Chapter Thirty-One

Raffe

Eammon looked like he hadn’t slept in days. In the shadows of the cloister room, Raffe saw him drop a kiss to Red’s forehead before heading to the door. He closed it softly behind him and ran a hand over his face. “This is the first deep sleep she’s had since she saw Neve. I suppose I should be grateful for that, at least. She’ll rest better on a land-bound bed.”

“There’s one good thing about being stuck here to add to the list,” Raffe said, leaning against the wall across from the room.

“How many things are on the list?”

“So far, one.”

The Wolf huffed a sound that was probably meant to be a laugh. “That sounds about right.” He rubbed his magic-addled eyes with one heavily scarred hand. “Did Kayu say when we’d be able to get another ship?”

“We’re headed to the main harbor now,” Raffe said. “We’ll have one by tomorrow morning. Maybe even tonight—at this point, I’m willing to sail back to Valleyda on a raft. Or someone’s buoyant spare mattress.”

“You and me both,” Eammon muttered. But Raffe thought the tinge of green on his face at the thought wasn’t only due to forest magic.

“Did she say anything else?” Raffe asked quietly. “About Neve?”

That night on the ship, when he left Red right before the key in her pocket pulled her to… somewhere else… had been chaotic, to say the least. Whatever force brought Red and Neve together had physically taken Red away, made her vanish from thin air in a wash of golden glow.

Raffe had been the only one to see it happen—the sailor at the prow hadn’t been paying attention. And Raffe had seen only part of it, really. He’d been climbing back down the ladder when he saw a shower of what looked like sparks, heard something that sounded like a thunderclap, air rushing in to fill a space recently emptied. When he’d scrambled back up to the deck, Red was gone.

And, because Raffe had the worst luck, Eammon had chosen that moment to come up and check on her.

To say the Wolf had been frantic was an understatement. His eyes had blazed green, no whites in them at all, and vines had pushed from the ends of his fingers as he prowled around the deck, calling her name, half a second away from throwing himself overboard to see if she’d somehow fallen.

Thankfully, Red’s absence was brief. She’d come back in the same gold-and-thunder crash she’d left in, dazed and teary-eyed, and sank to her knees, hands curled around her key. “I saw her,” she whispered brokenly. “I saw her.”

It could only be one her. “Is she all right?” Raffe started forward, the words crowding together on his tongue in their rush to get out. “How do we get her out? What do we—”

But then Red’s face crumpled into a sob, and she buried her head in Eammon’s shoulder. And Raffe had known that he wouldn’t be getting any answers, and he didn’t much have the heart for questions, anyway.

Now, outside Red’s door in the Rylt, Eammon just sighed, hand dropping away from his face. “She said there was a tree,” he said. “That the key took her somewhere with a massive tree, and Neve was there. The Heart Tree, I assume.”

“And she can go back.” Raffe tipped his head back against the wall as he tried to piece together sense from Kiri’s words, the ramblings of a mad priestess whom they were supposed to follow into the shadows. “She can go back, but she can’t make Neve come back with her.”

Eammon nodded. His eyes slanted Raffe’s way, thoughtful. “Red said that Neve chose to stay there, Raffe.”

His spine stiffened. Kiri had said as much, in her circular and half-mad way, but to hear it from Red made it more real. Solid in a way he couldn’t dismiss. “Why would she do that?”

The Wolf shrugged uncomfortably. “She said something about a job left undone. About how she couldn’t leave until she finished what she started.” A pause. “She and Solmir are trying to kill the Kings.”

It made Raffe’s stomach pit, but not with surprise. Of course that’s what it was. Of course. He remembered Solmir’s shouting as he was dragged into the churning storm of the dying grove, after Neve pulled all those darkened veins connecting her to the trees inward. About how they didn’t understand. About how it would be so much worse.

This was always about the Kings. About monsters and gods and the worlds that either contained them or would be left to survive them.

Shadows damn him, he needed a drink.

