Chapter Fifteen
Neve
After scaling one smaller bone-shard rise behind them—Neve was afraid the pieces might slip, but they held fast—a small cave appeared, the path to it marked by another mound of fused-together bones. The cave was a dark pit, stark against the ivory.
Solmir stopped on the curve of a giant pelvis, gestured toward the cave’s mouth. “Welcome to the Kingdom of the Oracle.”
“Some kingdom,” Neve muttered, balancing on an oddly shaped leg joint thrusting out of the mountain.
“Cold and small and barren, just like yours.”
She made a rude gesture at his back.
It was a steep climb up splintered bones to reach the cave entrance. At the top of the rise, Solmir turned, offered a hand to pull her up. He tugged too hard when she accepted, and Neve crashed into his chest.
His skin was chilled where it pressed against hers, his hair feathered across her cheek, smelling of pine. The scars on his brow were deep punctures, ragged edges with angry welts in the centers. They’d be deep crimson, if there was color here, but in the Shadowlands they were only charcoal. There were six marks, deepest on either temple, the size gradually decreasing to be smallest in the center of his forehead.
“What are they from?” Neve asked quietly, eyes fixed on the scars.
“Some crowns are hard to take off,” he answered. Then he stepped away from her, putting distance between them.
Neve stood there a moment, fists closed tight at her sides. Something like guilt churned in her stomach, something like shame. She’d told him that understanding wasn’t forgiveness, and that was true. But Neve was starting to feel like forgiveness might be something she wanted to give him, and what kind of traitor did that make her?
Forcefully, she turned her thoughts to Raffe. A good man, a gentle man, someone who always strove to do right. He loved her, even though she didn’t deserve it, and shouldn’t that be the kind of connection she wanted? Love unconditional, love she couldn’t tarnish, even with her hands so bloodstained?
But she could still hear Solmir’s voice, calling down that corridor into the cairn. Coming to save her, even if it was just because they needed each other.
Solmir wasn’t good, but he was… something. And that something made her have to fight to keep thinking of him as an enemy. Fight to keep her thoughts in simple dichotomies of right and wrong and good and bad, because the places between were treacherous.
The opening to the Oracle’s cave was on another jut of bone, this one made of what appeared to be a giant femur, rounded ends spearing into open space. Smaller bones cluttered the entrance, creating a low wall. At first, the bones puzzled Neve, ridiculously small against the vastness of the Old Ones’ remains. She took a step closer to the cave mouth to peer at them, wrinkling her nose against the fetid smell wafting from the opening.
The remains of lesser beasts, wings and claws, strangely shaped skulls, so many other bones that bore no resemblance to anything she could name. All of them were scored with teeth marks.
She backed up so quickly, she nearly tripped over her ripped hem.
Solmir stood near the rounded edge of the giant femur, like he didn’t want to be near the cave, either. “Don’t let its looks fool you,” he cautioned, voice pitched low. “The Oracle was one of the most dangerous Old Ones even before most of them died.”
“So how do we kill it?”
He didn’t answer at first. When Neve glanced at him, Solmir was twisting that silver ring around and around his thumb again, jaw held tight. The tension of it made the scars on his brow darken.
“You don’t worry about it,” he said finally. “You stay as far away from the Oracle as possible.”
No humor in his voice, just the flat tone of an order. Neve bristled against it—she resoundingly hated taking orders—but now, about to face a god he knew, didn’t seem like the time to argue. She could always bring it up as a point of contention later.
And it was bolstering, to think there would definitely be a later.
The piece of god-bone lay heavy against her hip. Wordlessly, Neve dug it out, held it in Solmir’s direction.
He shook his head. “You hold on to it for now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just trust me.”
Their eyes met, dual realizations—both that the statement should have been totally ludicrous, and that, somehow, it no longer felt that way.
Neve slid the bone back into her pocket. Then she and Solmir walked into the cave.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but not because of darkness—her pupils contracted against unexpected light, a soft glow from somewhere deeper in the cavern. On the floor, more rings of bones, stratified and grown higher than the one right at the cave’s opening, as if whatever had made the piles once had a greater range of movement than it did now.