Chapter Thirty-Four

Raffe

I only did it to escape my betrothal.”

The six of them huddled around a tavern table, shrouded in cloaks, seated in the darkest corner they could find. They didn’t attract much attention. Everyone here was very drunk or on their way to it.

Kayu stared into a tankard. Her third. Raffe wasn’t one for beer, but they didn’t have any wine here and a drink was a drink, so he’d downed two of his own. He stopped there, though—the look on the Wolf’s face was murderous, and Raffe had made a point of staying between him and Kayu.

He didn’t interrogate himself on why.

During their madcap flight from the Temple, the Shrine with its scene of bloodless death shut and locked and hopefully still undiscovered, they hadn’t spared time for discussion. It wasn’t until they arrived at the tavern, needing somewhere to wait out the two hours left until dawn, that the questions—and the anger—had time to reveal themselves.

“So you joined the Order.” Lyra had established herself as the go-between, the cool head that acted as a buffer between the Wolves and Kayu. “Because then you couldn’t be married off.”

“It was the only way to avoid it,” Kayu said. “I couldn’t run from my father forever. I chose the Rylt because it was far away, remote. I’d heard the Order was in some… turmoil… but I didn’t expect the Ryltish Temple to be caught up in it.”

Raffe grimaced. The same reasons Neve had packed the priestesses that didn’t follow Kiri off to the Rylt—the same reasons Raffe had sent Kiri herself and the remains of her followers to join them, after the shadow grove. But, apparently, adherents to a dying religion were willing to latch onto just about anything to try to keep it alive. The three-day voyage had changed the defecting priestesses’ minds about what was acceptable, and they’d spread the poison across the sea, making it the perfect place for Kiri to land. A ready-made cult, just waiting for their leader.

Shit. He really was starting to believe in destiny, in things you couldn’t escape. And destiny seemed to be a bastard.

“By the time I got here, the only priestesses left in the Temple were loyal to Kiri. And once they heard my story, they knew I’d be useful to her. As soon as Kiri arrived and found out who I was, she gave me an ultimatum.” Kayu spoke into her beer, the words kept low so they wouldn’t carry farther than their table. “Either I could go to Valleyda, or she’d send me back to my father.”

“Just go to Valleyda?” Red didn’t look nearly as angry as Eammon did—even though she’d been the one who was almost murdered—but there was a fierceness on her face that Raffe certainly wouldn’t want to cross. “Nothing else?”

The way she asked the question sounded like she knew the answer already.

“I was to go to Valleyda,” Kayu answered slowly, “and find a way to bring Red to the Rylt.”

Eammon was almost completely hidden in a heavy cloak, but his scarred hand was visible, wrapped around his tankard. Every vein went bright, blazing green, his grip tightening until Raffe thought he might break the thing.

Red’s hand landed on his, and from across the table, Lyra gave the Wolf a look that wasn’t quite reproachful, but cautioning.

“Why?” Lyra’s voice stayed even, but her own grip on her cup had gone tense, the slim lines of her hands etched in tendons. Across from her, Fife glared at Kayu, palm rubbing at his Mark. “So Kiri could kill her?”

A brief nod from Kayu. No change in Eammon’s stance, though Raffe saw Red’s grip on his hand tighten, as if she might have to hold him back.

It took Kayu a moment to answer, which seemed reasonable when faced with the ire of the Wolves and those who counted them as family. “Yes.” She sighed, spilling the rest without being asked. “Kiri thought that killing Red would solve two problems—make it so Neve wouldn’t have a reason to hold out against the Kings, and take away Eammon’s help, so he’d have to anchor the Wilderwood alone again.”

“What do you mean, hold out against the Kings?” Nerves sharpened Red’s voice. “What do they want Neve to do?”

Kayu shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Kiri did, either. To hear her tell it, she was taking orders from the Kings themselves.”

Silence at the table. Raffe took a long draft of his beer, even though it tasted like warmed-over piss.

Red’s face was thunderous, her eyes glinting brown and green from within the shadows of her hood. The nexus of her wrist flushed with emerald, one hand still atop Eammon’s. “So Kiri thought the Kings breaking free from the Shadowlands was inevitable.”

Kayu ducked a nod. “Not in the way it was going to be before. Kiri was clear on that. It was going to be different.” She rubbed a hand over her face, pushing back loose strands of black hair. A sleepless night had carved dark circles beneath her eyes. “How different, I never got a clear answer on.”

