Chapter Fifteen
Neve
After scaling one smaller bone-shard rise behind them—Neve was afraid the pieces might slip, but they held fast—a small cave appeared, the path to it marked by another mound of fused-together bones. The cave was a dark pit, stark against the ivory.
Solmir stopped on the curve of a giant pelvis, gestured toward the cave’s mouth. “Welcome to the Kingdom of the Oracle.”
“Some kingdom,” Neve muttered, balancing on an oddly shaped leg joint thrusting out of the mountain.
“Cold and small and barren, just like yours.”
She made a rude gesture at his back.
It was a steep climb up splintered bones to reach the cave entrance. At the top of the rise, Solmir turned, offered a hand to pull her up. He tugged too hard when she accepted, and Neve crashed into his chest.
His skin was chilled where it pressed against hers, his hair feathered across her cheek, smelling of pine. The scars on his brow were deep punctures, ragged edges with angry welts in the centers. They’d be deep crimson, if there was color here, but in the Shadowlands they were only charcoal. There were six marks, deepest on either temple, the size gradually decreasing to be smallest in the center of his forehead.
“What are they from?” Neve asked quietly, eyes fixed on the scars.
“Some crowns are hard to take off,” he answered. Then he stepped away from her, putting distance between them.
Neve stood there a moment, fists closed tight at her sides. Something like guilt churned in her stomach, something like shame. She’d told him that understanding wasn’t forgiveness, and that was true. But Neve was starting to feel like forgiveness might be something she wanted to give him, and what kind of traitor did that make her?
Forcefully, she turned her thoughts to Raffe. A good man, a gentle man, someone who always strove to do right. He loved her, even though she didn’t deserve it, and shouldn’t that be the kind of connection she wanted? Love unconditional, love she couldn’t tarnish, even with her hands so bloodstained?
But she could still hear Solmir’s voice, calling down that corridor into the cairn. Coming to save her, even if it was just because they needed each other.
Solmir wasn’t good, but he was… something. And that something made her have to fight to keep thinking of him as an enemy. Fight to keep her thoughts in simple dichotomies of right and wrong and good and bad, because the places between were treacherous.
The opening to the Oracle’s cave was on another jut of bone, this one made of what appeared to be a giant femur, rounded ends spearing into open space. Smaller bones cluttered the entrance, creating a low wall. At first, the bones puzzled Neve, ridiculously small against the vastness of the Old Ones’ remains. She took a step closer to the cave mouth to peer at them, wrinkling her nose against the fetid smell wafting from the opening.
The remains of lesser beasts, wings and claws, strangely shaped skulls, so many other bones that bore no resemblance to anything she could name. All of them were scored with teeth marks.
She backed up so quickly, she nearly tripped over her ripped hem.
Solmir stood near the rounded edge of the giant femur, like he didn’t want to be near the cave, either. “Don’t let its looks fool you,” he cautioned, voice pitched low. “The Oracle was one of the most dangerous Old Ones even before most of them died.”
He didn’t answer at first. When Neve glanced at him, Solmir was twisting that silver ring around and around his thumb again, jaw held tight. The tension of it made the scars on his brow darken.
“You don’t worry about it,” he said finally. “You stay as far away from the Oracle as possible.”
No humor in his voice, just the flat tone of an order. Neve bristled against it—she resoundingly hated taking orders—but now, about to face a god he knew, didn’t seem like the time to argue. She could always bring it up as a point of contention later.
And it was bolstering, to think there would definitely be a later.
The piece of god-bone lay heavy against her hip. Wordlessly, Neve dug it out, held it in Solmir’s direction.
He shook his head. “You hold on to it for now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just trust me.”
Their eyes met, dual realizations—both that the statement should have been totally ludicrous, and that, somehow, it no longer felt that way.
Neve slid the bone back into her pocket. Then she and Solmir walked into the cave.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but not because of darkness—her pupils contracted against unexpected light, a soft glow from somewhere deeper in the cavern. On the floor, more rings of bones, stratified and grown higher than the one right at the cave’s opening, as if whatever had made the piles once had a greater range of movement than it did now.
Solmir nudged one of the bones with his toe, turning it over to reveal more teeth marks. “It kept loosening its restraints,” he said quietly. “I finally had to use god-bone to keep it lashed to the floor.”
“You imprisoned it?” He’d said as much before, but now, faced with concrete proof of the Oracle’s violence, the feat seemed nearly impossible. “How? And why?”
