Chapter Forty

Neve

She felt the Heart Tree break apart as she closed her eyes, as she directed all that new power she’d absorbed into one unifying thought: the surface. Escape. Her own world.

Valchior’s harsh laughter clattered in her mind, too loud and sharp to fully ignore. The world you are turning over to me.

The deep and star-strewn dark around them turned to blazing gold at the same time that the final threads holding the Shadowlands together snapped. The remains of the prison world created so long ago spun into nothingness, drained of magic, drained of gods. Neve was all the gods now, all the Shadowlands, all the power, and she was both herself and nothing and everything as she moved through the endless expanse between the ended world and the real one.

Neve felt it, the crash and collapse, felt it as if it were her own bones shattering. She cried out, but the sound was lost in the wrap of black space around her, nothingness rushing in to take the place of the underworld that no longer existed.

All its power within her now. She was a woman made a world, and that world was dark and seething.

She couldn’t see Solmir, couldn’t hear him, but she felt when his nails dug into her, trying to keep her close. It was pointless; this strange new atmosphere knew only how to be alone, and it ripped him away from her. Godhood was lonely, lonely, lonely.

All the magic she’d swallowed, mingling with the Kings’ voices in her head: new world make it ours make it dark and shadowed overrun it death and blood and cold—

Neve realized she’d landed somewhere outside all of that emptiness only because she finally could hear herself screaming.

Snow—she felt it seeping through her torn nightgown, the old boots the Seamstress had given her. The scent of chilled air and leaves.

She stood in the center of a ruined tree trunk, formed around her almost like a throne, charred edges sending smoke curling through the cold. She stayed there. It was oddly comforting, and clenching her hands around burning wood helped block out the Kings in her head.

Our world now she’ll live and we’ll live in her Wolves won’t kill her this is all ours she can’t hold out for long—

Solmir lay a few feet away from her. Still, but she could see the rise and fall of his chest. It was so strange to see him in color—the brown-gold of his long hair and close-cropped beard, the slight pink of the puckered scars on his brow. His jaw was bruised a mottled purple, silver rings glinting against reddened knuckles.

Her monster, just a man.

A wall of gray shadow writhed around them, like smoke trapped in glass. Drained of magic, drained of darkness, serving only as a barrier between them and the rest of the world. Her fingers bent on instinct, the claws at their ends carving through the air.

Red was here. She could feel it. And she needed Red in order to end this.

The smoke dissipated at her command. Three people stood too far away for her to see, smudges against the snow. But one of them was closer, and they drew her attention, as well as the attention of the Kings she’d imprisoned within her.

A man, lying limp, sleeping. Black hair, curling where Solmir’s was straight, long but not quite as long. Scarred on his cheek, through his eyebrow, on his hands. Neve stared at him. She’d never seen the man before, but something about him seemed familiar, like she should know who he was.

Other sounds echoed in the dark, other voices, and she could hear shouts from far away. But all Neve’s awareness was trapped in her own body, in navigating a vessel that seemed to barely belong to her anymore.

Crimson dripped into her eye—blood. Neve stretched up her hand to her forehead, wreathed in thorns and black-veined. The tiny spikes of an iron crown speared through her skin.

Just like us. Valchior’s voice, quiet and hissing against the cacophony of the magic Neve held. All that talk of being better—you very nearly fell for it, didn’t you, Neverah? You aren’t better. You aren’t good. Just another monarch with a hunger for power and a willingness to do whatever it takes to get what you want. I’ll show you.

“Shut up!” She had no control over her mouth, her vocal cords—it came out a scream when she meant to mutter it. Neve knocked a thorn-laced hand against her brow, thinking of nothing but drowning him out. The end of her hand was still a bloody mess from the finger she’d cut off, the wound reopening when she hit it against the spikes of her growing crown. “Shut up!”

A laugh rumbled through her head, made her teeth rattle. Was she laughing, too, her mouth unhinged for Valchior’s voice to roll out? Her body was a puppet she had only the barest control over, the outside the same size she’d lived in for twenty years, the inside swollen by magic and shadows. She felt like she might split at the seams.

Already, destruction itched at her fingers, pulled slow through her veins. A desire to take the world by the neck and shake it until it went limp. Those distant voices of the people in the snow prickled at her ears, an irritation that swelled in her chest until it made her want to scream, and her clawed hands curled in anticipation, knowing she could reach with her thorned magic and rip out the offending throat—

“No.” A moan through lengthened teeth. Neve pulled her hands in toward her chest, like she could cage them. This had to end. She couldn’t hold on.

She stumbled forward on numb feet.

“Neve!”

A voice she recognized, rising panicked from the haze.

Neve turned, swirling shadow in her wake. The figure charging toward her was Red, but Red changed—antlers made of white bark on her brow, green completely overtaking the whites of her eyes, ivy crowning her dark-gold hair. She’d been a wild and beautiful thing before, but it was nothing compared to now. Red was all golden light to Neve’s endless dark.

A sob lodged in Neve’s throat, knowing what she was about to ask. What she needed her sister to do.

Even in her otherworldly grace, Red almost stumbled in her haste to get to her, charging over snowbanks churned nearly to mud. They fell into each other’s arms, light and dark.

For a moment, Neve let herself relax into her sister’s hold, let herself pretend this was just a homecoming.

“You’re here,” Red murmured into her hair. “You chose to come back.”

Neve didn’t respond, other than the harsh sob she couldn’t quite swallow. Red’s arms tightened around her, the leaves braceleting her wrists rustling against Neve’s thorns.

