Silence. “I could make you go.”
Red’s eyes narrowed, half confusion and half wariness.
His hands slid from her shoulders, closed around her wrists. “I could take you somewhere he couldn’t get to you.” A pause, laden with sharp hurt. “Where you couldn’t get to him.”
Arick’s grip was just shy of bruising, and with an angry surge like leaves caught in a cyclone, Red’s shard of magic broke free.
It clawed its way out of her bones, unspooling from the spaces between her ribs like ivy climbing ruins. The ferns on the sill arched toward her, called by some strange magnetism, and she felt the quickening of earth beneath her feet even through layers of marble, roots running like currents, reaching for her—
Red wrestled the power under control just before the ferns touched Arick’s shoulder, the fronds grown long and jagged in seconds. She shoved him away instead, harder than she meant to. Arick stumbled as the ferns retracted, slinking back to normal shapes.
“You can’t make me do anything, Arick.” Her hands trembled; her voice was thin. “I can’t stay here.”
“Why?” All fire, angry and low.
Red turned, picking up the edge of the brocaded curtain in a hand she hoped didn’t shake. Her mouth worked, but no words seemed right, so the quiet grew heavy and was her answer.
“This is about what happened with Neve, isn’t it?” It was an accusation, and he threw it like one. “When you went to the Wilderwood?”
Red’s heart slammed against her ribs. She ducked under the curtain and dropped it behind her, muffling Arick’s words, hiding his face. Her gown whispered over the marble as she walked down the corridor, toward the double doors of the north-facing balcony. Distantly, she wondered what the priestesses’ informants might make of her mussed hair and swollen lips.
Well. If they wanted an untouched sacrifice, that ship had long since sailed.
The cold was bracing after the hearths in the ballroom, but Red was Valleydan, and gooseflesh on her arms still felt like summer. Sweat dried in her hair, now hopelessly straight, careful curls loosened by heat and hands.
Breathe in, breathe out, steady her shaking shoulders, blink away the burn in her eyes. She could count the number of people who loved her on one hand, and they all kept begging for the only thing she couldn’t give them.
The night air froze the tears into her lashes before they could fall. She’d been damned from the moment she was born— a Second Daughter, meant for the Wolf and the Wilderwood, as etched into the bark in the Shrine— but still, sometimes, she wondered. Wondered if the damning was her own fault for what she’d done four years ago.
Reckless courage got the best of them after that disastrous ball, reckless courage and too much wine. They stole horses, rode north, two girls against a monster and an endless forest with nothing but rocks and matches and a fierce love for each other.
That love burned so brightly, it almost seemed like the power that took root in Red was a deliberate mockery. The Wilderwood, proving that it was stronger. That her ties to the forest and its waiting Wolf would always be stronger.
Red swallowed against a tight throat. Biting irony, that if it hadn’t been for that night and what it wrought, she might’ve done what Neve wanted. She might’ve run.
She looked to the north, squinting against cold wind. Somewhere, beyond the mist and the hazy lights of the capital, was the Wilderwood. The Wolf. Their long wait was almost ended.
“I’m coming,” she murmured. “Damn you, I’m coming.”
She turned in a sweep of crimson skirts and went back inside.
Chapter Two
S leep came only in fragments. By the time sunrise bled into the sky, Red stood by the window, tangling her fingers together and staring out at the Shrine.
Her room faced the interior gardens, an expanse of carefully maintained trees and flowers, specially bred for their hardiness against the cold. The Shrine was tucked into the back corner, barely visible beneath a blooming arbor. Sunrise caught the edge of the arched stone and painted it muted gold.
The Order stood scattered among the greenery, crowding the flowers, a sea of white robes and piety. Every priestess that called Valleyda home, plus all who had traveled, from the Rylt across the sea and Karsecka at the southern tip of the continent and everywhere in between. Each Temple had a white tree shard, a small splinter of the Wilderwood to pray to, but it was a special honor to trek to the Valleydan Temple, where they had a veritable grove of them. A privilege, to pray among the bone-white branches that made the prison of the Kings and beseech their return.