Chapter Thirty-Three
Red
Eammon was there when she awoke, walking a path into the dust, back and forth across the cloister room, anxiously holding a glass of water. Some of it had slopped over the side from his constant pacing, dripping from his scarred knuckle onto the stone floor.
“There’s a perfectly serviceable table over here, you know.”
It came out a barely audible croak, but he was by her side in an instant, spilling more water when he insisted on kissing her forehead before handing her the glass. “To be honest, I didn’t notice the table.”
“Too busy taking in the rest of the scenery?” She wagged her fingers at the room—dingy white and gray, all of it dusty—lips bent into a rueful smile. Eammon’s worry had always been an all-consuming thing, especially where she was concerned.
He quirked the side of his mouth, though it fell quickly, his thoughts too churning to find any humor. His eyes flashed as he shook his head, sinking down next to her on the bed. “How do you feel?”
Red made a noncommittal noise. “About as well as one can, under the circumstances.”
Now that she was awake, heaviness settled over her again, helplessness a weight on her shoulders. She had a key to the underworld, a key to getting Neve back, and it was completely useless unless her twin decided to leave.
The key lay against her side now, pulled out of her pocket by tosses and turns of sleep, glowing golden against the sheets. Red fluttered her fingers over it, just enough to reassure herself of its presence. She almost didn’t want to touch it, now that she knew exactly what it was. Such a powerful thing, but it still couldn’t bring her what she wanted. Setting her teeth, she gingerly picked it up and placed it on the bedside table.
Worry still sparked in Eammon’s eyes, green-haloed and fixed on her. Red sighed, put her hands on his shoulders. “I promise you, I’m fine.”
“You aren’t,” he rumbled. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“At least that’s true, this time.” She gave him a tired smirk. “Not just something I tell you because I want to be a martyr. Unlike someone I could mention.”
The Wolf rolled his eyes even as he tilted up her chin with his finger. “A self-martyring bastard was the term you used, I think.”
He kissed her, quick and chaste, and Red leaned her forehead against his. “Did Raffe and Kayu get another ship?”
“They were headed to the harbor, last I heard.” Eammon tucked her hair behind her ear. “We should hopefully be able to leave in the morning.”
Morning would be soon, at least—night had already fallen, blackening the windows. “I’ll probably stay up and let you sleep,” Red muttered. “I don’t much like the idea of all of us being vulnerable here with Kiri. We need to set a watch.”
“Might not be a bad idea.” Eammon scooted onto the bed until he sat next to her, leaning back against the spare headboard. “Though I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep, either. Plenty of time for that on the ship, with miles of water between us and the mad priestesses.” He grimaced. “Maybe I can sleep the entire three days. That would be an improvement on my prior sailing experience.”
“No more boats after this.”
He nodded. “No more boats.”
Red put her head on his shoulder, frowning as she thought back over Kiri’s ravings. “Kiri called Neve the Shadow Queen and me the Golden-Veined. Isn’t that what Valdrek said the Sisters constellation was called, in some of the old languages?”
“I think so,” Eammon murmured. “But what would that mean?”
“Maybe nothing.” She burrowed farther into his shoulder, suddenly exhausted though she’d spent the last few hours asleep. “At the very least, it means this is bigger than us. This is something that was always going to happen.”
He went quiet, thoughtful. “It’s my fault, then.”
“No.” She sat up, turned, crouched over him with his waist caged by her arms. “Don’t you start that martyring shit again. I already warned you.”
A slight smile, but the worry stayed in his eyes. “You’ve become far more wolflike than I ever was.”
“And don’t forget it.” She sat back on her heels, still straddling his waist. After a moment, she picked up his hand, traced his scars with a light finger as she talked. “I think when I chose to become the Wilderwood, it… started something. Set something into motion. The roles were waiting, the pieces already set, and we just made the game begin. In that case, it’s just as much my fault as it is yours. And Neve’s, too.” She sighed. “We all made the choices that led us here. They just had further-reaching consequences than we knew.”
