Neve nodded, swallowing. She knew the one. The hall where Red had been blessed as a sacrifice to the Wolf. The hall where Isla had chosen Tealia as the High Priestess’s successor and thus sealed her fate.
She slanted a glance at Solmir, unsure whether she was looking for guilt or simple recognition. His face was blank.
They reached the drop—Neve anticipated another climb, but the ceiling was sloped gently enough that they could walk, albeit very carefully. Solmir went first, gracefully, but Neve slipped halfway down. She cursed, scrabbled for a handhold, got fingernails full of splinters instead—
Then Solmir’s arms, wrapping around her waist. Solmir’s middle absorbing the impact of her fall with a grunt. Her knees bracketed his hips, her hands splayed across his chest, palms on skin bared by his half-open shirt.
And they stared at each other, her confused, him with the stoic face of a man marching to a noose.
“Are you going to take it?” he asked.
Her brows knit. “Take what?”
“The power,” he sneered. “The magic. You could, you know. Right now. You could take all of it.”
The furrow in her brow went deeper. “But it would make me—”
“Monstrous?” he scoffed. “You want to be afraid of that, Neverah, but we both know you aren’t.”
Truth, and it made her scramble from him, put her feet on solid ground, and close her hands to fists so she didn’t feel him beneath them. “What are you trying to do?”
“Give you all your options.” His eyes glinted in the dark as he stood, raised his arms to either side, a stance that encouraged a fight. “You have to take in the power of a god to get through to the Tree anyway. And if you decide to take it all—the Serpent’s power, the Oracle’s, all the damn lesser beasts we’ve killed along the way—I won’t stop you. I’ll let you become the monster you were always meant to be.”
Cruelty came as a surprise now. She’d stopped expecting it from him. And maybe that was the reason he offered it; as if he realized they’d grown past animosity, and it scared him. So he threw it out like a wild punch, not caring whether it hit, only that he’d tried.
It made her want to answer in kind, to strike with sharp words of her own. But Neve was still a queen, and her voice came even, her chin tilted upward, regal in his coat and her torn nightgown. “As I’ve said before,” she stated coolly, “one of us is more prone to monstrousness.”
His teeth shone, not a smile, though the fierce expression was tempered by a regretful glint in his eyes. “Are you so sure about that?”
Neve’s teeth set hard against each other, fingers flexing into fists and back out again. All the warm thoughts she’d had of him—in the marshes, on the Bone Ship, on the beach where she’d watched him wash his hair and let her cheeks heat for it—felt like indictments now. This man played her like a harp string, over and over, and she kept looking for goodness in those discordant notes. Kept looking for something worth thinking of fondly.
Strange and humbling, what loneliness could do.
She strode past him, close enough for her shoulder to brush his arm. “You were right,” she said. “It appears having a soul does little to make one good. Maybe they’re mostly just nuisances, after all.”
He didn’t respond. But she saw a wince pull at his mouth as his arms dropped back to his sides, no longer inviting a brawl.
So preoccupied was she with the fallen King, she hadn’t taken a moment to marvel at what lay before her until she moved beyond him. A familiar foyer, one she’d walked through countless times in that other life, the one where she was merely a sister and a daughter and a future queen. But inverted, like everything else was here.
The marble floor she knew so well hung far, far above, so distant she couldn’t quite make out the individual pieces of interlocking stone. The huge spiral staircase started right at the level of her eyes, spinning upward at an angle that made her stomach hook.
And there, at the top—the bottom—a shimmer of darkness, like shadow had solidified into a wall.
“Is that where we’ll need the magic?” she asked quietly.
“Yes.” Neutral-voiced, like their argument of a moment before was forgotten. Solmir stepped up beside her, scrutinizing the staircase. “The first time I came, I climbed that. It was less than pleasant.”
“I haven’t expected any part of this to be pleasant,” Neve muttered.
“I think I can spare enough to make it somewhat less unpleasant.” Solmir raised his hands, shooting her a barbed grin. “All that murder put to work.”