Chapter Twelve

Red

Raffe’s here.”

Red’s head jerked up from the book she’d been reading, fast enough to set a crick into her neck. “Raffe?”

Lyra leaned against the doorjamb of the library. Her arms crossed over her gown, a deep green that set off the golden flecks in her dark eyes. “He brought a guest, too.”

That made Red’s brow climb, her head swing to Eammon. He sat beside her, slouched behind a stack of heretofore-useless books, face tired and hair mussed. They’d been here for nearly the whole of the four days since the clearing, searching volume by volume through everything in the library. So far, they’d found nothing.

Still, Eammon pored endlessly over his books until his eyes drooped, and she often had to prod him awake to get him to come upstairs and sleep in their bed instead of slumped over the table.

But most nights, she waited. And when he was asleep, Red picked up the books he’d discarded as useless and kept looking for more mentions of voices in dreams.

She’d told him most of her strange dream, of course. The fog, the blood-warm apple, the Heart Tree, that there’d been a voice that spoke in cryptic loops. But she kept it vague, didn’t tell him everything about the voice itself. Didn’t tell him how familiar it felt, how personal.

That was part of it, somehow. She could tell, with the deep resonance of an unquestioned truth—whatever had to happen in order to save Neve would be personal, would reach into her in a way Eammon ultimately couldn’t help with.

She knew he’d hate that, so she kept it to herself.

Red’s hand stole into her pocket, to the key she kept there. Eammon didn’t like looking at it, had only given it one cursory glance when she first showed it to him. But Red carried it everywhere, tracing her fingers over it like it was a worry stone, twisting it in her palm. It felt like a tangible link to Neve, the only thing she had to hold on to.

The Wolf closed his book, brows drawn low. His eyes flickered to Red’s, a question—she shrugged. There hadn’t been anything in her note that would’ve made Raffe think he needed to come here, at least not that she could figure. Especially when they all agreed it was best to try to keep the Wilderwood out of Valleyda’s collective thoughts as much as possible right now.

Eammon stood, shoving a piece of scrap paper into the spine of his book to keep his place. “Won’t do to keep them waiting.” A weary hand rubbed over his mouth. “Why in all the shadows would he bring someone else into all this?”

“You’d know about letting others get caught up in messes they should steer clear of,” Lyra murmured.

The three of them paused, animals once more aware of the traps set around them. Red couldn’t find any anger in her, even though the wounded look on Eammon’s face sliced her insides.

She and Eammon had talked of Fife and what happened in the clearing, deep in the night, pressed together, with their legs tangled and her cheek pillowed on his chest. What he remembered from the brief moment when he’d sent out the Wilderwood’s call, everything else crowded out by panic. And what happened before, the day of the shadow grove, when he pulled in all of the forest to save her.

“I don’t really remember any of it, either time,” he’d whispered into the dark, the paneless maws of their windows letting in crisp autumn scent, crisp autumn air. “There was golden light. The feeling of being… being vast, taking up more space than should be possible. All of the parts of me scattered.” Green-haloed eyes turned to hers, made luminous in moonlight, the worry in them stark. When Eammon spoke again, it was hushed. “How badly did it hurt, when you felt the call?”

“It wasn’t that bad. Just… loud, in my head.” She traced her hand over his chest, rested it on his heart. “You didn’t hear anything at all?”

“Nothing. But the Wilderwood and I have coexisted for so long, it seems loud to me all the time.” Eammon ran a hand through his tangled hair. “Fife said I hadn’t gotten any better at listening to it. Seems like he’s right.”

“It’s a hard thing to listen to,” Red murmured. “Especially when it’s been part of you for so many years.”

“I just don’t understand the rules anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I vastly prefer this to what the Wilderwood and I were before, but part of me misses knowing exactly what the forest wanted from me.” He shifted beneath her. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let him bargain to save Lyra. She wasn’t dying, just hurt, and he was panicked. But I didn’t… I didn’t know it’d be like this.” He paused, idly twining a strand of golden hair and ivy around his finger. “It’s different,” he said finally. “This bargain is different than the one he made before, but I don’t know how. It’s like the Wilderwood knows something I don’t.”