“Luck, mostly.” Gingerly, Solmir stepped over the first ring of bones. “As for the why, it’s a long story, and this timing is less than ideal.”
She couldn’t argue there. “But you’ll tell me after.”
He made a noise that wasn’t assent or disagreement. Circumstances being what they were, Neve didn’t push.
As they moved forward, the glow at the back of the cavern gradually grew brighter. It was soft, diffuse, like shafts of sunlight seen through morning mist. The gentleness of it sat strangely against the carnage of gnawed-on skulls.
The last ring of bones was high enough to obscure Neve’s view of whatever lay on the other side, though she could tell whatever it was emanated that glow. Solmir paused, twisting his ring again. Blue eyes slanted her way, then down to her pocket.
Neve read his meaning: Keep the bone hidden. She nodded.
Solmir went first, climbing over the bone-pile with more grace that the shifting shards should’ve allowed. Neve followed, her torn nightgown making the ascent fairly easy. The chill of the Shadowlands might make it less than ideal, but at least she could run with her skirt tattered to strips, and that seemed more prudent.
Then she topped the rise.
A circular stone dais sat beyond the wall, its color bleached white in the glow from the figure that stood on it.
A beautiful, almost human figure.
The god was dainty and feminine, delicately boned. White hair fell shimmering to the floor, almost indistinguishable from the long white robe that covered the figure from neck to ankle, leaving its arms bare. Its forehead and eyes were covered by a silver wire mask, attached to a crown of rotting roses. Chains bound thin wrists, stained dark and crusted with what might’ve been ink or dried blood, anchored to the stone floor in front of it with shards of ivory. More chains around its waist, similarly anchored, a bound deity in a palace of chewed bones.
The Oracle.
Solmir stood at the foot of the dais, glaring up at the Old One with undisguised hatred. The god didn’t acknowledge him at all, didn’t so much as twitch when Neve slid down the bone-pile, though a clatter of stirred vertebrae fell to the floor in her wake.
Solmir didn’t look at Neve when she stepped up next to him, but he did shoulder in front of her slightly, like he wanted to stay between her and the god he’d imprisoned.
Neve let him. Out of all the things she’d seen since coming to this strange, upside-down world, this slight, girlish figure in the decaying flower crown was the most unsettling.
For a handful of heartbeats, they stood in silence.
Then the Oracle: “Aren’t you going to cede your power, Solmir? That’s the polite thing to do. Or are you just going to stare at me all day?”
“I’d rather eat glass than cede power to you.” He didn’t snarl it. He said it measured and matter-of-fact, and the words were sharper for it.
The Oracle angled its head to look at them through its wire mask. Darkness stained the skin beneath it, as if the god’s eyes had rotted and dripped from the sockets like egg yolks. More black stains marred its gown, the remains of some bloody feast.
Neve thought of all those teeth marks and swallowed.
“I see,” the Oracle said slowly, voice gentle and smooth. “Still upset over centuries-old hurts. Not surprising, I suppose. Our kind have long memories, and the ages melt together eventually.”
“You and I are not remotely the same thing,” Solmir replied.
A slow smile spread over the Oracle’s face, revealing double rows of tiny, pointed teeth. “It’d be easier for you if that were true, wouldn’t it? But the only thing separating you from me is a soul, Solmir, and yours seems worse for wear lately. Well, a soul and belief. Believing yourself to be a god is the most important aspect of divinity, and you lost your belief in yourself long ago. In every way.”
Solmir’s expression didn’t change, but his hands clenched by his sides, tight enough to blanch the skin around his rings.
“All that magic, swelling you like a tick on a vein,” the Oracle murmured. “Truly, it’s astonishing you’ve managed to hold on to your soul at all.” With a burst of unnatural speed, the Oracle bent its head to the side at an angle that should’ve snapped its neck, exaggerated curiosity. “Does she know why you take the magic from her? Why you keep it, so she stays empty?”
“Yes,” Solmir said, but there was a pause, and his eyes darted to Neve as if he wanted to gauge her reaction.
Neve was having a hard time coming up with any reaction other than cold dread.
The Oracle’s fingers twitched through the air, arms held out to its sides by the chains. “You’re still so angry,” it said to Solmir, Neve apparently forgotten. “I can taste it, coming off you in waves. Anger and guilt, though the guilt is more complicated. You just can’t stop pulling women into your underworld, can you? Or trying to, at least. This one seems to have worked out better than the other.”
That, finally, was enough to get a reaction; Solmir lurched forward like he might lunge at the god, mouth bent into a snarl. Neve’s hand shackled around his arm, holding him back, though she had to grind her heels into the stone ground to do it.
