Neve left without a word.
In the carriage, Red pulled the edges of the cloak tighter around herself. She couldn’t keep her sister close, but she could keep this.
The world rolled past her window. Northern Valleyda was hills and valleys and open vistas, as if the Wilderwood allowed no trees but its own. When she and Neve stole the horses and fled north the night of their sixteenth birthday, she remembered being awed by the emptiness. She’d felt like a falling star on a clear night, pelting through the dark and the cold.
There were villagers by the road sometimes, quietly watching the procession pass. She was probably supposed to wave, but Red stared straight ahead, the world cut to the edges of her scarlet hood. The Mark thrummed on her arm, the tug of it making all her insides feel unstable and shaky.
The road stopped well before the Wilderwood— none but the Second Daughter could enter, and no one else would want to try, so there was no reason to make the way easy. A bump as the carriage wheels rolled into frosted grass, crossing into some borderland belonging to neither Red nor the Wolf.
Red’s limbs moved nearly of their own accord. She gathered her skirts, slung her bag of books over her shoulder. She stepped down carefully. She didn’t cry.
The driver turned the horses around as soon as Red was free of the carriage, without a second glance. A strange hum emanated from the edge of the forest, repellent and beckoning at once. Pulling her forward, warning everyone else to stay back.
The array of carriages behind her ringed the road like beads on a necklace, the line of them almost reaching the village. Everyone who’d traveled to see the tithe paid, waiting silently for the job to be done.
Ahead, the Wilderwood towered, casting shadows on the frost-limned ground. Bare branches stretched into fog, so tall she couldn’t see their endings. Trunks bent and twisted like frozen dancers, and the bits of sky caught between them seemed darker than they should, already shaded twilight. The trees grew in a straight, exact line of demarcation from side to side as far as the eye could see, a firm boundary between there and here.
She’d been given no instruction on what to do next, but it seemed simple enough. Slip between the trees. Disappear.
Red took a step before she had the conscious thought, the forest drawing her like a leaf on a current. A sharp breath as she planted her feet. The Wilderwood would have her in moments, but shadows damn her, she’d set the terms of her own surrender.
“Red!”
Neve’s voice cracked the quiet. She climbed from her carriage, almost stumbling on the hem of her black gown. Sunlight caught the edge of the silver circlet in her hair as she marched over the field, determination blazing on her face.
For the first time she could remember, Red prayed, prayed to Gaya or the Five Kings or whoever might be listening. “Help her,” she muttered through numb lips. “Help her to move on.”
Whatever remained of Red’s life waited beyond the trees, but Neve’s was here. The thought was sharp and strange-shaped, that for the first time since their conception, she and her twin would both be alone.
Another figure emerged from the carriage behind Neve. Red’s stomach dropped, thinking it’d be Arick or Raffe, the three of them launching one last effort to change the unchangeable. But when the figure made its slow way around the carriage, head held high, it wasn’t Arick.
Mother.
Red favored her mother in appearance. The same honey-gold hair, the same sharp cheekbones, a breadth to their hips and breasts that twig-slender Neve didn’t share. Watching her mother cross the frost-covered field was almost like looking in a mirror, watching her own sacrifice.
The thought felt like it should mean something.
Neve reached her before their mother did, her breath the rattle of a sob tenuously caged. She pulled Red close, thin hands gripping her shoulders.
“I’ll see you again,” she whispered. “I’ll find a way. I promise.”
Her tone waited for an answer. But Red didn’t want to lie.
Their mother’s shadow fell over them, darker than the shadows of the trees. “Neverah. Return to the carriage, please.”
Neve didn’t turn to look at Isla. “No.”
A pause. Then Isla inclined her head, as if in concession. “Then we’ll say our goodbyes together.”
This should be a moment, Red knew. Merra’s mother had been so distraught when they sent her daughter to the Wilderwood, she’d nearly abdicated. Sayetha’s mother had to be sedated for days after. Kaldenore’s had to be sedated before, going half mad when the Mark appeared on her child’s arm, when it was finally discovered that all Second Daughters born to Valleydan queens were bound by Gaya’s bargain with the forest.