Red dropped a mock curtsy. “It’s been a while since I wore a dress,” she said, picking at the embroidery on her sleeve.
“You would reappear dressed like a storybook huntsman.” Neve shook her head, lips twisted in a wry grin. “I’m surprised no courtiers swooned at the immodesty.”
“Immodest or not, dressing like a storybook huntsman is far more practical.”
The grin vanished. “For traipsing through the Wilderwood, I suppose it is.”
Her voice drew battle lines. Red wilted.
Neve turned to walk down the pathway, and Red fell in beside her, their silence as chilly as the autumn air. The twigs of a barren hedge scraped Red’s arm as they passed. She could almost see the leaves withering, months of decay distilled into seconds. A strange scent tickled her nose, cold and somehow familiar. It plucked at her, something she should recognize, but she couldn’t quite draw all of it together into a conclusion. “What’s wrong with them?”
Neve’s shoulders stiffened, but her voice was mild. “It’s been a hard autumn.”
Autumn had just begun, but Red didn’t mention that. A leaf dropped from the hedge to the cobblestone path. She frowned, nudging it with her toe. It crumpled to dust, leaving a brittle skeleton ringed with dead lace.
“I know the gardens don’t look like much,” Neve said. “I should probably get someone to fix them. But no one passes through this way, really, unless they’re on the way to the Shrine.”
The mention of the Shrine seemed to tug at both of their frames, up straighter and away from each other. Silence fell between them, shining and brittle as springtime ice.
When Neve reached out and grabbed Red’s hand, her palm was slick with sweat. “My intention was always to save you.” The sincerity could slice. “Everything I’ve done, it was to save you.”
“Neve, I told you.” Red’s voice sounded soothing, falsely gentle, and she hated it. Hadn’t Neve spoken to her the same way, countless times? Like an animal struggling in a trap and only making it cut deeper? “I don’t need saving. Eammon is a good man, and he needs me. I understand why you did it, but hurting the Wilderwood—”
“Hurts you.” Neve’s eyes had closed when Red said Eammon’s name. Now they stayed that way, squeezing tighter. “Hurting the Wilderwood hurts you.”
“Yes.” Red wasn’t sure what else to say.
“I should’ve expected this.” Neve released Red’s hand, slowly, like lowering something in a grave. “They tried to warn me the forest wouldn’t let you go easily. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the son or the father, the Wilderwood made the Wolves monsters, and now he’s tangled you in it, too.”
“All Eammon has done is be bound to the Wilderwood for a bargain he had no part in.” Red grabbed her sleeve, pulled it up so her Mark glared in the sunlight. “If that makes him a monster, what does it make me?”
No answer. The air between them all but vibrated.
Dark shadows deepened under Neve’s eyes, her sigh stooping her shoulders. “You wanted to see the Shrine.”
She’d nearly forgotten, in the rush of her anger. Red nodded, but she didn’t pull her sleeve down. The tendrils of her Mark curled beneath her skin, stark and solid as ink.
“Come on, then.” Neve started back down the path, drifting beneath thorny arbors that used to hold flowers.
She stopped just outside the arched stone entrance, looking back at Red over her shoulder. The swirl of emotions on her face was hard to parse— sadness and hope and fear and relief. “You should light a candle,” she said softly. “You should pray.”
“I don’t want to pray.”
A swallow worked the narrow column of Neve’s throat. “Then do it for me.” She disappeared into the dark.
Red closed her eyes, took a shaking breath. She could light a candle, if Neve wished it. No one but her would know she cursed the Kings as it burned.
She stepped into the Shrine.
Nothing was different. Maybe it’d been foolish of her to think this would be so easy, that whatever she needed to find and reverse would be immediately apparent.
But on second glance, there were subtle changes. Dark-gray candles flickered on the ledges of altars, at Gaya’s marble feet. Red frowned— she remembered them being crimson. The darkness behind the statue, that second room with its gauzy curtain and sentinel shards, seemed somehow deeper than before. Like the cavern had grown larger.