Chapter Twenty-Seven
Neve
It reminded her of the Serpent’s cairn, a solid dark that pressed against her skin, that robbed her of all her senses, even deeper than the black water when the Leviathan brought them under.
“Dammit.” Solmir, snarling right next to her ear, the close quarters of their prison pressing them shoulder to shoulder. “Shit.”
The pound of something against stone—his fist, whistling past her cheek. He was so close that she caught his arm on her first try, stopping him from slamming a punch into the wall again.
“Solmir.” His name a command as she caught his hand, his fingers slicked with blood against her own. Without sight, her sense of smell was heightened, the pine of him and the salt of the sea undercut with thick copper. Her other palm reached out to touch the wall. Jagged coral, bloodstained. She was glad she couldn’t see the mess he’d undoubtedly made of his hand.
Stiffness, then he sagged, the motion of it felt rather than seen. “We’re trapped,” he said unnecessarily.
“Can we kill it?” Maybe it should alarm her that killing was now her first idea, but Neve didn’t care to think about that right now. “When we get out of here, if we get the chance—”
“No.” Solmir cut her off, firm. “If the Leviathan dies, the Shadowlands will be completely destabilized.”
The wall was too rough to slide down—Neve sat gingerly, keeping only a breath away from Solmir’s legs as she did so, the shape of him guiding her in the dark. When she met seashell-pocked floor, she leaned her head back against the jagged coral. “What is it going to do?”
“Fuck if I know.” His sigh was so heavy it stirred her hair. “Not kill us, we know that much. And it won’t hurt you.”
“What about you?” It shouldn’t kick up her heartbeat, the thought of the Old One hurting Solmir. Not after everything she’d just learned, everything still swimming in the space between them. And yet.
“The Leviathan has never been what I’d call a friend.” Dry, but with an undercurrent of apprehension. “And you’re the interesting one, Shadow Queen.”
There was a question in it, harkening back to what the Leviathan said—that she’d chosen the mantle, chosen to stay. But that discussion could wait.
First, Neve had a score to settle.
No tears—they burned in her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall, even if he couldn’t see. “You were going to sacrifice me.” She couldn’t keep the waver from her voice—Neve wanted to be a thing beyond hurting, but he softened all her armor. “Up until a minute before the Heart Tree opened, you were going to let me be a vessel for the Kings. You bastard.” Her voice fully broke then, and she pulled in a deep, shaky breath. “How could you do that?”
“I didn’t.” Barely a whisper, rough and hoarse. “I didn’t do it, Neve. I couldn’t.”
“You want another medal?” Neve wiped at her streaming eyes, her nose. “One for keeping your soul, one for deciding at the last minute not to kill me?”
“We both know I don’t deserve any medals.” Solmir moved to sit beside her, the salt dried on his skin rasping against the sleeve of Neve’s coat. His coat. A sudden urge filled her to rip it off, but she didn’t.
“There’s one thing we can agree on.” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her wrist, streaking his blood across her cheekbone. “I trusted you, Solmir.”
The emphasis on the past tense was intentional. Neve let it hang in the heavy air.
“I know,” Solmir murmured. Paused, and the next question came soft and low as a prayer. “Is it something I can earn back?”
She clamped her lip between her teeth, pulled her knees up to her chest. Yes welled in her throat like a river dammed back, that loneliness tugging at her again, reminding her that he was the only thing in this whole underworld even close to human. He’d intended to betray her, even if he’d changed his mind. Even if he’d kissed her to pass on the magic that would save her, even if that kiss felt real.
I couldn’t kill you, not even to save the fucking world.
“You can try to earn it back.” The dark made it impossible to see anything, but she turned her head in his direction anyway. “It won’t be easy.”
A nod, felt rather than seen. “It shouldn’t be.”
They sat in silence, other than the rasp of their breathing. The heat of their bodies ovened the small space, turning dampness to thick humidity. Neve slipped her hand into the coat’s pocket, closed it around the bone and the key. The bone she stuck in her boot. The key she weighed in her hand for a moment before reaching up and threading the open end through the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, further knotting her tangles to hold it in place.
