Instinctively, Neve closed her eyes. Her breath came shallow, her heart pumping. It felt, almost, like her heart’s rhythm echoed elsewhere, something else responding to the beat of her pulse.
And when she opened her eyes, she saw the Tree.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Red
Sleeping on a ship should be easy, Red thought. The slow creak of ropes, the gentle rocking—by rights, she should fall effortlessly into rest. Eammon certainly had. He lay next to her, large and warm and snoring, on a bunk that was far too small for the two of them, his seasickness banished by sleep.
But for Red, it wouldn’t come.
After dinner—jerky and some kind of bread, yes, but well spiced, and far more appetizing than anticipated—the sailors had gone to smoke on the deck, and Kayu had taught them all a Niohni board game that involved dropping smooth stones into a simple grid and seeing who could collect the most in multiples of four. Red wasn’t quick enough with numbers to be much good, but Raffe, Eammon, and Lyra all won nearly as many rounds as Kayu did. Raffe had pretended to be annoyed, but the smile he flashed at Kayu when she poked him hard in the shoulder was genuine, and the two of them had stared at each other for a moment after as if the rest of them didn’t exist.
But when Raffe saw Red looking, the smile had dropped. He’d gone to the other side of the table and didn’t speak to Kayu again. After a few more rounds, everyone but him had gone to bed. Raffe’s excuse was he wasn’t tired yet, though the shadows beneath his eyes showed it for a lie.
Now, in bed next to Eammon, Red stared up at the dark beams above her and sighed. Gently, she extracted herself from Eammon’s arms and crept to the ladder leading to the deck.
When she emerged under the dark sky, it seemed she was alone. One of the sailors would be up at the wheel, she knew, making sure they stayed on course toward the Rylt, but they paid her no attention.
Red went toward the back of the small galley, the wooden boards rough beneath her bare feet. When she reached the railing, she pulled off her hood, tipping back her head and letting the wind pull at her ivy-threaded hair. It was too dark for anyone to see, unless they were standing right next to her.
“So you couldn’t sleep, either?”
She jumped back, hands raised defensively. “Shadows damn me, Raffe!”
Raffe just quirked a brow and drank from the chipped ceramic cup in his hand. “No wonder, if you’re this jumpy.”
The trajectory of her raised hands went from defensive to deprecating. Red snorted, settling her elbows on the rail. “I think I’m entitled to a little jumpiness, all things considered.”
“You’ll hear no arguments from me.” The sound of liquid swirling—Raffe took a sip of wine, then held out the cup to Red. She accepted, took a swallow. Made a face.
“Not Meducian,” Raffe said, taking the cup back.
“Not Meducian,” Red agreed.
They lapsed into comfortable silence, listening to the rhythm of the tide against the hull.
“Do you think she’ll come back different?” Raffe asked finally. “I mean, it’d be impossible to not be… changed by all this, somehow. But do you think…” He trailed off, like he didn’t quite have the words for what he wanted to ask.
Red knit her fingers together. Even in the color-stealing dark, the green tint of her veins was evident, incongruous in the grays and blues of the sea at night. “You’re wondering if she’ll come back as changed as I was.”
No response from Raffe, but that told her she was right.
The Wilderwood rustled down her spine, spread new leaves toward her shoulders. Almost like an offered answer.
“She made a choice,” she said quietly. “There in the grove. You saw it. She pulled all that shadow in, made it part of her.”
“But it wasn’t a choice, not really.” Raffe’s voice was harsh in the quiet. “Not like yours was. You fell in love and took the roots, she… she had to close the door, and she did it the most obvious way she could. It wasn’t the same.”
“No, not exactly the same,” Red conceded. “But it was still her decision.”
Silence, again, but she felt the way he tensed, the way that this quiet was no longer the comfortable kind between friends. It was something waiting for a shattering.
Red sighed and started braiding her hair, for something to do with her hands as much as to keep it out of her face. “Neve’s taken the first step to becoming my mirror. That’s why the mirror in the tower shattered. She’s taking in the Shadowlands like I took in the Wilderwood.”