“But you had to let him.” Red looked up, flicked a lock of dark, overlong hair out of his eyes. The point of a tiny antler brushed her fingertip. “Lyra wasn’t connected to the Wilderwood enough for you to heal her without a trade.”

“I know. I couldn’t leave her like that.” A huff, his hand coming up to capture hers and cage it against his chest. “But now I’ve left Fife like this.”

Red turned her head to press a kiss on his bare, scarred shoulder. “They’ll come around.”

“They shouldn’t have to,” he’d murmured. But it’d been low, sonorous, and soon his breathing had evened and he’d dropped into sleep.

Now, in the library, Eammon’s eyes were still shadowed with guilt. He didn’t respond to Lyra, bracing himself with knuckles against the table for one deep breath before pushing up and going to the door. She let him pass without a word.

Lips pressed together, Red moved to follow. When she reached Lyra, she paused, eyes still ahead. “He didn’t mean to get Fife tangled up in this again,” she said softly.

She thought Lyra might not respond, but after a moment, the other woman sighed, her shoulders dipping low. “I know.” A corkscrew curl hung in her eye; Lyra knuckled it back. “Fife made the choice to bargain. And Eammon…” A shrug. “Well. He wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse, I guess.”

“He would have.” Red knew her Wolf down to the bones, the way his mind worked and the things that sparked his guilt. “If he’d been himself, he would have tried to find another way. Something other than a bargain.”

“There wasn’t one,” Lyra said wearily. “We all know that.”

Red had no rebuttal.

Lyra’s nails tapped against the sleeve of her gown, her eyes still fixed on the floor. “It was to save me,” she said, so quiet it was nearly a whisper. “Fife bargained to save me, so I shouldn’t be mad, right? But all those years, those centuries longer than we ever should have lived, all he wanted was to be free of this damn forest. And I—” She caught the words and swallowed them, heaved a quiet sigh. “I don’t want to be the reason he’s not. He doesn’t resent me for it, not yet. But I can’t imagine that he won’t, eventually. And what do I do then?”

Red put out her hand. A heartbeat, and Lyra placed hers in it, allowing comfort. “Fife loves you,” Red said, simple and plain and true. “Exactly like you need him to. And he has for so long now, it’s stood up against so much more time than it ever should’ve had to. He won’t regret anything that saved you.”

“I know.” Lyra shook her head. “I just… Kings, I wish he’d told me. I wish I hadn’t had to find out like this.”

“He should have.” Red snorted, giving Lyra’s hand a gentle pull as they left the library and went to the staircase. “Secrecy never serves them well, does it?”

“You’d think they’d learn.”

Eammon stood at the top of the stairs already, holding himself stiff and unsure, eyes shadowed by lowered brows. He nodded once as Red and Lyra climbed up the steps but didn’t look their way, all his attention on the man at the door. “Raffe.”

“Wolf.” Raffe stood in the center of the foyer just as uneasily as Eammon did, dressed for traveling and anonymity. Dark trousers, boots, dark doublet, no tor to be seen. His fingers flexed back and forth, like he wished he had something to hold in them, and his eyes reluctantly left Eammon to find Red, as if he thought the Wolf might jump the moment he wasn’t making eye contact. “Lady Wolf.”

The title shouldn’t have stung. It did anyway. Careful distance, wrought by the replacing of her name. A sign that things between them were unutterably different than before, that easy friendship muddled. “Hello, Raffe.”

He didn’t respond to the greeting. Instead, he looked behind Red, a spark of reverence lighting his face. Lyra was the only thing that had ever brought Raffe close to piety. He raised his fist to his forehead. “Plaguebreaker.”