“Why is that her responsibility?” His voice raised, though he didn’t mean for it to. “You and Red are the forest gods—why is Neve being pulled into it?”

Eammon shot a meaningful look at the closed door, and Raffe took a deep breath, trying for calm. “I don’t understand why she thinks she has to help him.”

Him came out like a curse, and the look in Eammon’s odd eyes was one of agreement. Neither of them had any love lost for Solmir.

“I don’t know Neve well,” the Wolf hedged. “Or at all, really, other than what I’ve heard of her from you and Red. But she seems like the type of person to make things her responsibility. She and her sister are similar that way.”

“Damned savior complexes,” Raffe muttered.

Eammon snorted. He crossed his arms, leaning against the wall next to Raffe. “I’m familiar with the need to take responsibility,” he said quietly. “With feeling like you have to fix everything that came before you. Especially when you’ve made mistakes that ended up hurting other people.”

Raffe tapped his foot, an outlet for nervous energy, and didn’t respond. He thought of Second Daughters disappearing into the woods. He thought of bloody branches in a dark Shrine.

A moment, then Eammon turned, looking toward the door. “I thought I’d get her some water.” Quiet, as if he thought he might wake Red even though solid oak stood between them. Maybe he could—the Wolves were tied together in ways Raffe didn’t fully understand. “For when she wakes up.”

It took Raffe a moment to figure out that he was waiting for a response. Asking slanted permission from someone else to leave. Otherwise, Eammon would just stay right here, staring at the door and straining his ears for any sign of wakefulness from within.

“I think that’s a good idea.” Raffe gestured down the hall. “Kitchen is that way, to the right. End of the short staircase.”

“I’ll find it.” The Wolf turned to him, a considering look in eyes that seemed to be all the colors of the forest at once. “Neve’s choice is about her, Raffe. Not anyone else.”

Not you, hung the unspoken addendum.

“I know,” Raffe replied. But it tasted thin and bitter.

Eammon nodded, giving one more look to the door before starting down the hallway toward the kitchen.

Raffe sighed, rubbing a hand over his short hair, and tapped the back of his head on the wall. Once, twice, three times, trying to gently knock away all the things he didn’t want to dwell on. He’d managed to stop thinking of them—at least, he had since that night when he told Red about how he didn’t dream of the Tree anymore—but they were hard to hold at arm’s length here, like the Temple called thoughts of Neve forward, tied themselves together with his memories.

He cared for her. Deeply. And while lately he cursed himself for getting involved in all of this, it was more with exasperation than regret. He didn’t regret being there for her, staying in Valleyda when he could’ve gone back to Meducia and avoided this entire situation. He didn’t regret trying to get her back.

But shit, it would be nice if one thing could be simple.

The Ryltish Temple was a spare structure, with only the three hallways branching off the central room—one on the right for a Shrine that he had no desire to explore, one in the middle for cloister rooms, a bathing facility, and the kitchen, and one on the left leading to a domed amphitheater coated in dust, apparently little used. A sign that the world was moving on from the Order, that Kings who did nothing for them were falling further and further out of collective consciousness.

Good fucking riddance.

Raffe headed toward the front doors. Kayu was going to meet him there, and then they’d go to the harbor together to charter another ship with her seemingly endless supply of coin.

She was waiting just outside the door, arms crossed, body tense. Kayu had held herself scabbard-tight since they arrived here, like the oppressive atmosphere of the Temple weighed even heavier on her shoulders than it did on the rest of them. She turned as soon as Raffe pushed open the door, but her eyes didn’t quite meet his. “Ready?”

“I suppose.” They fell into step, both very determined not to look at the other. After they passed the flower-tangled gate, Raffe jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “So when were you here last? You seem fairly familiar with the Temple.”

Her steps stuttered, dark hair flicking behind her as she turned startled eyes on him. “What do you mean?”

“You said you studied here. Before you came to Valleyda.”

