When she arrived in the dining room, Lyra was already seated, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand and a smile on her elfin face. Time in the sun outside of the forest had lightened the tips of her tightly coiled black hair, giving it a coppery shimmer. She raised her chipped mug in salute as Red walked through the door. “Are you actually going to sit and eat, or will you go the way of your husband and steal a slice of toast with barely a hello?”
“I’ll sit.” Red slid into her chair and took the cup Lyra offered, giving her a thankful grin when she saw the other woman had already doused her coffee with cream. “This smells far better than usual.”
“Did you know coffee doesn’t have to taste like limp bean water? I learned this when I took a detour into Meducia. They know their way around a beverage, between the wine and the coffee.”
“I’m choosing not to be offended.” Fife emerged from the kitchen, carrying what looked like a whole ham and setting it down next to the toast. “I’m choosing not to comment on the fact that you called my coffee limp bean water.”
Lyra wrinkled her nose and patted his reddish hair. “The very best limp bean water.”
Fife smiled at her. It was the first true smile Red had seen from him in a week. He wore his long sleeves pulled down, hiding his Bargainer’s Mark, and when Lyra turned back to her breakfast, he fiddled with the cuff, making sure it was still at his wrist.
He must’ve felt her watching. Hazel eyes slid to Red’s; Fife gave a slight, rueful shrug.
So he hadn’t told Lyra about the new bargain, hadn’t shown her the new Mark. He needed to, and soon—Lyra remembered enough of their battle with Solmir at the inverted grove to know she’d been badly hurt. Eventually, she’d figure out what it was that saved her.
The three of them ate in companionable silence, Fife next to Lyra and Red across from them. Meals were a much more intricate affair now that they weren’t limited to supplies only from the Edge. The villagers beyond the forest were still preparing for their great migration south—delayed by the currently quiet chaos in Valleyda—but Valdrek and Lear had already gone to the capital to scope out the new world they’d be returning to.
If they could find Neve—when we find Neve, Red thought to herself almost savagely, fingers tightening around her mug—Red knew she would help with the villagers’ resettlement. But for now, with Raffe secretly holding things together in Valleyda by willpower alone, it didn’t seem wise to try to move a whole tiny country from behind the Wilderwood. Those at the Edge agreed, and many of them were content to stay where they were, anyway. Now that the way through the forest was open and they could feasibly trade with the rest of the world, the land beyond the Wilderwood no longer seemed like a prison.
“Do you care to give this to Raffe when you see him?” Red asked, fishing the letter from her pocket.
Fife took it, cocking a brow when he felt how thin it was. “Anything new to report?”
“No.” She sighed. “But he’d want to know that. No news is bad news.”
Lyra picked up another piece of toast. “I thought it was ‘no news is good news.’”
“We’ll just leave it at ‘no news is going to make Raffe more nervous than he already is.’”
Other than the brief reminder of Arick’s birthday, the letter truly wasn’t much—just a reiteration that although Red offered to the mirror every day, it still showed her nothing of her sister. Telling him, again, that she and Eammon were looking for any possible way to open the Shadowlands and pull Neve out.
Well. Any safe possible way.
Before they’d become the Wilderwood, there’d been countless accidental doors into the Shadowlands. The breaches, the churned black dirt around falling sentinels that birthed shadow-creatures and the lesser beast they’d fought after the first time he took her to the Edge. And that, Red thought, could be the answer they were looking for.
What if there was a way to re-create a doorway to the Shadowlands? To somehow free a sentinel from within one of them, like a loose tooth, plant it back in the ground and let its distance from them rot it just enough to open a way between the worlds?
She’d mentioned the idea to Eammon only once. He’d responded poorly. Furious would be more accurate, really, Eammon fire-eyed and low-voiced, looming over her like something avenging, asking her what the fuck she thought she was doing.
She hadn’t realized until right then that it was the same way his mother had died. Gaya had attempted to open the Shadowlands and pull Solmir out, and the Wilderwood had consumed her for it, desperate to stop its own wounding.