Chapter Six

Neve

Neither of them spoke as they pushed through the inverted trees again, growing so close together Neve could use them like handholds as she picked her way over the uneven ground. Walking was much easier in boots.

Up ahead, Solmir didn’t move with the predator-like grace she’d grown to expect. He seemed shaky, almost, like someone fighting off the first throes of a fever. His veins flickered sporadic darkness, fingers flexing out and then in again, as if something was trying to work out of them.

She eyed him warily. He’d said he could always take more magic, but it looked like it wasn’t as easy as he’d made it sound.

Something almost like concern rose in her chest. Neve hated that. Solmir didn’t deserve her concern.

Still, he was the only thing that seemed even marginally safe in the entire Shadowlands. And her only source of magic, if she didn’t want to twist into something monstrous.

Another quake moved through the ground, making her cling to the trunk of an inverted tree to keep from falling. Ahead, Solmir did the same, steadying himself with one black-flickering hand against pale bark. When the earth settled, he spared her a glance to make sure she was in one piece before heading off again.

But then he stumbled, just slightly, disrupting his precise speed. He stopped, turned to face her, jaw drawn tight and hand pressed against his middle. His eyes were cast downward, but when Neve advanced a step, they flickered up to hers. She froze.

The whites of Solmir’s eyes had gone completely dark.

Neve wanted to back away, to hold up her hands between them as a paltry shield. Instead, she frowned, hoping it covered her fear. “Are you going to pass out?”

Sharp and prim; she kept her concern behind her teeth. It was practical to be concerned, really. The last thing Neve needed was to be left in the Shadowlands alone.

“No, Neverah, I’m not going to pass out.” The flickers of shadow along his veins had lessened, but his eyes were still new-moon black around the blazing ocean of his irises. He turned on his heel, resting his back against the trunk of a tree, rubbing at the scars on his forehead. The movement made a flash of that strange tattoo show through his shirt again. “Magic is a slippery thing to hold. Especially when you have to keep it from subsuming your soul.”

Her brow arched. “So you’re in a battle for your soul as we speak? Rather melodramatic.”

“Truly.” He pushed off the tree with a slight grimace, rings glinting as he swept back his hair. Darkness still fluttered along his limbs, but it disappeared even as Neve watched, shadow going wherever he kept it. “I’ll be just fine in a moment or two. Don’t waste any worry on me. I know you have a very limited supply for anyone who isn’t Redarys.”

Her brows slashed down, but Neve didn’t reply.

His long hair trailed, smoke-colored, as Solmir moved through the trees again, every step seeming stronger. Neve chewed her lip a moment before following. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere we can rest.”

“I expect my questions to be answered clearly.” Vowels clipped, tone measured. Damn her if she wouldn’t still sound like a Queen, even in ancient boots and a bedraggled nightgown and Solmir’s old, too-large coat. “It’s the least you can do.”

For a moment, she didn’t think he’d reply. Solmir’s gait had eased, all that thorny magic he’d absorbed finding comfortable places to wait until they needed it, and he turned fully around to face her. He didn’t like half looks when he could help it, she’d noticed; he wasn’t one for coy glances over the shoulder. Solmir seemed to prefer facing her head-on.

He dipped his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Neve balled her fists.

The corner of his mouth turned up, wicked and sharp. “The Weaver wasn’t the only Old One who had an adherent follow them into the Shadowlands, though she’s the only one still alive.” He paused, only for a second, something dimming in his gaze. “Well. She was.”

He didn’t sound sorrowful, not really. But there was a finality in his tone, and a sense of emptiness. The difference between knowing something was gone and feeling its absence when you reached for it.

A minuscule shake of Solmir’s head, only visible because of the way it stirred his hair. “The Dragon had one, long ago. The Rat, too—to each their own when deciding who to go to bed with, but that I can’t quite wrap my head around. And the Leviathan.” His mouth flicked down in distaste. “The Leviathan kept its lover’s body, apparently. As a testament to their devotion. Love devolves very quickly into horror when gods are involved.”

“Love can devolve quickly into horror with anyone,” Neve said quietly.

“Don’t I know it,” he muttered as he pivoted away from her, started forward again.

The inverted forest looked all the same, no variation to mark the passage of distance or time, but Neve estimated they walked another mile before they reached the cabin.

This one looked even more uncanny than the Seamstress’s had. The cabin was up on stilts, tall enough so that its roof brushed the underside of the ever-present fog that floated in place of clouds here. A rope ladder dangled from the platform that held the cabin to the ground, twisting gently back and forth. For all that the roof sagged—and there was one ragged hole gaping in the side Neve could see—the stilts themselves looked solid enough.

Still, when Solmir grabbed the ladder, Neve shook her head. “Absolutely not. Why would we—”

“Are you tired, Neverah?”