“Oh.” Kayu shook her head, grimaced. “Sorry. I’ve been distracted since we arrived. This place makes my skin crawl.”

He snorted. “Mine too.”

“I studied here for a month or so.” Her lips twisted to the side, like she was thinking. “Languages. The Ryltish priestesses are some of the last to remember the old dialects the country spoke centuries ago.”

“Seems an odd thing to want to learn.”

“Not when you like learning.” But she said it quietly, as if the distraction she’d spoken of was still in full effect.

Kayu loosened up the farther they got from the Temple. The dock they’d sailed to was down the shore from the main harbor, which grew busier as they approached. This harbor in particular was more for travel than trade, so most of the vessels were galleys like the one that brought them here, though a few larger ships idled in the water, too.

Raffe, lost in thought, let Kayu lead the way. He wasn’t sure what to do now—now that everything rested on Neve, now that they knew it would have to be her own decision that brought her back. Just waiting didn’t seem like an option, but what else could he do? What else could any of them do?

Even Kiri and the other priestesses seemed content to stagnate, to see what happened in the Shadowlands and how it reverberated here. They must expect Neve and Solmir to fail, the Kings to break through and rule the earth like they had once before; otherwise, wouldn’t they be doing something about it? Kiri could speak to the Kings—at least, that was what Raffe gleaned from her ravings in the sickroom, talking to Red about choices and Shadow Queens—but she was just… lying there. Waiting. All of them, just waiting.

It made his palms itch. Such massive stakes, undercut by utter helplessness.

“Such is the way with gods, apparently,” he muttered under his breath. He would truly kill for a glass of wine.

Kayu found her mark quickly, a grizzled older captain with a galley smaller than the one they’d sailed over on. Raffe hung back while she did the deal, falling into the role of brawn and letting her be the brains. He kept a hand on his dagger hilt—he’d left his tor back in Valleyda; his rudimentary skill with the thing was embarrassing when Lyra was around—and ambled up behind Kayu, trying to look like a hired guard rather than the son of a Meducian Councilor. His fine doublet had already earned him some looks, and he felt it was probably more prudent to stay beneath anyone’s notice.

“Six of us,” Kayu said emphatically. “As early tomorrow morning as you can.”

“Only six will cost you extra,” the captain said. He flashed a grin pocked with missing teeth. “I don’t leave the harbor with less than ten, to go all the way to Floriane. Have to make the trip worth it.”

That was a lie; the galley bobbing in the water behind him wouldn’t carry ten passengers unless they slept on top of each other in the hold. Kayu knew that, Raffe saw it in the downward pull of her mouth, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she tugged a purse from her waist and started counting out coins.

“Be ready when the sun rises,” she said as she dropped the last coin in the captain’s gnarled hand. “And remember the number of passengers.”

“Aye.” The captain, for all that he’d named the price, seemed taken aback at the amount of money he’d just been handed. With a surreptitious look at the bustling harbor, he shoved the coins into the pocket of his coat. “When the sun first licks the sky, I’ll be waitin’. For six passengers.” He held out his hand to shake.

Kayu gripped it. When she pulled, the captain gave a little grunt of surprise, tugged forward more by shock than any particular strength on Kayu’s part.

“I have an eye for faces,” she said, voice pitched low. “And friends in places that could make your life very uncomfortable, if you decide not to hold to our bargain. Just letting you know.”

Raffe’s eyes went wide, but when the captain shot a startled look his way, he tried to school his expression into nonchalance.

“You have my word,” the captain said, fingers squirming to get out of Kayu’s grip. “Sunrise, six passengers, at the Temple dock.”

“See you then.” Kayu turned on her heel. Raffe followed. When he looked over his shoulder, the captain was shaking out his hand, like Kayu’s grip had squeezed off his circulation.

Once they’d left the harbor behind, Raffe sped up until they walked apace. “You drive a hard bargain.”

“Had to.” Kayu tried for a smile, but it fell flat. “Sailors will scam you cross-eyed if you aren’t careful. You should’ve seen what I had to pay the ones that brought us here.”