The Oracle laughed, a high, almost screeching sound. “Or has it?” the god asked, fingers still twitching. “The last one you wanted to open the Shadowlands for only because you loved her and wanted to escape, but this one… this one has a purpose. This one has strings attached, strings from stars, and you want to play them like a harp.” A delicate shrug. “Better strings than roots.”
Roots. Gaya. Neve’s eyes cut to Solmir, her fingers tightening around his arm.
The muscles beneath her hand went the consistency of stone, but Solmir didn’t lunge at the god again. “Don’t talk about her,” he said, voice low and poisonous. “You aren’t allowed to talk about her.”
“Fine with me,” the Oracle replied. “Especially when you’ve brought someone much more interesting.” Its head bent again, this time to the other side, wire-covered eyes fixed on Neve. “Hello, Shadow Queen. You want something from me.”
Neve’s eyes shifted from the horrible-beautiful god to Solmir, fear making her spine straight and her muscles weak. It knew. Somehow, the Oracle knew they were here to kill it, and it would—
“Don’t look so shocked. No one comes here for any reason other than wanting something. Especially not Solmir, who hates me so.” Another of those wide smiles, showing rows of teeth. “But you can’t get something for nothing. I always get my due.”
The gnawed bones around their feet gave the words unsettling weight. Neve tightened her hand around Solmir’s arm, though she didn’t think he would try to go for the god again. At least, not until he was ready to kill it.
And when was that supposed to happen?
What you want and what he wants are not the same thing, Shadow Queen.
The Oracle’s voice was smoother than the Serpent’s had been, a caress around her mind rather than a scrabble against it. Neve swallowed and clenched her jaw, not allowing the Oracle in, not allowing it to read her thoughts.
The laugh that echoed in her skull was just as screeching and unpleasant as the one that had echoed through the cave. Your desires twine and tangle, but come apart at the most important seams. A thoughtful pause. He can count the number of people he has ever cared about on one hand. Do you think you’re among their number, Shadow Queen?
Her teeth ground together, but Neve’s hand dropped from Solmir’s arm. He glanced at her, brows drawn low.
The Oracle pouted, sticking out a lush lower lip. “The Shadow Queen doesn’t want to talk to me,” it said, straightening. A toss of its head, resettling the rotting rose crown. “But someone will have to. That’s the price for what you want.”
“What do you think we want?” Solmir asked. His hand kept flexing back toward Neve, toward the piece of god-bone in her pocket.
“To open the Heart Tree,” the Oracle answered. “To do so, you need the power of a god.” It preened at that, fingers twitching, shaking out its long white hair. “I knew you’d have to free me eventually, Solmir. This punishment couldn’t be forever.”
Punishment? Confusion twisted Neve’s mouth.
The Oracle chuckled. Neve hadn’t allowed it to read her thoughts, but it seemed to see the question in her expression. “I didn’t tell Solmir that trying to open the Heart Tree with his former lover would kill her.” A graceful shrug. “He didn’t take it well.”
Solmir’s shoulders were tense ridges beneath his thorn-ripped shirt, but he didn’t rise to the Oracle’s bait. He looked to Neve, something fierce and half hopeful in his eyes.
It hit her then. The Oracle didn’t know they were here to kill it.
The pieces came together quickly—the god thought they were here to break its chains, to make it guide them to the Heart Tree. The Oracle knew the Heart Tree could be opened only by the power of a god, and thought they meant to make it their prisoner, not their victim.
Which meant it would expect Solmir to get close enough to loosen its restraints. It wouldn’t know the closeness was for killing until it was too late.
But only if they played this next part very, very carefully.
Moving so slowly her muscles shuddered, Neve slipped the bone from her pocket. She pressed her hand to Solmir’s, the cool of his skin welcome against her fevered fear.
“But before you free me,” the Oracle said, “I want a truth.”
Her fingers went numb; Neve almost dropped the bone. She and Solmir both tried to catch it while also keeping as still as possible—her fingers closed around it just before it fell from their awkwardly clasped hands.
Neve pulled her arm tight to her side, hiding the bone in the tatters of her skirt. “A truth?” she asked, more to distract than to clarify.
“Oh look, she speaks.” The Oracle’s tone sounded exactly like the flippant cattiness of a seasoned court gossip. “Yes, Shadow Queen, I want a truth. There might be no food or drink here, but we all feed on something, unless we want to weaken enough to get reeled into the Sanctum.”
