Piercing blue, the High Priestess’s fevered gaze darted directly to Red, the rest of her staying preternaturally still. She gave the unsettling impression of a waking corpse.
“Redarys.” Her name a rasp, the s held too long. “You’ve finally come.”
Eammon’s grip on her hand was tight enough to hurt. Red squeezed back, leaving her anxiety there instead of in her expression.
“Have you been waiting?” she asked.
The smile started at one side of Kiri’s mouth, moved slowly to the other. “Oh, we have.”
Beside her, Eammon waited like a bow poised to fire, all tense lines. Fife stood just behind him, hand on his dagger hilt and body positioned between the priestess on the bed and Lyra, whose fawn-brown eyes were wide. On Red’s other side, Raffe had maneuvered himself between Kayu and Kiri, so subtly that she wondered if he even realized he’d done it. Only Kayu didn’t look surprised. She just looked worried.
Kiri’s eyes narrowed, unfocused. “You’ve seen her already,” she murmured, like she was reading it out of the air. “You’ve been to the space between. The Heart Tree. You took it in, carry it with you.”
The key in Red’s pocket burned, almost hot to the touch. She reached in and pulled it out—the pulse in it was faint again, but the golden lines tracing the bark flared, glowing bright against the white wood.
“And she has her key, too, now,” Kiri said, watching the gentle golden light in Red’s hand. “The way back, strung between you both, two points of a compass. Either one of you can enter now, you know.”
Red’s heartbeat kicked against her throat. “You mean I can go there again? I can bring her out?”
Kiri’s mouth opened and a laugh rang out, though nothing else about her expression changed. Her blue eyes still looked vacant. “Stupid wolf-girl,” she chuckled. “The Shadow Queen chose to stay. She chose to fulfill her destiny. To become the vessel.”
“Shadow Queen?” The title itched at Red’s shoulder blades. “What do you mean?”
“You’re the Golden-Veined, she’s the Shadow Queen. How it was always going to be.” Kiri turned back to the ceiling, as if looking at Red bored her. “They’ve whispered of you to me since I was a girl, you know. Since I bled on that branch at the edge of the woods. It lodged them in my head, and then I spent all my days just waiting for you. Listening to them whisper.”
Something like pity made the leaves between Red’s ribs stir. Here was another reflection, warped and twisted. “You bled on a branch, too. Like Arick did. That’s how they could talk to you.”
Kiri didn’t answer. Instead, she laughed again, but this time she closed her eyes, and the corners of her mouth twitched, like the laugh might become a sob at any moment.
“She’s mad,” Raffe whispered, coming up to Red’s other side. On the opposite, Eammon stood silent and stoic. “Does any of this make sense to you?”
“Almost?” Eammon murmured. Behind him, Fife nodded, rubbing at his Mark.
Red took a breath, tried to make herself calm and even. If she spoke to the High Priestess as if all of this was clear, maybe it would start to be. “So I’m the Golden-Veined, and Neve is the Shadow Queen.”
“As I just said,” Kiri singsonged to the ceiling. “You never were the smart sister.”
A low sound started in Eammon’s throat, but Red knocked their clasped hands against his abdomen, a silent request for him to hold his tongue. “All right,” Red said slowly. “So how does that help me bring Neve home?”
“Oh, she’ll come home. One way or another.” Kiri’s eyes twitched beneath her closed eyelids, back and forth, as if she were watching something play out in her head. “Solmir thinks he saved her. He knows nothing.”
The name made all Red’s muscles tense, but she stayed silent, hoping the mad priestess would fill the quiet.
“He knows there must be a vessel, and he thinks it can be him. It could’ve been, once, but now that they know there’s another option, they’ll never settle for him. Stupid. All of you, made stupid by your caring, over and over.” She shook her head, red hair scraping over the pillow. “There are two vessels, mirrors, reflections. That is how it has to be. It will be either an end or a beginning, and that is up to her.”
“To me?” Red asked.
“To the Shadow Queen.”
So it all came down to Neve. Neve in the dark with only a fallen god for company, Neve in the shadows she’d chosen.