Chapter Thirty-Nine

Red

The Wilderwood was gold.

It flowed back from where the Heart Tree grew at the fore of the forest, blazing like a branch-shaped sun, a burn of light that spread through the veins of every leaf, wound its way up every trunk. A shadow-pit in reverse, not rotting the woods, but… awakening them. Touching each piece of forest magic, pricking it into light that made the surrounding plane seem dusk-dim.

Red pushed up from the snow, shading her eyes with her hand. Still no sign of Neve.

Her heartbeat quickened, a punch of dread she could almost taste.

“Red.” Eammon’s voice, hoarse. He was beside her, grimacing as he sat up, snow dampening his hair. But he had eyes only for her hand, and he picked it up with a mix of wonder and fear.

She followed his gaze, and the thud of her heart hit harder. Red had grown used to seeing her veins a color other than blue, but this time they weren’t green—they were gold, like she’d traced her vascular system in gilt. Her eyes darted to Eammon, expecting something similar, the two of them gleaming to match their forest.

But Eammon hadn’t changed like she had. Faint glimmers shone along his wrists, his knuckles, but they were nothing compared to the lines of light that shot through Red.

The Golden-Veined. It snapped into place, all of it. The Shadow Queen, the Golden-Veined. Things written in stars, roles already made that she and Neve stepped neatly into.

As if seeing the change sparked it into action, a draw began deep in Red’s center, that same place where she’d felt the Wilderwood’s power long before she claimed it and made it part of her. A tug toward the Heart Tree, mitigated only by Eammon’s presence at her side. She felt pulled in two different directions, suspended between Eammon and the Heart Tree like they owned two halves of her soul.

Eammon’s eyes raised to hers. She hadn’t seen fear like that since the day Neve disappeared.

The others pushed themselves out of the snow, in all the places the Heart Tree had flung them when it burst from the ground. Kayu shivered, her dark hair damp with snowmelt. Raffe helped her stand, then wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

“Are we supposed to do something?” This from Lyra, standing to brush snow off her legs. Her gaze flickered to Red, then to Eammon, noting the gold in their veins, the way Red’s shone more brightly. “It’s not doing anything on its own.”

Eammon banished the fear from his face, firmed his mouth and tightened his grip on Red’s hands. Within the two of them, the Wilderwood shifted and stirred, disturbed but not in pain. Restless, waiting, anticipating.

Still not speaking.

She looked to Fife. His hand was tight on his Mark, his eyes distant. Unease prickled at the back of her neck.

Red’s spine twinged, the tightening of the roots around it reminding her of when the Wilderwood was newly sprouted and growing in that dungeon beneath the Valleydan palace. Of when it’d pulled her away from Neve and back into its borders.

Now it pulled her toward the Heart Tree. Toward her sister, instead of away.

But Eammon didn’t feel the same pull. She could see it in his eyes, the way they kept flickering from her to the Tree behind her, in the half snarl of his mouth. He could feel her being pulled away but didn’t feel the same tug himself. Red reeled toward the Tree, Eammon reeled toward Red. Her heart torn down the middle, always, her two homes never content to share.

This magic she’d braided into herself was a selfish kind. It didn’t allow for all the different strands of love she ached with.

Fife’s mouth drew into a tight, pained line. His eyes darted from Red to Eammon, someone who’d just been given an order he didn’t know how to complete. He rubbed at the Mark on his arm again.

Something like understanding began to unfurl in Red’s mind, along the blooming branches of the forest she held.

The ground rumbled again, shaking hard enough to disturb the snow, to make them all brace against falling. Down in the village, voices raised. Red half expected them to come up the hill with torches and pitchforks, but apparently whatever magic had kept them from seeing the shadow grove also guarded the Heart Tree. The Wilderwood took care of its own business and didn’t desire an audience.

It burned within her, twisting along her bones, the forest’s magic sun-bright and shining. Red felt like she housed embers, like if she opened her mouth she’d spill out light. She didn’t realize she’d stepped closer to the Tree until Eammon’s hand caught her wrist, the pattern of his scars against her skin like home.

