Despite everything, he’d reflexively reached for the table of red prayer candles when he entered. When he realized what he was doing, he shrank away like it was a basket full of snakes rather than wicks and wax. The Kings were the last people he wanted to hear from. He could revert to his childhood ways, he supposed, praying to some folktale figure, or the Plaguebreaker—but after meeting her in the flesh, that felt strange, too. The idea had occurred to him that maybe Red and Eammon were the thing to pray to now, but that felt even more strange, and useless besides. They didn’t know what to do any more than he did.
His thoughts wandered to Kayu. He’d seen her this morning after breakfast, as he walked down to the Shrine—dressed in a sumptuous gown of purple silk with silver embroidery, her long black hair elaborately braided back from her face. She’d been strolling the gardens on the arm of Belvedere’s valet—the master of trade kept quarters in the capital city, even as the seasons dipped toward cold, though he generally stayed away from the palace unless he had to come balance ledgers. Her eyes had flickered his way even as she laughed gaily at some quip the valet made, but other than an inclination of her head, she hadn’t acknowledged Raffe at all. As if she hadn’t been in his room playing at assassination in the small hours of yesterday morning. Reading his correspondence. Offering help.
Raffe rubbed a hand over his face. He would say he didn’t trust Kayu as far as he could throw her, but she was a small woman, so he could probably throw her much farther than his trust would extend. Even still, he didn’t see a way around taking her offer. She was right. He needed money.
And with everything else he had to deal with, trying to head off a curious Niohni princess was one task he just didn’t have the mental capacity for. He’d let her help. And if things went awry… well, she’d played at assassin first.
Even as Raffe had the thought, his stomach went knotty. He wasn’t nearly as bloodthirsty as one needed to be for this.
So when he turned and saw her standing behind him, eyes wide and a lit candle clutched in her hand, the string of profanity he let loose was truly impressive.
She cocked her head to the side. When he’d first seen her, he could’ve sworn the look in her eyes was somewhere near panic, but now she seemed cool and unruffled as ever. “Feeling pious, Raffe?”
Raffe gestured to the candle in her hand. “Not as pious as you, apparently.”
Again, that flash of something wary across her heart-shaped face. But then Kayu shrugged. “Old habits.” She passed him in a flutter of silk, going to fix her candle before one of the branch shards. She did it carefully, he noticed, with graceful movements that spoke of practice.
Candlelight shimmered over her gown as she turned to him, her back now on her prayer. Her ink-dark eyes narrowed at the branch shards lining the walls. “Not much for decoration.”
“Is the Shrine in Nioh decorated?”
“It’s austere, but better than this. Only having one branch to display means we can do more elsewhere; having so many really overwhelms the room.”
“You could return to your stroll with what’s-his-name, if the lack of decoration offends you so much.”
“Don’t be jealous. Aldous is quite spoken for; he and Belvedere have been together for years.” She nodded at the note still held in Raffe’s hand. “More news about the Queen?”
The word made his fingers flex; Raffe tucked the note into his pocket with a scowl. “Sorry, but the only way you’re going to know the contents of my correspondence is if you steal it.”
“Sounds like a challenge.” But the words were softer than they should be; Kayu’s face was pensive. She sighed, eyes swinging from him to the jagged shadows of the branches on the walls. “It’s honestly remarkable that you’ve held everything together this long. I know the Valleydan court isn’t necessarily one for intrigue—the cold saps it out of them, I guess. But your luck won’t hold forever. Power is power, and eventually, someone will want it. The sooner you can find Neverah Valedren, the better.”
Truer than Kayu could know. There was no way to tell what was happening to Neve in the Shadowlands, how she spent the days that ticked by as they got no closer to finding a way to save her. He played it over endlessly in his head—the glass coffin, the churning hurricane the grove became, the way she sank into the dirt with only a glimpse of that gray sky, that inverted forest, that endless dead land populated by undead things. It was a world totally unlike their own, and he had no frame of reference for how it worked, what it would do to her.