The question took her aback, but there was a heaviness in her eyes, and her limbs did feel harder to hold up the longer they lingered here, as if standing still had allowed exhaustion to catch her. “Is that relevant?”

Solmir’s arms flexed, making the ladder swing back and forth. His hair followed, waving in the gray air. Neve hoped the rope snapped. “You’ve been awake far longer than your body is used to. We both need to get some sleep.” A flash of teeth. “It seems we have quite the journey ahead of us, and I, for one, would like to be well rested.”

He started climbing the ladder, the muscles of his back working as he hauled himself up, that tattoo on his arm prominent again through the fabric of his shirt.

Neve scowled at him. “So we’re both going to sleep in the same decrepit cabin?”

“You’re welcome to stay down there and sleep on the ground if you want.”

“Kings on shitting horses,” Neve muttered.

A snort came faintly from above her.

Climbing the rope in borrowed boots and a nightgown proved difficult, and Neve was out of breath when she reached the platform at the top. It seemed mostly sturdy, though there were gaps between some of the wooden planks large enough to put a foot through.

The door slumped open on broken hinges. Neve stepped through cautiously; the pervasive cold of the Shadowlands was even more pronounced up here, and she instinctually tugged Solmir’s coat tighter around her shoulders.

The inside of the cabin was just as run-down as the outside. The gaping hole to the right of the door took out most of the wall—Solmir was in the process of pushing what looked like an old wardrobe in front of it to block out the breeze, shoulders working in a way that Neve was irritated with herself for noticing.

When the wardrobe was situated in front of the hole, Solmir straightened, dusted off his hands. He caught Neve’s narrowed eyes and shrugged. “Won’t do much for the cold, but better than nothing.”

Other than the wardrobe, the only furnishings left in the cabin were a broken table listing against the opposite wall and a threadbare rug in the center of the room. Something was stuck in the rug’s weave, spiny shards flecked with odd fibers.

Neve bent down to lightly touch one of them. Feathers.

“This was the home of the Hawk’s lover. He’s been dead a long time, almost as long as the Hawk has been.” Solmir sat down against the wall and began unlacing his boots. “The Old Ones’ lovers don’t seem to outlast them for long.”

“That’s the trouble with religion,” Neve said. “Tying the reason for your existence to a god seems to naturally lead to your existence not mattering much.”

Solmir cocked a brow, still working his laces. “For someone who ushered in a new spiritual order, you hold religion in great contempt.”

“You knew that already.” Neve didn’t follow his example of making herself as comfortable as she could, instead standing stiffly next to the rug. She still had his coat clutched around her. “I might’ve tried to show piety in the true world, but I don’t think I fooled you.”

His hands stilled; Solmir looked up at her, blue eyes narrow and blazing in the gray-scale gloom. It made Neve want to call the words back, cage them in her throat.

The moment passed; he turned back to his boots. “You fooled everyone else well enough, if it’s any consolation.” He snorted. “Except Kiri, maybe.”

It was the opposite of consolation, but Neve didn’t tell him that. Didn’t tell him that the two villains in her story being able to read her better than anyone else was a fact that clawed her gut and hollowed her chest.

“I didn’t fool Raffe,” she said quietly. Almost a weapon. Proof that someone else looked at her and saw truth.

Mostly.

The name made Solmir’s mouth twist as he leaned his head back against the wall. “Raffe would believe whatever you told him.” He snorted. “That’s what true love does, isn’t it? I wouldn’t know.”

Her hands closed to fists in the too-long sleeves of his coat. True love. Right.

She shook her head, banishing thoughts of Raffe and whatever lay between them and all the invariable ways she’d broken it. With a sigh, she settled on the rug, then lay back, head cradled on threadbare fabric and broken feathers.

“Comfortable?” Solmir asked.

“Better than a glass coffin.”

Silence. She heard Solmir shift against the wall. “I would say I was sorry about that,” he said, voice nearly as sharp as hers had been, “but it was to keep you safe, actually. I understand that you have a hard time believing I’m concerned with your safety, but it’s true.” Another pause, longer, heavier in the cold air. “I need you, Neverah. Unfortunately for us both.”

“It wasn’t worth it,” Neve said, curling up on her side. She pillowed her head on her arms, the fabric of his coat scratchy against her cheek, smelling of pine and snow.

“What wasn’t?”

“Keeping me safe,” she replied.

Fog. Not just around her—it felt like the fog was in her, like she’d dissipated and become nothing but smoke herself. It was peaceful, almost.

Dreaming. She must be dreaming.

Neve wasn’t one to dream deeply or often, wasn’t one for ascribing some sort of richer meaning to whatever her brain spilled out in sleep. But something felt… different here. Heavy. Aware.