A sound enough answer; still, Raffe sped up again, overtaking her and then turning around so they were face-to-face, halting her forward stride. “Kayu.”

Her full lips pressed together, dark eyes finally meeting his. “Raffe.”

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong.” Something in her heart-shaped face went flinty. “Why, are you afraid I’m going to renege on your meal ticket if my mood goes sour? I know you don’t think much of me, but I’m more trustworthy than that.”

“Kayu,” he said again, because her name was all he really knew to hold whatever feeling this was. Irritation, yes, but also worry, and not just for himself.

She didn’t say anything, eyes wide on his. He didn’t realize he’d put a hand on her shoulder until he felt her muscle tremor beneath his palm.

Raffe swallowed. Then he dropped his hand. “I’m not worried about the money,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”

Her mouth twisted; he couldn’t tell what emotion caused it. Kayu took a breath, looked away from him. Thoughts raced behind her eyes.

“It’s this place,” she said finally, softly. “I don’t have pleasant memories here.”

“At the Temple?”

She nodded, making her waterfall of black hair ripple in the wind off the ocean. “I didn’t come under the best circumstances.” It was almost a whisper, like it was something she didn’t want to admit. “My father… he wanted to marry me off. To a brute of a man who’d had four wives already, every one of them mysteriously dead within six months of matrimony. I’m the third daughter. My only value is in my marriage, how much money or power or strategic influence it can bring the Emperor.”

He nodded, piecing together the narrative. “So you came here—started traveling, studying elsewhere—to escape.”

A high, harsh laugh. “More or less.” Kayu shrugged. “The night I refused the marriage, I stowed away on a ship. I didn’t care where it was going. It brought me here, and things…” She stopped, swallowed. Another flash of rapid thought behind her eyes, calculating, tallying up what she wanted to reveal. “I did what I had to do. Took shelter in the Temple. My memories of my time here are not kind.”

His older sister, Amethya, had been married to a man his parents chose. But he’d been kind and funny and handsome in addition to being immensely wealthy, and Raffe knew his family wouldn’t have consented to the marriage otherwise. He couldn’t imagine sending someone he loved to marry a person he knew was dangerous. “And your father… he still doesn’t know where you are?”

Her chin ducked; she tucked her hair nervously behind her ear. “Even if he does,” she murmured, “it doesn’t matter. He can’t touch me.”

The words could’ve been full of bravado, but the way she said them was almost regretful. Raffe nodded, arms crossed. “It’s hard, being somewhere that holds bad memories,” he said. “I understand.”

“Do you?” Still so soft, so quiet. But Kayu brushed past him without a backward glance.

When they topped the dunes again, Fife and Lyra were standing by the fence, talking quietly. It seemed they were playing some kind of game—Lyra would point to a plant, and Fife would name it.

“Threader moss.” Fife sipped from a steaming cup of tea in his hand—he’d found the kitchen, apparently. Lyra’s finger moved, pointing to another variety of moss clinging to the fence. “Queenscarpet.” Another, this one on the ground and dotted with blooms. “Mermaid hair.”

“I hate it when they name real things after pretend things.” The mask of a sunny smile and easy laughter had slipped back over Kayu at some point between the harbor and the dunes, the mask she’d been lacking since they stepped onto the shore of the Rylt. She rested her arms on the fence, leaned over to see the plant in question. “It seems inconsistent.”

“Unless mermaids are real?” Raffe mimicked Kayu’s stance, though he kept careful distance between them. “Honestly, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“If they are, I don’t know about it.” Lyra bent down and plucked one of the blooms she’d pointed to; small, pale blue petals drooped from a green stalk. “Maybe they’re just too smart to leave the sea. Things seem much more complicated on land.”

“What with the maidens to save and the plagues that need breaking,” Fife muttered beside her. She bumped him with her hip and stuck the tiny flower behind his ear.