“Red,” he murmured, worry and fear and wariness all tangled in his throat. “Wait—”

Another boom, teeth-clattering, earth-shaking. The air around the Tree vibrated, made nearly visible in its force.

The center of the Tree opened, the trunk arcing gracefully away from itself to reveal the hollow within. Shimmering, endless light filled the space, like a telescope dialed in to focus solely on the sun. It was beautiful and terrible and it hurt her eyes and drew her closer at once, the light of the Tree singing to the light in her.

The hollow darkened, slowly, as if something rose up from the depths, from the giant Tree’s roots. Something huge, something awful.

But all Red could think as that immense shadow rose was Neve is coming home.

Thin traceries of darkness climbed the Heart Tree, sinuous lines of shadow following the veins of gold as the hollow went dark. But the darkness didn’t overtake the gold—instead, the two of them twined together, one the inverse of the other, light and shadow in a twirling dance that painted the trunk in arabesques, mimicked the carvings on the walls of the Edge. For one beacon-bright moment, the Heart Tree stood tall, patterned in gold and black, a perfect nexus of the Wilderwood and the Shadowlands and the space in between. Red felt like a beacon, too, a lighthouse on the edge of a coastline, glowing to call her sister home.

Beneath her, the ground shuddered and heaved, something about to erupt. Shadow fully filled the hollow space in the Tree’s trunk, seeped in until it drowned out all the gold—

Then another boom as all that darkness in the center of the Tree shot out.

Red flew backward, landing on her back, the breath knocked out of her lungs. The burn of the Wilderwood in her body grew white-hot, though not necessarily painful—it begged movement, a wild, kinetic energy that bloomed flowers around her heart and grew vines around her ribs only for them to wither away and start the cycle anew, an endless circle of life and death.

Inverses and mirrors, walking gyres of grief and loss. Her losing Neve, losing Eammon, and now them losing her.

The certainty of it bloomed along with the flowers, and a branch stretched across her shoulder blades in agreement. Not speaking but finally telling her the thing she hadn’t wanted to hear, finally letting her understand what this would take.

To save Neve would be to lose herself somehow. Maybe death. Maybe something different, something stranger, an afterlife wrought by the forest she’d made a home, the magic as suffused into her as roots into ground.

With the realization ringing in her ears, Red sat up and looked at the Tree.

She couldn’t see it. The Heart Tree was blocked by a wall of writhing smoke. At first Red thought they were shadow-creatures, an amalgam of them formed to keep Neve from her, but these shadows weren’t black—they were the charcoal of a snuffed candle, and silent. Weak, somehow, as if they’d been drained of power.

Next to her, Eammon crouched, a snarl on his mouth and green-amber eyes narrowed at the shadows. With a grunt, he ran at the wall, and was immediately knocked backward, repelled by twisting smoke.

But Red felt pulled toward it. Beckoned.

Lyra’s eyes were wide, tracking from where Eammon was once again pushing up from the ground to the dark, writhing wall where the Tree had been. Her gaze flickered to Red’s, went from concerned to very near alarmed. “Red…”

She looked down at her hands.

Her veins grew steadily brighter, a strengthening glow. At the same time, the forest behind the shadows lost its luster, the gleam of golden light seeping out of the magic-touched trees, flowing into Red instead. As if the gold had gone to gather up all the stray magic and now delivered it back to its proper vessel.

Eammon looked from the forest to her, jaw tight, hands clenched into fists. He moved to stand between Red and the Wilderwood, like he could shield her from it one last time.

Too late for that.

“It won’t take you.” Eammon murmured it like an echo from the past, a battle already fought that had come to their doorstep again. “We didn’t do all this just for the fucking woods to take you, Red.”

But she felt the knowledge that it would take her humming between her bones, all the places the Wilderwood had seeped in and made her something else—not really a god, not really a monster, not really human. Red had never felt the weight of staring down the well of possible eternity, like she knew Eammon had. She’d assumed it would come with time, that the countless years would come to rest on her the same way they rested on her Wolf as they walked hand in hand into the belly of forever.

Their forever had been so short.

Kings, it hurt. Tears sprang to her eyes at the idea of leaving Eammon, of sending him back to solitude. It felt like a hole punched in her chest, like floating in the dark without a tether.