The shift of her feet was Lyra’s only outward sign of discomfort. She raised her own fist, quick, then let it fall. “Raffe.” Then, eyes sliding pointedly to Raffe’s left, “Raffe’s friend.”

Raffe’s friend—Kings and shadows, it was so strange to see someone that wasn’t the five of them in the Keep; what was he thinking?—was dressed similarly to him, in a dark gown and gray cloak. She was beautiful, shorter and smaller than Red, with a waterfall of straight black hair and dark-bright eyes in a heart-shaped face.

Ironically, she seemed far more at ease than Raffe did. No fear in her eyes, just something near to awe. Her mouth hung open, her gaze eating up the Keep with a mix of trepidation and delight.

“Who are you?” Red didn’t quite mean for the question to sound so rude, but it came cracking out of her in shocked surprise. They’d all agreed this needed to stay secret—the way the Wilderwood had changed, the way Red was so much more than just a Second Daughter. Nothing good could come of involving too many people.

But Raffe’s guest didn’t seem taken aback. She grinned, dipping her head—not a bow, which according to the few courtly manners Red remembered, meant she was also royalty.

Fantastic.

“Okada Kayu,” she said, in a low, sweet voice that sounded like that of a singer. “Third Daughter of the Niohni Emperor, long may he reign.” The last was said with a wry twist of her mouth, a flash in her eyes. “Not that I care overmuch.”

Nioh. A collection of islands to the east, beyond the edges of the continent, known for their advances in science, particularly botany. Red remembered that the gardeners at the Valleydan palace had tried to cultivate some Niohni flowers once, sky blue and delicate, large as dinner plates. The climate had been far too harsh for them, leaching their color and leaving them limp on their stalks.

For all her beauty, Kayu didn’t remind Red of those flowers at all. She seemed like someone who thrived in conditions others thought she should wilt under.

Eammon’s eyes swung to Raffe, crackling green and amber. “What is the meaning of this, Raffe? I thought we agreed not to tell—”

“If it’s any consolation,” Kayu said, “he didn’t tell me.” She drifted from her place at Raffe’s side, going to the wall and peering up at the tapestry of Ciaran and Gaya. It still hung there, threadbare and muddied. Red and Eammon hadn’t found much time for interior decorating. “I figured most of it out on my own. Your plan of just hoping everyone ignores the Wilderwood only works for those who would be inclined to ignore it anyway. Which, to be fair, is most people.” She lifted a finger, lightly touched the tapestry with thoughtful reverence. “But anyone with a curious bone in their body is going to figure out something is off eventually. And anyone with a brain to go along with that curious bone is going to figure out it has something to do with the missing Valleydan queen.”

Red put a warning hand on Eammon’s tense arm. The shape of his anxiety was easy to map. Another thing they’d murmured of at night, when there was no space between them and words came easily—what might happen if those who’d lived for so long in fear of the Wolf in the Wilderwood realized he was vulnerable. Pitchforks and pyres, centuries of terror and anger breaking against the boundaries of a forest that would no longer keep them out.

“I know what’s happening.” Kayu dropped her hand, turned to face them. “I know Queen Neverah has gone to the Shadowlands. And I know you’re looking for a way to bring her back.”

Red turned incredulous eyes to Raffe. “What part of we should keep this quiet meant bring Niohni royalty to the Keep to you?”

Circles stood out under his dark eyes, like sleep had been a hard thing to come by. “She figured it out, Red. It seemed more prudent to keep her close. Where we can keep an eye on her.” He rubbed a weary hand over his face. “I am cursed to be surrounded by the bookish and prying.”

“To his credit, Raffe was doing an excellent job keeping things under wraps,” Kayu said, gesturing gracefully to the man in question. “But I came to Valleyda to study, so study I did. It wasn’t hard to see that something was off, once I started paying attention.” She dropped her hand, shrugged. “And I had taken more than a passing interest in the whole Valleydan Second Daughter mess before I came. It’s a fascinating custom, if you can get over how awful it is.”