Silence, both of them sitting with the weight of the idea. “Well,” Eammon said finally, “I should be sorry, probably. But I’m not.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Making you fall in love with me and thus setting all this in motion.” A mischievous smile twisted his mouth, made his eyes glimmer like autumn sunshine through leaves. “I should have tried to temper my raw appeal.”
She tugged on his hair. “I feel like I was the one who had to make you fall in love with me. You were infuriatingly noble about the whole thing.”
“I started falling in love with you the moment you crashed into my library,” Eammon said, matter-of-fact. “I was just very good at hiding it.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes that felt stolen. Red leaned forward and rested her cheek on his chest, listening to Eammon’s heartbeat, the thud of it cushioned with leaf and branch. He loosely wrapped his arms around her waist, his breath warm against her neck.
The key lay on the table next to her half-drunk glass of water; she reached over and grabbed it, sitting back and holding it on her palm between them. It still glowed, still felt warm to the touch. She could still feel the faintest thud of a heartbeat.
Eammon eyed it warily. “You were right all along. What you did in the clearing, trying to get to Neve. That’s what gave you the key, made the Heart Tree able to pull you to it when Neve arrived.”
“I had to give up something for her,” Red murmured, turning the key over in her hands. “She went into the underworld for me. I had to prove I was willing to do the same for her. That’s how it works, I think. The same kinds of love, whether they’re pretty or not.”
Deep within her, the Wilderwood bloomed, pushing new shoots through her marrow. Agreement, acknowledgment that she was right.
Her Wolf’s hands tightened on her thighs, his wary look at the key almost becoming a glare. “As long as it doesn’t ask you for anything else,” he said, low and fierce.
Red pulled her lip between her teeth. She didn’t respond.
Finally, she clambered off him, stretching. “I need to wash my face and get out of this room.”
He swung long legs over the side of the bed and stood. “Fife found a library while he was looking for the kitchen, said it was well stocked and had some volumes that weren’t at the Keep or the Valleydan capital. Might be worth investigating.”
“Somehow, you always find the books.” Red gently pulled the ends of his hair until he bent far enough forward for her to drop a kiss on his forehead, right between the points of his nascent antlers. “Go leave me for reading, I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not above punching a priestess if the need arises.”
Eammon nodded, kissed her one more time before heading toward the door. “The library is on the other side of the amphitheater, if you need me.”
She nodded, and the door closed behind him.
Red splashed some water on her face from the ewer in the corner and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Part of her thought of following Eammon to the library, seeing if there was anything they could find that mentioned the Shadow Queen or the Golden-Veined. But the thought made her stomach curl in on itself, her body signaling the need for a momentary reprieve, so she decided just to wander the halls for a bit first, work out some of her nervous energy.
The door closed quietly behind Red as she slipped into the hallway. The cloister room she’d ended up in wasn’t far from the main foyer, the nexus of the entire Temple. When she came out of the mouth of the corridor, the door to the amphitheater was open to her right, revealing a sliver of dusty and little-used curving stone seats. It seemed the Ryltish Temple didn’t see many worshippers.
She turned away from the amphitheater. On the opposite side of the foyer, a short stone hallway ended in a plain wooden door.
“Where are you going?”
Red’s hands closed to fists as she whirled, a promise of what she’d told Eammon about punching a priestess. But it was just Kayu.
Her hair was mussed, the usual pin-straight strands tangled and frizzed behind her head. She wore the same clothes she’d worn earlier, but the way they hung seemed subtly different, as if they’d been removed and then replaced. She looked tired, and her eyes were glassy, like she’d either been crying or was about to start.
“Just wandering.” The clear vulnerability on Kayu’s face made Red want to reach out to the other woman, want to trust her. But there was still a small part of Red that regarded everyone warily, sharp and feral and unwilling to open her safe circle to new people.
