“So it’s safe, then.”
A laugh, echoing in her head. Nothing here is. But it is necessary.
Neve nodded, though she wasn’t sure if the god could see. Still, her throat felt as if she’d swallowed a rock, as her fingers tightened around the shard of bone.
“Hesitation? I didn’t expect that from you, Neverah.”
A new voice, slicing through the shadows.
The darkness ahead of Neve coalesced, like Calryes’s had above, shaping itself. Becoming a man, more solid than Calryes had been, as if he had a greater command of the magic here. Spikes growing from his head like a crown, strong shoulders under a rich purple robe, and a blaze of auburn hair, his handsomeness flickering to skeletal decay and back again.
She’d never seen him before. Still, she knew who he was.
Valchior.
The King smiled. “I expected you to stab our godly friend here the first chance you got. You like magic. You like control. And you’ll have all of those things when you absorb its power.”
Neve didn’t respond, didn’t move, faced with the greatest of the gods she’d been taught to worship and filled with a dread that was anything but holy. She could feel the Serpent’s displeasure in her mind, sparking with inhuman fear, though that fear was a distant second to her own. She wondered if the King could sense it. If he liked it.
Valchior might be more solid than Calryes, but still his edges feathered, features shifting. Man, skull, shroud. In every form, though, a sharp smile hovered around his mouth, lips fuller and more sensual than a rotting god had any right to have.
“Aren’t you lovely,” he murmured, stepping forward as shadows boiled around his feet. “It’s no surprise you turned our Solmir’s head.”
Even through the terror churning in her gut, Neve managed to twist her lips into a sneer. “We need each other. It’s nothing more than that.”
Valchior’s head cocked to the side, face shifting skeletal as he chuckled. “Perhaps that’s true. You did leave him at Calryes’s mercy, and that’s certainly not a pleasant family reunion.”
Guilt, again, digging claws into her chest. Neve gritted her teeth against it.
“Did you figure out what he was doing, all his plans for you?” Valchior asked. “Did he make you ruthless, there on the surface?”
“He didn’t make me anything.” Neve tightened her grip on the bone.
Was it giving something away to say that? The spreading of the King’s lips into a cold smile said it was. “Interesting,” he purred. “So the ruthlessness is all your own.”
His voice slithered over her, calling down to deep fears she hadn’t let herself examine closely. Fears of what she’d become. What more she’d do. She’d pressed all her lines until they gave way and hadn’t yet had the desire to redraw them.
“It’s a liberating thing to realize, Neverah.” Valchior wasn’t quite corporeal enough to pace around her. Instead, he appeared at different places in the shadows, drawn to cardinal points as the dark shifted to accommodate him. “All that striving for goodness does nothing but exhaust you. No one can even decide on what goodness really is. Such an arbitrary thing, and we use it like a noose.”
“Goodness is whatever you’re not,” she said, but it came out so small.
“Is it?” In front of her now, and close. Neve held every muscle frozen to keep from flinching. “Because I think goodness is more about trying to save those you love. Regardless of the cost.”
She wanted to argue, but what could she say? Neve agreed, shadows damn her. She agreed.
Valchior’s smile widened. “We took similar paths, Neve. I tried to save my daughter from the Wilderwood, from the Wolf. Tried to get back the power that would keep us all safe from the gods this prison world couldn’t hold forever. Can you blame me for that, really?”
The King stopped his movement, standing still before her. The flicker of his features from bone to beauty stopped, leaving him only handsome, only regal. “This place wasn’t made for us. You’ve seen how it changes you. Are we to blame for what we’ve become?”
“You didn’t have to.” Sweat slicked the god-bone in her hand, made it hard to grip. The cold air on her fear-clammy skin made her shiver. “You didn’t have to keep pulling power up from the Shadowlands, tying your souls to its magic until you couldn’t even leave your Sanctum. Solmir didn’t.”
“Solmir,” Valchior hissed, “has not told you the entirety of his sorry tale.”