Red exchanged a quick look with Eammon. The Wolf’s brows were low, his mouth a flat line. Clearly, the other woman’s explanation didn’t convince him.

But Red was inclined to believe her. It didn’t seem odd that a neglected princess from a faraway land might find herself taken with the fairy tale that Valleyda became every time a Second Daughter was born.

Still, it wasn’t ideal. With a sigh, Red pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, a nervous tic she’d picked up from Eammon. “What do you want, Kayu? We don’t have money—”

“Everyone thinks I want money.” Kayu sounded nearly disgusted, rolling dark eyes. She left the tapestry, going instead to the vine laced along the wall, studded in its flickerless, forest-magic-made flames. “I have quite enough of my own, thank you. And I’m planning on parting with a significant portion of it to help you find your sister.”

Trepidation drew up every line of Eammon’s form, but the dip of his head and the flicker of his eyes toward Red said this was her call. He’d go along with whatever she wanted.

Red blew out a deep breath. She didn’t know how money would play into finding Neve, but nothing else they’d done had gotten them any closer. Desperate was a weak word for the emotions snared in her branch-laden chest.

And Kayu knew. Knew Neve was gone, knew Red and Eammon had become the Wilderwood, knew the sacrifice of Second Daughters was a thing of the past. Dangerous knowledge, all of it. Raffe was right, it’d be prudent to keep her close.

She nodded to Eammon. Kayu could stay.

Kayu studiously peered at the flames on the wall through the whole exchange, knowingly giving them time to decide. She must’ve sensed when an agreement was reached—a breath after Eammon’s nod, she gestured to the vine. “This is interesting. Forest magic?” She looked over her shoulder, pointer finger wavering between Red and Eammon. “Raffe told me you two have… something… going on with the Wilderwood.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Eammon muttered.

Raffe sighed. “If you have chairs in this ruin, you’d better find them,” he said as he headed toward the sunken dining room to the right of the door. “I have a lot to tell you. You’ll want to sit down.”

“So Kiri knows what the Heart Tree is?”

Dregs of long-cold tea sat in chipped mugs before them. Red’s arms were crossed on the table, her neck bent over to stare at the letter written in Kiri’s swirling script. Eammon’s hand rested on the back of her neck, a soothing weight. Lyra sat on Red’s other side, and Fife, tense and silent, sat next to her—he’d come in from errands in the Edge before Raffe started talking.

Across from them, as if they’d arranged themselves like opposing armies, Raffe sat next to Kayu, staring into the leaves at the bottom of his cup. Throughout his whole tale—Kiri’s letter, the ends of the branches twisting into keys in the Shrine, Kayu’s offer of help—Kayu herself appeared to be barely listening, her attention captured more by the surrounding Keep, as if she was reading a fairy story for the first time.

“She mentioned it by name, but didn’t give any specifics.” Raffe shook his head, running a hand over his close-shorn hair. “And her letter mentions something about a key. What happened with the branches in the Shrine makes me think she knows more than she put in the letter.”

“So Neve has to find a key, too.” Red’s own lay on the table. When Raffe mentioned the branches in the Shrine, she’d pulled it from her pocket, told him about how it came to her.

Eammon’s eyes had flickered to the key briefly when she first brought it out before he looked away, as if it still unsettled him. But now he was peering at it with a line between his brows, almost studiously.

“How did you find yours?” Raffe asked. “I assume it came to you right when those branches changed shape, and that was four days ago, sometime in the afternoon. Do you remember what you were doing?”

The tips of Eammon’s ears turned scarlet.

Red cleared her throat, shifted in her seat. “I was trying to get to Neve,” she said, leaving out the specifics of both the attempt and what came after. “If Neve’s key is supposed to come to her the same way, I suppose it will happen while she’s trying to get to me.”

That sent all of them into silence, what logically followed hanging over their heads: If Neve didn’t have a key yet—and none of them had reason to think she did—did that mean she wasn’t trying to get back?

