Chapter Forty-Five

Neve

Red!”

Neve’s shout was, predictably, ignored. Her sister shook out her fist while Solmir grunted, gingerly touching his jaw. The skin had split, and his fingers came away bloody.

“Look at that,” he murmured. “It’s been a while since I bled in color.”

“There’s more where that came from,” Red growled, ready to swing again.

Neve reached out, but she wasn’t the one to catch her twin’s hand.

Raffe was.

His fingers curled around Red’s fist, holding it gently. Red whirled to face him. “If you don’t want me to hit him, you’d better do it, and quick.”

Solmir clenched his teeth. Blue eyes burned beneath lowered knife-slash brows, staring at Raffe like one might glare down an approaching predator.

But Raffe didn’t return the same fire, his face thoughtful and drawn. He looked from Solmir to Neve, to the torn coat Neve wore.

Neve didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do here, where her prince and her monster stood so close and all her fear was for the wrong one.

Slowly, Red dropped her fist and stepped back, coming level with Eammon. Fife stood beside him, an angry look on his face, though he didn’t make any move toward Solmir. Lyra looked more determined than angry, her fingers continuously twitching toward the hilt of the curved blade she wore on her back. Kayu mostly seemed confused, though her tense stance and almost-reaching hand betrayed the apprehension she felt at having Raffe stand so close to the once-King.

And Raffe and Neve just stared at each other, neither having the words to explain what had happened.

Though after a handful of heartbeats, it seemed Raffe understood.

He turned to Solmir, still with that thoughtful expression. “You protected her.” A murmur, but in the silence of the snow, it was loud enough for all of them to hear.

Neve expected Solmir to cant up his chin, to give some sharp, pithy response. But when words came, they were low and nearly pained, chased with a nervous swallow. “Not at first.”

She thought of that moment in the upside-down castle when they found the Shadowlands’ half of the Heart Tree in its first form, before she chose to stay and made it a key. When he’d kissed her, a real kiss, and passed on all that magic, made himself the more suitable vessel in anticipation of the Kings’ coming.

He’d told her he loved her. She supposed that was when he realized it.

“But then I did.” Solmir’s gaze went from Raffe to Neve. “As much as I could.”

Raffe nodded. His fingers flexed by his side. “Just one punch, then.”

He delivered it as soon as the words left his mouth. Solmir reeled back, but when he straightened, it was with a rueful grin. “Oh, come on, don’t you want to make it worthwhile? You and the Wolf can both take a shot, I’ve got nothing to lose but time.”

“Stop, Solmir.”

Almost a whisper; still, it rang. Every eye turned to Neve.

All this time, she’d agonized over how she would explain this to Raffe, to Red, to everyone who cared about her and hated Solmir, as if the two were part and parcel, something that came together automatically. But those two words—the way she delivered them, maybe—seemed to do all her explaining for her.

She looked to Red, hoping her sister would understand, her sister who’d married a monster and become one herself. Their paths mirrored even in this, both of them falling for someone inhuman and following in their footsteps, only to be thrust back into rude humanity.

Red swallowed. She took a shaky breath, then looked to Solmir, eyes narrow and fierce. “I want you to know,” she said, “that the only thing saving you is her.”

“Same as it ever was,” Solmir murmured.

Raffe stepped back, the effort of it conscious. “I’m thankful for what you did,” he said. “But I never want to see you again.”

“Believe me, you won’t.” Solmir wiped the blood off his jaw. “I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do with my newfound humanity, but it will be something far away from here.”

It twisted Neve’s gut. Red’s eyes darted to her, like she could tell.

Solmir didn’t look at her, but she could tell he wanted to. Instead, he raised a brow at Eammon, standing behind Red. “What do you say, Wolf? You want one more round before I go?”

There was something hopeful in it, like Solmir wanted Eammon to hit him. If Eammon heard it, he didn’t let it sway him. Red’s husband shook his head. “I’m with Raffe. We’re done.”

“We’re done,” Solmir repeated, hands raised, walking backward, a pained smirk on his mouth. Then his hands dropped, and he turned, headed into the snow.

“Solmir…” Damn her, Neve could barely get out any word but his name.

He glanced over his shoulder, a flash of blue. “It’s done, Neve,” he murmured. “Let it be done.”

Then he trudged away. And she let him.

They all stood there a moment, still figures in snow. Neve took a deep breath. Closed her eyes.

Steeling her spine, she turned to Raffe. “I loved you.”

He didn’t miss the past tense, and he didn’t seem upset by it. Raffe nodded, his hand on Kayu’s at his side, the action absent and natural. “I loved you, too.”

One decisive nod, the matter closed. The love she and Raffe had shared was real, but it was different now, changed into something warmer and more placid. Kayu would need someone by her side who knew the Valleydan court, who could help her navigate her new role.

Her lip lifted in a bittersweet smile. She’d always thought that Raffe would make an excellent consort.

“Let’s go to the Keep.” This from Red, and said with a forced cheerfulness that only made it clear none of them had any idea what to do now. “It’s better than standing out here in the cold.”

