Chapter Forty-Four

Neve

Coming back to life hurt worse than dying did.

It happened like a slow reverse of what she’d felt when she woke up in the field—head, then torso, then limbs, all tingling as they shuddered out of death. Her heart thumped once, enough to rattle her rib cage, then gave a flutter of smaller beats before settling back into a regular rhythm.

When her eyes opened, it was snowing. Gentle drifts of white swirling from a velvet sky, blanketing the world and making it new. To someone else, the scene might’ve appeared stark black and white, but Neve’s eyes were used to monotone, and she could pick out the subtle shades of indigo in the night.

It took a moment for her to hear the shouting.

More growling than shouting, really, and all of it coming from her right. Neve turned her head, the movement slow and syrupy.

A brawl, as vicious and common as any ever seen in a tavern yard. Two tall men grappled with each other, sweat and blood flying, both of them fighting like they had nothing left to lose.

“Of course,” Red’s voice, as slow and tired as Neve felt. Her sister’s head was next to hers, the two of them laid out brow to brow in the snow, legs pointing in opposite directions. “We die, and they fistfight.”

Three more figures watched the brawl, stark against the pale expanse of the ground. When Neve realized one of them was Raffe, she shrank back, a strange alchemy of guilt and shame and relief making her body feel like her own again in one agonizing sweep.

But there was still something missing. Some kind of… of emptiness, a piece of herself that she’d left in death. Neve’s hand was halfway to her heart, ready to check again for its beat, before she realized what that emptiness was.

Her soul. A prison for magic, obliterated.

She swallowed. Her eyes turned to Red, still lying beside her, their gazes made level by the way they’d fallen in death. Long hair fanned out on either side of them, dark gold and black, two sides of a circle.

“I feel it, too,” her sister murmured. Her dark eyes were clouded and thoughtful—and only brown, with no halo of green around the irises.

Neve nodded. “I don’t…” She shifted, looked up to the falling snow. “I expected it to feel worse.”

Red shrugged. “What’s a soul but the most concentrated piece of yourself?” A tiny, tired smile lifted the side of her mouth. “We know who we are. Maybe that means we don’t need them.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Neve said.

Red’s arms made wing shapes in the snow as she stretched, shaking out pins and needles. “Well, it’s not so—”

She stopped as abruptly as if she’d hit a wall. Red’s head turned to the opposite side, where Neve couldn’t see her face, staring at whatever her hand had hit when she stretched.

With a grimace, Neve pushed herself up on her elbows to peer over her sister.

Arick.

His body was curled on his side as if the snow were a feather bed, chest rising and falling in easy rhythm. Dark curls brushed his forehead, and a slight smile curved his mouth, like worry wasn’t something he’d ever known.

“He came back with us.” Neve’s voice sounded thin and cracked, someone waking up from a long sleep. “When we… did what we did, it must have brought him back.”

Red’s eyes were wide and glassy. “He wasn’t really dead, not in the normal way,” she murmured. “Just… caught in between. Like us. That must be why.”

The enormity of what they’d done was slow-settling, a leaf incrementally weighing down into a river. Soulless, yet still themselves. Bereft of magic, when they’d both been a home for it. Alive when they’d been dead.

Then Red gave her head a tiny shake and swung her eyes to Eammon and Solmir, still rolling over the ground with their teeth bared and fists flying. “What a way to introduce Arick to my husband.”

Neve followed her gaze, raised a brow. “Should we let them work it out, you think?”

“No.” Red pushed to sit up, shaking snow from her hair. Her face had gone stony. “Eammon might kill him, and I’d like to punch him at least once first.”

Nerves twisted in Neve’s middle, the pinch of it more pronounced from the fact she’d been dead until moments ago. They’d solved one problem—the cosmic, god-proportioned one—but she was somehow far more apprehensive about the personal ones on the horizon. Like making sure Red and Eammon didn’t kill Solmir, even though he deserved it.

Like explaining why she didn’t want them to.

Red stood, called across the snow, “If you’re fighting about us, everything is fine now! If it’s over something else, carry on!”

Everyone on the plain froze, a tableau in the churned snow as more poured from the sky. Then Eammon—looking worse for wear—staggered over the ground toward them. He wrapped Red in his arms, and she buried her face in his chest, heedless of the blood crusting his nose.

“You were dead,” he murmured into her hair, his voice still breaking on the word. “I felt it, you were dead.”

Red’s hands tightened around him, white-knuckled. “Of everything that’s happened to us, me coming back from the dead is the biggest surprise?”