Down the table, Fife gnawed on his lip, one hand on his mug and another on his Mark. His sandy-red brows drew together, like he was thinking hard. Or listening hard. Maybe both—the forest lived in him, not in the same way it lived in Red and Eammon, but similar. It was probably telling him to get the fuck out of the Rylt.

Raffe would be happy to listen.

Lyra twisted her mouth, darting a glance at Red. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” she said soothingly. “We’ve well established that Kiri is mad.”

“Was,” Eammon grumbled. There was a note of satisfaction in the past tense that made the skin between Raffe’s shoulder blades prickle with gooseflesh.

“Was,” Lyra amended. She shrugged, the movement graceful, and took a sip from her tankard. “Maybe she just couldn’t fathom her gods failing.”

“She spoke to them.” Red slumped in her seat. “If she couldn’t fathom them failing, it’s because they couldn’t. What we don’t know is what that means for Neve.”

Nothing good. None of them said it, but it hung over their heads, storm clouds that hadn’t yet erupted into rain.

“We need to get back to the Wilderwood.” This from Fife, the first words he’d spoken since they flew from the Temple, trying to outrun the discovery of the priestesses’ bodies in the Shrine. “As soon as possible.”

“Dawn is coming.” Lyra gestured to the windows. The first fingers of pink light seeped slowly into the sky above the ocean. “But we can’t make the voyage go any faster.”

As if to punctuate her words, the floor rumbled.

Cutlery clattered, the surfaces of foamy beer disturbed, sloshing onto tables. The quiet drunks populating the tavern at this hour looked up with bleary eyes, confusion on drawn, sleepless faces.

The quake wasn’t enough to do any damage, and settled quickly, only a scant few heartbeats of shaking. When it calmed, the tavern patrons went back to their mugs, almost as if it had been a collective hallucination.

But Raffe knew it wasn’t. And, somehow, he knew it had something to do with Neve.

“What was that?” Lyra voiced the question, though it was clear on all their faces that they’d come to same conclusion Raffe had.

“Neve told me the Shadowlands are breaking apart,” Red said quietly. “I think that’s what the quakes are. I felt another one back home, but it wasn’t this strong.”

The implications of that made Raffe drain the rest of his beer and consider ordering another. If they could feel a quake here, how bad was it back at the Wilderwood?

“There isn’t much time.” Fife’s hand clamped over his forearm, like the Mark beneath his sleeve pained him. “We have to get back.”

“And do what?”

Red nearly spat it, loud enough that more than a few heads turned in their direction. Her tone was all anger, but her lip wobbled, and there was a shine in her eyes that wasn’t due to drink. Eammon’s hand left the table, snaked into her lap, and she clung to it like ivy on a wall. “There’s nothing I can do, Fife,” she said, more quietly now. “It’s all on Neve. Even if I go back into the Heart Tree, I can’t make her come with me.”

“This is about more than Neve.” Fife’s eyes glinted in the dim light, something almost distant about them, like he was listening to whispered words. “Red, this is about more than Neve, and you know it. You are the Wilderwood, both of you.” His gaze went to Eammon. “When the Shadowlands break apart, when all that magic comes back, you have to be there to contain it. To do something, regardless of what comes out.”

It was, Raffe thought, the most words he’d heard from Fife at once in the entire time he’d known the man.

Slowly, the distant look bled from Fife’s eyes. He blinked, looked to Lyra, who was watching him with a confused look on her face.

“Did the Wilderwood tell you that?” Eammon, puzzled and low.

A pause, then Fife nodded, almost reluctantly.

Red frowned. “I didn’t feel anything.”

Fife’s hand tightened over his Mark, eyes flicking away. “Maybe it knows you wouldn’t listen,” he said quietly. “I think it tells me the things that you two don’t want to hear.”

Eammon looked to Red, face unreadable. Red’s lower lip clamped between her teeth, blanched nearly white.

Raffe ardently wished for another beer.

“What do you mean, ‘regardless of what comes out’?” Red swallowed, her hand on her own Mark now, as if she could make the forest within her explain itself. “Neve is coming out.”

“I’m just telling you what it told me,” Fife said wearily.

“We aren’t hurting Neve.”

Raffe was almost surprised to hear the sound of his own voice; from the wide-eyed looks everyone else shot him, so were they. He hadn’t spoken since they arrived at the tavern.