She couldn’t feel the floor, but she knew she was lying on it; couldn’t feel the weave of the coat pressed against her face, but knew it was there. The pinions of old feathers poked through her nightgown, and she felt them as if they were pressing through thick fabric instead, present but distant.

And she felt magic.

Not much, nothing like what she’d carried before Solmir took it with that bruising, terrible kiss, or even the cold slither that had been a constant on the surface, when she was stealing it daily with blood on a sentinel. But there was a breath of it deep within her, the prick of thorns in her very center, like something had been permanently altered in ways kisses couldn’t fix.

Her soul, maybe.

Slowly, the fog around her dispersed. As it did, the feeling of being incorporeal faded, Neve’s consciousness weighting back down into her limbs.

The shifting fog revealed a massive tree.

But only part of one, the lower half. A tower of roots, twisting in on each other, tall as three of her. If she craned her neck, she could almost see where the trunk began in the fog, what seemed like miles above her head. Looking down, she saw she stood on roots, too. The tree was the only solid thing she could see, the rest of the world made only of mist.

The roots were white, like the branches in the Shrine, like the trees in the inverted forest. Dark veins ran through them, streaks of shadow that were still somehow luminescent. But far above, where the roots ended and the trunk began, were faint glimmers of gold.

Neverah Valedren.

A voice, reverberating all around her, coming from every direction and none at all. The diffuse sound made it difficult to pick out characteristics, but it came across as vaguely masculine, confident. Half familiar.

She took a step forward, toward the root tower. The tree itself grew no closer, but every step seemed to ground her more in her body. Her nightgown was gone, and Solmir’s coat and the Seamstress’s boots, leaving her in nothing but a gauzy white covering that reminded her uncomfortably of a shroud.

Following some deep dream instinct, Neve began to climb up the roots toward the trunk.

Something glimmered in all that white wood. As she drew closer, she saw it was a mirror, one framed in golden gilt that looked vaguely shabby against the luminous glow of the tree bark. Rusty stains marred the frame, the color almost unbearably lurid, and blond hairs had been woven through the whorls like rays from a faded sun.

But the mirror wasn’t nearly as unsettling as the reflection it held.

Neve’s veins were black under white skin, every one of them, tracing her entire frame in a lacing of darkness. Tiny spikes grew down from her wrist, largest near her hand, tapering into smaller points as they grew nearer her elbow. More thorns stood out from her knuckles, a gauntlet. And her eyes were wholly, completely black.

Just like Solmir’s had been when he took in all that magic from the Seamstress, the lesser beasts they’d killed. Except hers didn’t have the slightest touch of color that signified the presence of a soul.

This must be the monstrousness he was saving her from.

Gently, Neve lifted one thorn-laced hand and touched the mirror’s silvery surface, her skin gray against the red and gold.

Something shifted in the glass. A momentary distortion of her reflection, her gauntness filled out and given color. Dark-gold hair, fierce brown eyes, a face with fuller lips and plumper cheeks than her own.

Red.

There and then gone, and Neve all but clawed at the mirror, her spiked hands arching on the glass as if she could smash it. “Red! Can you hear me? Come back!”

But her reflection was merely her own again, and even that was momentary. The mirror stopped picking up her image and instead showed only a thick tangle of tree roots touched with darkness.

Neve slapped her hand against the glass. “Red!”

Nothing.

She slid to her knees, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes, mindless of her bracelets of thorns.

You almost have it.

That voice again, the one that had said her name, full and soft and somehow familiar, like a memory from childhood she couldn’t quite hold together. Sorrow welled in it, one deep enough to make answering pain echo in her chest. She took her hands from her eyes—no blood, as if her thorns were incapable of harming their wielder—and peered into the fog. “What?”

You aren’t ready to be the mirror yet. Not until you find the Tree, find the key.

Neve shook her head. Nonsense words in a nonsense place, but the voice had mentioned the Tree, and that made her think this was something she should pay attention to. “Who are you? An Old One? One of their adherents?”

A pause. Behind the mirror, in the gaps between the tree roots, Neve almost saw a figure. It was gone too quickly to make out anything distinct.

I don’t know what I am. Not really. Faint, with a note of longing. But I don’t think I ever did.

Frustration faded to something more complicated. Neve swallowed, gnawing on her bottom lip. “Why should I trust you, then?”

You probably shouldn’t. Almost joking. But you’ve made lots of questionable decisions when it comes to whom to trust.

Damn her if she was going to be lectured by a disembodied voice in a shadowy not-quite-dream—she’d rather just get to the point. “Do you know something about the Tree?”

I think I do. Maybe. But memories… they’re like fog. A billow of mist rolled across Neve’s feet. When I see you, it’s easier. But I’m caught in between.

“Between what?”

