Neve’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“You deserve a proper goodbye, dammit.” Red dashed at her eyes. “I won’t stand for my sister to be cast off without one, even if I begrudge the air he breathes.”
Neve huffed a laugh that sounded more like a sob.
“So go make him tell you goodbye,” Red said, “or I will.”
And that was all the motivation Neve needed to turn and run.
“Wait!” It ripped out of her, stronger than she felt it should sound as she fumbled through snowdrifts in her borrowed boots. “Stay right there!”
To her surprise, he did.
The former god in the snow stood still, letting her approach at her own pace. Wind teased at his long hair, sending tendrils of it out to almost touch her face. His eyes were the color of lake ice, blue and burning.
They just stood there a minute, the once-Queen and once-King. Neither was sure how to move. How to step forward from all they’d done.
“What do you want, Neve?” Apprehension in his voice, like he expected her to ask for more than he could give. He knew this was an ending, too.
She swallowed. “A real goodbye.”
Relief on his face, and a thorn-sharp sorrow.
His rings were cold against her skin when she reached out, grabbed his hand. The one she still wore on her thumb clicked against the one on his smallest finger. He’d never asked for it back. “Does it feel as strange to you as it does to me?”
“You holding my hand,” he murmured, “or the sudden onset of humanity?”
“Both,” she answered. Turning their palms, lacing their fingers together.
“The first feels natural,” Solmir said, looking down at their linked hands instead of her face. “The second… I don’t know yet.” A deep breath, those blue eyes pressing closed. “I feel… heavy.”
She thought of the hollowness in her chest, the empty space where a soul had been. And she thought of his soul, the thing he’d so painstakingly disentangled from Shadowlands magic. “You know what you said about souls being mostly a nuisance?”
He nodded, one confused brow arched.
“I’ll be able to tell you if I agree soon.” She tried to smile, but it fell apart. “I’ve lost mine.”
He didn’t look surprised. Solmir cupped her cheek, those silver rings points of ice, lifted her face so he could see her tear-pricked eyes. Tentatively, like even now he thought she might push him away, he rested his forehead against hers. “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that souls are malleable things,” he murmured into the space between them. “Lost and found all the time.”
She laughed, but it shattered on the end, became almost a sob. The former god held her close, frozen pine filling every breath.
“Can I even be human without a soul?” she asked, the plume of it rising between them in the cold. “Soullessness is what marked the Old Ones as different from us. What made them monstrous. How can I be anything but a monster without one?”
“Because you aren’t.” He said it so simply, so sure. “You won’t be a monster, because you aren’t a monster.” Solmir gently pushed her out from him, hands on her shoulders. “You are good, Neve. How often do I have to tell you that before you’ll believe it?”
“More than you’ll get time for,” she whispered. “Right?”
She could go with him. She’d considered it as she ran toward him in the snow, but only briefly. Both of them needed time. Space. There was a whole world Neve had never really explored, and she wanted to, desperately. And Solmir… he had his own darkness to wrestle with. More atoning.
Still, she wanted to know, so she asked.
“Would you let me go with you?” she murmured.
“Are you going to ask?”
“No.”
He nodded. “That’s for the best.”
They stood bent toward each other, and for a moment she thought he would kiss her. But he didn’t, and strangely, it was a relief. This already felt like it might rend her heart in half, and now that she was soulless, her heart was all she had.
One more burning moment, the two of them staring at each other. Then Solmir bowed deeply. “My Queen.”
“Not a Queen anymore.”
“Always will be to me.” Then he turned, walked away over the snow. She watched until he faded into the drifting white.
Neve curled her hand against her chest, the thud of her heart, the rattle of her breath in and out of her lungs. Her mind swirled with thought and feeling, unchanged since she’d lost her soul, still fragile and heady and confusing. All the things that made her human.