Kayu’s eyes flickered between them, bright and full of questions. “Are you two…”

Raffe’s brow lifted, his gaze slanting her way, then back to Fife and Lyra. The two Wilderwood denizens looked at each other, an unspoken conversation.

“Well,” Fife said, putting down his tea and cocking a brow at Lyra. “I love you. But you know that.”

“And I love you,” Lyra replied. She reached up, adjusted the mermaid-hair flower so it brushed his temple. She looked back at Kayu, shrugged. “I’m not one for romance. Or sex, mostly. But we love each other. Always have.” She gave Fife a wry smile. “Always will, at this point.”

“To my great chagrin,” Fife said. But he reached over and threaded his fingers through Lyra’s, soft and easy.

That was the only mark of connection between them, solid friendship and clasped hands. No kisses, no signs of romantic love as Raffe knew it. But it seemed like Lyra and Fife ran deeper than that. A different sort of love, one perfectly tailored to them.

Raffe was feeling very out of his depth on love as a concept lately.

The four of them stood in silence. Down on the beach, a gull cawed.

Kayu straightened, dark-bright eyes turning from the moss to Raffe. An unreadable expression crossed her face, somewhere between hope and vulnerability and steel. “You coming?”

And even lost in a haze of thoughts about love and things he didn’t understand, Raffe caught her meaning, the question behind the one she asked. A need for comfort, for something warm, for a place to not think for a moment.

So when Kayu started toward the Temple, a particular kind of determination in her gait, Raffe followed and knew what that meant.

Behind him, the murmur of Fife and Lyra’s voices, gentle against the wind and the gulls and the crash of waves on the shore, a secret language only the two of them shared.

Raffe followed Kayu through the Temple door, down the hall, toward the small cloister rooms with their small cloister beds, toward the one she’d claimed for herself when it became clear they’d be staying at least one night. He didn’t think of what was coming next, though his body knew it. He didn’t let himself think at all.

It was nice, to let his mind settle. Let the rest of him take over for a while.

When the door closed behind them, Kayu turned. She was small, her nose nearly level with his sternum, and when her eyes tilted up to look at his face, her pupils were already wide. His breath went ragged in his chest as she shrugged out of the billowing shirt, the trousers, the boots, and stood before him pale and bare.

“It’s been a while,” she whispered.

“Same here,” Raffe replied.

Kayu kissed him, and she tasted like spice and like flowers. His hands wove through her hair, impossibly silky, running over his skin like a black curtain.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything.” She pulled away, tugged his shirt over his head, ran her hands across the mahogany planes of his chest. “It doesn’t have to mean anything you don’t want it to.”

Comfort. That’s what they were both after. That’s what he told himself as he kissed her again, as his hands came to her hips and lower. Comfort didn’t mean anything, did it? He’d done this before, with other people who knew it wasn’t anything deeper than solace, who knew his heart was elsewhere and didn’t mind. This didn’t mean anything beyond needing some respite. So few things Raffe knew about love, but this, he knew.

And if it did mean something more? If this was something beyond bodies doing what bodies did, what would that mean for him? For Neve?

In this moment, as Kayu backed up to that tiny cloister bed, all warmth and silk, and gulls cawed and waves crashed outside, Raffe found he didn’t much care.

She fell asleep after. They curled toward each other like the two halves of a circle, space between them, the only point of contact Raffe’s palm on the curve of her waist. Her hair feathered over her brow, caught in the current of her breath. He lifted his hand to push it away, and other than settling her head farther into her pillow, Kayu didn’t stir.

Raffe sat up, ran a hand over his face. He felt better—it really had been a while—and now his mind was coming back to him, the endless churn of worry he’d become. It’d been nice to set that aside for an hour. It’d been nice to set it aside with her.

But reprieves didn’t last long.

He was still for a moment, waiting for the guilt, waiting for Neve’s face to paint itself on the backs of his eyelids. It didn’t come. He felt warm and languid and, yes, still worried, but no part of him felt guilty.

