Red put out her hand. A heartbeat, and Lyra placed hers in it, allowing comfort. “Fife loves you,” Red said, simple and plain and true. “Exactly like you need him to. And he has for so long now, it’s stood up against so much more time than it ever should’ve had to. He won’t regret anything that saved you.”
“I know.” Lyra shook her head. “I just… Kings, I wish he’d told me. I wish I hadn’t had to find out like this.”
“He should have.” Red snorted, giving Lyra’s hand a gentle pull as they left the library and went to the staircase. “Secrecy never serves them well, does it?”
“You’d think they’d learn.”
Eammon stood at the top of the stairs already, holding himself stiff and unsure, eyes shadowed by lowered brows. He nodded once as Red and Lyra climbed up the steps but didn’t look their way, all his attention on the man at the door. “Raffe.”
“Wolf.” Raffe stood in the center of the foyer just as uneasily as Eammon did, dressed for traveling and anonymity. Dark trousers, boots, dark doublet, no tor to be seen. His fingers flexed back and forth, like he wished he had something to hold in them, and his eyes reluctantly left Eammon to find Red, as if he thought the Wolf might jump the moment he wasn’t making eye contact. “Lady Wolf.”
The title shouldn’t have stung. It did anyway. Careful distance, wrought by the replacing of her name. A sign that things between them were unutterably different than before, that easy friendship muddled. “Hello, Raffe.”
He didn’t respond to the greeting. Instead, he looked behind Red, a spark of reverence lighting his face. Lyra was the only thing that had ever brought Raffe close to piety. He raised his fist to his forehead. “Plaguebreaker.”
The shift of her feet was Lyra’s only outward sign of discomfort. She raised her own fist, quick, then let it fall. “Raffe.” Then, eyes sliding pointedly to Raffe’s left, “Raffe’s friend.”
Raffe’s friend—Kings and shadows, it was so strange to see someone that wasn’t the five of them in the Keep; what was he thinking?—was dressed similarly to him, in a dark gown and gray cloak. She was beautiful, shorter and smaller than Red, with a waterfall of straight black hair and dark-bright eyes in a heart-shaped face.
Ironically, she seemed far more at ease than Raffe did. No fear in her eyes, just something near to awe. Her mouth hung open, her gaze eating up the Keep with a mix of trepidation and delight.
“Who are you?” Red didn’t quite mean for the question to sound so rude, but it came cracking out of her in shocked surprise. They’d all agreed this needed to stay secret—the way the Wilderwood had changed, the way Red was so much more than just a Second Daughter. Nothing good could come of involving too many people.
But Raffe’s guest didn’t seem taken aback. She grinned, dipping her head—not a bow, which according to the few courtly manners Red remembered, meant she was also royalty.
Fantastic.
“Okada Kayu,” she said, in a low, sweet voice that sounded like that of a singer. “Third Daughter of the Niohni Emperor, long may he reign.” The last was said with a wry twist of her mouth, a flash in her eyes. “Not that I care overmuch.”
Nioh. A collection of islands to the east, beyond the edges of the continent, known for their advances in science, particularly botany. Red remembered that the gardeners at the Valleydan palace had tried to cultivate some Niohni flowers once, sky blue and delicate, large as dinner plates. The climate had been far too harsh for them, leaching their color and leaving them limp on their stalks.
For all her beauty, Kayu didn’t remind Red of those flowers at all. She seemed like someone who thrived in conditions others thought she should wilt under.
Eammon’s eyes swung to Raffe, crackling green and amber. “What is the meaning of this, Raffe? I thought we agreed not to tell—”
“If it’s any consolation,” Kayu said, “he didn’t tell me.” She drifted from her place at Raffe’s side, going to the wall and peering up at the tapestry of Ciaran and Gaya. It still hung there, threadbare and muddied. Red and Eammon hadn’t found much time for interior decorating. “I figured most of it out on my own. Your plan of just hoping everyone ignores the Wilderwood only works for those who would be inclined to ignore it anyway. Which, to be fair, is most people.” She lifted a finger, lightly touched the tapestry with thoughtful reverence. “But anyone with a curious bone in their body is going to figure out something is off eventually. And anyone with a brain to go along with that curious bone is going to figure out it has something to do with the missing Valleydan queen.”