Arick’s eyes closed. He titled his forehead against the bars. “I bargained,” he said quietly as Kiri picked up his hand, as she cut into it with a tiny dagger. “I went to the Wilderwood, I found one of the white trees near the border. It . . . leaned. Leaned over, like it was about to fall, like the ground around it was close to giving way. That’s how I could touch it. Just one branch. Just barely.” He shook his head, slowly. “It hurt, the hum, like someone’d stuck a whole sawmill in my ribs. But I got close enough.”
“Why?” She shook her head, stars spangling in her eyes. “How? The Wilderwood doesn’t bargain anymore, it’s not strong enough.”
“But the things in the Shadowlands are.” It didn’t sound like a boast. It sounded weary. Solmir leaned his back against the wall.
“A living sacrifice.” Kiri smiled beatifically. “A living sacrifice, fresh from the vein.”
Black and scarlet welled from Arick’s palm, shadow swirling through his blood as it dripped into the cup.
“And once blood has been used to bargain with the Shadowlands,” Kiri continued, “it can be used to invert the Wilderwood. The boy’s shadow-tainted blood awakened the branches in the Shrine, set them to a nobler purpose. And all who offered more blood afterward reaped a harvest of power, just as promised to me in my long years of praying.” Apparently satisfied, she shoved Arick’s limp and bleeding hand back through the bars, rounded on Red. “You think you’ve won by defiling our grove, cursed thing? You know nothing. Five lives are—”
“Shadows damn us, woman, do you ever stop talking?” One long-fingered hand covered Solmir’s eyes. Kiri’s teeth snapped shut.
“That’s why you don’t have a shadow.” Instinct made her hands curl despite her injuries, and a new wave of pain drove Red’s teeth together. “You’re Arick’s shadow. And he’s yours, when he has to be.” She shook her throbbing head. “All this, and you aren’t really here.”
“Oh, I’m here.” Solmir’s hand dropped, eyes glittering. “Here enough.”
“The white tree was easy to see.” Arick spoke low and almost slurred, like he was recounting a dream. An exorcism, the whole bloody tale spinning out of him now that he’d started. “So pale against the rest, like bone.” The hand Kiri had cut flexed open convulsively. The deep puncture wound in his palm blazed lurid scarlet, a black spot of rot blooming in its center, sending sickened tendrils through his skin. “I bled on it. Living sacrifice. Just like she told me.”
Kiri smiled.
“And it . . . opened.” Even now, Arick sounded horrified, like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. “The branch reared back, like . . . like something alive, like a startled horse. There was this sound, this awful tearing sound, and a boom. And then he was there, standing right at the edge of the trees, shadows curled around him like chains. And he asked what I wanted, and what I would give for it.”
“What did you want?” She knew. She asked anyway.
Arick didn’t answer, but his head bowed lower.
“He wanted a way to save you.” Solmir said it like it bored him. “And he said he would give everything.”
Oh, Arick. Arick, telling her he loved her over and over, even when she never said it back. Arick, building a castle in the air where they could have a happy ending, mortaring it with blood and empty promises.
“At first he was just my shadow.” Arick recounted the tale to the damp floor, like looking at Red hurt. “But then . . . when things . . .”
“He couldn’t stomach it.” Kiri swirled the cup of his blood under her nose like wine, breathing deep. “He couldn’t handle when we realized they needed killing, the High Priestess and the Queen. So they changed places. One the shadow, one the man.”
“I’ll have you remember that you were the only one who decided they needed killing,” Solmir murmured. “But once it happened, Arick wanted . . . distance from the situation.”
Red could taste her heartbeat. Her stomach twisted on itself. “How could you?” It was a breath of sound, a wound in the air. “How could you do that to Neve?”
“It was for Neve.” Solmir pushed off the wall, mouth a snarl. “Kiri may have overstepped, but this is what Neve wanted, whether she’ll admit it or not. She was just as desperate to save you as Arick was. She would do anything for you, Redarys. You don’t deserve a tenth of her love.”