Chapter Twenty-Eight

Red

Are you going to eat?”

Eammon’s voice was quiet in the dim of the cabin. Red saw his shadow against the wall, the edges diffuse from the sunlight up on the deck.

“You know, that wasn’t really a question.” The edge of the bunk sank down as he settled his weight on it. “You’re going to eat, it’s just a question of how pleasant the experience will be for everyone involved.”

She snorted weakly. Flipped over so she could curl around his knee instead of her pillow. “In that case, the answer is yes. I’d rather eat jerky of my own accord than have you nearly drown me in broth again.”

“Good girl,” Eammon rumbled.

Red forced herself to sit up, wincing against the pain in her head, and accepted the napkin-wrapped dinner and cup of lukewarm ale Eammon handed her.

It was the first time she’d managed to eat since the night before last, since the key in her pocket pulled her into a strange dream-space—the Heart Tree—and revealed her sister, only to take her away. The key was still under her pillow. She’d considered breaking it, more than once, in a fit of rage that it’d brought her so close only to fail. But she couldn’t do it.

Her sister, wreathed in thorns, black-eyed and black-veined, changed by the Shadowlands in ways that echoed Red’s changes from the Wilderwood. Wasn’t that what the voice meant, when the mirror in the tower broke? That they had to mirror each other, match each other? But they’d done it, and here they still were, stuck in opposite worlds.

Red chewed methodically, took a swallow of ale to wash it down. She tasted none of it. “I don’t understand.”

“I know.” A constant refrain, what they’d repeated to each other over and over again since Eammon found Red collapsed on the deck. “But we still have the key. Maybe Kiri can tell us how to make it bring you to Neve again.”

She nodded listlessly. “If she’ll come.”

There was the hardest part, the one that cut deepest. It wasn’t that Red had done something wrong, wasn’t that the Heart Tree wouldn’t let Neve go. Neve had chosen to stay.

And Red didn’t know how to process that.

On some level, she recognized the irony—Red had chosen to enter the Wilderwood, and Neve had chosen to stay in the Shadowlands. Both of them refusing to be saved. One more reflection.

And there were the things she said, about Solmir being on their side, about killing the Kings. Clearly, Neve thought she had a part to play in it. But couldn’t she do it from here, where Red could keep her safe?

Because there, sunk into the shadows, the only person to keep her safe was Solmir. And that thought made Red’s hands curl into claws, made tiny vines peek from her nailbeds and her veins run springtime green.

Eammon didn’t try to tell her everything would be fine. He didn’t speak empty words of pointless comfort. Instead, he put one large, scarred hand on her thigh and used the other to push her ivy-threaded hair behind her ear. “If she’ll come,” he repeated. Then, “And whether she does or not is her decision, Red. You can’t make her do something she doesn’t want to do.” His mouth tipped up at the corner. “It’s never worked out well for the two of you.”

She huffed a halfhearted laugh and drained the rest of the ale. “No, it certainly hasn’t.” Her lips pressed together, brows drawing down. “I just… I don’t understand. I don’t understand why she pulled all that darkness in at the grove, why she let herself get trapped in the Shadowlands in the first place. Surely there was another way.”

His green-and-amber eyes glinted in the dim light, gaze level. “She probably thought the same thing when you insisted on going to the Wilderwood.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“It’s close.” He shrugged. “You both got tangled up in something beyond yourself. With people who don’t deserve it.”

“Don’t you dare compare yourself to him.” It came out low, nearly a snarl. “He tried to kill you, Eammon. He killed your parents.”

“He had a part in it,” Eammon agreed softly, “but their death was a complicated thing. We could just as well blame the Wilderwood.” He paused, looked away. “Or blame Ciaran and Gaya themselves. Very rarely can the entirety of fault be held by one person.”

Red gnawed on the corner of her lip. She’d told him and the others what Neve said about Solmir while they were in the Heart Tree. That they were on the same side. Eammon hadn’t seemed as incredulous as she thought he should be. When they’d become the Wilderwood, some of the latent anger in Eammon had been tempered. Forests were old, slow-growing things, patient and even, and some of that had seeped into Eammon, too.

Red kept waiting for some of that patience and placidity to temper her. Thus far, it hadn’t happened.

“I’m not saying we forgive him. You know that.” He lifted a heavy brow. “If you already laid your claim on the first punch, I have the second.”

“Raffe can have third,” Red said.

“Working with Solmir doesn’t mean we forget what he’s done.” Eammon tucked another strand of ivy behind Red’s ear. “Once this is all taken care of—once the Kings are gone, completely—then we can talk about retribution. About fault and blame.”

“And we can kill him,” Red said brightly.

Eammon snorted. “We’ll see.”

She watched him, lip still between her teeth. A hulking shadow in dim light was her Wolf, his hair long, the bark on his forearms rough against her leg. “You,” she said softly, “are far more compassionate than you have any right to be.”

He leaned forward, lips brushing over hers. “Someone taught me that sometimes it’s all right to feel sympathy for monsters.”

One kiss, for comfort rather than heat. They’d broken away, foreheads tilted together, when someone darkened the doorway.

“Land on the horizon.” Kayu didn’t sound exactly enthused about it. “We’ll be at the temple dock by this time tomorrow.”

The Rylt looked very different from Valleyda.

All the greenery in Valleyda was carefully cultivated—flowers bred to keep hardy in the cold, banks of tough grasses that would survive short summers and long, bitter winters. Other than the Wilderwood, most forests were all pine and fir, more blue and gray than green.

