Which meant it would expect Solmir to get close enough to loosen its restraints. It wouldn’t know the closeness was for killing until it was too late.
But only if they played this next part very, very carefully.
Moving so slowly her muscles shuddered, Neve slipped the bone from her pocket. She pressed her hand to Solmir’s, the cool of his skin welcome against her fevered fear.
“But before you free me,” the Oracle said, “I want a truth.”
Her fingers went numb; Neve almost dropped the bone. She and Solmir both tried to catch it while also keeping as still as possible—her fingers closed around it just before it fell from their awkwardly clasped hands.
Neve pulled her arm tight to her side, hiding the bone in the tatters of her skirt. “A truth?” she asked, more to distract than to clarify.
“Oh look, she speaks.” The Oracle’s tone sounded exactly like the flippant cattiness of a seasoned court gossip. “Yes, Shadow Queen, I want a truth. There might be no food or drink here, but we all feed on something, unless we want to weaken enough to get reeled into the Sanctum.”
Solmir stepped up on the dais, fists clenched at his sides. “Fine. Take one; I have truths enough to glut yourself on.”
“But none of them are surprising, once-King, and when one has been in famine, they desire a feast to break it.”
That only left one solution. Neve stepped forward. “Take one from me, then.”
Another slow smile, all those pointed teeth. “Yes,” the Oracle whispered. “You smell of secrets buried deep, of things left to age like wine. Your truths are sure to be delicious.”
The word delicious made skitters of fear rattle down her spine, but Neve clenched her teeth, her fists. The point of the god-bone dug into her palm, held flush along the line of her forearm.
She shot a quick glance back at Solmir, read the inevitable and his fear of it in the flash of his eyes—she’d be the one close enough. She’d have to stab the Oracle.
Stab it, and hope that was enough.
The Serpent had wanted to die; it didn’t fight back when Neve shoved the god-bone into its side. But she had no idea how the Oracle would react, what it would do as magic seeped out of its wound.
No time to think about that, no time for fear. Neve stepped forward, cautiously approaching the god in chains. “What kind of truth do you want?”
“Oh, Shadow Queen,” the Oracle said, those twitching fingers stretching forward to brush lightly over her forehead. “You don’t get to choose.”
The finger didn’t move. For a moment, Neve wondered if this would be easier than she’d thought, if the extraction of a truth was something simple—
Pain. Pain like a dagger slicing into her brain, paring to her heart even though the Oracle’s finger still didn’t move—so much worse than the pain she’d felt before, when she pulled magic from the Shadowlands and nearly drove her soul down into its foundations. Neve gasped, but she knew it only because she felt her mouth open. She heard nothing, nothing but an awful buzzing in her ears, like a horde of corpse-flies. Down, down that sharpness traveled, down to the knot of emotion she’d kept so tightly tangled in her chest.
Her soul. Cold and small, wrapped in anger and guilt and all the things she didn’t want to see, didn’t want to feel.
But now they flashed before her, snatches of sight and sound, narration by the voice of the Oracle that she didn’t hear in her head so much as in her very center, seething up and hissing against her bones.
You thought you loved him, but did you really? Was it more an idea of him, a clinging to who you thought you were, wished you could be? An image of Raffe, dark eyes warm, cupping her cheek in her cold bedroom. You didn’t avenge your mother, you would’ve held the knife yourself if you thought it was the only way. Isla, distant across a dining table that felt miles long. You knew Red was fine, you knew it the moment you saw her again, but you were in too deep to admit mistakes. You would’ve sacrificed her Wolf and killed whatever happiness she’d found because to do otherwise would mean admitting you were wrong, and you couldn’t do that, not then and not ever. Red, crouched in the Shrine, more wild than woman, and Neve knowing that was what she was always meant to be.
An image of Solmir leaning against the wall after Neve’s coronation, arms crossed and mouth stoic. But that had been Arick, hadn’t it? Or Solmir wearing Arick’s face? It was all too knotted together for her to untangle, who he was, who he’d been.
Does it matter? the Oracle’s voice asked, amusement twisting up the end of the question. You knew something was wrong, and you did nothing. You never let yourself think deeply on what Arick was up to, because you knew you wouldn’t stop him, no matter what it was. What kind of queen does that make you? What kind of friend? What kind of person? Not a good one, Shadow Queen. Never a good one.