He’d awoken not quite knowing where he was. Only that Red wasn’t there. He knew her absence like he’d know a missing bone.
The shadows, the storm. Eammon caught glimpses of her between the strands of darkness, his girl become a god—antlered and crowned in ivy.
She was beautiful. He was terrified.
The shadows wouldn’t let him through. He didn’t know what Red was doing, just that she was doing it without him, and every flicker of her he caught had her slumping, fading.
No no no no no no no no no
There was someone else here, someone else trying to batter their way through a wall of shadow. Long hair, silver rings on each finger, nearly as tall as he was.
But before he could get a good look, the shadows threw him back, sent him sprawling head over feet to land in a sprained heap. Eammon thrust out his hand at the maelstrom as soon as he landed, trying to call up forest magic that might stop the storm. But there was nothing.
Not just nothing, as in his magic wouldn’t work. Nothing, as in it wasn’t there.
No no no no no no no no no
The storm froze. A boom, and the shadows dissipated, leaving nothing but moonlight on snow.
Nothing but two bodies on the ground.
Chapter Forty-Two
Solmir
He should’ve known.
That day in the grove, the day he pulled her into the Shadowlands—it was a precursor to this, a ghost of something that hadn’t happened yet. She’d pulled the magic into herself instead of expelling it, and why had he ever expected that to change? He’d tried to hold the Kings’ souls, and wasn’t strong enough, so Neve shouldered the burden instead.
Even now, trying to pick himself up after being thrown back by a wall of shadow, he felt his own soul like a sentencing.
A terrible thought then, though terribleness from him should come as no surprise—at least she hadn’t made him kill her. At least it had been her sister, one draining the other, mirrored love and mirrored lives and mirrored death.
He couldn’t have killed her. Even if she asked, even if she begged, even if it meant the world fell into howling hell. He’d let it before he hurt Neve.
He’d always been weak.
When the storm of shadows stopped, Red and Neve lay head to head, blond hair mingling with black. All vestiges of magic had left them in death. Just two young women in the snow.
The Wolf howled. He reached them before Solmir did, knees on the ground, one scarred hand on Redarys’s brow and the other curled over his face, his shoulders bowed forward like he could squeeze the life out of himself and into her. One racking sob, harsh enough to make his throat sound bloodied.
Solmir hadn’t cried in eons. He didn’t know if he even remembered how. But his own throat felt tight, his hands opening and closing into useless fists. He wanted to hit something. Wanted to fight something. Wanted to run and run until he collapsed and was back to not feeling anything, damn her for making him feel.
How dare she make him feel something other than rage or sorrow or guilt for the first time in centuries and then die?
So when Eammon lurched up from the ground, snarling and wild-eyed, and launched his scarred knuckles at Solmir’s jaw, it was almost a relief.
Chapter Forty-Three
Neve
She didn’t know how she expected dying to feel, but it wasn’t like this.
It took Neve a moment to be aware of her body—limbs, torso, head, all present and accounted for. No pain, which she didn’t realize she’d anticipated until she was startled by its absence. It all felt… mostly normal.
Neve kept her eyes closed, because as normal as this all felt, she still wasn’t quite brave enough to see what death looked like. Tentatively, she pressed a hand to her chest.
Well. There was a difference. No heartbeat.
One deep, shaking breath, into lungs that felt surprised to be used. Then Neve opened her eyes.
Death, it seemed, was a field.
Rolling and green, stretching as far as she could see in either direction. Tiny white flowers pressed up through the grass, but their scent was that of autumn leaves, biting and cinnamon-like. An incongruity of seasons that she supposed shouldn’t startle her.
She didn’t realize she’d backed up until her spine hit something solid. Neve turned around.
The Heart Tree.
It was huge, the trunk thick enough that it would take at least five grown men holding outstretched hands to encircle it fully. The white bark was riven with swirls and arabesques, gold outlined in black, light and shadow harmonizing across the entire surface. If Neve looked at it with eyes unfocused, the shapes nearly looked like… not letters, not really, but something she could read regardless. Scenes, maybe. Scenes of her own life, of Red’s. A hungry forest and a sinking grave and hands outstretched to both.