He looked back, just once, eyes full of guilt and something else.
“Trust me.”
Eammon swung his jacket over his shoulders, ran a hand through his mussed hair, and turned to march into the Wilderwood. Cheeks burning, Red followed. They stayed carefully apart, and silent.
Later, Red stood at the door to the tower, frowning up into the open windows.
Neither she nor Eammon had spoken when they reached the Keep, though they’d stood in the foyer a moment, silent and watching. Eammon had turned away first, headed toward the library, and Red had watched him until even his shadow was gone.
She’d taken her bag of new clothes up to their room. There were two gowns, a few shirts, and thick leggings, and as Red packed them into the drawer, she’d made up her mind.
Now, standing at the tower door, she still wore Eammon’s shirt.
That first time the mirror had shown her Neve kept tugging at her thoughts, the strange conversation she’d overheard— something about escape, something about weakening. She couldn’t shake the notion it might have something to do with the Wilderwood.
Shoulders set, Red pushed the door open.
The stairs were dark and cold, the room above colder still. Red’s breath fogged as she walked to the mirror against the wall, its surface matte and gray.
She yanked a hair from her braid, touched with dirt from their earlier battle, tangled from Eammon’s hands. Red wound the strand around the whorls of the frame, sat back on her knees, and waited.
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then, that silver shine, that roll of smoke, that feeling of pressing up against a window. The mirror showed one clear figure in a blurred landscape.
Neve.
Her twin sat on a bench, staring at something in her hand. A flower, large as a dinner plate. A twitch of motion, and the flower wilted, petals sagging, brown decay threading through them.
Neve dropped the bloom, peering at her palm. Crystals of frost clung to the edges of her fingers, and across her hand, a slash bisected life and love and heart lines, not quite scabbed over. The veins in her wrist shaded dark before clearing, quick enough to almost be a trick of the light.
Even in the suspended state the mirror left her in, Red’s stomach dropped. Something about Neve’s hand— the cold, the bleeding line— echoed her own magic. An inverse, a dark reflection.
“The more trees we pull out of the Wilderwood, the more power we can harness from the Shadowlands. And the weaker the forest’s hold will become.” The voice was as blurry as the figure it came from, barely clear enough to make out the words. Red could see only a flash of white, a smudge of auburn.
“And she should be able to escape?” Neve glanced at her companion. “The Shrine is full of these experiments, Kiri, and yet my sister still isn’t here.”
“That is not our only goal, Neverah.” Exasperated, like this had been repeated over and over. “And we should exercise caution. If she comes—”
“When she comes.”
No response.
More smoke, and the mirror was flat and gray again.
Red’s breath burned when she pulled it in, like she’d been sprinting rather than sitting. When she stood, her knees creaked against the cold.
The curl of unease in her gut had been right. Neve was the reason for the missing sentinels. She wasn’t quite sure how, not positive of the mechanics, but what she’d seen was enough to know it was true.
Her sister was still trying to bring her home. And she was killing the Wilderwood to do it.
Red stumbled from the tower on numb legs. She pushed open the door to the Keep, staring blankly ahead, mind stuttering over plans that came together and broke apart.
Neve.
Lyra strode from beneath the broken arch of the dining room, a steaming bowl and a crust of bread in her hands. She arched a slender brow. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
It felt like she had. “Where’s Eammon?”
“Your room, I think.” Lyra took a bite of bread. “Fife says thank you for getting sweet bread instead of the usual. In his words, it tastes more like food and less like a brick.”
“He should thank Loreth.” Red gave Lyra a tiny smile before mounting the stairs, doing her best not to run.
In their room, Eammon leaned over a book on his desk, brow in hand, fingers stained with ink. He looked up when she topped the stairs, eyes underscored by dark circles.
The sight of him was enough to scatter her thoughts again. The kiss she’d pushed to the back of her mind rushed forward, memories of hands and mouths and warm, ragged breath. He gripped the pen like he’d gripped her hair, the line of his body bent over the table like he’d bent over her.