It should’ve been a relief. An answer, finally, to the question of whether the love he and Neve had was something more than friendship. Instead, cruelly aware of the shape of the woman next to him, Raffe was afraid this realization would only make the whole situation even more complicated.

She’d said it didn’t have to mean anything. He wished it hadn’t.

Kayu shifted in her sleep, a slight smile curving her full lips. Kings, she was beautiful. Infuriating and meddling and too smart for her own good, but beautiful.

He stifled a groan in his palm.

A bag sat in the corner. Kayu’s. Lavishly embroidered fabric spilled from the top to trail across the stone. Raffe pushed up, meaning to stuff it back in the bag—the dress looked expensive, it would get ruined lying on this dust-covered floor. It didn’t seem as though the priestesses spent much time cleaning.

And he needed to get away from Kayu’s warmth before he reached for her again.

He pulled the dress the rest of the way out of the bag, intending to fold it up and put it back. But as he did, something fluttered to the ground. Frowning, he picked it up.

Papers. Bound together with twine. He could catch one line written across the top: For Her Holiness, the High Priestess.

His pulse ratcheted up in his ears.

Raffe didn’t waste time wondering about Kayu’s right to privacy. He broke the twine with his teeth, sitting naked on the floor to read over the notes.

Notes on everything. All signed by Sister Okada Kayu, novitiate of the Order of the Five Shadows.

It was like a bone setting, the awful way it all came together in his head, the ragged pain of things snapping into place. Kayu’s abrupt arrival in Valleyda right after the other priestesses left. Intercepting that letter from Kiri—except she hadn’t really intercepted it, had she? It’d probably been written for her in the first place, a convenient thing to get into his circle of trust. To get into his bed.

Kings. That stung.

“I’m not going to give it to her.”

The thin sheets puddled around Kayu’s waist. She’d sat up while he was reading, probably watched him do it. Even now, though, she didn’t look afraid. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her.

Kings-damn and all the shadows, he was a fool.

“I only came here to get away from my father.” The words came fast, now that she was finally giving a confession, as if they’d been waiting. “If I became a priestess, he couldn’t compel me to return home. I thought the Rylt was far enough away from the continent to avoid its politics, but when I arrived, the priestesses here had already swapped their loyalties to Kiri’s order, then Kiri arrived right after I did, and when she found out I was distantly in line for the Valleydan throne—”

“She sent you to spy on us.” Raffe stood slowly, the pages of notes clenched in his fist. “To report back on any progress we were making to find Neve.”

“I never sent any of them.” She shook her head, black hair feathering over still-bare shoulders. “Raffe, I never sent any of those notes. I stopped taking them the day I snuck into your bedchamber. I never wanted to do any of this. I’m on your side.”

“The only side you’re on is your own, Kayu. I’m not an idiot.”

“You don’t know him.” Near-panic in her voice, in the way she clutched the sheet to her chest. “You don’t know how awful he is, Raffe. I wouldn’t have lived out the year. I had to do something.”

“Well, you certainly did.” Raffe threw the papers to the ground, grabbing his discarded clothes and pulling them on without checking to make sure they weren’t inside out. If he stayed here, if he listened, he might forgive her. And he’d done enough foolish things for one day.

“I want to help you, Raffe. I…” She trailed off, head dipping lower to obscure her face farther behind all that black hair. When she spoke, it was a whisper. “I have no love for the Kings. I want them dead. I want to help Neve however I can, and I want her to come back. Because you want her back, and you deserve to be happy.”

She could’ve reached in his chest and pulled out his heart, beating and vital, and wrung it out in her hands. It would hurt less.

“I can’t…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Not when she sat there, naked and gilded in the light of the sun setting in the window, golden skin covered in a white sheet and hair like a black river.

So he didn’t finish. Raffe opened the door and strode aimlessly out into the hallway, wanting to be anywhere other than with the traitor he might’ve been falling for.