Chapter Nine

Raffe

The Shrine gave him the shivers.

It always had, really. He’d never been much for religion—in most countries, day-to-day veneration was more for folk heroes and figures of local legend, faith on a smaller and more personal scale. If you weren’t an Order priestess—or an unluckily fertile Valleydan queen—your dealings with the Kings were few. One might light a red candle a couple times a year, and you’d be married in white and buried in black, but the religion that had sprung up around the Five Kings wasn’t one that required much of its penitents.

Raffe very much wished he could go back to that kind of distance.

He stood in the second room of the Shrine like one might stand at the edge of a cliff, hands held stiff by his sides, shoulders tense. The note from Red that Fife had delivered dangled from his fingers, so many words to tell him there was still no news, still no sign of Neve, still nothing. Another day passed with the Queen of Valleyda missing, and he was the only one who knew.

Well. Him and Kayu.

“Shit,” he muttered, crumpling Red’s letter in his hand.

The broken branches in the Shrine’s second room looked a little worse for wear after Neve’s campaign against them, but not by much. A little more crooked, a little more withered, but they stood strong in their stone bases, and though there were bloodstains on the floor, there were none on the bark.

Not that the Shrine was even necessary anymore, not really. Hardly anyone but the priestesses came to pray, and all of them were in the Rylt, either sent there by Neve or by him. He didn’t know if it was the same in other Shrines in other kingdoms, but Valleyda had always been the most pious. Their religion was dying a slow death.

Now that Raffe knew what the Kings were, that the whole thing was built on lies and half-truths and power, being in the Shrine at all made him feel slightly ill.

Raffe didn’t know why he was here, really. He’d searched the Shrine already, every inch of it, trying to see if there was some clue they’d missed, some leaving of Neve’s strange experiments that might reveal the way to save her.

Despite everything, he’d reflexively reached for the table of red prayer candles when he entered. When he realized what he was doing, he shrank away like it was a basket full of snakes rather than wicks and wax. The Kings were the last people he wanted to hear from. He could revert to his childhood ways, he supposed, praying to some folktale figure, or the Plaguebreaker—but after meeting her in the flesh, that felt strange, too. The idea had occurred to him that maybe Red and Eammon were the thing to pray to now, but that felt even more strange, and useless besides. They didn’t know what to do any more than he did.

His thoughts wandered to Kayu. He’d seen her this morning after breakfast, as he walked down to the Shrine—dressed in a sumptuous gown of purple silk with silver embroidery, her long black hair elaborately braided back from her face. She’d been strolling the gardens on the arm of Belvedere’s valet—the master of trade kept quarters in the capital city, even as the seasons dipped toward cold, though he generally stayed away from the palace unless he had to come balance ledgers. Her eyes had flickered his way even as she laughed gaily at some quip the valet made, but other than an inclination of her head, she hadn’t acknowledged Raffe at all. As if she hadn’t been in his room playing at assassination in the small hours of yesterday morning. Reading his correspondence. Offering help.

Raffe rubbed a hand over his face. He would say he didn’t trust Kayu as far as he could throw her, but she was a small woman, so he could probably throw her much farther than his trust would extend. Even still, he didn’t see a way around taking her offer. She was right. He needed money.

And with everything else he had to deal with, trying to head off a curious Niohni princess was one task he just didn’t have the mental capacity for. He’d let her help. And if things went awry… well, she’d played at assassin first.

Even as Raffe had the thought, his stomach went knotty. He wasn’t nearly as bloodthirsty as one needed to be for this.

So when he turned and saw her standing behind him, eyes wide and a lit candle clutched in her hand, the string of profanity he let loose was truly impressive.

She cocked her head to the side. When he’d first seen her, he could’ve sworn the look in her eyes was somewhere near panic, but now she seemed cool and unruffled as ever. “Feeling pious, Raffe?”

Raffe gestured to the candle in her hand. “Not as pious as you, apparently.”

