And as the Heart Tree began to grow—the doorway she and Red had compressed into keys by the force of their matched love, by their willingness to do whatever it took to save the other—she heard Valchior laughing and laughing and laughing.
You’ve played your part to the letter, Shadow Queen.
Roots boiled up from the place where she’d dropped the key, a white trunk stretching toward the broken-bone ceiling of the Sanctum. An opening in the gray-fogged sky, a gash of color as a doorway opened.
Neve grabbed Solmir’s hand, dragging him behind her. If he protested, tried to jerk away, she couldn’t tell.
She stepped toward the Tree, trying to ignore the voice, trying to hold on to herself amid all this writhing shadow. The trunk opened, the dark inside filled with a wheel and a glimmer that looked like stars, like a place between worlds, a corridor to walk from one to the other.
As she stepped in, Valchior whispered, singing it along her bones:
I told you we welcomed it.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Red
The Wilderwood was gold.
It flowed back from where the Heart Tree grew at the fore of the forest, blazing like a branch-shaped sun, a burn of light that spread through the veins of every leaf, wound its way up every trunk. A shadow-pit in reverse, not rotting the woods, but… awakening them. Touching each piece of forest magic, pricking it into light that made the surrounding plane seem dusk-dim.
Red pushed up from the snow, shading her eyes with her hand. Still no sign of Neve.
Her heartbeat quickened, a punch of dread she could almost taste.
“Red.” Eammon’s voice, hoarse. He was beside her, grimacing as he sat up, snow dampening his hair. But he had eyes only for her hand, and he picked it up with a mix of wonder and fear.
She followed his gaze, and the thud of her heart hit harder. Red had grown used to seeing her veins a color other than blue, but this time they weren’t green—they were gold, like she’d traced her vascular system in gilt. Her eyes darted to Eammon, expecting something similar, the two of them gleaming to match their forest.
But Eammon hadn’t changed like she had. Faint glimmers shone along his wrists, his knuckles, but they were nothing compared to the lines of light that shot through Red.
The Golden-Veined. It snapped into place, all of it. The Shadow Queen, the Golden-Veined. Things written in stars, roles already made that she and Neve stepped neatly into.
As if seeing the change sparked it into action, a draw began deep in Red’s center, that same place where she’d felt the Wilderwood’s power long before she claimed it and made it part of her. A tug toward the Heart Tree, mitigated only by Eammon’s presence at her side. She felt pulled in two different directions, suspended between Eammon and the Heart Tree like they owned two halves of her soul.
Eammon’s eyes raised to hers. She hadn’t seen fear like that since the day Neve disappeared.
The others pushed themselves out of the snow, in all the places the Heart Tree had flung them when it burst from the ground. Kayu shivered, her dark hair damp with snowmelt. Raffe helped her stand, then wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“Are we supposed to do something?” This from Lyra, standing to brush snow off her legs. Her gaze flickered to Red, then to Eammon, noting the gold in their veins, the way Red’s shone more brightly. “It’s not doing anything on its own.”
Eammon banished the fear from his face, firmed his mouth and tightened his grip on Red’s hands. Within the two of them, the Wilderwood shifted and stirred, disturbed but not in pain. Restless, waiting, anticipating.
Still not speaking.
She looked to Fife. His hand was tight on his Mark, his eyes distant. Unease prickled at the back of her neck.
Red’s spine twinged, the tightening of the roots around it reminding her of when the Wilderwood was newly sprouted and growing in that dungeon beneath the Valleydan palace. Of when it’d pulled her away from Neve and back into its borders.
Now it pulled her toward the Heart Tree. Toward her sister, instead of away.
But Eammon didn’t feel the same pull. She could see it in his eyes, the way they kept flickering from her to the Tree behind her, in the half snarl of his mouth. He could feel her being pulled away but didn’t feel the same tug himself. Red reeled toward the Tree, Eammon reeled toward Red. Her heart torn down the middle, always, her two homes never content to share.
This magic she’d braided into herself was a selfish kind. It didn’t allow for all the different strands of love she ached with.
Fife’s mouth drew into a tight, pained line. His eyes darted from Red to Eammon, someone who’d just been given an order he didn’t know how to complete. He rubbed at the Mark on his arm again.