Haltingly, the others started moving toward the border of the woods, glad that someone had given them something to do other than stand there. Neve stood still for a moment, watching that figure dwindle smaller in the snow.

Then she turned and followed her sister.

Low voices, murmuring as they walked—Fife, saying something that Neve didn’t catch but that made Eammon bark surprised laughter. Kayu, leaning in with a smile to whisper to Raffe. Lyra and Red walked together, and Neve heard Lyra mention something about the air feeling strange, about pins and needles in her fingers.

Good people who would do good things. Maybe not always—maybe those forks in the road would make them choose different paths sometimes, walk somewhere in the gray in-between—but good people nonetheless.

She thought of Solmir. Of trying for goodness.

So deep was she in her thoughts that she didn’t realize Red was waiting for her at the edge of the forest until she almost ran into her.

Red grabbed her shoulders, held her steady. Her eyes were wet, and there was a small, sad smile on her face. “Go make him tell you goodbye.”

Neve’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“You deserve a proper goodbye, dammit.” Red dashed at her eyes. “I won’t stand for my sister to be cast off without one, even if I begrudge the air he breathes.”

Neve huffed a laugh that sounded more like a sob.

“So go make him tell you goodbye,” Red said, “or I will.”

And that was all the motivation Neve needed to turn and run.

“Wait!” It ripped out of her, stronger than she felt it should sound as she fumbled through snowdrifts in her borrowed boots. “Stay right there!”

To her surprise, he did.

The former god in the snow stood still, letting her approach at her own pace. Wind teased at his long hair, sending tendrils of it out to almost touch her face. His eyes were the color of lake ice, blue and burning.

They just stood there a minute, the once-Queen and once-King. Neither was sure how to move. How to step forward from all they’d done.

“What do you want, Neve?” Apprehension in his voice, like he expected her to ask for more than he could give. He knew this was an ending, too.

She swallowed. “A real goodbye.”

Relief on his face, and a thorn-sharp sorrow.

His rings were cold against her skin when she reached out, grabbed his hand. The one she still wore on her thumb clicked against the one on his smallest finger. He’d never asked for it back. “Does it feel as strange to you as it does to me?”

“You holding my hand,” he murmured, “or the sudden onset of humanity?”

“Both,” she answered. Turning their palms, lacing their fingers together.

“The first feels natural,” Solmir said, looking down at their linked hands instead of her face. “The second… I don’t know yet.” A deep breath, those blue eyes pressing closed. “I feel… heavy.”

She thought of the hollowness in her chest, the empty space where a soul had been. And she thought of his soul, the thing he’d so painstakingly disentangled from Shadowlands magic. “You know what you said about souls being mostly a nuisance?”

He nodded, one confused brow arched.

“I’ll be able to tell you if I agree soon.” She tried to smile, but it fell apart. “I’ve lost mine.”

He didn’t look surprised. Solmir cupped her cheek, those silver rings points of ice, lifted her face so he could see her tear-pricked eyes. Tentatively, like even now he thought she might push him away, he rested his forehead against hers. “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that souls are malleable things,” he murmured into the space between them. “Lost and found all the time.”

She laughed, but it shattered on the end, became almost a sob. The former god held her close, frozen pine filling every breath.

“Can I even be human without a soul?” she asked, the plume of it rising between them in the cold. “Soullessness is what marked the Old Ones as different from us. What made them monstrous. How can I be anything but a monster without one?”

“Because you aren’t.” He said it so simply, so sure. “You won’t be a monster, because you aren’t a monster.” Solmir gently pushed her out from him, hands on her shoulders. “You are good, Neve. How often do I have to tell you that before you’ll believe it?”

“More than you’ll get time for,” she whispered. “Right?”

She could go with him. She’d considered it as she ran toward him in the snow, but only briefly. Both of them needed time. Space. There was a whole world Neve had never really explored, and she wanted to, desperately. And Solmir… he had his own darkness to wrestle with. More atoning.

Still, she wanted to know, so she asked.

“Would you let me go with you?” she murmured.

“Are you going to ask?”

“No.”

He nodded. “That’s for the best.”

They stood bent toward each other, and for a moment she thought he would kiss her. But he didn’t, and strangely, it was a relief. This already felt like it might rend her heart in half, and now that she was soulless, her heart was all she had.

One more burning moment, the two of them staring at each other. Then Solmir bowed deeply. “My Queen.”

“Not a Queen anymore.”

“Always will be to me.” Then he turned, walked away over the snow. She watched until he faded into the drifting white.

Neve curled her hand against her chest, the thud of her heart, the rattle of her breath in and out of her lungs. Her mind swirled with thought and feeling, unchanged since she’d lost her soul, still fragile and heady and confusing. All the things that made her human.

Slowly, she turned back to the woods, to where the rest of them waited. Her equally soulless sister, held together by a knowledge of who she was and the deep love of the people she cared about, her newly human brother-in-law who could go through the world without being its Wolf. Raffe and Kayu and Fife and Lyra, all navigating how to live when magic might be at your fingertips, when you could be god or monster or human and still willing to burn it all down for those you loved.

Red waited at the border of what had been the Wilderwood. When Neve got close, she held out her hand.

Neve grasped it.