For the Wolf (The Wilderwood Books Book 1)

The cloak was far too large, and Neve felt like a child in it, measuring her steps as she walked toward her silver throne. Her gown was silver, too, and so was the dagger strapped to her belt, all heavy pieces of ceremony. Behind her, two priestesses clutched the cloak’s black velvet edge, angling it so the silver-stitched names of former queens along the hem caught the light. The threads of her own name were loose, embroidered in a hurry.

Everything about this was hurried.

The coronation was just a formality— by the laws of Valleydan matrilineal succession, Neve was effectively Queen the moment the life left Isla’s body— but still, it seemed portentous, heavy. Her heart hammered like she’d run miles, even as her feet took small, precise steps, ever closer to the throne.

The morning after Tealia was confirmed as the High Priestess, Isla’s condition markedly worsened. No amount of cosmetics could hide it, and she took to her bed, barely stirring other than to take a sip of broth now and then. A week, and she was gone.

A week, and Neve went from First Daughter to Queen.

The thought was a constant in the back of her mind, movements clicking along like clockwork. My mother is dead. It echoed as she ate, as she met with Kiri and Arick and the others in the Shrine. It reverberated between her ears even now, as Tealia watched her approach with wary eyes, flanked by white and scarlet candles. My mother is dead, my mother is dead.

And an extra layer of resonance, buried as deep as she could send it: My mother is dead, and I’m not sad.

Neve’s emotions were an ocean of history and feeling, and sadness was just the foam. She thought for the thousandth time of that last dinner together, the tiny tells in the way her mother held her wine, how her eyes flickered— this had hurt Isla, too, hurt her in a way Neve couldn’t begin to fathom. Had some small, indefinable thing gone differently, maybe they could’ve been united in ending the Second Daughter tithe and bringing Red home.

Neve couldn’t think on that for long. It ached too much.

The strange, terrible synchronicity of it all still left her reeling. The High Priestess, then the Queen, sick then gone, making way for her plans even when she thought they’d gone awry. Neve was the eye in a storm of death; it swirled around her like a train on a gown.

Guilt climbed her throat as the silver crown descended to her brow, Tealia’s fingers flitting away so as not to touch her skin. Even though the deaths were natural, they still felt like rocks around her neck, waiting for a sea. She made herself cold against them because it was all she could do, the only way to shoulder the weight.

She’d cried for Isla only once. That first night, alone in her room, clutching the darkened wood-shard pendant Kiri had given her until it cut into her already-sliced palm.

There’d been a strange moment of stillness then. An awareness, cold across her shoulders, like someone peering in at her through a fogged window. A breath of sound, but it seemed to be only in her head, like a word that wouldn’t quite form.

She’d rubbed her blood off the branch shard, wrapped her hand in a bandage. Once the pendant was clean, the odd feelings passed. Still, she hadn’t touched the thing since, and she regarded the drawer she’d shoved it in as one might look at a snake’s cage.

Now, clad in heavy silver jewelry instead of wooden, she felt the heat of hundreds of candles making her cheeks flush. Half of them white, to symbolize the purity of her purpose, and half of them red, to signify the sacrifices she would have to make to rule.

None of them knew the half of it.

Neve rose and turned to face the court. Raffe stood on the front row, arms crossed and mouth tight. He tried to smile when he caught her eye, and Neve’s cold heart lurched.

She’d stayed away from Raffe recently, both because of time and because of the bone-deep, logic-defying terror that somehow death had attached itself to her, clearing space where she needed it. It made no sense, and she knew it wasn’t true. Neve hadn’t killed anyone, by her order or her hand.

But she couldn’t risk it. Not with Raffe.

They’d have time. When this was over, she and Raffe would have all the time in the world. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about somehow endangering him, somehow marking him for death by her need.

“Neverah Keyoreth Valedren.” Tealia’s voice was high and breathy, a wash of sound in the vast hall. “Sixth Queen of her House.”

Polite applause from the assembly. The room was barely full; only the few Valleydan nobles and a handful from Floriane and northern Meducia had traveled to be part of her hasty coronation. The other countries on the continent had done their duty by attending Red’s send-off; they wouldn’t be eager to venture into Valleyda’s unpleasant chill again until prayer-taxes came due.

Arick stepped up to the dais, a thin silver circlet gracing his brow. A bandage still wrapped his palm, but it was clean, no trace of black or scarlet. With a reassuring smile, he offered his arm and walked her down the aisle. His muscles flexed beneath her palm, and his other hand came up to settle over top of hers.

Raffe watched them as they passed, and Neve kept her eyes trained straight ahead.

