She took a moment to steady her hands. This was Neve’s doing, and Red knew her sister well enough to guess what she intended. Neve couldn’t convince her to run, and thought maybe Arick could.
Red would let him try.
She slipped through the curtain, and his arms were around her waist before the ball was gone from view.
“Red,” he murmured into her hair. His lips moved to hers, fingers tightening on her hips to pull her closer. “Red, I’ve missed you.”
Her mouth was too occupied to say it back, though she made it clear she shared the sentiment. Arick’s duties as the Consort Elect and Duke of Floriane kept him often out of court. He was only here now because of Neve.
Neve had been as shocked as Red when Arick was announced as Neve’s future husband, cementing the fragile treaty that made Floriane a Valleydan province. She knew what lay between Arick and Red, but they never talked about it, unable to find the right words for one more small tragedy. Arick was a blade that drew blood two different ways, and the wounds left were best tended to alone.
Red broke away, resting her forehead against Arick’s shoulder. He smelled the same, like mint and expensive tobacco. She breathed it in until her lungs ached.
Arick held her there a moment, hands in her hair. “I love you,” he whispered against her ear.
He always said it. She never said it back. Once, she’d thought it was because she was doing him a favor, denying herself to make it easier on him when her twenty years were up and the forest’s tithe came due. But that wasn’t quite right. Red never said it because she didn’t feel it. She loved Arick, in a way, but not a way that matched his love for her. It was simpler to let the words pass without remark.
He’d never seemed upset about it before, but tonight, she could feel the way his muscles tensed beneath her cheek, hear the clench of teeth in his jaw. “Still, Red?” It came quiet, in a way that seemed like he already knew the answer.
She stayed silent.
A moment, then he tilted a pale finger under her chin, tipped it up to search her face. No candles burned in the alcove, but the moonlight through the window reflected in his eyes, as green as the ferns on the sill. “You know why I’m here.”
“And you know what I’ll say.”
“Neve was asking the wrong question,” he breathed, desperation feathering at the edges. “Just wanting you to run, not thinking about what comes next. I have. It’s all I’ve thought of.” He paused, hand tightening in her hair. “Run away with me, Red.”
Her eyes, half closed by kissing and moonlight, opened wide. Red pulled away, quickly enough to leave strands of gold woven around his fingers. “What?”
Arick gathered her hands, pulled her close again. “Run away with me,” he repeated, chafing his thumbs over her palms. “We’ll go south, to Karsecka or Elkyrath, find some backwater town where no one cares about religion or the Kings coming back, too far away from the forest to worry about any monsters. I’ll find work doing . . . doing something, and—”
“We can’t do that.” Red tugged out of his grip. The pleasant numbness of wine was rapidly giving over to a dull ache, and she pressed her fingers into her temples as she turned away. “You have responsibilities. To Floriane, to Neve . . .”
“None of that matters.” His hands framed her waist. “Red, I can’t let you go to the Wilderwood.”
She felt it again, the awakening in her veins. The ferns shuddered on the sill.
For a moment, she thought about telling him.
Telling him about the stray splinter of magic the Wilderwood left in her the night she and Neve ran to the forest’s edge. Telling him of the destruction it wrought, the blood and the violence. Telling him how every day was an exercise in fighting it down, keeping it contained, making sure it never hurt anyone again.
But the words wouldn’t come.
Red wasn’t going to the Wilderwood to bring back gods. She wasn’t going as insurance against monsters. It was an ancient and esoteric web she’d been born tangled in, but her reasons for not fighting free of it had nothing to do with piety, nothing to do with a religion she’d never truly believed in.
She was going to the Wilderwood to save everyone she loved from herself.
“It doesn’t have to be this way.” Arick gripped her shoulders. “We could have a life, Red. We could be just us.”
“I’m the Second Daughter. You’re the Consort Elect.” Red shook her head. “That is who we are.”