Frustration faded to something more complicated. Neve swallowed, gnawing on her bottom lip. “Why should I trust you, then?”
You probably shouldn’t. Almost joking. But you’ve made lots of questionable decisions when it comes to whom to trust.
Damn her if she was going to be lectured by a disembodied voice in a shadowy not-quite-dream—she’d rather just get to the point. “Do you know something about the Tree?”
I think I do. Maybe. But memories… they’re like fog. A billow of mist rolled across Neve’s feet. When I see you, it’s easier. But I’m caught in between.
“Between what?”
The two worlds. The two of you. Life and death, too, I think.
Neve wrapped her arms around herself, cold seeping through the gauzy dream-dress. “Tell me what you know.”
The Tree waits for you, in the place it’s always been. But just reaching it is not enough—there must be a mirrored journey, a matched love. And a key, if you’re to return.
“So where do I get a key?” That seemed like the best place to start. Mirrored journeys, matching love… that, she could deal with later.
Once you need it, it will be there.
Neve frowned into the mist. “Are you sure you can’t tell me who you are?”
A pause. When I remember, I’ll let you know.
Fog slithered over Neve’s skin. She shivered—it felt almost invasive, as if it were looking for something.
The voice went stern. You’re an empty vessel.
She shifted on her feet. “Solmir is holding the magic. So I don’t…” She trailed off, looked down at her thorny hands. “So I don’t end up like this.”
The voice fell quiet. More fog slid over her, considering.
That will change, it said finally. The past and the present and the future all twine together here, and all paths look as solid as the one that will be. But he’ll do what’s right, in the end. That is solid and sure.
He. Solmir? Neve didn’t ask for clarification, but it made her mouth pull down. The idea of Solmir doing what was right, of it being solid and sure, seemed nearly as likely as her wanting to kiss him for any reason other than magic.
Another flash of a shape in the roots beyond the mirror, concrete enough for her to pick out broad shoulders and a narrow waist before it faded again. Look up.
She did. Slowly, a branch descended through the fog. Bare of leaves, and in addition to being crossed with dark veins, the white wood held glimmers of gold. Duality trapped in bark. It stopped right above her head, close enough for her to reach out and touch what grew there.
Apples. One black, one gold, one crimson.
Her hand nearly moved of its own accord, reaching up through the mist to touch the black apple. It was warm. Smelled somehow of copper. The points of tiny thorns studded the dark flesh, like they were growing outward from the apple’s center.
Don’t pick it.
An urgency in the voice. Neve dropped her hand. “What is this?” She breathed. “This is more than a dream.”
Everything here is more than what it seems. The apples swayed gently above her head. Having two worlds means having a place between them, and you belong to neither one nor the other. Things appear as you can conceive of them. Amusement colored the voice. That is no more an apple than you are, but your eyes need something to see.
“Is this a place between worlds, then?”
In a way. A place between life and death. A place to lock things in. A pause. We are too skilled at making prisons.
Many words that gave few answers. Neve frowned, anxiously worked her nails into the meat of her palm. “Should I tell him?” she asked quietly. “About everything you’ve said?”
Do what you want, the voice said. Everyone has to decide how best to tell the story of their own villain.
Her nails bit deeper.
I have nothing else for you. She couldn’t imagine how a disembodied voice managed to sound so weary. It pricked at that familiarity again, made her lips twist in an effort to recall where exactly she’d heard that same shade of tired, of run-down and heartsick. Go back to him.
And her eyes flew open at the command.
Neve stayed curled on her side for a moment, with a feeling like falling back into herself. Awareness came piecemeal, to her legs and then her arms, her heart. Physically, she hadn’t moved, but it still felt like she’d traveled miles.
A place between worlds. Between life and death. Things too large and heavy to understand, things her thoughts couldn’t wrap around.
But she didn’t spend much time trying, distracted by something else. Because here, in this ruined cabin in the Shadowlands, someone was singing.
A language she didn’t recognize, a low and droning melody that lilted up and down like a lullaby. She heard the scrape of metal across wood; then the song was interrupted with a curse.
Solmir sat with one knee bent and the other stretched out, leaning back against the wall of the cabin. His thumb was in his mouth, a dagger in his hand and a small piece of whittled wood lying on the floor, in a shape that looked deliberate.
His eyes flicked her way when she moved. “Good morning, sleeping beauty,” he muttered around his thumb.
“Except there’s no morning here.” Neve sat up slowly, muscles protesting. “What were you singing?”
His thumb dropped from his mouth. A gray spot marred it, blood leached of color. “Was I singing?”
He looked so different, for that small moment. Sprawled out and vulnerable, human. Someone who might be capable of doing the right thing, whatever that was.
“Yes,” Neve said, waspish. “Loudly.”
The snap of her tone wasn’t lost on him. Solmir straightened, wiped his thumb on his shirt, picked up the carved wood, and stuck it in his pocket. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. One whiles away the hours as they can.”
“By singing and… whittling?”
“It would be drinking and bedsport, but the Shadowlands are woefully empty of wine and I’ll wait for you to ask me for the other.”
An angry flush ran from her forehead to her chest. “I’d sooner ask you to throw me into the mouth of the next lesser beast we come across.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” He stood, swept a hand toward the lolling door. “Now that we’re both well rested, let’s go destroy a god.”
Chapter Seven
Red
It changed, Eammon. I showed you yesterday, and you said to wait and see if it stayed.” She waved her hand. “It did. It has to mean something.”
Red stood next to the mirror, still fringed with strands of her split-ended hair and spotted with her blood, still with a pile of fingernail clippings as a macabre centerpiece before it. The sight of all her sacrifices discomfited Eammon, she could tell, but he didn’t comment on them. He stood next to her, arms crossed, staring into the mirror with its reflected tangle of roots. His heavy brows drew together, his mouth pressed to a thin line.