Is that what it would be like? Endless dark, and no one to be lonely with?

“Red, stop!”

Arms around her waist, strong and familiar, anchoring her to the ground—Red hadn’t even realized she was moving toward the wall of shadow until Eammon caught her.

“Stay with me,” he murmured, low and hoarse and pleading. “Red, stay with me.”

He understood now. He knew. The Wilderwood rustled in Red’s chest, another bloom of recognition—she needed it all. All of the forest, all of the magic. Saving Neve would require becoming what Eammon had become to save her, a circle coming back around to the point where it began.

The Wilderwood, entire. Girl made god.

At the edge of her vision, across the snow, Fife stiffened.

It would be different this time, someone becoming the whole of the Wilderwood, taking in every bit of its magic. She’d have to gather it all up, then walk into the shadow that was its antithesis and face whatever Neve had become in the dark.

Eammon didn’t care about the magic—he knew he could call her back, just like she’d called him, love a line they could always follow back to each other.

But that darkness. That shadow. Neve changed, Neve waiting.

That was where he didn’t want her to go. That was where she had to.

And neither of them knew if she’d come back out.

“It’s selfish of me to ask.” Eammon’s hand cradled her face, warm and rough; a tear broke from his green-haloed eye and ran down his cheek, bisecting the scar he’d taken from her in a library that smelled like coffee and leaves. Red had never seen Eammon cry. She’d seen him get close, but never this close, and that more than anything else made anguish chew at the bottom of her heart. “Shit, Red, I know it’s so selfish, but…” He stopped, leaned his forehead against hers. “Please stay,” he whispered. “I know you want to save her, and I want you to, but I can’t… there has to be a different way.”

A way that didn’t make her walk into that churning dark, leaving him forestless and human and alone. A way that let the world have both of the Valedren daughters, the one meant for the throne and the one meant for the Wolf.

Such a way didn’t exist. Hadn’t since Gaya died, since the Kings broke the Wilderwood. The world had never been big enough to hold both the First and Second Daughters unbound and free.

It had to change. This was the only way.

“I love you,” she said, murmuring it against his lips. They tasted like salt, and she didn’t know which of them it came from. “I love you.”

He didn’t say it back. He didn’t have to. The pained catch in his throat said enough.

Red kissed him. It wasn’t heated, wasn’t full of need the way so many of their kisses were. She refused to think of it as a goodbye, but it was a benediction, an ending of something. Her hand curled in his hair and tipped his head down to hers, and with a ragged sound, he wrapped both arms around her, crushed her to him so hard she nearly lost her breath.

Then Eammon went rigid. His spine stiffened, chin tilting up to the snow-filled sky.

Behind him, Fife, his hand on Eammon’s back, his face twisted in concentration. The Mark on his arm blazed green and gold, bright enough that he had to look away, painful enough that his mouth was a rictus.

His new bargain, the one none of them had understood until moments ago. Until realization snapped into place for Red, the Wilderwood growing and budding to help her know what was required.

Fife’s new bargain was to be a conduit. A vessel, however temporary.

The look Fife gave her was sorrow tinged with rage, but it was the Wolf he spoke to. “I’m sorry. Eammon, I’m so sorry, but I knew you wouldn’t give it to her, and she has to have it.”

The Wilderwood drained out of Eammon slowly, so many years of tangling taking time to unknot. Ivy wound out of his hair, the points of his tiny antlers sank back into his brow, the green surrounding his eyes leached to white.

The forest leaked away to leave only the human man in its wake, and shadows damn her, he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Fife grimaced, the Bargainer’s Mark on his arm growing as the Wilderwood went from Eammon to him. It stopped right at his elbow, glowing gold and green, a vessel for magic. A way to take it from one of them and give it to the other.

Like the forest had known that the love its Wolves shared could ruin worlds.

I’d let the world burn before I hurt you. Eammon had said it, a confession that he loved her before he ever dared use the words. The Wilderwood had heard him, the Wilderwood knew it was true. And it built in a failsafe.

