Neve wondered what he was doing. She wondered what they’d say to each other, if she saw him again. She wondered what she wanted him to say.
Thinking of Raffe made her think of Arick, and thinking of Arick made her think of Solmir—Solmir-as-Arick, wearing her betrothed’s face, bending them all to his plans like they were nothing but tools.
She glowered at him, moving straight-backed and precise through the trees. All the weakness that absorbing magic had wrought in him was gone now, dark power packed down. A vessel, that’s what he’d called himself. It tugged at her mind, that word, like it should hold more weight, like it was a piece of something larger. But Neve couldn’t remember what.
“Watch your head.”
His voice came quiet, startling her from her thoughts. Ahead of her, Solmir had turned to face her, gesturing up at the lowest branches—roots—on the upside-down trees.
Webbing. It was strung fine as silk, nearly invisible, but still thick, clouding the air. Neve grimaced. “I hate spiders,” she muttered, low enough to be speaking to herself.
“Me too,” Solmir said, turning back around and ducking to avoid the webs.
Her mouth twisted. Other than a shared goal of sending her back to her own world—and, hopefully, killing the other Kings—common ground with Solmir was not something she wanted to find.
The strange moments of tenderness he’d shown back when she thought he was Arick still haunted her. The way he’d moved, careful and caring at once. She wasn’t sure how much of it had been his trying to make a convincing mask of Arick, to fill in the blanks of his being her betrothed. But not all of it felt like a mask.
Now that he was here, in his own body, that carefulness around her had stayed. Not as obvious, but there in glimmers, both in the way he treated her and the way he moved through this world. Giving her his coat. Humming a lullaby.
She couldn’t quite categorize him, and Neve hated things she couldn’t quantify. She’d always had a quick mind, able to decipher people within moments, know what they wanted and how she could use it. But Solmir eluded her, and that made her uneasy.
He needed her. And, for now, she needed him—she couldn’t navigate the Old Ones’ underworld on her own. Right now, Solmir was a necessary evil.
But if there ever came a moment when he wasn’t… well. Then other choices might be made.
The trees thinned, eventually, revealing an open vista of gray. It might’ve been a field once—in some places, the dried husks of dead grasses still clung to the earth, stubbornly rooted into the cracked ground. Now it was nothing but a flat expanse, stretching ever forward, vast and featureless but for the figure of Solmir walking up ahead.
The rumbling started slow, crawling through the ground, making her borrowed boots shake. She looked up, found Solmir staring at her, blue eyes wide.
“Get on your knees,” he said, and though the words were something she certainly would’ve given him an earful for in any other circumstance, Neve obeyed.
Just in time.
The ground shuddered like it was trying to break apart, raising a roar into the still air, making her teeth clatter together. Then it did break apart—fractures split the dry, dusty ground, shuddering open, yawning chasms of deep darkness.
A hairline crack appeared next to Neve’s hand, widening rapidly into a fissure. She tried to scramble away, but the shuddering earth made directing movement nearly impossible, and more cracks ruptured around her, making an island of rapidly deteriorating safety where she crouched.
“Neverah!”
Solmir lurched toward her, bounced over the ground like a coin in a tin cup. He skidded around the opening chasms, kicking up clouds of gray dust. The whole not-quite-sky filled with the sound of breaking earth, collapsing dirt. A world shuddering itself apart.
He launched across the ground, landed next to her in a crouch. “Forgive me for the impropriety, Your Majesty,” he hissed, then scooped her up and jumped across the growing fissure to a larger piece of solid earth. The landing made him stumble, and they sprawled onto the dirt, his arms braced next to her temples. The back of Neve’s head slammed against the earth, hard enough to make her vision blur and pain spangle through her skull.
Wafts of black smoke billowed from the chasms like smoke from yawning mouths, curling up toward the gray mist that made the false sky. The chittering sound of it cut through the groan of the shattering ground—loose magic, untethered from the world by its breaking.
Solmir sprang up, standing over her like a predator defending its kill. His hands arched in the air, and with a roar, he called all that rogue magic in.