Eammon shrugged again, this time purposefully dramatic, to send her head popping up from his shoulder. He grinned when she swatted at him, though his eyes were contemplative. “Seems as good a term as any.”
“Wilderwood intuition is a thorn in my side.”
“You have thorns everywhere, Lady Wolf.”
“Such a romantic,” she replied. But she sounded as preoccupied as she felt, and Eammon gave her an understanding look before reaching down and threading his fingers through hers.
“She’s fine,” he said quietly. “The mirror shattering yesterday means she’s done something, right? That’s what it told you?”
Red nodded grimly. The forest within her—her Wilderwood intuition—had imparted understanding after the mirror broke, in that voice she’d heard in her dreams. She no longer needed the mirror, because Neve had done… something. Taken in the dark the way Red took in the light.
That meant she was alive. But it still wasn’t exactly comforting.
The mirror’s breaking had broken something in her, too—she’d passed out in the tower, and not awoken until deep night seeped around the windows. It’d delayed their trip to the Edge until this morning, bright and early. Pale yellow sunlight filtered through the autumn colors of the leaves, dappling everything in crimson and ocher and gold, a precursor of the fall rapidly approaching outside the Wilderwood.
“How do you keep the forest from turning?” Kayu jogged up to them, slightly out of breath. Her black hair shone in the autumn light as she gestured to the trees. “Turning with the seasons, I mean. I asked Fife, and he said to ask you.”
Red doubted he’d said it so politely. “It’s not conscious. It just…” She trailed off, looked to Eammon, who gave an inexpressive shrug. “It follows our lead, I guess. Takes on our aspects. It was early autumn when we… when we did what we did.” Even now, she didn’t quite know how to articulate it. The nature of what she was—woman and Wolf and wood—eluded easy language. “So it’s frozen there. We stopped changing, so it did, too.”
Kayu nodded, her eyes tracking between them. “Because you are the Wilderwood.”
“Exactly.” Red tried to sound sure of herself. Eammon shifted uncomfortably on his feet, the movement sending black hair feathering over the tiny points of his antlers.
“And because you are the Wilderwood,” Kayu said slowly, “it won’t call any more Second Daughters.”
Something about the question prickled Red’s skin, that damn Wilderwood intuition sparking enough to make her wary, but not enough to give her its reason. She slid a look to Eammon as she nodded. “Right. No more Second Daughters.”
Kayu looked thoughtful but didn’t ask anything further. She drifted back toward Raffe and the others, picking up a fallen leaf from the ground and twirling it between her fingers.
“That was strange,” Eammon muttered under his breath as she walked away. “We can both agree that was strange, right?”
“It makes sense for her to be curious.” Tugging absently at one of the ivy tendrils growing in her hair, Red flipped him a wry smile. “We are a bit of an enigma, after all.”
“Still.” A slight shake of his head. Eammon rubbed at one of the bark-vambraces growing over the skin of his forearms. “I think we should be cautious.”
“When are we not cautious?” A joke, but a weary one. “And it’s not like we have much choice. She knows Neve is gone. Like Raffe said, it makes more sense to keep her close.” Red glanced at Raffe again. Kayu was telling him a story, shaping it in the air with her hands. He smiled at her, small but genuine.
Eammon made a gruff noise, somewhere between challenge and agreement. He looked at the pair over his shoulder, then turned curious eyes to Red. He didn’t give voice to his question, but she could read it there.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know how he and Neve… left things.”
He squeezed her hand. “We bring her back,” he said decisively, “and then she can figure out her own damn love life.”
Ahead, the forest thinned, the golden autumn trees giving way to green moss and unencumbered sunlight. Red could just glimpse the Edge’s outer wall, though even squinting, she couldn’t quite make out any shapes in the arabesques carved there, key-groves or otherwise. Her own key was in the pocket of her tunic, beneath her bridal cloak. She slid in her hand, brushed a finger over one of its teeth.