Neve thought of black veins and ice, of thorns where flowers should be. She thought of Red, skin traced in green. Solmir held the magic because he knew how to keep it from changing him—at least, that’s the reason he claimed. But what if Neve took it back? Would she become something like the Seamstress?
Not one like me, the Seamstress answered. She chuckled. It was an extremely disconcerting thing to hear in one’s mind. And there will be time for taking magic, or taking something else. There is much to hold in this world. The two of you will have to decide who holds what, Shadow Queen.
What does that mean? Neve wasn’t versed in how one carried on a conversation in their head. To be the Shadow Queen?
A stretch of silence before the Seamstress answered. That, ultimately, is up to you.
“Neverah?”
Solmir’s voice startled her out of whatever trance the Seamstress had put her in. Neve shook her head, dispelling the ghost of the spider-woman’s giggle. “What?”
His eyes swung between her and the Seamstress, understanding in the arch of one brow. “Ah. So they can talk in your head, too.”
“Too?” Neve’s hand half rose to her forehead, like her thoughts were a physical thing she could shield. “So everyone here can read minds?”
By the hearth, the Seamstress crowed laughter. “Nothing so pedestrian,” she reassured her. “It takes immense power to speak mind-to-mind. The Old Ones can do it, and the Kings, though only if you’re in their physical presence. Some of those Beloved, like me, though I am the only one left now. Unless you count that awful puppet the Leviathan has made of his Beloved’s corpse, and I certainly do not.” She gave a delicate shrug. “Just because someone speaks into your mind does not mean they can read it. They can only do that if you allow them.” The touch of a sharp-toothed smile on her mouth, just this side of wicked. “Concentrate on not letting them in, Shadow Queen. None of the others will be as kind as I. They’ll take your thoughts like pilfered gold without giving you the courtesy of knowing.”
Neve swung around to face Solmir, teeth bared. “If you try to read my mind, I swear to you, I will rip your brain right out of your skull.”
He raised his hands as if in surrender, a hateful smirk on his mouth, though the emotion in his eyes seemed more complicated than the expression would imply. “I’m not a King anymore, Neverah. Not in the way that matters. I can’t read your mind.” The smirk hitched higher. “Whatever dirty thoughts you have about me are safe.”
She didn’t acknowledge that with a reply, though her teeth felt close to cracking with the force of keeping her mouth shut.
Another peal of musical laughter from the Seamstress. “However this all plays out, once-King, at least you won’t be bored.”
“Bored might be better,” Solmir muttered, his hands still raised and his eyes still burning.
The air between them crackled like a thunderstorm; then Solmir’s arms dropped. He turned away from her, a dismissal that made angry heat flush her cheeks. “If the Heart Tree is where it’s always been, then are the other Kings there, too? Trying to force it open?”
The Seamstress gathered a mug from the cupboard behind her, poured in liquid from the kettle over the fire. “How long has it been since you’ve seen the others, Solmir? You broke with them so long ago. After the first time you went to the Heart Tree. The first time you tried for the surface.”
Something shuttered in his eyes. “We’re not talking about that.”
Spider legs and human hand waved in tandem. “Fine. My point is that you haven’t seen the other Kings in centuries. Why do you think they wait for the Old Ones to be pulled to the Sanctum, rather than hunting them down? It’s not for sport. It’s because they cannot leave. They’ve delved so deep into Shadowlands magic that they’ve anchored themselves, as surely as stone to earth.” She took a sip of the thick, muddy liquid in her cup, staining her teeth. “The only way the Kings can leave the Sanctum is if the Heart Tree is opened. Only its power is enough to disentangle them and draw them out.”
Surprise was another emotion that didn’t live easily on Solmir’s face. His mouth hung open a moment before snapping closed, and when he reached up to rub at the puckered scars on his forehead, there was a slight tremor in his hand.
“Physically, the Kings are trapped, but do not let that lull you into false security. They can still send out their thoughts, send projections of themselves. And though the projections cannot touch you, the darkness they command can.” The Seamstress licked the dark liquid from her sharp teeth. “There is nothing like safety here. Do not delude yourself into thinking this will be easy.”
Solmir’s mouth was flat, his eyes narrow. He looked like a man working out a complicated equation in his head, as if this information somehow altered a plan he’d been making and now he needed to amend it. “If they think we’re just going to open the Tree,” he said, “there’s no reason for them to stop us. They’ll think we’re trying to let them come through.”
“They are not stupid,” the Seamstress said sharply. “The Kings know that anything you attempt is not in their best interest, Solmir. They will not believe you have accepted your fate so easily.” She shrugged, setting down her mug and turning to the cupboard again, her segmented legs pulling something from within its depths too quickly for Neve to see what it was. “I do not know if they will try to stop you from reaching the Tree, but they will not sit idly by as you do it. You play a complicated game, and it is impossible to know what moves they will make.”
“What fate?” Neve asked, turning to Solmir. She kept her tone cool and her face implacable. “What fate have you not accepted?”
Another flash of calculation in his eyes; to be expected when speaking with Solmir, apparently. Every word out of his mouth always seemed carefully calibrated, honed to cut. “Being one of them,” he answered. “Never being anything else, because once I was a King.”
She wanted to respond with something sharp, something that sliced. But a ghost of vulnerability hung around his sneer, and for reasons she couldn’t quite name, that kept her silent.
The Seamstress turned back around from the cupboard, whatever she’d retrieved hidden in all her spider legs. “If I were you,” she said, ignoring the conversation they’d had while her back was turned, “I’d start with the Serpent.”
“You make it sound like the Serpent will welcome us,” Solmir said.
“It will, for it knows what your coming will mean. Live long enough, once-King, and death becomes a kindness. You aren’t there yet, I don’t think.” A pause. “I am.”
It hung there, a casual death wish. Neve couldn’t tell whether it surprised Solmir or not. If it did, he hid it this time. No emotion flickered on his face at all; he could’ve been marble-carved.