And neither of them knew if she’d come back out.
“It’s selfish of me to ask.” Eammon’s hand cradled her face, warm and rough; a tear broke from his green-haloed eye and ran down his cheek, bisecting the scar he’d taken from her in a library that smelled like coffee and leaves. Red had never seen Eammon cry. She’d seen him get close, but never this close, and that more than anything else made anguish chew at the bottom of her heart. “Shit, Red, I know it’s so selfish, but…” He stopped, leaned his forehead against hers. “Please stay,” he whispered. “I know you want to save her, and I want you to, but I can’t… there has to be a different way.”
A way that didn’t make her walk into that churning dark, leaving him forestless and human and alone. A way that let the world have both of the Valedren daughters, the one meant for the throne and the one meant for the Wolf.
Such a way didn’t exist. Hadn’t since Gaya died, since the Kings broke the Wilderwood. The world had never been big enough to hold both the First and Second Daughters unbound and free.
It had to change. This was the only way.
“I love you,” she said, murmuring it against his lips. They tasted like salt, and she didn’t know which of them it came from. “I love you.”
He didn’t say it back. He didn’t have to. The pained catch in his throat said enough.
Red kissed him. It wasn’t heated, wasn’t full of need the way so many of their kisses were. She refused to think of it as a goodbye, but it was a benediction, an ending of something. Her hand curled in his hair and tipped his head down to hers, and with a ragged sound, he wrapped both arms around her, crushed her to him so hard she nearly lost her breath.
Then Eammon went rigid. His spine stiffened, chin tilting up to the snow-filled sky.
Behind him, Fife, his hand on Eammon’s back, his face twisted in concentration. The Mark on his arm blazed green and gold, bright enough that he had to look away, painful enough that his mouth was a rictus.
His new bargain, the one none of them had understood until moments ago. Until realization snapped into place for Red, the Wilderwood growing and budding to help her know what was required.
Fife’s new bargain was to be a conduit. A vessel, however temporary.
The look Fife gave her was sorrow tinged with rage, but it was the Wolf he spoke to. “I’m sorry. Eammon, I’m so sorry, but I knew you wouldn’t give it to her, and she has to have it.”
The Wilderwood drained out of Eammon slowly, so many years of tangling taking time to unknot. Ivy wound out of his hair, the points of his tiny antlers sank back into his brow, the green surrounding his eyes leached to white.
The forest leaked away to leave only the human man in its wake, and shadows damn her, he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Fife grimaced, the Bargainer’s Mark on his arm growing as the Wilderwood went from Eammon to him. It stopped right at his elbow, glowing gold and green, a vessel for magic. A way to take it from one of them and give it to the other.
Like the forest had known that the love its Wolves shared could ruin worlds.
I’d let the world burn before I hurt you. Eammon had said it, a confession that he loved her before he ever dared use the words. The Wilderwood had heard him, the Wilderwood knew it was true. And it built in a failsafe.
Eammon slumped into the snow, eyes closed. His face looked peaceful, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. For the first time, she saw him unencumbered by forest, just a young man with a crooked nose and dark hair and mysterious scars, and she could’ve wept at the sight.
She took off her cloak, crimson and gold. She wrapped it around him. She didn’t want him to get too cold.
Lyra, Raffe, and Kayu stood a distance away, like none of them wanted to get too close to what was happening between the Wolves and the man who’d bargained with their forest. Kayu looked alarmed, Raffe confused. But Lyra’s eyes were wide and wet, her hand pressed against her mouth as if she didn’t want a cry to escape.
“Do you think he’ll forgive us?” Red whispered.
Fife looked at the slumped figure of the Wolf—the former Wolf—instead of her. “He’ll always forgive you.”
They all knew that love made monstrous things necessary sometimes. They all knew their own capacity to burn worlds down.
Finally, Lyra stepped closer, snow lighting her dark curls, making a halo. She didn’t ask for clarification, didn’t pepper them with questions. She’d read between the lines, both Red’s gilded veins and the swirling magic held in the vessel of Fife’s Mark. She swallowed, then reached out, the tremble in her hand only visible for the glow of the snow around her.
Red grasped it. Lyra wasn’t one for embraces, so Red stayed her arms, though they wanted to wrap tight around the other woman and pull her close. “Thank you,” she said. “Both of you.”
“Don’t act like it’s goodbye.” Lyra shook her head, expression stony to counteract the moisture in her eyes. “Don’t.”
Her lips pressed together. Red swallowed.
Fife’s palm was a running mass of green and gold, Eammon’s portion of the Wilderwood’s magic trapped and held, waiting for Red to take it.
Before she could second-guess herself, Red slammed her palm into Fife’s.
A pause. Then the Wilderwood rushed, seeping into her, blooming between her bones. It was quicker than the first time she’d taken the roots, and it hurt less—her body was used to this by now, used to housing something inhuman. Gold washed over her vision, blinding her, and when it was gone, she was the forest, whole and entire.
The congruent line of consciousness next to her own was loud, the sound of cracking branches and wind through leaves. For a moment, it almost overwhelmed her, but then it quieted, leaving enough room for Red’s mind to stay her own.
When Eammon had done this, the Wilderwood had no experience with such a thing, no knowledge of how to take a host without drowning the whole of them out. Now it folded itself up, made itself something that could be carried.
The stretch of branches and susurrus of leaves cobbled into words, brief and quiet. The Wilderwood speaking to her, finally. She knew it would be the last time.
Hello, Lady Wolf. We’re ready.
Red opened her eyes. The ivy tendrils in her hair had coiled themselves into a crown. Antlers weighed heavy on her brow, grown from white bark that edged neatly through her skin. The veins around her wrists had sprouted autumn leaves, like she wore golden bracelets made of foliage.
Beside her, Eammon lay on the ground, cradled in snow and her crimson cloak. Slowly, Red bent, pressed her lips to his forehead.
Then Redarys Valedren—the Second Daughter, the Lady Wolf, the Wilderwood—turned toward the Heart Tree.