But the Rylt was green all over. Even the beach beyond the small dock that serviced the Temple was fringed with waving fronds of grass, hillocks of it sprouting from the sand, like the earth here was so abundant, it couldn’t be held back. Flowers bloomed in the moors beyond, carpeted a deep and verdant green.

Red expected the Wilderwood within her to be pleased when they stepped off the gangplank, feet once again on solid ground, especially among all these growing things. But it stayed as it had throughout the voyage, still and close and on edge.

She shot a look at Eammon. He met her eyes, gave her a tiny nod. He felt it, too. This place might be abundant, but it wasn’t home.

And what waited for them here wasn’t welcoming.

Kayu strode past them, headed for the dunes. “Temple is just ahead.” Her voice was quiet, preoccupied. Nothing like the funny, playful woman she’d been in Valleyda and on the ship. She’d grown quieter and quieter as they drew closer to the Rylt, drawing in on herself. Even Raffe couldn’t get her to laugh there at the end, only give a wan smile.

The man in question walked up to Red and Eammon, all three of them watching Kayu climb the path cut into the dunes beyond the dock. “She doesn’t seem all that happy to be here,” Red said after a moment of quiet.

“No, she doesn’t.” Raffe frowned as he watched Kayu draw farther away. With a sigh, he started forward, tugging up his hood against the wind off the sea. “Though frankly, if anyone was enthused about visiting Kiri, I’d be concerned for their mental stability.”

Fife and Lyra were the last to disembark. Lyra looked around curiously, always excited to see somewhere new, but Fife seemed as apprehensive as Red and Eammon felt. He rubbed at the Mark hidden beneath his sleeve. “Well. Let’s get this over with.”

“At least the food will improve,” Red said, searching for a bright side as they started through the sand.

“If you like sheep’s stomach,” Lyra replied.

Red grimaced.

The Temple was immediately visible when they topped the dunes, gleaming marble amid all the green. A profuse garden of herbs and wildflowers grew around the plain driftwood fence and shallow stone steps that led to the Temple doors, ruffled by the ever-present breeze off the water.

Kayu stood by the door, shifting from foot to foot, not making eye contact with any of them. Raffe stood next to her, face drawn into uncomfortable lines.

When the rest of them reached the door, he was the one to turn and face it, drawing his spine straight and his shoulders back. His hand lifted to knock.

But the door swung in before he could.

A priestess with a white, freckled face and golden-red hair stood on the other side, smiling. “The party from Valleyda,” she said brightly. “We’ve been expecting you.”

All of them cast sidelong glances, shifted from foot to foot. All of them but Kayu. She brushed past the priestess without looking at her. “Come on. I’ll take you to Kiri.”

The priestess at the door stepped aside with another smile. “Yes, do come in.”

Red gave Eammon one more quick, apprehensive glance. His fingers wrapped around hers as they crossed the threshold, and it felt like crossing into enemy territory.

The inside of the Ryltish Temple was just as simple as the outside, the stone walls unadorned with anything but a single tapestry of five crowns—four in quadrants, one in the center, a pattern Red recognized from the Temple in Valleyda. Three hallways branched from the circular foyer, stretching from side to side and directly in front of the door, with no sign to what might lay within them. Sconces adorned the walls, providing wavering light in the gloom.

All the candles were dark gray.

Eammon gave the candles a wary glance. “Say the word, and we’re gone,” he murmured, low enough that only she could hear. Leaves rustled in his voice. “I won’t even complain about the seasickness.”

“We have to see what she knows,” Red whispered back. The key burned in her pocket. “We have to see if she knows how to get to Neve again.”

His teeth ground in his jaw, but Eammon nodded.

Kayu headed toward the central hallway, not looking behind her to see if they followed. Lyra’s brow furrowed. “How does she know where to go?”

“Maybe she’s traveled here before?” But even Raffe didn’t sound convinced. A curse hissed through his teeth as he hurried after Kayu.

Fife slid his eyes to Red and Eammon. “Do you feel as nervous about this as I do?”

“Absolutely,” Eammon muttered.

Red sighed, releasing Eammon’s arm to start after Kayu and Raffe. “You two are worse than my old nursemaids.”

“They have been for centuries,” Lyra said.

The hallway was silent, the quiet broken only by the sound of their feet over the stone. A few more priestesses passed by, but not many, and none of them spoke, barely acknowledging them at all. The corridor was lined with doors, some of them open, revealing empty cloister rooms with naked beds and empty wardrobes.

“Not many priestesses here,” Fife said. “Did they turn out the ones who didn’t agree with them, or have them killed, do you think?”

Lyra scowled at him. “Do you have to make this more morbid than it is?”

Nerves were a ball in Red’s throat, difficult to swallow past. Eammon rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.

Up ahead, Kayu stopped at a closed door, one that didn’t look any different from the others lining the hall. “These are the High Priestess’s quarters.”

“How do you know that?” Red asked quietly.

The other woman’s expression didn’t waver, but her dark eyes widened, just momentarily, before she flicked them away. “I’ve been here before,” she said airily. “I studied here before I went to Valleyda.”

Red wasn’t sure she bought that. The tightening of Eammon’s fingers said he didn’t, either. But what was there to do about it now? They needed to talk to Kiri, and Kayu had brought them here to do it. The rest they could figure out later.

After Neve was home.

A moment, then Raffe stepped up beside Kayu, put his hand on the door handle. “Here we go,” he breathed, and pushed the door open.