The howl of the Kings rose louder in Neve’s ears, nearly deafening, drowning out the string of comforting words that fell from Red’s lips. Something about home, about healing, I can fix this I can fix this I can fix this.

There was only one fix.

Her grip on herself was shaky, glass vibrating at the shatterpoint. Valchior and the others battered against her mind, against her bones, against her soul that held theirs. Her fingers were blackened as if by frostbite, wanting to bend, wanting to force this world to bow to the might of her shadows.

My world, Valchior hissed into her ear, slithering around her skull. We’ll have such fun, Neverah. There are other vessels you could pour me into, once you realize that we’re all better off together, once you see all the incredible things we’ll accomplish. You could find one to your liking, another body for me to stay in. Even Solmir—

“Stop.” It came through chattering teeth, slicing through whatever comfort Red had been trying to give. It was a directive to the King’s soul she held, but also to her sister. She couldn’t take comfort now. It was too late.

Red closed her mouth, held Neve out at arm’s length, hands firm on her shoulders. Her green-brown eyes were filmed with tears. “Tell me what you need me to do, Neve.”

A soft sound from the snow beyond them where the dark-haired man lay. He stirred, amber eyes opening. “Red…” The Wolf. It had to be.

Red’s eyes squeezed shut, a single tear falling down her cheek. “Tell me what you need,” her sister murmured, the tendons in her neck standing out with the effort of not turning to the Wolf on the snow. “Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it.”

“Do you promise?” Neve whispered.

And her sister’s eyes opened wide, horror and understanding and a sorrow sharp enough to cut.

Inside Neve’s head, in her hollow places, the souls of the Kings rattled her bones like prison bars. The power of the Old Ones they’d killed swirled and spun, darkness that eclipsed everything else. She held all the power of the Shadowlands, the perfect dark mirror to her sister’s Wilderwood light.

You are ours, Neverah, Valchior said. How did you ever think you could be something different? You’ve been ours since you bled on the branches in the Shrine. Ours since you decided you were always right.

Neve closed her eyes, gasping like she’d run miles, blood still dripping down her forehead as the iron crown grew from her brow. She wanted to collapse into Red, wanted to tell her sister she was sorry, but her control was so tenuous. She was so close to breaking.

And when Red reached out, her golden-veined hand cupping her cheek, Neve did.

Her jaw opened to scream, but instead it was a rush of shadow, pluming from her like she’d held a mouthful of black smoke. The shadows whirled around them like a cyclone, like the force of her grief and her regret and her rage held them in perfect orbit, fast enough to whip their hair and tear at their clothes.

“Red!” The Wolf was fully awake now; through eyes that wept black-ink tears and a blur of shadows, Neve could see him staggering toward them, face twisted in horror. “Redarys!”

His shouting woke Solmir, outside the barrier of her shadowed wall. The former King pressed up from the ground, hair wet with melting snow, blue eyes dim and then brightening with fear and rage. He ran toward them with a snarl on his mouth, like he expected the darkness to part for him.

It didn’t. Not for him, not for the Wolf, blocking both of them out, sending them sprawling when they tried to run forward again. The only ruler the darkness acknowledged was Neve, and she knew that she couldn’t allow anyone to stop them now.

She didn’t know if Red understood, or if Red merely acted at the behest of the Wilderwood. Either way, it was what had to happen. The Wilderwood and the Shadowlands, two halves of a whole, just as they were.

And if Neve had this right, there would be only one left in the end. Only the Wilderwood, golden and shining, all the dark snuffed out.

Red closed her hands around Neve’s, golden veins against shadowed. Teeth bared, she held on tight, and let her magic go.

At first, it acted like a dam. The rushing of both powers stopped, golden and dark, each frozen at the onslaught of the other. Even the swirling shadows around them paused, arrested mid-motion.

Then the magic crashed.

It was a wave meeting a shoreline, lightning breaking against the ground. Two opposites, feeding endlessly into each other, making a void between them that neither could fill. Canceling each other out.

And when both of them simultaneously fell to their knees, each held up only by the other’s death grip on their hands, Neve realized the truth of it.

One couldn’t live without the other. Both of them were part of this magic, two points of the same arrow. Their souls were so steeped in it that neither could sustain being drowned in opposite power.

This would kill them both.

In Neve’s head, Valchior raged, his calculations proven incorrect, his plan not accounting for all variables. He’d thought Red couldn’t bear to kill her sister. And maybe that was true—Neve hoped it was—but Red was the Wilderwood now, all of it in its entirety, and the Wilderwood knew what had to be done.

Neve tried to pull away, animal instinct opting toward self-preservation, but it was too late. Her hands stayed in Red’s like they’d been shackled there, this outpouring of magic too overwhelming for either of them to stand against. Around them, the very atmosphere roared with swirling streaks of golden light and deepest dark, the two of them the eye of their own hurricane.

Red’s green-haloed gaze said she understood. Said she wasn’t angry. She tipped her forehead against Neve’s, ivy-threaded hair whipping. “I love you.” It was so quiet, lost in the chaos, but Neve heard it bell-clear.

She swallowed. Her body felt brittle and weak, draining magic into her sister and life into the wind. “I love you.”

Her vision was hazy. Her heart was a drumbeat thud in her chest, slowing, slowing. The howl of the Kings in her head faded to whispers, all of them realizing this was it, they were done, their host’s soul fading and taking theirs with it, here in the true world where death couldn’t be cheated.

Then she knew nothing.