He straightened, looked Fife in the eye. “No matter what your forest told you, we aren’t hurting Neve.”

Next to him, Kayu’s shoulders softened. Defeat or relief or a strange mixture of the two, he wasn’t sure.

“No,” Red agreed softly. “We’re not.”

Eammon said nothing, his lips pressing into a flat line beneath his hood.

Lyra broke the tension, one hand on Fife’s arm and the other still curled around her cup. “Let’s get back home,” she said, “and then we can figure out what exactly we need to do to be prepared.”

Not exactly a reassuring sentiment, but it was all they had.

Tension about Neve dispelled, replaced with one more pressing. Red gave Kayu a narrow-eyed look. “You saved me.”

“Technically, Eammon did,” Kayu said softly. “But I tried.”

“I don’t know how much that means, when you were the one to bring us into a trap in the first place,” Eammon growled.

“Not a trap.” A tendril of ivy trailed out of Red’s hood; she tucked it behind her ear. “Even if it was meant that way, we learned valuable information. We have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

“Still.” Kayu lifted one shoulder, let it drop. Her face was wan, carved out with exhaustion. “I understand if you want to leave me here.”

“No.” Again, Raffe was surprised by his own voice, doubly surprised by how strong it sounded. He leveled his gaze at Red. “We’re not leaving her. It isn’t safe.”

The door to the tavern opened. A man stumbled in, clearly half drunk already, and took a seat at the bar. “You hear all that racket up at the Temple?” he asked the bartender. “Screamin’ and carryin’ on. You’d think someone died.”

“Of course we’re not leaving Kayu.” Red looked over her shoulder, at the window above the bar. Sunrise stained the sky. “All of us are leaving. Now.”

Beer on an empty stomach had been a bad idea.

Raffe leaned his head back against the wooden hull, grateful for the dim light. His initial assessment of the ship had been correct—the cargo hold and what Captain Neils referred to as the “passenger bunks” were one and the same, with a few cots made from pushed-together crates and lumpy mattresses, divided three to one side and three to the other with a hastily hung curtain.

When they ducked out of the tavern’s back door, the grizzled captain had been waiting, his tiny galley bobbing in the tide at the dock. His eyes looked bleary, and a yawn creased his sun-leathered face as they approached, all still swathed in hoods. If it took him aback, he didn’t show it. Kayu had given him a lot of money.

“Welcome aboard.” A large, blunt hand swept behind him, indicating the galley. “Ship don’t have a name, but mine’s Neils. Don’t wear it out.”

None of them were inclined to. The distant sound of shouts carried on the breeze from the Temple, echoed by the sound of voices rising in the tavern behind them. The six of them filed onto the gangplank, as fast as they could move without running.

“Let’s go,” Eammon said, bringing up the rear.

It was an order, and it was followed. Neils, apparently, was the type who allowed gold to outweigh his questions.

Now Eammon and Red were on the other side of the curtain, murmuring too low for Raffe to make out any words. Lyra was above, talking to Neils, and Fife was with her.

Maybe Kayu was, too. Raffe was trying very hard not to care where Kayu was.

Memories of that brief time in the cloister room kept rearing up in his brain, embers from a fire he couldn’t stamp out. It hadn’t been simple, not at all, but it’d been simpler. He’d at least had the illusion of knowing who she was, though it’d been thin.

Disappointment tasted bitter, disappointment and shame. He should’ve known there was something wrong. Looking back, he couldn’t believe he’d ever taken Kayu at her word, that he’d ever trusted her with something so huge as Neve’s absence. Yes, he hadn’t had much of a choice after she found that letter—which was the entire purpose of the letter, he knew now—but what kind of absolution was that, falling perfectly into the trap she’d set? The Order had written a script, and he’d acted his part impeccably.

She’d planted the idea that they needed to speak to Kiri, that they needed to go to the Rylt. And though they’d gotten valuable information, it still stood that the entire purpose of this trip had been, at its heart, to kill Red.

Yes, Kayu had saved her in the end. And yes, she’d felt like she had no choice but to dance to Kiri’s tune. But all Raffe could think of was what Neve would say if the plan had worked and Red had died.

If the worst had happened, Neve would’ve never, ever forgiven him. He would’ve never forgiven himself. Though Kiri would’ve held the knife, the fault would lay on Raffe, and even though it hadn’t happened, he could still feel what it would’ve been like if it had—a possibility that lay right beside him, barely a breath away, so close he could feel its phantom echoes.

