“Not my story to tell.” Fife reached for another apple. “It’s longer and more noble than mine.”
They lapsed into silence, still somewhat chilly, but more comfortable than before. Red lifted her apple to take a bite, but before it reached her mouth, something . . . faltered in her vision. A flash of green shadows, shaped like leaves and branches.
It reminded her of that night. When the Wilderwood rushed her, as if her sliced palm was something it could seep into. When she first saw Eammon’s hands, the connection between them forged in branch and blood.
Her brow furrowed as she shook her head. She hadn’t had a vision like that in four years; no reason to think she’d have another now. Across the table, Fife was oblivious, crunching an apple and staring into space, lost in thought.
She pressed her lips to a white line.
When the strange faltering came again, it was nothing so subtle as forest-shadows. This was a lightning strike behind her eyes, completely washing out the tower to show her something else entirely. The potted ivy on the table stretched green fingers toward her, the withered apples plumped and blushed scarlet.
Fife cursed, jumping from his seat, but Red didn’t hear him. Red didn’t see the tower anymore, nor anything in it. Instead, like the night of her sixteenth birthday, she saw hands.
Scarred hands, holding a dagger, palms running with green-threaded blood.
And beyond them— a creature, a monster. Vaguely man-shaped, but as if a man had been taken and twisted in ropes of shadow, the form bent to wrong angles and painted in dripping black. Milky eyes, a howling mouth. Behind it, fog shifted around a white tree with dark rot climbing its trunk.
The creature gave a low laugh, tripping up a discordant scale, and raised its clawed fingers before slashing down.
Another shadowed rush of leaves and branches. Her eyes saw only the tower again. Red’s mouth opened and closed on a choked sound as she clutched her stomach, sure she’d feel viscera spilling warm and slippery.
But it wasn’t her facing a monster. It was Eammon. Eammon, the vision of him even stronger than it’d been before.
The thread bond made her magic easier to wield— at least in theory, when she wasn’t utterly frozen by bloody memories. Apparently, it gave them other abilities, too. Tied them so tightly together that she could see through his eyes.
See that something was terribly, horribly wrong.
“Are you all right?” Fife arched a brow.
“I . . .” She didn’t know how to articulate what she’d seen. Past or present? Future? The parameters of this new bond between them were entirely alien. “I saw Eammon. Eammon getting hurt, hurt by something . . . something dark . . .”
Fife’s eyes went wide and worried. “You saw him?”
“It’s happened before.” She didn’t know quite how to explain it, so she didn’t try. Red stood quickly, her chair toppling behind her. “I have to go.”
“Absolutely not.” Fife’s head shook so vehemently, his hair stuck up. “Eammon said—”
“I can’t just leave him.” Shadowed forest-shapes still edged in at the corners of her eyes, sharp twigs and climbing vines. In her chest, power swirled, growing up and out, making the already-overgrown ivy on the table quiver. “It was real, Fife, just like last time. I have to do something.”
His brow furrowed with an emotion she couldn’t quite identify. Finally, Fife sighed, standing. “Fine.” He turned to jog down the stairs. “But when Eammon wants to know whose idea it was, don’t expect me to save your ass.”
The Wilderwood was eerily still as Red and Fife made their way between the trees, its attention drawn elsewhere. Fog stretched sinuous fingers into the lavender sky, threading between mostly bare branches.
“Northwest, since they came from the Edge,” Fife murmured, following a compass in his head. “And probably close by.” His teeth flashed. “Kings-shitting stupid Valdrek.”
Red barely heard him. She pushed through the undergrowth, weaving around thorns and catches of leaves, her focus singular— Find Eammon.
As far as what she could do once she found him . . . that, she wasn’t quite sure of yet.
Sentinel trees scattered along their path, tall and pale. Black rot climbed them all, sometimes only at the roots, sometimes past Red’s knees. She could smell it when they came close— empty and cold, ozonic. The ground around them was solid, for now, but she couldn’t keep from wondering how long that would hold. When they’d come loose from whatever magic moored them in place and show up at the Keep, a silent sign for Eammon to either spill more blood or risk tipping his internal scale further into forest.