Eammon slumped into the snow, eyes closed. His face looked peaceful, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. For the first time, she saw him unencumbered by forest, just a young man with a crooked nose and dark hair and mysterious scars, and she could’ve wept at the sight.

She took off her cloak, crimson and gold. She wrapped it around him. She didn’t want him to get too cold.

Lyra, Raffe, and Kayu stood a distance away, like none of them wanted to get too close to what was happening between the Wolves and the man who’d bargained with their forest. Kayu looked alarmed, Raffe confused. But Lyra’s eyes were wide and wet, her hand pressed against her mouth as if she didn’t want a cry to escape.

“Do you think he’ll forgive us?” Red whispered.

Fife looked at the slumped figure of the Wolf—the former Wolf—instead of her. “He’ll always forgive you.”

They all knew that love made monstrous things necessary sometimes. They all knew their own capacity to burn worlds down.

Finally, Lyra stepped closer, snow lighting her dark curls, making a halo. She didn’t ask for clarification, didn’t pepper them with questions. She’d read between the lines, both Red’s gilded veins and the swirling magic held in the vessel of Fife’s Mark. She swallowed, then reached out, the tremble in her hand only visible for the glow of the snow around her.

Red grasped it. Lyra wasn’t one for embraces, so Red stayed her arms, though they wanted to wrap tight around the other woman and pull her close. “Thank you,” she said. “Both of you.”

“Don’t act like it’s goodbye.” Lyra shook her head, expression stony to counteract the moisture in her eyes. “Don’t.”

Her lips pressed together. Red swallowed.

Fife’s palm was a running mass of green and gold, Eammon’s portion of the Wilderwood’s magic trapped and held, waiting for Red to take it.

Before she could second-guess herself, Red slammed her palm into Fife’s.

A pause. Then the Wilderwood rushed, seeping into her, blooming between her bones. It was quicker than the first time she’d taken the roots, and it hurt less—her body was used to this by now, used to housing something inhuman. Gold washed over her vision, blinding her, and when it was gone, she was the forest, whole and entire.

The congruent line of consciousness next to her own was loud, the sound of cracking branches and wind through leaves. For a moment, it almost overwhelmed her, but then it quieted, leaving enough room for Red’s mind to stay her own.

When Eammon had done this, the Wilderwood had no experience with such a thing, no knowledge of how to take a host without drowning the whole of them out. Now it folded itself up, made itself something that could be carried.

The stretch of branches and susurrus of leaves cobbled into words, brief and quiet. The Wilderwood speaking to her, finally. She knew it would be the last time.

Hello, Lady Wolf. We’re ready.

Red opened her eyes. The ivy tendrils in her hair had coiled themselves into a crown. Antlers weighed heavy on her brow, grown from white bark that edged neatly through her skin. The veins around her wrists had sprouted autumn leaves, like she wore golden bracelets made of foliage.

Beside her, Eammon lay on the ground, cradled in snow and her crimson cloak. Slowly, Red bent, pressed her lips to his forehead.

Then Redarys Valedren—the Second Daughter, the Lady Wolf, the Wilderwood—turned toward the Heart Tree.

Red stepped forward, her tread on the snow heavier than she was used to, hands already outstretched in preparation for tearing through that wall of shadow. If the Heart Tree wouldn’t give her Neve, she’d go drag her out. She’d go to the underworld for her sister.

Steps away from the smoky barrier, a rumble ran beneath her feet, almost knocking her off-balance. Behind her, a cry as the others scrambled to stay upright, sliding in the snow.

One more massive heave, like the earth itself was about to give birth.

The shadow dissipated all at once, smoke feathering away into the air, as if whatever had held it at attention had loosed its grip. Behind it, the Heart Tree, still covered in gold and black, twisted light and shadow.

A moment of relief, the heavy burden on Red’s heart lifting. If the shadow was gone, maybe Neve was close behind—

Then the Heart Tree broke completely apart.

Bark shattered as if a gigantic hand had smashed down from above. Branches fell, crashed to the snowy ground; bits of charred wood raced past Red’s head, past her ivy crown and heavy antlers.

The Heart Tree was gone.

And in the midst of its ruin, a dark shape stood.