Damn him for being handsome. Life would be so much simpler if all monsters looked the part.
He recovered first, once the ground stopped writhing. The line of his mouth actually looked worried now, instead of just mocking. “It’s getting worse,” he muttered, nearly to himself. “Must be only three left.”
Neve straightened on shaky legs. “It seems like the Shadowlands might end themselves if we just wait long enough.”
She’d been only half serious, but the look Solmir leveled at her was grave. “Even if the Shadowlands collapse with the Kings in it, they won’t be ended. Not really.” He turned on his heel, striding away over the branches cutting through the dusty ground. “It takes more than that to vanquish a god.”
They walked in silence. Neve shivered against the cold, tugging Solmir’s coat around herself before she thought through exactly what she was doing. Part of her wanted to cringe away, but a bigger part of her was just cold.
After a moment, Solmir sighed, as if her silence were something that weighed on him. “I did try to do this the easiest way possible,” he said. “Before your sister and her Wolf got in the way.”
If he kept bringing up Red, she was going to tear him limb from limb and relish the fact that he couldn’t really die here. “I don’t believe that you’ve ever done something for the benefit of someone else in your life.”
“First time for everything,” he replied.
“Is that why you took all my magic? To prove your noble intentions?”
He half turned, the gleam of his blue eyes bright as flame-hearts in all this gray. The corner of his mouth twisted up, not in a smile. “I’d never claim that my intentions were noble, Neverah. I know what I am.”
Her lips pressed into a tight line.
“I took it because the magic here rots your soul, turns you into a monster.” He started forward again, climbing with agile grace over the thatched branches hilling the unnatural forest floor. One of them sliced up from the ground; he stood on it, looked down at her. “I don’t expect a thank you, don’t worry.”
Neve glared up at him. “At least you know better than that.”
Another bend of that cruel mouth into a not-smile. Solmir inclined his head, almost courtly, then hopped down and continued weaving through the inverted trees. He didn’t offer Neve a hand to help her over the branch; she nearly stumbled, stubbing her bare toe against pale bark.
“If you want my soul to stay free of rot,” she said, glowering at his back and trying to ignore the pain in her foot, “what about yours? Assuming you have one.”
“Oh, I do.” He sounded almost angry about it. “Withered and sorry thing though it is. But I managed to disentangle it from magic some time ago.” His voice slanted low. “It was quite a feat, if you want to know the truth. The magic here likes to seep into every available place, take you over. Much like the magic in the Wilderwood, I’m told. But if I’m careful, I can keep the two from melding together.”
“Do you want a medal?”
Blue eyes flickered her way. “A moment of silence will suffice.”
And because her mind was already awash with things she couldn’t quite wrap meaning around, Neve gave it to him.
She craned her neck as they walked, peering at the snatches of sky she could see between the thready roots of the inverted trees. Something that looked almost like stratified clouds marked the gray, but when she squinted at them, she saw that they were just more roots, high enough to be obscured in shifting mist.
“I don’t deserve your trust. I know that much.” Solmir resolutely faced forward, his tone and his stance casual in a way that seemed almost forced, like he’d been thinking the words over long before they escaped his mouth. “But, unfortunately, you’re going to have to give it to me.”
“I did trust you.” It came out almost wounded, and Neve hated that, but she couldn’t swallow the jagged sound out of her voice. “It put me here.”
His hand tightened on the strap of the bag over his shoulder.
Neve’s eyes narrowed at his back, something thorny and poisonous rising in her chest, despite the fact that all her power was housed in him now. “Maybe it’s unfair to claim I trusted you, since you were pretending to be someone else all along. You’ve lied to me since the beginning, Solmir. How can you ask me for trust?”
Solmir turned. He closed the distance between them, nimble as a dancer, striding over the irregular, branch-covered ground to loom over her, hands clasped behind his back like a general addressing a wayward soldier.