Eammon broke the tense quiet. “I think I recognize your key, Red.”

She swung around to look at him, brow furrowed. Eammon still stared at the key on the table, mouth twisted up like it did when he was thinking hard. “It could be nothing,” he cautioned, “but there’s something that looks like a grove of keys carved into the walls of the Edge. Valdrek might know something.”

“It’s worth a try,” Raffe said. “I’ll take any connection we can get at this point.”

“There are lots of carvings on that wall.” Lyra’s voice came out gentle, like she didn’t want anyone to get their hopes up. “It might be a connection, or it might just be a coincidence. And Kiri is mad, we can all agree there. Her talk of keys and trees could just be ravings.”

At that, Kayu’s expression darkened, just for a moment. Red couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or distaste or something in between.

“She’s undoubtedly mad, but the things in her letter correspond with Red’s dream.” Eammon sat forward, giving the back of Red’s neck a squeeze and the key one more pointed look before he ran the hand over his face. “We shouldn’t discount her fully.”

“Mad or not, the best way to find out what Kiri means is to go ask her in person. All of us.” It was the first time Kayu had spoken since Raffe ushered them into the dining room and began his strange account, and it came out with conviction. Her dark eyes went from the greenery-choked window to Red. “I can pay for passage to the Rylt.”

“We can’t.” Eammon shook his head, quick and sharp. “What if Neve comes back while we’re gone?”

“I don’t think Neve coming back can happen without me,” Red said gently.

He knew that. Red knew he did. She also knew his reluctance to leave the Wilderwood wasn’t all about the possibility of missing Neve. Nerves tensed his shoulders—she settled her palm on his knee, squeezed.

Lyra shook her head. “The rest of us can pass as normal, but Red and Eammon can’t.” She gestured to the flourish of Red’s Bargainer’s Mark, the ivy in her hair. “How do you plan to explain all that to a ship’s crew?”

“We’ll wear cloaks.” Now that there was some semblance of a plan coming together, some possibility that they could move forward with saving Neve, Red wasn’t about to let it slip through her fingers. “Stay out of sight as much as possible. We can make it work.”

“And I’ll pay the crew very well,” Kayu said. “Well enough that a story about my friends’ strange illnesses won’t be questioned.”

Beside her, Eammon’s lips twisted, his knee bouncing nervously beneath the table. But he said nothing.

Red slipped her hand into his, curled her fingers around his scarred ones. “Eammon?”

He’d conceded to her in the foyer, told her without words that the things having to do with Neve were hers to decide. But she didn’t want to make this decision for him.

His hand tightened around hers. Eammon looked up at Kayu and nodded.

Kayu clapped her hands, dark eyes sparkling. “Wonderful! I’ll make the arrangements. We should be able to leave within a few days. It’s a three-day journey, so pack accordingly.” She looked to Lyra and Fife, inclining her head. “Raffe assumed you two would want to go, as well. The whole gang.”

The fact that she included herself in the whole gang went without saying.

Chagrin and resignation chased themselves over Raffe’s face, but there was something else there, too. He looked almost grateful. When Kayu moved, his eyes followed, a mix of irritation and wariness and begrudging respect.

“If we’re going to ask Valdrek about that carving, we should do it today,” Eammon said. He pushed up from the table, eager to be headed toward something that might hold answers.

Red nodded. “But I… I want to check the mirror again first.”

Eammon froze. One hand spasmed by his side.

They hadn’t looked at the mirror—hadn’t spoken of it—since that day in the clearing. Eammon had brought it back to the tower, and there it had stayed. Red had made herself stay away from it, but now something in her felt pulled there.

She kept thinking about Neve, how she had to look for a key. What if she’d found it but couldn’t communicate with Red until she looked in the mirror? What if something in the glass surface had changed, giving them another clue? She couldn’t leave it to chance.

Red grabbed Eammon’s hand, squeezed it. “I just want to make sure.”