Again, that flash of something wary across her heart-shaped face. But then Kayu shrugged. “Old habits.” She passed him in a flutter of silk, going to fix her candle before one of the branch shards. She did it carefully, he noticed, with graceful movements that spoke of practice.

Candlelight shimmered over her gown as she turned to him, her back now on her prayer. Her ink-dark eyes narrowed at the branch shards lining the walls. “Not much for decoration.”

“Is the Shrine in Nioh decorated?”

“It’s austere, but better than this. Only having one branch to display means we can do more elsewhere; having so many really overwhelms the room.”

“You could return to your stroll with what’s-his-name, if the lack of decoration offends you so much.”

“Don’t be jealous. Aldous is quite spoken for; he and Belvedere have been together for years.” She nodded at the note still held in Raffe’s hand. “More news about the Queen?”

The word made his fingers flex; Raffe tucked the note into his pocket with a scowl. “Sorry, but the only way you’re going to know the contents of my correspondence is if you steal it.”

“Sounds like a challenge.” But the words were softer than they should be; Kayu’s face was pensive. She sighed, eyes swinging from him to the jagged shadows of the branches on the walls. “It’s honestly remarkable that you’ve held everything together this long. I know the Valleydan court isn’t necessarily one for intrigue—the cold saps it out of them, I guess. But your luck won’t hold forever. Power is power, and eventually, someone will want it. The sooner you can find Neverah Valedren, the better.”

Truer than Kayu could know. There was no way to tell what was happening to Neve in the Shadowlands, how she spent the days that ticked by as they got no closer to finding a way to save her. He played it over endlessly in his head—the glass coffin, the churning hurricane the grove became, the way she sank into the dirt with only a glimpse of that gray sky, that inverted forest, that endless dead land populated by undead things. It was a world totally unlike their own, and he had no frame of reference for how it worked, what it would do to her.

What it had already done, even before she disappeared into it. He hadn’t forgotten that the last move of the night had been hers. How her eyes had opened, seeing Red—seeing him—and then closed as she pulled in all that darkness, let it overwhelm her. Became the shadows. Left him.

Which brought his thoughts around to Solmir.

In the months between Red leaving and the battle at the Wilderwood, Raffe hadn’t known what to make of the relationship between Neve and Arick. It wasn’t quite friendship, but wasn’t quite something more, either. Still, he’d thought they were falling for each other at first, and it had made his middle feel empty, twisted. Jealousy, yes, but almost something like… relief? It was all so much to be caught up in, royalty and betrothals and the geometries of love. Maybe conceding defeat was better.

As time went on, his thinking had shifted—he no longer assumed Neve was falling for Arick, but it seemed Arick was falling for her. It flew in the face of everything Raffe thought he knew about the man. Arick had loved Red since they were old enough to know what that meant; she’d been his first everything. And though Arick’s love wasn’t the kind you could build a foundation on, it hadn’t needed to be. They’d talked so much about trying to make Red run, but in the end, they’d all known she wouldn’t. Raffe had known before Arick and Neve, but no matter how poorly they took it, it hadn’t been a surprise.

So for Arick to suddenly decide he wanted Neve, his betrothed, even as they were attempting to bring Red home—it didn’t make sense. And that should have been his first clue that Arick wasn’t himself anymore.

Maybe want wasn’t even the right way to put it. Solmir had been tender with Neve, careful. It was clear that he wanted her safe, even as things veered wildly out of control. But maybe that wasn’t so much for want of her as it was for want of the use of her.

The thought made his fists clench even now.

By the time he’d figured it out, things had gone too far for him to halt them. He remembered running into the grove, seeing the coffin, flailing at it with his sword and his hands. Nothing.

Nothing.

And now Neve was trapped with Solmir in the underworld.

Next to him, Kayu was silent, watching the branch shards with her eyes narrowed and her full lips twisted to the side. Her manicured nails tapped on the silk sleeve of her dress, the picture of a princess.