The Wolf—but was he the Wolf anymore? He looked like a man, only a man—huffed a jagged laugh and pulled her closer.

Neve pressed her lips together, wrapped her arms around herself. In the distance, Solmir stood, chest still heaving. He didn’t move any closer. Neither did she.

Eammon looked up, eyes meeting Neve’s. There was a flash of anger there, and she supposed she deserved it. But the anger settled to wariness after a moment, and she understood that, too. Love could wrench the most undeserved compassion out of you.

“I’m Eammon,” he said with a nod. “It’s nice to meet you, Neve.”

She managed to smile, though it was a shaky thing. But she didn’t trust herself to speak, not yet.

His eyes lighted on Arick’s body over her shoulder, then widened. “Is that…”

“Let him sleep,” Red said quietly. “He’ll wake up when he’s ready.”

The slowly falling snow lumped around Arick, nearly obscured him from view. Neve put a hand to his forehead, afraid he’d be cold; he felt pleasantly warm, and shifted in his sleep, frowning. She took her hand from him and moved away.

Confusion still knit Eammon’s brow, but he acquiesced to his wife. He sighed, shaking his head. “What happened to us? I feel… I don’t…”

Her sister pressed a finger against his lips. “You’re human,” she murmured. “And so am I. The rest of it we’ll figure out.”

A shudder went through the former Wolf, mingled horror and relief, a long-held burden finally relinquished. Eammon tilted his forehead against Red’s and closed his eyes.

Behind them, Solmir’s dim figure stood still in the snow, like he was waiting for Neve to tell him what to do.

She didn’t know. She didn’t know.

The other ragged figures drifted over, the ones she’d briefly seen when she was all shadow—Red’s friends. A white man with reddish, curling hair, his arm around a beautiful woman with golden-brown skin and a halo of dark curls, both of them looking at her like… well, like someone risen from the dead. The woman’s face was only wondering, but the man’s looked like he hadn’t decided if her rising was a good thing or not.

She guessed that was fair.

Lagging slightly behind them, another woman she’d never seen before. Short, with dark eyes in a pretty, heart-shaped face and a fall of straight black hair. Her expression cycled between guilt and awe and something that looked almost like jealousy. Dark eyes flickered to Neve, then away to the last person trooping over the snow toward them.

Raffe.

Neve didn’t know where to let her eyes land, what to do with her hands. She wanted to rush him, to wrap her arms around him and hold him close. She wanted to run away before he could see her, see what she’d become.

Just a soulless woman who’d been a god. Who’d been a queen. Who never wanted to be either of those things ever again.

The air around them seemed to spark, just for a moment. Filaments of light spangling in the snow, and a tiny, prickling feeling at her fingertips. But it was gone when she blinked, so quickly she might’ve imagined it.

Raffe stopped a few feet from her, a tall, imposing shadow against the sky. She couldn’t read the expression on his face, his dark eyes glued to hers, his mouth slightly parted.

The woman with the long black hair swung her gaze between them, then away.

“Neve.” Raffe’s mouth worked before it settled on her name, like he couldn’t decide what other words he could feed into the silence.

“Raffe.” Her fingers clenched on the scraps of her nightgown. The diaphanous thing she’d worn while she was dead was gone, leaving her in only her nightgown and boots and Solmir’s torn coat, and the freezing cold sank teeth into her newly human body.

It seemed to spur Raffe out of inaction. He stepped forward, shrugging out of his own coat before noticing the one she already wore. A pause, his arms awkwardly half out of his sleeves. He shrugged back into them with a pensive expression.

From the corner of Neve’s eye, she saw a tall, long-haired figure step backward, farther away from her, farther into the snow.

“Are you well?” But as soon as he said it, Raffe shook his head. “No, of course you aren’t well, you spent weeks in the Shadowlands—”

“I’m fine,” Neve said quietly. “I’m fine.”

Raffe’s lips pressed together, unsure of how to follow the tangling thread of this conversation, but before he could try, Red turned her face from Eammon’s chest. “We took care of it,” she said decisively. “The Kings, the Shadowlands, the Wilderwood. All of it. It’s gone.” She looked behind them, at the forest—still standing but empty, drained of all the magic it had held. Her lip went between her teeth, like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry.

Behind her, Eammon’s eyes widened, his shoulders sagging slightly even as his arms stayed wrapped around Red. He looked down at his hand on her waist as if he’d never seen it before.

