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.
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.