In the morning, Red goes to the shrine, where priestesses of the Order have been praying. The religious belief holds that once the Wilderwood was a verdant forest, and magic ran free in the world. 400 years ago, the Five Kings performed the Binding to banish the monsters to the Shadowlands and contain all the magic in the Wilderwood. The same year, Ciaran and Gaya, the original Wolf and Second Daughter, entered the forest to escape her father and betrothed. 50 years later, the Kings entered the forest and never returned.

150 years after that, Ciaran brought Gaya’s body to the edge of the Wilderwood and told the villagers, “Send the next” (17). The belief is that the Wolf holds the Five Kings prisoner, and if he is pleased with the tribute of the Second Daughter, he will release them. Neve is upset that Red has to go. That night, at another ceremony, Red is blessed by the High Priestess, Zophia.

The day she leaves, Red gains her Mark. She feels it pulling her toward the Wilderwood. She packs her bag full of her favorite books. Neve gives her a scarlet cloak with a hood. Her mother tries to explain that she kept her distance because she knew she was destined to give Red up. Neve is agonized by the parting, but Red feels her power growing: “Deep in her chest, her splinter of magic, the Wilderwood’s twisted gift, opened like a flower to the sun” (29).

Once she is inside the forest, Red notices white trees, some with the shadow of rot on the bottom of their trunks. Red finds herself kneeling with her hands sinking into the ground. Red pushes back her magic and pulls her hands free. She walks through the forest, and a thorn cuts her cheek. She is astonished to see her blood sink into the trunk of a white tree. She hears the forest murmuring, “Finally. It’s been only one for so long” (34). She feels the forest is about to attack her and runs until she reaches an iron gate.

The gate opens, and behind it is a ruined castle. Red walks inside and finds moss and vines covering the inside. Lights come from the vines without burning them. She finds a library and a man bent over a book, writing. She realizes this is the Wolf.

The wolf has long dark hair and scarred hands. He looks like a man but cannot be entirely human. Red asks if he will let the Kings go. He says the Kings aren’t there and she wouldn’t want them returned, anyway. He says she can go home, but Red insists she’s staying.

He introduces himself as Eammon. Ciaran and Gaya were his parents. The Wolf sees the cut on Red’s cheek and takes it onto his own cheek, healing her. Eammon tells her to stay within the gate and not to bleed on the trees. Red looks at his hands and recognizes he was part of that night, four years ago, when she received her magic from the Wilderwood.

Red explores the Keep and shies away when she hears other voices. She eventually finds her room, where there is a wardrobe full of dresses and water poured for a bath.

Neve walks to the Shrine, angry and hurt that Red is gone. She thinks, “The Shrine was nothing but a stone room full of candles and branches. No comfort. No absolution” (60). She finds a group of priestesses praying and sends them away.

In the inner room stand branches from the white trees of the Wilderwood. Neve snaps them until she is caught by a priestess. The priestess wears a pendant with a shard of a white tree that is threaded through with black. The priestess helps clean up the mess and tells Neve that Red is alive. She suggests that the forest can be weakened.

Red takes a cold bath and scrubs herself clean. She hears Eammon talking with another, who says it is time he had help. A third person says there is a breach, that she saw a sentinel full of rot, and she threw some blood on it. Eammon says getting another person involved won’t help.

Red confronts Eammon and asks if he sent the monsters 200 years ago. He says it wasn’t on purpose. Eammon is going out into the Wilderwood, and Red asks to go with him.

The night is cold and foggy. Eammon says a breach looks like a pool of black mud and is “[a] place where the Wilderwood didn’t hold strong and the Shadowlands pushed through” (75). They come across a white tree with a shadow of rot at its base. Eammon uses his magic to heal the tree, though doing so changes his body, like the color of his eyes, and creates bark on his skin. A root grabs Red, and thorns cut her. She feels her magic rising and is terrified she will be consumed like Gaya. She cuts her magic off. Eammon is shocked that Red also has magic.

A shadow woman emerges from the breach. She taunts Eammon that he isn’t strong enough to hold them off forever. The shadow turns into an image of Merra, one of the Second Daughters. Eammon cuts his palm and uses his blood to banish the shadow and heal the breach. Red learns that the Wilderwood drained all of those who came before.

Eammon asks how she got her magic, and Red explains that it got inside her on her 16th birthday, “like a piece of power I’m not supposed to have, something that makes plants and growing things act strange around me” (83). She’s afraid it causes bad things to happen. Eammon wonders if she could help fix the Wilderwood if she learned how to use her magic.

Neve talks with Raffe. She is attracted to him, but feels they cannot be together because she has been told to marry Arick. A group of priestesses enters, and the one Neve saw in the shrine says that some of them are still praying. The priestess believes the Wilderwood may yet release the Kings. Neve fears that Red has been sacrificed for nothing.

In the garden, Neve overhears the priestess, Kiri, talking with Arick, who asks about a way he might help free Red.

Red wakes in her new room. She didn’t expect to survive her 20th birthday and wonders what to do with this new future. When she exits her room, she sees a sentinel tree has appeared in the hallway. She meets Lyra, another young woman, who helps guard the forest by scattering vials of blood when she finds trees infected with shadow-rot. Lyra bargained with the Wilderwood and gained a Mark, so now she, too, is bound to the forest.

Red visits the library, then meets Fife, the young man who also lives in the Keep and is bound to the forest. As they have breakfast, Fife explains that the infected sentinel trees come to the Keep so Eammon can heal them. Red takes a walk and thinks she sees Arick at the front gate.