Neve, tied to this inverse Wilderwood. The process of bringing the sentinels into the cavern had taken weeks, but with a willing sacrifice so close at hand— and unconscious— Kiri and her Order had grown a new grove in moments.
And anchored it within her sister.
A low, keening noise escaped Red’s throat. Next to the coffin, Arick’s eyes squeezed shut.
“I can’t move it.” Raffe’s voice was flat and emotionless, all feeling wrung out. “I pushed, but I was afraid I might hurt her.” His voice didn’t break, not exactly, but it wavered on a thin thread.
The bottom of Neve’s coffin— a coffin and Neve in it, her mind couldn’t fit the words together— looked fused to the ground, grown from the thatching white branches cutting through the rotten earth. Slowly, with the same fear Raffe had, Red stepped forward, making sure not to step on any of the dark lines connecting her sister to the grove. This close, she could see the shadow running through them, beating like a pulse.
Nausea churning her stomach, Red knelt, touched her fingers to one of those black veins.
Darkness behind her eyes, like her vision had been ripped away. A nightmare blur of images— a wide gray sea, something beneath it flashing innumerable teeth. A huge, scaled carcass, the size of a mountain and just as still. Wrong-shaped skulls in carrion piles. A thin, bony figure, a rotting floral wreath on its head, chained to a rock. Four monolithic men on monolithic thrones, shrouded in white, crowned in iron spikes. Next to them, a fifth throne, empty.
Red jerked her hand away, breathing hard, sweat on her brow. In her coffin, Neve didn’t stir.
“He promised.” Her teeth wanted to shred the words; her nails bit into her palms as she stood on unsteady feet. “He promised she would be safe.”
“She’s alive.” Raffe said it like he’d been repeating it to himself over and over. “She’s. . . . she’s like this, but she’s alive.”
Outside the grove, another roar ripped through the quiet. Soon Solmir would tire of being the shadow to Arick’s flesh, even if it gave him an advantage against Eammon. Soon he would let himself be made whole by the priestesses’ sacrifice, and the rest of the Kings would come to join him.
And the Wilderwood— Eammon— would die.
It was time for choices. She could see only one.
“Arick.” Her voice was hoarse.
At his name, Arick’s eyes closed tighter. “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “We were all just trying to save you.”
“Come here.” Tears choked her. “Come here, please.”
A pause, then a lurch as he moved over the darkened ground.
Red fought to keep herself steady against her childhood love’s broken stance and the sure knowledge of things vast and terrible stirring beneath her feet.
She reached up when he came close enough to touch, gently laid her fingers on his bloodied face. “I know you didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“No. But I didn’t care what was going to happen, not then.” There was shame in it, just barely. “I only wanted you safe.”
Red’s lips pressed white. All of them loved like burning, no thought for the ashes.
“I am safe.” Her hand left his face, fell to her dagger. She tried not to think on it, tried to let her body work without her mind’s direction. “I love Eammon, and he loves me. That’s safe.”
Another roar ripped through the grove. “Do you love what he’s become?”
“We’ve both been monsters,” Red whispered. “I’ll love him, whatever he is.”
“You loved me once. You never said it, but you did.” Arick’s dry throat worked a swallow, eyes still pressed shut. “Didn’t you?”
“I did.” It was barely a whisper, this gentle thing that existed beyond truth and lie. Her fingers closed around the dagger hilt. “Not the way you wanted me to. But I did.”
His eyes opened. “Do it quick, then.”
Near Neve’s coffin, Raffe was silent. When Red looked at him, his eyes shone, but his mouth was a tight line.
Arick bowed his head, and after a moment, he knelt before her. She wanted to grab his shoulders, force him up, but she stood frozen, her hand on her dagger and him like a supplicant at an altar.
“Blood to open,” Arick murmured, a last rite. “Blood to close. My blood brought Solmir here. My blood inverted the Wilderwood. A living sacrifice.” His eyes rose to hers, and the peace in them, the relief, was somehow worse than fear would’ve been. “This only ends when the sacrifice is no longer living.”