The worst part was that a piece of her had. Had recognized that something strange was happening, and ignored it, because it got her closer to what she wanted.
Her sister, home. Some Kings-damned control.
She heard Arick’s footsteps cross to her, felt the shift in the atmosphere as he reached out a hand. He didn’t touch her, as if he knew that would be a bridge too far, but she felt his desire to. A deep, begrudging ache to comfort.
“And the High Priestess?” She stared at her hands, interwoven like vines, bloodlessly clutched. “Her, too?”
“Yes.”
Not twists of fate. Not proof she was right. Murders. “Who else knows?”
“Only Kiri.” A pause. “Kiri killed them both.”
Kiri, with her disapproving mouth, her smugness. There from the beginning, orchestrating the fall.
She heard him swallow. “My plan didn’t include so much death, but it . . . it served its purpose. I didn’t tell you because it wouldn’t have made a difference.” His hand finally moved, landing lightly on hers. It was cold, but she didn’t pull away. “We do what we have to do.”
An echo of the night after Isla died. Not the night everything changed, but the night they crested the hill of it and began careening down the other side. She’d set the wheel in motion, and now she had to hold on until the end was reached.
A deep breath. Numb lips. “We do what we have to do.”
All this death had to pay for something.
“You are an extraordinary woman, Neve.” He used her shortened name so rarely these days. Every time he did, it came out like something he wasn’t sure he was allowed to say. “You’ve risen to every challenge, you’ve held up under burdens no one should have to bear. You are a better Queen than this place deserves.” His thumb twitched slightly, like he wanted to run it over her knuckles. He didn’t. “You are too good for this.”
Neve looked at Arick, confusion and uncertainty freezing her in place. In the silver light through her window, his eyes looked almost blue instead of green.
He squeezed her hand, once, before dropping his. “It will be over soon.” Then Arick bowed, and slipped out into the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Five
S he woke with her spine at odd angles and her neck aching. Red sat up with a disgruntled sound, rolling her shoulders. On the bed, Eammon’s deep, even breathing was just shy of a snore.
A smirk pulled at her mouth. She’d have to tell him the issue persisted.
Firelight combed golden highlights through his black hair, his face softened in sleep. She studied its angles, for once not hardened by exhaustion and teeth-clenching control. There was a slight scar through one dark eyebrow. Stubble shaded his jaw, a tiny nick from a careless razor right below his chin. It heartened her, strangely, to see a mark not made for the Wilderwood.
And to think, she’d once thought the Wolf too severe to be handsome.
Red pushed his hair off his forehead. He sighed, still asleep, moving the angle of his chin so his lips brushed her palm. The root-tendril Mark stood out against his pale skin, swirling to halfway down his forearm, up past his elbow. Last night, she’d been too preoccupied with saving him from the forest to concentrate on the shape of his chest, the breadth of his bare shoulders. All things she’d noticed before, obviously— it was impossible not to— but not this close, not since the night she healed him.
The sheet pooled around his waist where he’d kicked it down in the night, and the faint blush of those three scars glanced across his abdomen. Her hand was half reaching to touch them before she pulled it back.
No. She couldn’t. They couldn’t.
The dining room was empty when she went down the stairs, and so was the kitchen. A battered kettle hung over a banked fire, and she poked it into flame before scouring the shelves for tea leaves. She half hoped she wouldn’t find them, one more thing to stall the inevitable.
Red had to leave. She had to go to Valleyda.
It had been foolish to put it off as long as they had. Only a day, but she should’ve left the moment she realized what was happening. The only reason she hadn’t was because she didn’t want to leave him. He’d let himself be a distraction, let her use him as procrastination; stalling the inevitable just as much as she was. She didn’t know whether she wanted to hit him or kiss him for it.
Both, probably.
The pot whistled. Red jumped and pulled it off the hook, too quickly. A burn stung across her knuckles, and she looked at it for a moment, thinking of Eammon, how he always insisted on taking her hurt.