He was too good at trusting people. Raffe wanted to believe everyone meant well, and he’d been burned by it more than once—though never scaled with these kinds of possible consequences, wars and successions and stolen thrones. Now it was an instinct he actively fought against.

But for reasons he didn’t quite understand, he wanted to trust Kayu. Maybe it was loneliness—he was holding all of this together by way of tightly clenched threads and willpower. It would be nice to have someone here to help.

It would be nice to have someone he didn’t have to hide from.

He could feel Red’s note in the pocket of his doublet, shoved in next to Kiri’s. He should’ve burned them both, but he kept rereading them instead, as if he could somehow wring sense from the words if he repeated them over and over in his head.

But if he knew nothing, and Red and Eammon knew nothing, who else was left to ask? Maybe Kiri would be more forthcoming with information in person.

“How much would it be for a passage to the Rylt?” he asked quietly.

Kayu, to her credit, didn’t appear surprised at the question. She gave a graceful shrug. “Depends on how many people we’re taking.”

“Three. Wait, five.” It might be a good idea to have Fife and Lyra there—he’d feel safer being around Kiri if he was surrounded by allies.

“Six,” Kayu amended.

Too late, he recalled her phrasing when she answered his question, the use of we. “Kayu, you don’t understand—”

“Do not say that to me.” Since he’d known her—admittedly not long—Kayu had been nothing but calm, collected. Even when she was breaking into his room and pretending to be an assassin, she had the air of someone always in control, who knew exactly what the next three moves were and was amply prepared for them.

But now her dark eyes were fierce, her hands clenched into fists by her sides. She’d whirled around and glared up as if she really could kill him now if she had a weapon on her. Raffe’s eyes widened, but he successfully fought the urge to step back, even when she advanced so close that her nose almost brushed his collarbone.

“Please don’t act like I’m too dense to understand, Raffe.” She was angry, obviously, but her voice stayed even. “If you want to go to the Rylt on my coin, I’m coming with you.”

A moment, a breath. She was standing very close.

He couldn’t afford to get them all to the Rylt on his own. And trying to bring Kiri back here would be both too visible and too dangerous—he didn’t want that woman anywhere near Valleyda. Not to mention the complications of bringing Red and Eammon to the capital. It would be nigh impossible to hide what they were, now that they barely looked human. Maybe he could cook up some kind of explanation, give a half-truth, but it would be strained, and he couldn’t stanch the gossip.

He didn’t have any other options, and it almost felt like a relief.

“Fine,” Raffe said, low and dark. “But if any of this gets out, I’ll know exactly who is to blame. And I will not go easy.”

“I would never expect you to,” she said coolly.

And there they stood, too close and too heated, until the tension in the room was broken by the earth shaking.

The quake came out of nowhere. A pitch, a slide, a rumbling in the floor that sent them careening against each other and then to the ground. Instinctively, Raffe braced himself over Kayu, expecting falling rock and ruin.

But the rocks never came, as if the earthquake was centralized—focused on the pieces of sentinel trees. Around them, the stone walls groaned, but only the branch shards bent and twisted, like someone awakening from a long sleep. Shivers of color trembled over the white wood, gold and black, a dance of light and darkness that lasted only a blink.

Panicked, Raffe checked his palms, then grabbed Kayu’s and checked them, too. No blood, no tiny cuts that might’ve accidentally awakened the shards. This was different, something new—

As soon as it began, it stopped. No more groaning, and the floor was once again level, unmoving. They crouched on the ground, both tense and ready for another round, but the Shrine was still and silent.

A heartbeat. The very ends of the branches twitched, once, like dying hands. Then, with a crack, they all changed their shape.

Keys. They all looked like keys.

A blink, and they were just branches again, so quickly Raffe wondered if he’d imagined it. But next to him, Kayu’s eyes were wide, her mouth agape—she’d seen it, too.

“What in all the shadows was that?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.” Raffe sighed, shook his head. In for a sip, in for a pint. “But I know who will.”