“Gone?” This from the pretty woman next to the red-haired man, her delicate brows drawn together in confusion. Fawn-colored eyes flicked from Red to the man beside her, to his arm, like she was looking for something. “Fife, what you took… you mean all of it…”

“All of it.” Neve’s voice still sounded quiet, whispery. All that screaming followed by death had left her throat raw. “We…” But there was no easy way to explain what they’d done, souls turned to apples and dashed on the ground, people become reliquaries. “We took care of it,” she said simply, echoing her sister.

The woman’s brow creased, lips pursing. “I still feel…” She trailed off, her fingers twitching at her side. Again, that spangling of the air, like currents of light ran just behind a veil.

The man at her side looked at her with his mouth pressed flat. Neve couldn’t tell whether he saw the light or not. “What do you feel, Lyra?”

But the woman—Lyra—just shook her head. Still, when her hand dropped, her brow remained furrowed.

Raffe stood up straight, regaining himself now that there was a problem to solve, something to concentrate on other than him and Neve and the unnavigable space between them. “So what does that mean for us? For… everything?”

Such a large thing, such a far-reaching question. Red glanced at Neve, inclined her head. You’re the oldest, the look seemed to say. You answer the questions.

Neve didn’t really know how to do that. But she took a deep breath and tried. “We don’t know,” she began. “But I think… I think magic is here again. In the world, like it was before.”

The atmosphere glinted, an agreement. Could everyone else sense it, too? Or just a few of them, like it had been so long ago?

There will always be people who can access more power, and they will always use it to evil ends.

She clenched her teeth. How much of that had been Arick, feeling phantoms of guilt from the life he’d lived, and how much of it had been the magic speaking through him? Neve wanted to believe they’d done the right thing. She wanted to believe that people could be good, that atoning was possible.

You are good.

Her eyes lifted. Solmir was still there, just a smudge against the snow. Ignored for now, the shock of everything else smoothing over his arrival. She didn’t know how long that would last, and once it wore off, it probably wouldn’t be safe for him to be here. He knew that—the brawl with Eammon made it clear.

And yet he stayed. Making sure she was all right.

You are good.

“It will be like it was before the Shadowlands were made,” Neve continued, keeping her eyes on Solmir. “Where it’s free. Where anyone who can sense it can learn to use it.”

Lyra nodded. Almost subconsciously, her fingers twitched by her side again.

The other woman with the long black hair stepped forward, her face set like she’d decided something. “I’m Okada Kayu.” Then she stuck out her hand, lips in a firm line, as if she expected to be rebuffed.

Okada. Neve remembered the surname. She took Kayu’s proffered hand, inclined her head in the way one royal did to another. “You’re next in line,” she said simply. Something was starting to fill in, the final blanks finding their answers.

Kayu nodded jerkily, then stopped, like the agreement had been premature. “Or, I would be. But I’m the Third Daughter of the Emperor, and an Order priestess—novice, I mean.” Her brows drew together. “Though I don’t think I’m that anymore, either. Since I helped kill the High Priestess.”

Neve’s eyes went wide. Kiri. Dead. Something both relieved and sorrowful plucked at her chest. “I see.”

More pieces falling into place. She almost had it, almost knew what this final act would be. The poem in Tiernan’s book she’d burned held the answer, if she could just remember it.

Snow lighted in Kayu’s dark hair as she shifted uncomfortably. Raffe’s eyes flickered from her to Neve before he reached out and clasped Kayu’s hand. The other woman swallowed, then looked back at Neve, new resolve in her face. “I’m willing to face whatever consequences you deem appropriate for Kiri’s death, Your Majesty. Though I think we can both agree she deserved it.”

Neve snorted. “I wouldn’t argue.”

Kayu’s brow lifted, some of her apprehension shaking free.

The Holy Traitor. Neve remembered it now, the third part of the poem. A novice who murdered the High Priestess certainly counted. But there was something else, another role she felt Kayu should fill.

Majesty had sat so strangely on her shoulders.

“You said you’re the Third Daughter,” Neve said slowly. “Are your older sisters married?”

Raffe’s hand tightened on Kayu’s as she nodded, worry crowding her face again.

And there it was, the final piece clicking into place. Neve being given the freedom to cast off one more thing that didn’t fit, a burden she knew she could no longer hold up under.

She sank to her knees in the snow, quick and graceful. Kayu backed up with a surprised noise, Raffe stiff by her side.

“By the power given to me by lines upon lines of Valleydan queens,” Neve said, getting the words out in a rush, “I hereby cede my title, my holdings, and my queenship to my successor.” The next line was take up this task in the name of the Kings, but Neve refused to say that. She wondered how long their legend would hold, how many more years would go by of people clinging to a lie before it finally faded away. “Will you take up this task, Okada Kayu?”