Things between her and Arick had shifted since his return. A strange, quick closeness born of keeping the same secrets about the Shrine, about what they did there. There was something different about him now, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Arick, while a good friend, had always possessed a tendency toward self-absorption. It wasn’t malicious, and didn’t even seem purposeful— but Arick was looking out for himself, first and foremost, and things that didn’t immediately concern him seemed to sail over his head.

Not so lately. He’d been attentive to her ever since Isla died. The morning after, he showed up at her door, bearing coffee and a platter full of pastries.

“I’m so sorry, Neverah.” Odd occurrence number one: He’d never referred to her by her full name before. Usually Neve would balk at it, but coming from him, it sounded different than it did from courtiers. Used for its gravitas, to tell her he meant what he said.

Her lips had pressed together, a bloodless line. She nodded. Then, taking a breath, she’d said the thing that had bothered her the whole night through, the sharp part of a not-quite-grief. “It might make things easier.”

The early-morning light in the window had washed out many of the details of his face, making him a sun-soaked blur with no shadow, but Neve still noticed his brow climb.

She’d swallowed. Squared her shoulders. “We do what we have to do.”

A pause. Then a nod as Arick passed her the tray and cup. “We do what we have to do.”

She knew what it looked like to everyone else, this new closeness between them. But Raffe knew she and Arick better than most, well enough to know neither of them could forget Red so easily. Still, there was sadness in the set of his mouth as he watched Arick lead Neve back down the aisle, and it made her stomach churn.

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him so badly it felt like the words physically dammed in her throat. But Kiri and Arick insisted on complete secrecy. Kiri because the ideas of her second, smaller Order were technically sacrilege until she and Neve cemented them into religious truth with their political power. Arick because . . . well. She wasn’t really sure.

The doors closed behind them. Neve dropped her hand from Arick’s arm. “How long do we have?”

He glanced at the place on his arm where she’d touched him, a quick dart of his eyes with an emotion she couldn’t read. “There’s no rush. Give Tealia a few more moments to enjoy being High Priestess.”

They were alone, but still Neve’s spine went rigid. She whipped her head to look down the halls, to make sure they couldn’t be overheard.

“Peace, Neverah,” Arick murmured. “Everything will be fine.”

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, but his reassurance did somewhat loosen the knot in her middle.

“It will take Tealia at least ten minutes to get back to the Temple.” Arick propped a foot on the wall behind him, mindless of the scuff marks his boots would leave. “Kiri should have the others already gathered inside.”

Neve paced a tight line back and forth. “And you secured the position for her? At the Temple in the Rylt?”

“They expect her by the end of the week. Ryltish weather is even less agreeable than Valleydan, and they don’t get many sisters willing to live there. They were happy to have her and anyone else who refuses to join the Order of the Five Shadows.” Arick gritted his teeth. “I still find that name ridiculous.”

Another slight loosening of that stomach-knot. The priestesses who didn’t want to join them would be gone, out of Valleyda, across the sea. No need for her strange storm of death to touch anyone else.

Arick watched her pace with something apprehensive in his eyes, but he didn’t speak, and nothing else about his stance spoke of nervousness. In fact, he looked nearly nonchalant, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, an insouciant dark curl falling over his forehead.

The ten minutes passed. Arick’s hand was gentle on her arm, halting her pacing. A small smile tugged at his mouth as he gestured her forward. “My Queen.”

It stopped her cold, for a moment. But Neve recovered, returned a shaky half smile, and let him lead her to the Temple.

The Temple was built like an amphitheater, with only two corridors leading to the sunken main chamber— one from the palace gardens, and one, much longer and more guarded, from the city street. Both were completely empty. Whispers made a soft susurrus beyond the door as they approached, and Arick released her with a reassuring squeeze of her shoulder.

Neve closed her eyes, steadied her hands. Then she pushed the door open.

Tealia’s face was calm, hands folded in her sleeves as she stood on the dais at the bottom of the room, but near-panic lit her eyes. Kiri and her followers from the Order of the Five Shadows fanned out behind her. The other priestesses sat silent in their graduating rows, dread hanging thick as candle-smoke.

The High Priestess ducked an abbreviated bow as Neve made her way down to the dais. “Your Majesty, to what do we owe the honor? Had I known you desired to meet, I could’ve set aside time for an audience.” Fear made her brash, her eyes sparking anger even as her voice stayed solicitous. “There are protocols for such things. As I recall, none of them involve a priestess other than myself calling a gathering.”

