Sharp and prim; she kept her concern behind her teeth. It was practical to be concerned, really. The last thing Neve needed was to be left in the Shadowlands alone.
“No, Neverah, I’m not going to pass out.” The flickers of shadow along his veins had lessened, but his eyes were still new-moon black around the blazing ocean of his irises. He turned on his heel, resting his back against the trunk of a tree, rubbing at the scars on his forehead. The movement made a flash of that strange tattoo show through his shirt again. “Magic is a slippery thing to hold. Especially when you have to keep it from subsuming your soul.”
Her brow arched. “So you’re in a battle for your soul as we speak? Rather melodramatic.”
“Truly.” He pushed off the tree with a slight grimace, rings glinting as he swept back his hair. Darkness still fluttered along his limbs, but it disappeared even as Neve watched, shadow going wherever he kept it. “I’ll be just fine in a moment or two. Don’t waste any worry on me. I know you have a very limited supply for anyone who isn’t Redarys.”
Her brows slashed down, but Neve didn’t reply.
His long hair trailed, smoke-colored, as Solmir moved through the trees again, every step seeming stronger. Neve chewed her lip a moment before following. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere we can rest.”
“I expect my questions to be answered clearly.” Vowels clipped, tone measured. Damn her if she wouldn’t still sound like a Queen, even in ancient boots and a bedraggled nightgown and Solmir’s old, too-large coat. “It’s the least you can do.”
For a moment, she didn’t think he’d reply. Solmir’s gait had eased, all that thorny magic he’d absorbed finding comfortable places to wait until they needed it, and he turned fully around to face her. He didn’t like half looks when he could help it, she’d noticed; he wasn’t one for coy glances over the shoulder. Solmir seemed to prefer facing her head-on.
He dipped his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Neve balled her fists.
The corner of his mouth turned up, wicked and sharp. “The Weaver wasn’t the only Old One who had an adherent follow them into the Shadowlands, though she’s the only one still alive.” He paused, only for a second, something dimming in his gaze. “Well. She was.”
He didn’t sound sorrowful, not really. But there was a finality in his tone, and a sense of emptiness. The difference between knowing something was gone and feeling its absence when you reached for it.
A minuscule shake of Solmir’s head, only visible because of the way it stirred his hair. “The Dragon had one, long ago. The Rat, too—to each their own when deciding who to go to bed with, but that I can’t quite wrap my head around. And the Leviathan.” His mouth flicked down in distaste. “The Leviathan kept its lover’s body, apparently. As a testament to their devotion. Love devolves very quickly into horror when gods are involved.”
“Love can devolve quickly into horror with anyone,” Neve said quietly.
“Don’t I know it,” he muttered as he pivoted away from her, started forward again.
The inverted forest looked all the same, no variation to mark the passage of distance or time, but Neve estimated they walked another mile before they reached the cabin.
This one looked even more uncanny than the Seamstress’s had. The cabin was up on stilts, tall enough so that its roof brushed the underside of the ever-present fog that floated in place of clouds here. A rope ladder dangled from the platform that held the cabin to the ground, twisting gently back and forth. For all that the roof sagged—and there was one ragged hole gaping in the side Neve could see—the stilts themselves looked solid enough.
Still, when Solmir grabbed the ladder, Neve shook her head. “Absolutely not. Why would we—”
“Are you tired, Neverah?”
The question took her aback, but there was a heaviness in her eyes, and her limbs did feel harder to hold up the longer they lingered here, as if standing still had allowed exhaustion to catch her. “Is that relevant?”
Solmir’s arms flexed, making the ladder swing back and forth. His hair followed, waving in the gray air. Neve hoped the rope snapped. “You’ve been awake far longer than your body is used to. We both need to get some sleep.” A flash of teeth. “It seems we have quite the journey ahead of us, and I, for one, would like to be well rested.”
He started climbing the ladder, the muscles of his back working as he hauled himself up, that tattoo on his arm prominent again through the fabric of his shirt.
Neve scowled at him. “So we’re both going to sleep in the same decrepit cabin?”
“You’re welcome to stay down there and sleep on the ground if you want.”
“Kings on shitting horses,” Neve muttered.
A snort came faintly from above her.
Climbing the rope in borrowed boots and a nightgown proved difficult, and Neve was out of breath when she reached the platform at the top. It seemed mostly sturdy, though there were gaps between some of the wooden planks large enough to put a foot through.
The door slumped open on broken hinges. Neve stepped through cautiously; the pervasive cold of the Shadowlands was even more pronounced up here, and she instinctually tugged Solmir’s coat tighter around her shoulders.
The inside of the cabin was just as run-down as the outside. The gaping hole to the right of the door took out most of the wall—Solmir was in the process of pushing what looked like an old wardrobe in front of it to block out the breeze, shoulders working in a way that Neve was irritated with herself for noticing.
When the wardrobe was situated in front of the hole, Solmir straightened, dusted off his hands. He caught Neve’s narrowed eyes and shrugged. “Won’t do much for the cold, but better than nothing.”
Other than the wardrobe, the only furnishings left in the cabin were a broken table listing against the opposite wall and a threadbare rug in the center of the room. Something was stuck in the rug’s weave, spiny shards flecked with odd fibers.
Neve bent down to lightly touch one of them. Feathers.
“This was the home of the Hawk’s lover. He’s been dead a long time, almost as long as the Hawk has been.” Solmir sat down against the wall and began unlacing his boots. “The Old Ones’ lovers don’t seem to outlast them for long.”
“That’s the trouble with religion,” Neve said. “Tying the reason for your existence to a god seems to naturally lead to your existence not mattering much.”
Solmir cocked a brow, still working his laces. “For someone who ushered in a new spiritual order, you hold religion in great contempt.”
“You knew that already.” Neve didn’t follow his example of making herself as comfortable as she could, instead standing stiffly next to the rug. She still had his coat clutched around her. “I might’ve tried to show piety in the true world, but I don’t think I fooled you.”
His hands stilled; Solmir looked up at her, blue eyes narrow and blazing in the gray-scale gloom. It made Neve want to call the words back, cage them in her throat.