He looked at her with his lips pressed together. A laden moment, then he nodded.

“That damn mirror gives me the shivers,” Raffe muttered.

Eammon snorted.

It was an awkward trek across the courtyard to the tower, the sky darkening steadily toward night and casting everything in dusky purple shadow. Kayu’s eyes were round and wondering, trying to take in everything at once. Every time she reached out like she might touch something, moss on the wall or a flower woven into the rubble, Raffe would bat away her hand. The third time he did it, she batted back. “It’s bad form to treat your moneylender like a child.”

“It’s dangerous here.”

“Not anymore.” Red glanced at them over her shoulder. “Eammon and I have the forest well in hand.”

Eammon pushed open the tower door, and they caravanned up the stairs, into the circular room with its four windows and paper sun. Books spilled over the table, left from when Red and Eammon had desperately needed a change of scenery from the library.

The Wolf crouched, crooking his fingers at the fireplace—a moment, then flames caught along the logs, hovering right over the wood without actually burning it. Kayu’s eyes widened.

The mirror was propped against the wall between two of the windows, covered with one of Eammon’s old cloaks. He pulled it away, mouth a displeased line, and dropped the cloak onto the floor.

At first, it appeared as if nothing had changed from the last time Red looked. The surface of the mirror was still choked with tree roots, crowding against the glass, their shape barely visible as more than twisted darkness.

Cautiously, Red stepped forward, reaching up and pulling a strand of hair from her braid. She knelt, wrapped the hair into the whorls of the frame.

A moment. Then the roots pressed against the mirror glass began to slowly unfurl.

They unraveled like a thread from a hem, and Red stared until her vision went blurry, expecting something to be revealed behind their shift. But one by one, they fell back, revealing still nothing—just an endless expanse of featureless gray. No Neve, no Shadowlands. No clues.

Slowly, the matte gray peeled away, like a snake shedding its skin, leaving silver reflectiveness behind. Just a mirror.

Just a mirror, beaming her reflection back to her, a wild woman with ivy in her hair and a ring of green around her irises. Magic, power seeping through her skin to show itself.

Slowly, her reflection changed. Mist billowed in from the edges of the frame, covering her form, making it gray and amorphous. It reminded her of her dream, being somewhere in between.

When the voice came, it reminded her of the dream, too. The same voice, vaguely familiar. The golden thread of the Wilderwood running next to her thoughts vibrated with it, underscoring it like a harp, the two of them in harmony.

She’s taken the first step in becoming your mirror. Taken the power of a dark god, taken shadow where you took light. The two of you are too strong for mere glass to connect you anymore.

Her brows knit. “I don’t—”

And then the mirror shattered.

She screamed as it happened, the sound of her cry mingling with the ice-crack of breaking glass. The shards exploded out from the worn gilt frame in a storm of needles; Eammon lunged in front of her, throwing up a forearm in front of his eyes. Fife cursed, Kayu gasped. Red barely registered any of it, limbs gone limp, thoughts gone hazy.

She’s taken the first step in becoming your mirror.

Red sat down on the worn wooden floor, gaze miles away, her body feeling as distant as Neve did. Eammon crouched next to her, cradled her hand. There was glass in it. He carefully picked the slivers out.

“I don’t understand.” Raffe shook his head, glass crunching beneath his boots as he stepped toward the now-empty frame. “It just… just shattered, after telling us nothing…”

“It told me something,” Red murmured.

Eammon’s eyes darted up to hers, worry darkening the green and amber.

“I heard the voice from my dream,” Red said. Blood leaked slowly from her hand. “And it told me Neve had taken the first step in becoming my mirror.”

“But what does that mean?” Raffe sounded somewhere between panicked and angry.

Red didn’t get a chance to answer. Her vision grayed, her muscles slackening, every ounce of energy drained from her like water through a sieve. She was vaguely aware of her head slumping onto Eammon’s shoulder, her hand trailing through the shards of mirror on the floor, and then she knew nothing.