Solmir stepped up on the dais, fists clenched at his sides. “Fine. Take one; I have truths enough to glut yourself on.”
“But none of them are surprising, once-King, and when one has been in famine, they desire a feast to break it.”
That only left one solution. Neve stepped forward. “Take one from me, then.”
Another slow smile, all those pointed teeth. “Yes,” the Oracle whispered. “You smell of secrets buried deep, of things left to age like wine. Your truths are sure to be delicious.”
The word delicious made skitters of fear rattle down her spine, but Neve clenched her teeth, her fists. The point of the god-bone dug into her palm, held flush along the line of her forearm.
She shot a quick glance back at Solmir, read the inevitable and his fear of it in the flash of his eyes—she’d be the one close enough. She’d have to stab the Oracle.
Stab it, and hope that was enough.
The Serpent had wanted to die; it didn’t fight back when Neve shoved the god-bone into its side. But she had no idea how the Oracle would react, what it would do as magic seeped out of its wound.
No time to think about that, no time for fear. Neve stepped forward, cautiously approaching the god in chains. “What kind of truth do you want?”
“Oh, Shadow Queen,” the Oracle said, those twitching fingers stretching forward to brush lightly over her forehead. “You don’t get to choose.”
The finger didn’t move. For a moment, Neve wondered if this would be easier than she’d thought, if the extraction of a truth was something simple—
Pain. Pain like a dagger slicing into her brain, paring to her heart even though the Oracle’s finger still didn’t move—so much worse than the pain she’d felt before, when she pulled magic from the Shadowlands and nearly drove her soul down into its foundations. Neve gasped, but she knew it only because she felt her mouth open. She heard nothing, nothing but an awful buzzing in her ears, like a horde of corpse-flies. Down, down that sharpness traveled, down to the knot of emotion she’d kept so tightly tangled in her chest.
Her soul. Cold and small, wrapped in anger and guilt and all the things she didn’t want to see, didn’t want to feel.
But now they flashed before her, snatches of sight and sound, narration by the voice of the Oracle that she didn’t hear in her head so much as in her very center, seething up and hissing against her bones.
You thought you loved him, but did you really? Was it more an idea of him, a clinging to who you thought you were, wished you could be? An image of Raffe, dark eyes warm, cupping her cheek in her cold bedroom. You didn’t avenge your mother, you would’ve held the knife yourself if you thought it was the only way. Isla, distant across a dining table that felt miles long. You knew Red was fine, you knew it the moment you saw her again, but you were in too deep to admit mistakes. You would’ve sacrificed her Wolf and killed whatever happiness she’d found because to do otherwise would mean admitting you were wrong, and you couldn’t do that, not then and not ever. Red, crouched in the Shrine, more wild than woman, and Neve knowing that was what she was always meant to be.
An image of Solmir leaning against the wall after Neve’s coronation, arms crossed and mouth stoic. But that had been Arick, hadn’t it? Or Solmir wearing Arick’s face? It was all too knotted together for her to untangle, who he was, who he’d been.
Does it matter? the Oracle’s voice asked, amusement twisting up the end of the question. You knew something was wrong, and you did nothing. You never let yourself think deeply on what Arick was up to, because you knew you wouldn’t stop him, no matter what it was. What kind of queen does that make you? What kind of friend? What kind of person? Not a good one, Shadow Queen. Never a good one.
The bite of stone into her knees, her hands at her chest, as if she could reel all of this in and tie it back up. But once unspooled, her packed-down emotions kept coming, heightened and sharpened by the voice of the Oracle, slicing in and knowing all, an arterial pump of truth.
You never admit when you’re wrong you’d rather die than let anyone know you made a mistake all of this is your fault if you’d just listened to Red and let her go you’d still be with Raffe even though you don’t deserve him—
Neve wanted to pass out, to fade from consciousness, but the Oracle’s onslaught kept her viciously, horrifically present, anchored in all the moments she’d done wrong, seeing the face of every person she’d let down.
It was terrible. It was deserved.
When she felt Solmir streak past her with a roar in his teeth, felt him wrench the god-bone from her hand, she barely noticed, crouched on the bone-strewn floor with her soul in tatters in her chest.
Solmir leapt at the Oracle, over the chains that bound it to the dais, and slashed the bone across the god’s throat.
Immediately, the pounding of all Neve’s failures through her head ceased, the endless parade of all the ways she’d fallen short. She looked up through swimming eyes.