Then she pulled off Solmir’s coat. Set it next to her. The lack of a barrier between them pressed their shoulders together, skin on skin. The magic curled in her center spiraled lazily, a billow of smoke from a snuffed candle. But there was no pull from him, no tug like he was trying to take it back. He’d given her the power and intended to let her keep it.
That was a comfort, at least.
“Did they ever come?” she asked quietly. “The Kings?”
“No.” Solmir shifted, his salt water–coarsened hair brushing her arm. “Maybe they were on their way. I don’t know how all that works, the way power pulls.”
“Or they figured us out. Knew they couldn’t outsmart us.”
Solmir snorted. “That might be giving ourselves too much credit. Maybe there’s a reason they didn’t come, resisting on purpose.”
“What kind of reason?”
“I have no idea, Neverah.” He sounded weary. She felt the brush of his hair as he tilted his head back against the coral.
But she wasn’t one to wallow. Neve had never let seemingly impossible circumstances leave her languishing before, and she wouldn’t start here. “You said giving the Kings a vessel was the easiest way to kill them. But is there another?”
A pause. “Yes,” Solmir said finally.
She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t. His shoulder was tense against hers, rigid as stone.
Neve gave one nod, decisive, even though he couldn’t see it. “We’ll do that, then.”
Some of the rigidity bled from his muscles, relaxing against her by a fraction. The close quarters made touching inevitable, and both of them accepted it. There was reassurance in the solid shape of another person, giving form to the dark.
Her thumbnail worked nervously against the thin fabric of her nightgown. “I saw Red, while I was in the Tree.”
“You did?”
“She was there somehow. Called when I went into the Tree, I guess. She said something about a key…” Neve reached up, touched the one she’d secured in her hair. “The Heart Tree gave me one, too.”
“It gave you a key?” Solmir sounded puzzled. “I’m not sure what that means, to be honest.”
“That makes two of us.” Neve shrugged. “It was in my hand when I came out.”
“When you chose to come out,” he murmured.
That question again, hanging above her head like an ax set to fall. The key the Tree had given her shifted against her neck as Neve adjusted her seat on the hard, shell-pocked ground, its cold a welcome counterpoint to the heat inside their coral cell. She said nothing. If he wanted an answer, he had to ask the question, with words instead of tone and waiting.
“Why did you do that?” There was incredulity in his voice, but also something like awe. “You could’ve gone home, Neve. Why didn’t you?”
And she still didn’t know, not really, not in a way that lent itself to easy words. All she had was that feeling, that indelible sense that something here still needed to be done. That were she to go home now, there would be consequences. Maybe not for her, maybe not ones she would see. But someone would. Mistakes demanded payment, and they’d come due eventually.
“Because until the Kings are gone, I’m not done,” she said finally. “We’re not done.”
That collective pronoun made him sit up straight next to her. She felt the stir of air as he nodded, then another as he moved again, his arm rasping against hers. “Neve, I’m—Fuck, that hurts.”
She fumbled in the dark until her hand found his arm, traveled down to his fingers. Her palm slicked with his blood when it met the mess he’d made of his fist. Solmir cursed again, jerking away from her. “Shadows damn me, woman, what part of fuck, that hurts made you think grabbing it is a good idea?”
“Stop whining,” Neve muttered. Gently, she felt along Solmir’s fingers. One of them bent at a sickening angle. “You broke a finger when you punched the wall.”
“The wall deserved it.”
“It needs to be set, if you don’t want it to heal crooked.”
“I feel like a crooked finger is the least of my—Shadows damn me to the deepest pits of the earth and leave me there!”
Neve let go of his finger, the bones now set straight. He couldn’t see her self-satisfied smirk, but she gave him one anyway. “That will swell.”
“Oh, will it?” he muttered mockingly. But she felt him bend his fingers against her knee, testing them. “I suppose I should take that ring off, then.”
He lifted his hand from her knee. A moment later, his fingers found hers, placed something in her palm.
A cold circle of silver.
“Keep it for me,” Solmir said.
Neve weighed it in her fist. Then she slipped it over her thumb.