“Then I’ll wait with you,” Kayu said.
So now, that’s what they were all headed to do. Wait.
As Red descended into the dark of the hold and grabbed her bag, she couldn’t help but think of Neve, those long days after Red had disappeared into the Wilderwood, stretching into weeks and then months. Waiting to see if her sacrifices would bring Red back. Waiting to see what her blood on sentinel branches bought her.
She paused before going back up the ladder. Her scarlet cloak was stuffed into her bag; Red pulled it out, took off the gray one she wore, swirled the bridal cloak over her shoulders instead. Golden embroidery glinted in the gloom.
Better.
At the stern, Raffe was looping rope, doing some vital ship activity Red had no context for—two voyages in a week, and she still had no idea how boats worked. He’d been quiet. The most she’d heard him say was when she overheard him speaking with Kayu, his voice too muffled to make out specifics.
“Need help?” she asked.
“I’ve got it.”
Kayu and Lyra helped Neils shove down the gangplank, ready to disembark. Kayu went first, walking up the shore to where the horses were stabled and the carriage parked, beyond where the sand turned to grass. Raffe watched her.
Red chewed her lip. “I know it’s none of my business—”
“Here we go,” Raffe muttered.
“—but you should know you don’t have to feel guilty, Raffe.”
He stopped in his endless looping of rope, tilting back his head so his breath plumed toward the sky. At first, she thought he would ignore her or brush it off. But then he shook his head and turned back to his rope. “I know I don’t. And yet.”
Red didn’t push. She leaned against the railing.
Raffe spoke without her prompting, like this was something he’d been waiting for. Knowing him, it was. “The way we left things, Neve and I… well. That’s the point, I guess. There wasn’t a thing to leave. I told her I loved her, and she never said it back, even though she showed it, or at least that she cared, and I…” He ran a hand over his head. “Now I feel like I don’t know who she is. I only know who she was.”
“We change,” Red murmured. Not an indictment or an absolution, just a statement of fact. “We grow in different directions sometimes.”
“I still care about her,” Raffe said.
Care about. Not love. “I know.”
“And when she comes back, I…” He lost the words and couldn’t find any more that fit. Raffe shook his head.
“When she comes back,” Red said decisively, “you will be an excellent friend to her. You two will talk. You will figure out what kind of relationship you want to have.” She gave him a tiny, reassuring half smile. “All of this is complicated, Raffe. It always has been. You don’t have to know exactly what you’re doing all the time.”
He huffed a rueful laugh. “Even half the time would be welcome.”
The coach clattered up the road that led to the docks, Kayu driving. As the horses stopped, a rumble moved over the ground, shaking the docks, the sparse trees, making the waves in the ocean grow taller.
At the wheel, Neils boomed another laugh. “This keeps up, and I’ll be down to Karsecka in less than a week!”
Red gave him a tight smile, dread chewing at her spine. The Wilderwood sent a skitter of thorns across her ribs, a branch stretching over her collarbone, sharp and pinching.
Kayu drove fast, but the earthquakes were faster. They felt at least three in the two hours it took to travel from the Florish coast to the edge of the Wilderwood, growing in intensity the closer they got to Valleyda. By the time they crossed the border, only minutes from the Wilderwood, Kayu had to stop the carriage each time one started, the horses prancing nervously in place as the ground shook. It’d snowed while they were gone, white drifts of it lining the roadway, flakes spinning off to twirl in the air as the earth vibrated beneath them. Snow always started early this far north, barely giving summer time to fade to fall.
“The quakes are too close together.” Lyra shook her head, fawn-colored eyes glassy with worry. “How do we know the Shadowlands haven’t dissolved already?”
“We’ll know.” The forest within Red rustled, a bloom of a vine along her shoulder blades, the snaking of a root down her spine. Not for the first time, she half wished the Wilderwood could speak to her in words again, wither part of itself as a price for speech. “We’ll know when they dissolve.”