The Oracle was shuddering. Though shuddering seemed like too gentle a word—the space the god occupied seemed scrambled, making its shape judder from side to side, edges unmatched as if Neve were seeing it through window slats. Shadows poured from it, writhing into the air with their chittering sound, louder and more violent than she’d ever heard before.
The bone dropped; Solmir thrust his hands out, calling the rogue magic to him as it drained from the gaping wound in the Oracle’s throat. The shadows wound around his arms, filling him with darkness, and Neve saw the moment when his clenched jaw unhinged, when the pained scream became something he couldn’t hold in anymore.
The ground rumbled, dust raining from the ceiling. The pile behind them shook, loose bones rattling, sliding down to the bloodstained stone floor.
The Oracle fell to its knees, knocking the rotting rose crown askew. Its mouth opened, letting loose a high laugh, chased by more gibbering shadows, a cacophony of madness and unraveling. It reverberated in the air and in Neve’s skull; she clapped her hands over her ears.
Foolish of me, the Oracle whispered in her head. Foolish to think he offered freedom instead of death, but I’ve grown so tired of shackles that one is nearly as welcome as the other. Though not quite as foolish as you are, Shadow Queen. Thinking there’s something worth saving in him. Thinking there’s something good.
Pieces of rock fell from above now, chasing the dust. The bones behind them bucked and slid. Another quake, collapsing the cave, maybe collapsing the whole mountain. And still magic seeped from the dying god and poured into Solmir. Still he screamed, blue eyes flickering into black.
“You deserve each other,” the Oracle said, aloud this time. “Two fools, damning themselves over and over again.”
The Oracle’s body twisted, jerked in painful angles, winnowing away into smoke and shadow. The drain of its magic ate it away to muscle, to bone, the skeleton oddly shaped. Then, in another plume of dark smoke, it was gone.
The shadow rushed into Solmir’s hands, and he fell to the shaking ground. Darkness covered his skin, as if he’d dipped his arms in ink. His irises shuddered from blue to black, blue to black, his soul at a tipping point.
Neve had to get up. The cave collapsed around them, bones sliding and rocks falling; but she had to take some of that magic, too, siphon it out of him so he wasn’t consumed. She lurched forward, ramming her knee against the broken end of a sharp tibia. It punctured skin, the warm weep of blood seeping down her leg and making her stagger. Between the wound and the weakness left over from the Oracle’s assault on her mind, Neve could barely stumble across the floor.
When she made it to Solmir, he was pushing himself to stand, darkness seeping away from his veins, out of his eyes. “Don’t.” Loud and commanding against the screech of the falling mountain. “Don’t take it, we’ll need it all.”
“But you—”
“I,” he snarled, shoving the god-bone in his boot, “am perfectly suited to this.”
Another shudder shook through the cave. A stone fell from the ceiling, careening directly toward Neve’s head; Solmir grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, out of the rock’s path, then immediately released her, unwilling to linger on her skin.
“Promise you won’t take it,” he said, shouting into her face to be heard over the crash and collapse around them. “Not until it’s time!”
“Yes, fine, I promise!”
“Good!” Then he grabbed her waist and swung her up over his shoulders so her stomach pressed against the back of his head, her legs over one shoulder and her arms over the other, his silver-ringed hands wrapped around both to keep her in place. It was uncomfortable, and she barked a wordless protest even as he started forward, running toward the pile of sliding bones.
Solmir wiped a rough hand over her knee, held up his bloodstained palm. “Do you want to walk? Then stop complaining!”
A grunt punctuated the last word as he jumped up on the bones; they slipped under his feet, but Solmir moved quickly, stepping to the next before the one he stood on fell. Neve glanced back—the dais had sunk into the ground, the bloodstained stone crumbled. The bones slipped toward the ever-widening hole, like the mountain was eating itself.
The rasp of Solmir’s breath was loud against her ear as he carried her out of the cave, onto the outcropping of giant femur that made the cliff outside it. Still not safe; the mountain trembled, all the bones fused over eons shuddering apart.
They turned in the opposite direction from where they’d come, Solmir running toward another short rise that crumbled even as they approached. Through the wild tangles of hair—hers and Solmir’s, knotting together with wind and sweat—Neve could see where the mountain abruptly ended, gray horizon, beyond which looked like a sheer drop.
He swung her around to his front; it hurt, and Neve made another sound of protest as Solmir pressed her tight against his chest. “Apologies, Your Majesty. Hold on.”
As the mountain of bones crumbled behind them, Solmir ran to the edge and tipped them over.