like . . . not like last time.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.” Neutrality lost its footing, slipping into something hoarse and desperate. “Please, Neve.”

  For a moment, she thought Neve might ignore her again, might keep pushing this conversation past the careful parameters Red allowed for it. Instead she sighed, eyes shining as bright as the silver in her hair. “You could at least pretend,” she murmured, turning to the window. “You could at least pretend to care.”

  “I care.” Red’s fingers tensed on her knees. “It just doesn’t make a difference.”

  She’d done her screaming, her railing, her rebellion. She’d done all of it, everything Neve wanted from her now, back before she turned sixteen. Four years ago, when everything changed, when she realized the Wilderwood was the only place for her.

  That feeling was mounting in her middle again. Something blooming, climbing up through her bones. Something growing.

  A fern sat on the windowsill, incongruously verdant against the backdrop of frost. The leaves shuddered, tendrils stretching gently toward Red’s shoulder, movements too deft and deliberate to be caused by a passing breeze. Beneath her sleeve, green brushed the network of veins in her wrist, made them stand out against her pale skin like branches. Her mouth tasted of earth.

  No. Red clenched her fists until her knuckles blanched. Gradually, that growing feeling faded, a vine cut loose and coiling back into its hiding place. The dirt taste left her tongue, but she still grabbed the wine bottle again, tipping up the last of the dregs. “It’s not just the monsters,” she said when the wine was gone. “There’s the matter of me being enough to convince the Wolf to release the Kings.”

  Alcohol made her bold, bold enough that she didn’t try to hide the sneer in her voice. If there was ever going to be a sacrifice worthy enough to placate the Wolf and make him free the Five Kings from wherever he’d hidden them for centuries, it wasn’t going to be her.

  Not that she believed any of that, anyway.

  “The Kings aren’t coming back,” Neve said, giving voice to their mutual nonbelief. “The Order has sent three Second Daughters to the Wolf, and he’s never let them go before. He won’t now.” She crossed her arms tightly over her white gown, staring at the window glass as if her eyes could bore a hole into it. “I don’t think the Kings can come back.”

  Neither did Red. Red thought it was likely that their gods were dead. Her dedication to her path into the forest had nothing to do with belief in Kings or monsters or anything else that might come out of it.

  “It doesn’t matter.” They’d rehearsed this to perfection by now. Red flexed her fingers back and forth, now blue-veined, counting the beats of this endless, circling conversation. “I’m going to the Wilderwood, Neve. It’s done. Just . . . let it be done.”

  Mouth a resolute line, Neve stepped forward, closing the distance between them with a whisper of silk across marble. Red didn’t look up, angling her head so a fall of honey-colored hair hid her face.

  “Red,” Neve breathed, and Red flinched at her tone, the same she’d use with a frightened animal. “I wanted to go with you, that day we went to the Wilderwood. It wasn’t your fault that—”

  The door creaked open. For the first time in a long time, Red was happy to see her mother.

  While white and silver suited Neve, it made Queen Isla look frozen, cold as the frost on the windowpane. Dark brows drew over darker eyes, the only feature she had in common with both her daughters. No servants followed as she stepped into the room, closing the heavy wooden door behind her. “Neverah.” She inclined her head to Neve before turning those dark, unreadable eyes on Red. “Redarys.”

  Neither of them returned a greeting. For a moment that seemed hours, the three of them were mired in silence.

  Isla turned to Neve. “Guests are arriving. Greet them, please.”

  Neve’s fists closed on her skirts. She stared at Isla under lowered brows, her dark eyes fierce and simmering. But a fight was pointless, and everyone in this room knew it. As she moved toward the door, Neve glanced at Red over her shoulder, a command in her gaze—Courage.

  Courageous was the last thing Red felt in the presence of her mother.

  She didn’t bother to stand as Isla took stock of her. The careful curls coaxed into Red’s hair were already falling out, her dress wrinkled. Isla’s eyes hesitated a moment on the smear of lip color marking the back of her hand, but even that wasn’t enough to elicit a response. This was more proof of sacrifice than a ball, an event for dignitaries from all over the continent to attend and see the woman meant for the Wolf. Maybe it was fitting she looked half feral.

