“You want an end. And there were only ever two ways for this to end. Either the Kings are destroyed, soul and what’s left of body, or they escape the Shadowlands when it finally dissolves.” There were scars scored across his forehead, the most painful-looking on both his temples, lessening in severity in the center. He lifted his hand, rubbed them absently. “Believe it or not, I did try to take the easiest route for all of us, when I went to the surface.”
“When you manipulated Arick.” Nothing in his frame seemed penitent, and she probably couldn’t change that, but Neve wouldn’t let him hide behind half confessions. “When you manipulated me.”
“You didn’t have to be manipulated all that much, Your Majesty.” His blue eyes burned in the dim gray light. “You barely needed a nudge.”
She swallowed the taste of her pulse. Refused to duck her chin, refused to avert her gaze.
Solmir was the first to break eye contact, though the casual way he did made it feel less like a victory than Neve wanted. Another rub at his forehead, then his hand dropped, resting on the hilt of a dagger at his side. “I could’ve accomplished what I needed, what we all needed—really, Neverah, you should thank me—but your sister had to go and complicate things.” A pause. “I should’ve expected that, I suppose. Fate is a bitch.”
Her mouth opened to once again tell him to keep mentions of Red out of his mouth, but another quake came before she could.
Neve pitched sideways, slamming her knees onto the stairs, though this quake was minor compared to the first. Solmir didn’t make for the doorway, instead bracing in a crouch with practiced fluidity. How long had this world been shaking apart, for him to look nearly used to it?
When the earth was still again, Solmir straightened, turning to walk up the stairs toward the circular room where she’d awoken. “You’ve probably put together that time is short,” he called over his shoulder. “So I’d suggest you keep up.”
Chapter Two
Red
The forest gave her dreams sometimes.
It made sense. To house magic as fully as she did, one had to expect that it would leave marks inside as well as out, carve golden grooves into her thoughts as surely as it haloed her eyes green and threaded ivy through her hair. No less unsettling, but a fairly mild side effect, all things considered.
It’d started right after she became the Wilderwood. Right after Neve was dragged down into the earth. Dreams that left golden afterimages, dreams that felt more real than the firings of her weary thoughts before finally trailing into sleep. The dreams were fairly simple, didn’t last long. A mirror with no reflection. Stars wheeling in the sky, coming together to almost make the shapes of words, then spangling apart before she could read them.
But this was the most solid dream the Wilderwood had given Red yet: a tree. A white-trunked sentinel in a sea of mist, mist that obscured whatever the rest of the landscape might be. It started as a sapling, then grew—slowly, in the way of dreams, then immediately. Shooting up, spreading branches above her head, veined in swirling lines of gold and black.
Then, an apple in her hand. Warm and golden, heavier than an apple should be. She raised it to her lips, bit down. The taste of blood, and a horrible pain in her chest, as if she’d somehow torn out and eaten a vital part of herself.
Red’s eyes opened, her middle twisting, copper flooding her mouth. Her heart beat fast against the base of her throat, spiderwebbing her veins in verdant green, then ebbed to a slower rhythm as she remembered where she was.
The Black Keep. With the Wolf.
A slight breeze blew through the open windows of their bedroom, carrying with it the scent of leaves and dirt and cinnamon, wafting eternal autumn. Dim morning light filtered over the bed, burnishing Eammon’s dark hair in gold, highlighting the scars on his bare shoulders, bare abdomen.
She smiled to see them, banishing vestiges of bloody dreams as she burrowed into his side and traced one of the three white lines on his stomach with her finger. They’d rattled the forest back into linear time and out of endless twilight, and never was she so thankful for it as in the mornings. The Wolf looked very good in gray, early light.
Her trailing hand brushed the scars, his hipbone. Lower. He shifted, chin tilting up with a low, contented sigh when her fingers closed around him, but didn’t wake.
Red grinned wickedly, replaced her hand with her mouth.
That was enough to wake him up. Eammon’s eyes opened, amber ringed with a corona of deep green, immediately molten. One scarred hand slid into her hair. “Good morning.”