And still, he’d spoken up for Kayu at the tavern.

He couldn’t square it with himself, couldn’t make the ends match up. So he didn’t try. He rested his head against the wall, and he thought of nothing.

“Raffe?”

Shit.

Kayu had taken off her cloak but was still dressed in clothes similar to the ones she’d worn on their first voyage—loose pants, loose shirt, hair tied back in a colorful scarf. For a brief moment, he wondered what she looked like in Order white, then thrust the thought violently away.

Her lips were chapped. Shadows still purpled the skin beneath her eyes. She shifted back and forth from foot to foot, like she was torn between staying and running.

“I know sorry is a weak thing to say,” she murmured finally, looking down at where she worked the hem of her shirt nervously between her thumbnails. “And I know telling you I had no choice is cowardly, even though it’s true. Or felt true.” She shrugged. “You always have a choice, I guess. But when it’s death for you or death for someone you don’t know, it seems so simple.”

“When did it stop seeming simple?” His voice was hoarse.

She gave a weak snort. “Pretty much as soon as I arrived in Valleyda. Seeing you… how much you cared for Neve, how much you wanted her back… that made me care for her, in a way. Anyone you cared about that deeply must be someone good.”

Raffe thought of bloody branches and shadowed veins and dead queens. He didn’t respond. But he did scoot over a little, an invitation.

Kayu took it, sitting next to him. “And then I actually met Red, and I started to care about her, too,” she said, not breaking the rhythm of her explanation. A sigh slumped her shoulders. “I never had any intention of letting her be killed, not after we went to the Edge and saw those carvings, not after I got a chance to know her and Eammon. But I didn’t know how to stop the things already set in motion. That’s all I did the entire time we were sailing here, the entire time in the Rylt—tried to find a way to get all of us out of there alive.”

Six passengers, she’d told Neils when they chartered the galley. She’d intended for all of them to leave, even if she didn’t know how.

“In the end, it wasn’t anything graceful or smart.” Kayu made a rueful noise, knuckling her hair out of her eyes. “It was just desperation and using what I had. And I was almost too late.” A slight shudder rippled through her. “I keep playing it over and over in my mind, what might’ve happened if I had been too late, or if Eammon hadn’t showed up to finish the job when I couldn’t.”

“We don’t have to think about it.” A lifeline for the both of them, something to pull them out of those echoes of things that hadn’t happened but had been so damn close. “You weren’t too late, and neither was Eammon, so we don’t have to think about it.”

Kayu took a deep breath, nodded. For a moment, they sat in silence, both trying very hard to follow that advice.

“I want you to know,” Kayu murmured, “that from here on out, I’m on your side. Unequivocally. I don’t deserve your trust, and I get that, but just… just know that whatever we need to do to get Neve back, to make sure the Kings end once and for all, I’m in.”

“I believe you.” And he did, even if it made him a fool twice over. “The others might be harder to convince.”

“That’s fair.”

Raffe shifted against the wall. The movement brought their shoulders together. It made him think of other things coming together, but he didn’t edge away. “It’d be easier if we knew what we needed to do.”

“It seems like we can’t do much but get back to the Wilderwood and wait.” Kayu’s eyes flashed in the gloom. “Which I don’t think anyone is taking well.”

“Sitting tight and waiting for the monster prison to rupture isn’t my idea of a good time,” Raffe muttered.

Suddenly, the boat rocked to one side, then the other, fast enough to make them crash together in a tangle of limbs and knocked skulls. Raffe heard Red yelp, Eammon’s garbled shout. From above, a clatter of something falling over, more surprised yelling.

Raffe was first up the ladder, Eammon not far behind, though there was a hint of seasick glassiness in his eyes. Neils was whooping with rough laughter, pulling at a rope to adjust a sail. Fife and Lyra stood near the railing, both soaked in seawater and wearing similar expressions of alarm.

“Rogue wave!” Neils waved his hand at the sea like it was a horse that had jumped a steep hurdle. “Like there was an earthquake under the surface or somethin’! I’ve never seen ’em come like that!” Another whoop rang out rough over the water. “Kings’ kneecaps, the look on your faces! I don’t think we’ll be runnin’ into another one, not to worry, lads.”

Lots of worry, lads, Raffe thought wryly.

It seemed like the wait for the monster prison to rupture was growing shorter by the minute.