Neve nodded, swallowed.
He finally looked at her then, mouth a thin line and blue eyes narrowed. A faint streak of dirt still crossed his forehead right below his scars, mud from the marshes he hadn’t quite managed to scrub off.
A rumble. Low, but here on these brittle bones, it was enough to make them both tense. Neve started toward the door; Solmir grabbed her arm, covered by the sleeve of his coat, and hauled her back as an unsettling cracking noise spread through the cliff beneath them. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“You said a doorway was the safest place in an earthquake!”
“Not an upside-down one, Neverah!”
He crouched as he growled it, his arm bending over her back, bundling her into his side as if he could make them both smaller. The rumbling slowly stopped, the cracking noise fading. The bones held firm, the castle still stood, and Neve was still underneath Solmir’s arm.
He straightened slowly. Didn’t offer a hand to help her up. She thought of power, how she could steal it through a touch, and wondered if that was the reason he avoided her skin.
“When will we need the magic?” Neve shifted back and forth on her feet, shaking off the memory of his arm weighted over her. “Are you going to give it to me then?”
“You’ll know when we need it, and you’ll get what you need.” His hands closed to fists, like he had to gather courage from the air. Then Solmir strode toward the rusted-open door, gripped the curved top of the lintel, and spun down into the shadows.
She stood for a moment just outside the castle, looking up at its looming wrongness. This had been Valchior’s, built where the palace she’d grown up in stood now. Parts of it still existed, back in her world—the dungeons, pieces of the foundation. This was supposed to be a homecoming, yes, but this twisted reflection of her home made that thought all the more alien.
Mirroring Solmir’s deep breath, Neve stepped up to the doorframe. She grasped the splintering wood. And she followed him into the dark.
The climb wasn’t the difficult part, not really. The jutting stones that made the wall were slick, but Neve gingerly felt her way, probing out her foot to find a hold before putting her weight on it. She could hear Solmir’s breath below her, the rasp of it as he lowered himself down, and she did her best to follow. The only light came through cracked windows below, the panels in varying shades of gray telling her that they were stained glass, robbed of color in a monochrome underworld.
But after the climb came making their way across what was meant to be the ceiling, and that was harder.
“Stay close,” Solmir muttered when she finally dropped down beside him, the first thing he’d said to her since they’d entered the castle. Fissured light from the window cast him in shadow, made his eyes look like beacons. “And if I tell you to run, you do it.”
“Are you anticipating there being something to run from?” Her voice echoed in the cavernous ruin, though she kept it close to a whisper. “What territory are we in?”
“None. No gods have made a home here, or lesser beasts.” Solmir strode forward, ducking to avoid a crossbeam. “Just tell me you’ll do as I say, Neverah.”
He sounded worried. Worried and preoccupied, with that same reluctant look on his face he’d had since they called the Bone Ship. “What’s wrong, Solmir?”
The sound of his name made him pause. It made her pause, too. She’d used it before, but there was something different in her tone now. Like she was speaking to a friend.
“Nothing is wrong.” A slight shake of his head, sending his still-bloodied hair feathering over his back. “Everything is going to work out fine.”
Unconvincing. But Neve didn’t press. He was nervous—she was, too. It was an emotion that made sense.
But the look he shot her, the one she caught from the corner of her eye… it looked almost anguished, and that didn’t.
The floor—ceiling—was flat here, the doors to branching corridors far above them. Wooden beams crossed the space, low enough to almost brush the top of Neve’s head, the rectangles of cracked stained glass windows between them. Up ahead, though, the flat expanse ended, a steep drop indicating what would be a higher ceiling if the structure were right side up.
“Staircase is over there.” Solmir gestured to the drop. “We’ll have to climb up it.”
“Or down it, as it were.”
He didn’t acknowledge her. “The Tree is in the hall on the first floor—or what would’ve been the first floor, were this damn thing facing the right way. The one with the dais.”