Words from last night slithered in Neve’s mind, like pieces of a dream. The Wilderwood is only as strong as we let it be.
Confusion cooled her anger, made her clenching fingers fall open. Unfazed, the priestess inclined her head, a movement echoed by the others behind her. Then they glided away.
“Well, that will end poorly.” Raffe ran a nervous hand over his mouth. “She’s going to tell the High Priestess—”
“She won’t.” Neve knew it. The same way she knew the redheaded priestess wouldn’t tell anyone she’d wrecked the Shrine. Something about that branch-shard necklace, the way they spoke of the Wilderwood almost as an enemy rather than a holy site, told her that nothing about this would ever reach Zophia’s ears.
Raffe looked at her through narrowed eyes but remained silent.
Gently, Neve pulled her arm from his and walked to the double glass doors of the garden. She didn’t look to see if Raffe followed, but she heard the clip of his boots across the floor, heard him shut the doors behind her.
When they were outside, Raffe took a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his close-shorn hair. “Listen. I know you’re upset—”
“They sacrificed her.” Neve turned, chin tilted. Raffe was closer than she’d thought, his full lips only inches away. Her breath felt like a razor. “They sacrificed her for nothing.”
“Maybe it wasn’t for nothing, even without the Kings returning.” He said it carefully, a blade to carve a silver lining. “The tale of the monsters, before Kaldenore—”
“It’s horseshit, Raffe. If the monsters were real, we would’ve seen them that night.”
No need to clarify which night. The night of rocks and matches and a Wilderwood impervious to both. The night of the men that followed them, that were horribly slain by . . . by something.
Neve didn’t actually remember most of it, after the thieves arrived. She’d passed out when one of them hit her in the temple with a dagger hilt, and hadn’t woken up until they were back in the capital and under heavy guard.
But Red remembered. And Red thought it was her fault.
Guilt iced her spine, guilt and cold certainty. Whatever had happened, whatever Neve couldn’t remember, was part of what drove her sister into the Wilderwood.
“It was for nothing,” she repeated softly.
This time, Raffe had no response.
Neve walked down the path, trailing her fingers over the blooming hedges, letting the points of sharp leaves catch her skin. One pricked hard enough to bring a bead of blood to her fingertip.
Behind her, a sigh. Raffe’s footsteps echoed on the stone as he walked away.
She closed her eyes against early-summer sun, the light illuminating veins and capillaries, making her vision look veiled in blood.
“What about a bargain?” The voice was hushed and hoarse, like the speaker hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week. There was something familiar in it, but it was too quiet to be sure.
The voice came from beside her, hidden in a bower of wide pink blooms— clearly, this conversation wasn’t meant to be overheard.
But Neve didn’t move.
“Impossible.” This second voice was brusque, vowels clipped and precise. Also familiar. “The Wilderwood has twisted, its power has grown weak. It will no longer accept paltry things like teeth and nail clippings. Not even blood, if it’s not from a fresh wound.”
There was something leading in the tone. As if meaning hid behind the words, things implied rather than spoken.
That tone locked the familiarity into place. The red-haired priestess.
“No,” the priestess continued. “A dead sacrifice will no longer do. It would require more, if it could be accomplished at all, a heavier price both in the bargaining and in the aftermath. Our prayers have told us so.” A pause, then, cadenced like a litany: “Blood that has been used in bargains with things beneath is blood that can open doors.”
Neve’s brow furrowed, but the other voice sounded too distraught to try to puzzle out the cryptic nonsense. “There has to be a way.”
“If there is, dear boy,” the priestess murmured, “you must be prepared to give, and keep giving.” A pause. “The Kings take much, but they give much in return. Serving them brings opportunity to your door. I know.”
A rustle as someone stood from the bench hidden in the blooms. Cursing silently, Neve spun away, tried to make it seem like she’d been absorbed in examining a flower bed on the other side of the path.
From the corner of her eye, a flash of white. “Do come to me with any further questions,” the priestess said. “Our prayers this morning, after our less dedicated sisters left, proved most . . . insightful.”