The two worlds. The two of you. Life and death, too, I think.

Neve wrapped her arms around herself, cold seeping through the gauzy dream-dress. “Tell me what you know.”

The Tree waits for you, in the place it’s always been. But just reaching it is not enough—there must be a mirrored journey, a matched love. And a key, if you’re to return.

“So where do I get a key?” That seemed like the best place to start. Mirrored journeys, matching love… that, she could deal with later.

Once you need it, it will be there.

Neve frowned into the mist. “Are you sure you can’t tell me who you are?”

A pause. When I remember, I’ll let you know.

Fog slithered over Neve’s skin. She shivered—it felt almost invasive, as if it were looking for something.

The voice went stern. You’re an empty vessel.

She shifted on her feet. “Solmir is holding the magic. So I don’t…” She trailed off, looked down at her thorny hands. “So I don’t end up like this.”

The voice fell quiet. More fog slid over her, considering.

That will change, it said finally. The past and the present and the future all twine together here, and all paths look as solid as the one that will be. But he’ll do what’s right, in the end. That is solid and sure.

He. Solmir? Neve didn’t ask for clarification, but it made her mouth pull down. The idea of Solmir doing what was right, of it being solid and sure, seemed nearly as likely as her wanting to kiss him for any reason other than magic.

Another flash of a shape in the roots beyond the mirror, concrete enough for her to pick out broad shoulders and a narrow waist before it faded again. Look up.

She did. Slowly, a branch descended through the fog. Bare of leaves, and in addition to being crossed with dark veins, the white wood held glimmers of gold. Duality trapped in bark. It stopped right above her head, close enough for her to reach out and touch what grew there.

Apples. One black, one gold, one crimson.

Her hand nearly moved of its own accord, reaching up through the mist to touch the black apple. It was warm. Smelled somehow of copper. The points of tiny thorns studded the dark flesh, like they were growing outward from the apple’s center.

Don’t pick it.

An urgency in the voice. Neve dropped her hand. “What is this?” She breathed. “This is more than a dream.”

Everything here is more than what it seems. The apples swayed gently above her head. Having two worlds means having a place between them, and you belong to neither one nor the other. Things appear as you can conceive of them. Amusement colored the voice. That is no more an apple than you are, but your eyes need something to see.

“Is this a place between worlds, then?”

In a way. A place between life and death. A place to lock things in. A pause. We are too skilled at making prisons.

Many words that gave few answers. Neve frowned, anxiously worked her nails into the meat of her palm. “Should I tell him?” she asked quietly. “About everything you’ve said?”

Do what you want, the voice said. Everyone has to decide how best to tell the story of their own villain.

Her nails bit deeper.

I have nothing else for you. She couldn’t imagine how a disembodied voice managed to sound so weary. It pricked at that familiarity again, made her lips twist in an effort to recall where exactly she’d heard that same shade of tired, of run-down and heartsick. Go back to him.

And her eyes flew open at the command.

Neve stayed curled on her side for a moment, with a feeling like falling back into herself. Awareness came piecemeal, to her legs and then her arms, her heart. Physically, she hadn’t moved, but it still felt like she’d traveled miles.

A place between worlds. Between life and death. Things too large and heavy to understand, things her thoughts couldn’t wrap around.

But she didn’t spend much time trying, distracted by something else. Because here, in this ruined cabin in the Shadowlands, someone was singing.

A language she didn’t recognize, a low and droning melody that lilted up and down like a lullaby. She heard the scrape of metal across wood; then the song was interrupted with a curse.

Solmir sat with one knee bent and the other stretched out, leaning back against the wall of the cabin. His thumb was in his mouth, a dagger in his hand and a small piece of whittled wood lying on the floor, in a shape that looked deliberate.

His eyes flicked her way when she moved. “Good morning, sleeping beauty,” he muttered around his thumb.

“Except there’s no morning here.” Neve sat up slowly, muscles protesting. “What were you singing?”

His thumb dropped from his mouth. A gray spot marred it, blood leached of color. “Was I singing?”

He looked so different, for that small moment. Sprawled out and vulnerable, human. Someone who might be capable of doing the right thing, whatever that was.

“Yes,” Neve said, waspish. “Loudly.”

The snap of her tone wasn’t lost on him. Solmir straightened, wiped his thumb on his shirt, picked up the carved wood, and stuck it in his pocket. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. One whiles away the hours as they can.”

“By singing and… whittling?”

“It would be drinking and bedsport, but the Shadowlands are woefully empty of wine and I’ll wait for you to ask me for the other.”

An angry flush ran from her forehead to her chest. “I’d sooner ask you to throw me into the mouth of the next lesser beast we come across.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” He stood, swept a hand toward the lolling door. “Now that we’re both well rested, let’s go destroy a god.”