The other woman’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Eammon looked surprised, still holding Red close to his chest, and Fife and Lyra seemed mostly confused. But Red had a small smile on her face.

Heartbeats of silence, then Raffe turned to Kayu. “It will mean safety,” he said quietly. “Your father won’t be able to marry you off.”

The word safety made Kayu’s shoulders settle, a deep breath leave her mouth. She turned to Neve, nodded. “I’ll take up this task,” she said quietly. “But… why?”

And Neve couldn’t stop her eyes from drifting toward where Solmir stood in the snow. “I’m tired of it, frankly.”

“And I would rather cut off my foot with a spoon than be the Queen of Valleyda,” Red said cheerfully.

“That’s as good a reason as any,” Kayu conceded.

“You’ll be fine,” Neve said as she rose. Queendom seemed to fall from her like a cloak, much easier to shed than godhood had been. She’d been for a different kind of throne, apparently, and now she had none.

A weight lifted.

Anxiety flickered in Kayu’s eyes as she nodded, looking at Neve with slight wariness. She wondered how she appeared to the other woman, ragged and so recently dead, in a ripped nightgown and boots stolen from an underworld.

On the ground, Arick stirred.

Raffe’s eyes went to him immediately, hidden against the snow in his white tunic and breeches. His gaze cycled from surprise to joy to horror as he ran forward, fell to his knees next to his friend. “Arick?” He looked between Red and Neve. “How—”

“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Red said.

A moment, then Arick sat up, pushing snow-dampened hair from his eyes. He looked at Raffe, puzzled, then to the rest of them, brow furrowing further in confusion. When his gaze landed on Red, the confused look wavered, like it might change. It didn’t.

“Hello,” Arick said carefully, pushing himself up from the ground. He chuckled mirthlessly. “Forgive me, but I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here.”

Neve pressed her lips together. One tear slid down Red’s cheek. Neither of them spoke, knowing instinctually what had happened.

The two of them sacrificing their souls had somehow brought Arick back from the strange half death that had tied him to them, to the Heart Tree. But it’d come with a price.

Though Neve wondered if Arick forgetting the whole nightmare, forgetting them, was actually more of a blessing.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked quietly.

Arick pursed his lips, thinking. “Floriane,” he said finally. “I live in Floriane, I think.”

Horror shifted into sorrow as Raffe stared at his friend. He looked to Neve, as if asking her what to do, whether he should try to fill in the gaps in Arick’s memory.

Neve gave one slight shake of her head. “Let him rest,” she murmured. She glanced at Red—her sister should have some say, she thought.

Red nodded, mouth pressed into a tight line.

Raffe swallowed once, then again, and when he spoke his voice was thick. “You’re right,” he said, turning back to the man in the snow. “Your name is Arick. You live in Floriane. I can… I can help you get back there, if that’s what you want.”

“I’d like that.” Despite not remembering anything other than where he was from, Arick didn’t seem bothered. He tucked his hands into his pants pockets, looked down at the white ensemble he wore, somehow brought here from a place that no longer existed. “Didn’t dress for the cold, did I?”

“Here.” Eammon stepped forward, shrugging out of his coat. Arick accepted it with a guileless smile. The former Wolf watched him a moment, dark eyes unreadable. Then he clapped the other man on the shoulder and stepped back to Red again.

A ragged sound from Raffe, one he choked off. Kayu stepped up to him, put a tentative hand on his arm. Raffe covered it with his own, unselfconsciously.

Neve’s gaze strayed once again to the figure on the snow, watching. This time, Raffe’s eyes followed.

“Him,” he said, and started marching over the field. “I’m going to—”

“Not before I do.” Red moved forward with her hands bent to claws, amply prepared for mundane violence in place of anything magic. Eammon turned with her, his fists clenched, ready to dive back into the brawl they’d interrupted.

But they didn’t have to go meet Solmir. The once-King came to them, striding purposefully over the ground until he stood close enough for Neve to see his face.

Gone was the arrogance that she’d assumed was ingrained in him, as much a part of his features as his straight nose and high cheekbones. Solmir looked nearly as tired as Neve felt, face mottled with bruises, one eye puffed and purpled.

He held his hands out to his sides, a posture of martyrdom. But his eyes stayed fixed to Neve’s. “Go ahead.” His voice was hoarse—another bruise bloomed on his throat. “I won’t stop you.”

Maybe it was the defeated look on his face that stalled Raffe, and Eammon had already worked out his frustration, evident in the black eye and the bruises.

But Red took the invitation. She walked up and punched Solmir in the chin, hard.