Neve turned, striding into the cracked desert. The world rumbled softly beneath her feet, as if it was past the point of ever being truly stable again.
“We only need one monster,” she said. “And you’re already so good at it.”
The mirror was gone.
Neve lay cradled in the tower of twisting tree roots, white bark threaded with veins of shadow. They’d shaped themselves around her—curled to her temple so she could rest her head, slithered around her back so she could lay on her side. The same long, white shroud shifted against her legs.
But the mirror was gone. At first, Neve thought maybe it was just too high for her to see, grown into a different portion of the trunk than last time. But in the lopsided logic of dreams, she knew it was gone. The only things here were Neve and the mist and the impossible tree she reclined against.
Was that supposed to make her panic? It didn’t. All Neve felt was puzzlement. Her head cocked to the side; the root cradling it slid away, job done. The others slowly shrank back into the labyrinth of their tower as she stood.
Neve craned her neck, peered upward. A faint hint of gold, miles above her head. It seemed brighter.
What had the voice called this, before? A place between. Between life and death, between two worlds. Red on one side and her on the other.
You’ve taken the first step.
The voice. Stronger this time, less timid, still familiar in a way she couldn’t quite name.
Even knowing she wouldn’t see anyone, Neve still whipped around, staring, searching the endless fog. “What do you mean?”
Exactly what I said. She could practically hear the eye roll. Did the owner of the voice even have eyes? You took in a god’s power. Magic, the inverse of what Redarys holds. A dark reflection.
“I didn’t keep it.” Neve flexed her fingers, surreptitiously checking for thorns.
But you could have. You just chose not to. So much of this will come down to choice, in the end. A rueful laugh echoed through the mist, from everywhere and nowhere. A lesson learned isn’t easily discarded.
Neve frowned. “So that’s why the mirror is gone? Because I took the Serpent’s power?”
You don’t need a compass when you are yourself a map.
Her frown deepened. Neve continued forward into the fog, though no matter how far she walked, the tower of tree roots behind her never seemed to get farther away. “And in your metaphor here, the mirror is the compass.”
Well done.
“And I’m the map.”
Not you alone.
Neve’s feet stuttered. She paused a moment before picking up her ambling again. “Me and Red, then,” she said quietly.
A first and a second and a third to take what is left. Something melancholy in the voice’s tone now, like the mention of Red weighed as heavy on it as on Neve. But you and Redarys only, for the Tree to open. Prophecies can come piecemeal.
The cold knot in Neve’s middle felt suddenly heavy, like she carried lead behind her ribs. That place where she pushed everything, guilt and shame and every other emotion she didn’t feel like dealing with, the convenient cage where she held all her true feelings about everything that had happened since she and Red turned twenty. Her hand pressed against her stomach as if she somehow had to keep it from escaping, from ripping her open in its desperation to be known.
Such things can’t be pushed away forever. Mournful, tired. All truths must face the light, in order to have the power to get to the Tree. To get the key.
“But we know where the Tree is,” Neve said. Then, almost begrudgingly, “Or Solmir does, at least.”
The location is not everything. You need the power of two gods, one for each of you. And then, when you find the Tree, you must make your choice. To become what the stars have promised, or to leave the burden to those who come after.
Neve shook her head. “What do you mean? Make what kind of choice?” But even as the words left her mouth, they grew thin, faded, the tree roots and the mist blanking out.
“Neverah?”
Vision gray, swimming up out of her head, out of sleep. Neve sat up, wincing—sleeping on the hard-packed desert dust wasn’t doing her bones any favors. “What?”
Solmir sat a few feet away, back against a rock, legs stretched out in front of him as he whittled that piece of wood again. “You made a noise.”
She rubbed at the back of her neck, tried to run her fingers through her tangled hair. “Did you sleep?” she asked, because she didn’t want to ask what kind of noise she’d made, and she didn’t want to think about him paying close enough attention to be concerned at whatever kind of noise it was. Didn’t want to think about how she’d done the same, in those scant moments they stole for sleep, watching his face twist and his brows furrow when she should’ve been watching the empty landscape.