Behind Tealia, Kiri’s face was expressionless, but malice lit her eyes. Neve said nothing, still gliding carefully down the stairs, channeling all that icy poise she’d learned from her mother. Behind her ribs, her heart beat like a hummingbird’s.

The laugh Tealia summoned was shrill. “Surely, nothing we need to discuss involves every priestess in the capital?”

“It does,” Neve replied.

Tealia’s mouth clicked shut.

Neve reached the dais, finally. She had no script for this, and no energy to make it a long and drawn-out affair. She lifted one hand, placed it on Tealia’s shoulder. “I thank you for your service. Now you are released from it.”

Under Neve’s palm, the High Priestess trembled. Neve had to fight the urge to wipe it on her skirt when she lifted it from the other woman’s shoulder. “A position has been secured for you in the Rylt,” she said, nearly running the words together in her desire to see this finished. “You depart in an hour. The Consort Elect will escort you.”

Arick stepped inside the lip of the door at the top of the stairs, hands clasped behind his back. His face was stony.

Furious tears shone in Tealia’s eyes, her mouth a cut of anger. “It’s true, then,” she rasped. “You’ve become a heretic. You think I didn’t know what you were doing in the Shrine, that you and Kiri and the Florish whore you and your sister shared had some plan afoot?” She raised her voice, turning to the gathered priestesses. “You’ll follow those who would profane the sacred forest? Queen or not, such sacrilege is fit only for a pyre—”

The dagger was ceremonial. In truth, Neve didn’t even know if it was sharp— it’d been strapped to her waist as the servants dressed her in a hurry, just like everything in this damn coronation was a hurry, with pithy words about national strength. But she tugged it from her belt, without thinking, and held it to the former High Priestess’s throat.

“The sacred forest,” she said evenly, “is the reason the Kings haven’t returned.”

Silence. Kiri’s mouth bent in a cold smile. At the top of the amphitheater, Arick’s eyes glittered, something almost heated in them.

Tealia stared at Neve through righteous tears, pulse spasming against the blade’s edge. “Blasphemer,” she hissed. “These sins will only come back on you tenfold, Neverah Keyoreth. No one harms the Wilderwood and comes away unscathed.”

Neve held the dagger steady and shrugged.

The deposed High Priestess took a shuddering breath, closed her eyes. When they opened, they were calm, and Neve dropped the dagger. She’d give Tealia this: When the priestess walked out, she did it with her head high, and she didn’t try to hide her tears.

Neve looked out over the priestesses, a sea of white robes and shocked eyes. Her fingers felt numb around the dagger’s hilt; when she sheathed it, the edge caught her thumb, drawing a stinging line.

Sharp, then. Her knees went watery, but Neve kept herself straight-spined. After all that had happened to bring her here, threatening someone with a sharp dagger shouldn’t be shocking.

“There’s room on the ship for any who would like to follow Tealia.” Neve gestured to the door. “You heard her. You know what we believe. What we’re doing.”

Her voice rang with sincerity, though that thread of doubt still coiled around her heart. It’s for Red. It’s all for Red.

She turned to the priestesses behind her. “Kiri. By our lost Kings and the magic of bygone eras, I ask that you take up the task of leading your sisters.”

The collective gasp had no sound, but it had presence. It was in the flicker of Kiri’s eyes. It was in the way the air suddenly felt thicker.

Kiri inclined her head. “As you ask.”

Neve held her breath as she faced the assembly. The other priestesses were wide-eyed, but none rose to dissent. Courage gathered in her middle.

“The sacrifice of the Second Daughter is a useless practice,” she said, voice ringing in the silent hall. “Sending them to slake the Wolf’s bloodlust does nothing. The monsters he held in thrall are long dead, if they ever existed as anything but myth. And he won’t free the Kings, no matter the quality of sacrifice we send him.” Her lips twisted around that. She had to relate to the priestesses in the same terms they’d use, but damn if they didn’t taste bitter. “The Kings are trapped in the prison they helped create, held captive by the Wilderwood. There is power to be had in its weakening. When the Kings are freed, there will be even greater reward.”

The Order listened silently, blurred to one creature in the pale wash of their robes. Arick stood behind them, having passed off Tealia to the guards. His jaw was tight, his eyes unreadable.

“The process has already begun. If we uproot enough of the Wilderwood, the Kings can come home.” Neve swallowed. “Redarys can come home.”

Kiri’s head snapped to her, eyes crackling, but the new High Priestess said nothing.

“The ship for the Rylt leaves in half an hour.” Neve started toward the stairs that would take her to the door. Her parting words were said over her shoulder, ricocheting off marble. “You can join us, or you can leave.”