Kayu shifted back and forth, eyes flickering down the hall before coming back to Red. “Can I come with you? I don’t want to be alone. And you probably shouldn’t be, either.”
That made her brows draw down, but after a moment, Red nodded. Clearly, Kayu was dealing with something—she understood the desire not to be alone. And she was right; it might be safer for all of them to stick together.
“I was just going to see what this was,” Red said, gesturing toward the tiny hallway with its small door. “You’re welcome to come with me.”
Kayu nodded, mouth still pressed into a thin line, eyes still shining.
Red wondered if she should ask what had happened, but decided against it—were she in Kayu’s position, she wouldn’t feel like sharing. Instead, she went down the hallway and grasped the door handle. At first she thought it might be locked, but then the handle turned, smooth and soundless, taken care of in a way that seemed odd compared with the rest of the Temple’s obvious neglect.
The door opened into a small room lit only by flickering candles, all of them dark gray and dripping wax. In the center, a stone pedestal with a thick white twig, casting barred shadow on the wall.
A Shrine.
An instinct to flee flared from the woman Red had been before, the same one who pelted through a hungry forest with a bloody cheek, who’d knelt among the branch shards in the Valleydan Shrine and been prayed over by priestesses filled with piety for monsters. Lost and angry and helpless against powers she didn’t understand.
“Are you all right?”
Kayu’s voice shattered the memories, grounded her back into who and what she was. Not that woman anymore. Maybe scared, maybe out of her depth, but not someone who didn’t know who she was, not someone who didn’t understand the place she’d made for herself.
“I’m fine,” Red said.
She stepped over the threshold.
This Shrine was tiny, barely large enough for her and Kayu to stand shoulder to shoulder without knocking into the table full of prayer candles in the corner. The walls were the same dark stone, but they seemed darker with the absence of any light but the flickering flames. The barely there hiss of wicks was the only sound.
Cautiously, Red approached the branch in the center of the room. Slight threads of darkness traced the bark, nowhere near as thick as true shadow-rot, but enough to make unease sink a hook in her middle.
The click of the latch behind her made her jump, her back to the branch and knees bent to a crouch, hands outstretched like claws. Next to the door, Kayu stood statue-still, her eyes wide and her jaw clenched.
The priestess who’d pushed open the door gasped, a pale hand with bandaged fingers pressed against an ample bosom. “King’s mercy,” she murmured, voice touched with a Ryltish accent that made everything sound musical. But something about the glint of her eyes seemed more eager than surprised. She turned and looked behind her, gave a tiny nod to someone just out of sight. Then the door closed.
Red straightened out of her battle-ready stance, the feral look on her face melting away to anxiety. Being this close to an Order priestess still made her nervous, even with the Wilderwood contained beneath her skin, somewhere they couldn’t hurt it. “Sorry,” she muttered, making herself as small as possible to try to edge around the priestess toward the door.
“Don’t let me disturb you.” Oblivious to her attempted escape, the priestess stayed square in the path to the door, a gentle smile on her face. The hand she hadn’t pressed to her chest in surprise held an unlit gray taper. “Our Shrine is small, but more than one can pray here. Be welcome, Second Daughter.”
“Lady Wolf.” Not a growl, but close to it.
“Yes, yes, of course.” The priestess lowered her unlit candle to the flame of another until the wick caught. Still, she didn’t move away from the door, standing right before it like a sentry. “I’m Maera.”
Maera. The Ryltish equivalent of Merra. Red had always thought the practice of naming children after Second Daughters was macabre, but it wasn’t exactly uncommon. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling suddenly protective of her own name, the possibility of it being given to someone else who had no idea the true legacy they called back to.
The wavering candlelight caught the shape of a pendant on Maera’s chest. Pale bark on a thin cord.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Maera lightly touched the necklace. “It doesn’t allow us to speak to the Kings, not like the High Priestess can. But with the right coaxing, it allows one to feel their will more keenly.”