  “That shade suits you.” The Queen nodded to Red’s skirts. “Red for Redarys.”

  A quip, but it made Red’s teeth clench halfway to cracking. Neve used to say that when they were young. Before they both realized the implications. By then, her nickname had already stuck, and Red wouldn’t have changed it anyway. There was a fierceness in it, a claiming of who and what she was.

  “Haven’t heard that one since I was a child,” she said instead, and saw Isla’s lips flatten. Mention of Red’s childhood— that she’d been a child, once, that she was her child, that she was sending her child to the forest— always seemed to unsettle her mother.

  Red gestured to her skirt. “Scarlet for a sacrifice.”

  A moment, then Isla cleared her throat. “The Florish delegation arrived this afternoon, and the Karseckan Re’s emissary. The Meducian Prime Councilor sends her regrets, but a number of other Councilors are making an appearance. Order priestesses from all over the continent have been arriving throughout the day, praying in the Shrine in shifts.” All this in a prim, quiet voice, a recitation of a rather boring list. “The Three Dukes of Alpera and their retinues should arrive before the procession—”

  “Oh, good.” Red addressed her hands, still and white as a corpse’s. “They wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  Isla’s fingers twitched. Her tone, though strained, remained queenly. “The High Priestess is hopeful,” she said, eyes everywhere but on her daughter. “Since there’s been a longer stretch between you and . . . and the others, she thinks the Wolf might finally return the Kings.”

  “I’m sure she does. How embarrassing for her when I go into that forest and absolutely nothing happens.”

  “Keep your blasphemies to yourself,” Isla chided, but it was mild. Red never quite managed to wring emotion from her mother. She’d tried, when she was younger— giving gifts, picking flowers. As she got older, she’d pulled down curtains and wrecked dinners with drunkenness, trying for anger if she couldn’t have something warmer. Even that earned her nothing more than a sigh or an eye roll.

  You had to be a whole person to be worth mourning. She’d never been that to her mother. Never been anything more than a relic.

  “Do you think they’ll come back?” A bald question, one she wouldn’t dare ask if she didn’t have one foot in the Wilderwood already. Still, Red couldn’t quite make it so
und sincere, couldn’t quite smooth the barb from her voice. “Do you think if the Wolf finds me acceptable, he’ll return the Kings to you?”

  Silence in the room, colder than the air outside. Red had nothing like faith, but she wanted that answer like it could be absolution. For her mother. For her.

  Isla held her gaze for a moment that stretched, spun into strange proportions. There were years in it, and years’ worth of things unsaid. But when she spoke, her dark eyes turned away. “I hardly see how it matters.”

  And that was that.

  Red stood, shaking back the heavy curtain of her loose hair, wiping the lip paint from her hand onto her skirt. “Then by all means, Your Majesty, let’s show everyone their sacrifice is bound and ready.”

  Red made quick calculations in her head as she swept toward the ballroom. Her presence needed to be marked— all those visiting dignitaries weren’t just here for dancing and wine. They wanted to see her, scarlet proof that Valleyda was prepared to send its sacrificial Second Daughter.

  The Order priestesses were taking turns in the Shrine, praying to the shards of the white trees allegedly cut from the Wilderwood itself. For those from out of the country, this was a religious pilgrimage, a once-in-many-lifetimes chance not only to pray in the famed Valleydan Shrine but also to see a Second Daughter sent to the Wolf.

  They might be praying, but they’d have eyes here. Eyes measuring her up, seeing if they agreed with the Valleydan High Priestess. If they, too, thought her acceptable.

  A dance or two, a glass of wine or four. Red could stay long enough for everyone to judge the mettle of their sacrifice, and then she’d leave.

  Technically, it was very early summertime, but Valleydan temperatures never rose much past freezing in any season. Hearths lined the ballroom, flickering orange and yellow light. Courtiers spun in a panoply of different cuts and styles from kingdoms all over the continent, every scrap of fabric lunar-pale. As Red stepped into the ballroom, all those myriad gazes fixed on her, a drop of blood in a snowdrift.

  She froze like a rabbit in a fox’s eye. For a moment, they all stared at one another, the gathered faithful and their prepared offering.