The bandages on her fingers left little mystery as to what the right coaxing would be. Red’s stomach curled in on itself; the Wilderwood within her shuddered.
“It’s a privilege to wear,” Maera said softly. Her eyes flickered toward where Kayu stood in the shadows. “One must prove themselves worthy to receive their pendant. Worthy to remain within our sisterhood, to take advantage of the protections it provides.”
Next to the door, Kayu’s face was bone-pale.
Red didn’t know what was going on here, but both the forest within her and what was left of her regular human intuition told her it was time to get out of this room.
“Thank you,” she said, though she was unsure what exactly she was supposed to be thanking Maera for, “but I have to go.”
She twitched her fingers, trying to call the Wilderwood to attention. There was nothing with roots in this room, nothing under her influence, but surely she could find something—
Her veins greened, but it was weak. So far from home, in this place made of shadows and rock, there was little forest to be called.
“You don’t need to go,” Maera murmured. “You should stay right where you are, Lady Wolf.”
And the door behind her slammed open.
Kiri. Of course it was Kiri. The High Priestess still looked frail, still looked sickly, but she stood tall in the doorway, and her eyes blazed bright.
“Second Daughter.” It was a sneer, emphasized, a clear choice to use this title and not the true one. “It’s time we finished this, don’t you think?”
The shadow grove was gone, there was no cold magic for Kiri to call. But she flew at Red with her hands outstretched, and in one was a dagger.
Red backed up, her spine knocking into the pedestal in the center of the room, the branch shard crashing to the floor. Her hands raised, fingers crooked and flushed verdant as the Wilderwood within her searched for something, anything—
Threading roots beneath the stone floor, grass and herbs snaking through the ground. Red grabbed on to them, directed them, the floor shattering with a crack of breaking rock as they shot up to follow her order. But Kiri was fast, and her knife was sharp, and even as the roots burst beneath her in a shower of shale, the shine of the blade kissed Red’s neck.
Then—something wrapping around Kiri’s throat, making her mad blue eyes go wide. A belt, a thin strip of leather that Red marked as familiar. Kiri still strained forward, veins bulging around the makeshift garrote.
Behind her, Kayu, teeth clenched as she twisted her belt around the High Priestess’s neck. “Go, Red,” she panted. “Go.”
“No!” Maera, her previously pleasant face alight with rage. She held no weapon except her gray prayer candle, and Red saw her intent the moment she decided it, moving to sweep the flame toward the loose fall of Kayu’s hair.
A flex of Red’s fingers.
The roots she’d called from the floor shot up through broken stone, twisted around Maera’s arms, her legs, her neck. Just enough to keep her still, not to hurt her.
Maera’s eyes flashed, her face scarlet and her mouth a grimace. “Unclean thing,” she spat at Red. “Abomination. Your sister is lost, Second Daughter. She’ll bow to the Kings’ wishes, and there’s nothing you can do.”
The decision was made in that split second, that mention of Neve, a reminder that even with all this power, she was helpless.
The roots tightened. Maera’s eyes bulged. And Red let them keep tightening until the life in them blinked out.
“Killing her won’t make it less true.” Kiri’s voice, hoarse. She still moved forward, impossibly strong; behind her, Kayu struggled with the belt, but the magic that let Kiri hear the Kings somehow lent her unnatural strength. “You can’t do anything to stop this. All of it rests on Neverah now, and I’ve seen her darkness. You’re the only thing that could make her hold on to herself, and when you’re gone, so is she. It’s over.”
“Yes, it is,” growled a voice from the door.
Eammon. Veins green, eyes afire, striding across the broken floor. Eammon, wrapping one hand around Kiri’s jaw and the other around the back of her neck. Eammon, twisting, a crack as the High Priestess’s neck broke.
Green-haloed eyes checked over Red, made sure she was unharmed, then turned to Kayu. “I just spoke with Raffe,” the Wolf said, his voice the sound of autumn chilling into winter as the body of the High Priestess crumpled to the floor. “You have some explaining to do.”