The ghost of the argument that had dogged them for days hung close. She’d been understanding yesterday, had given it time to see if he was right and the change in the mirror was a fluke. Now she was ready for action. Ready to do something. Anything.
“It might,” Eammon hedged, still reluctant. “Or it could mean the mirror just doesn’t work anymore. Now that we’re the Wilderwood, the magic has changed, the ties that made it show First Daughters altered in ways we don’t understand yet.”
“Yes, I’m aware, thank you. But your mother made the mirror to see her sister. That is its function, and that is what I am trying to do.” Red’s hand cut toward the mirror. “If it worked before, why wouldn’t it now, when the Wilderwood is the strongest it’s been in centuries?”
“Because before, Neve wasn’t in the Shadowlands.”
“But if it’s supposed to help me see her—”
“Red, the Shadowlands are wrong.” The last word was almost a growl. “It’s an upside-down world filled with monsters that are terrible and gods that are worse. Even if we knew how to open it now that the Wilderwood has changed form, you can’t just make a way into something like that, not without dire consequences. It’s dark, and it’s twisted, and it twists everything within it.”
Everything within it. Like Neve.
Eammon kept his arms crossed tight over his broad chest, his pushed-up sleeves revealing the runnels of long-healed scars, the bark-like vambraces on his forearms. “It could be a clue,” he said finally. “It could be nothing. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, Red. I don’t want…” He trailed off, rubbed at his eyes with thumb and forefinger.
The quiet thickened around them, something that could suffocate. They’d circled this for days, and finally it was here.
Red swallowed. “You don’t want what, Eammon?”
His hand dropped, finally, green-ringed eyes turning her way. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself trying to save her,” he said, each word spoken quiet and clear.
“But that’s what she did for me.”
“And did you want her to?”
“It’s not the same. I didn’t need saving. We know Neve does.”
Eammon didn’t respond to that. But his expression remained implacable.
Red’s mouth felt like a vise from how tight she held it, as if her whole body were a bow and it the arrow. “You think we can’t bring her back.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I think there is a good chance we can bring her back.” She knew every tone in Eammon’s voice, knew when he was lying and when he told the truth and when he lingered somewhere in between. This was truth, but a thin one. “But it’s not going to be easy, Red. She’s in a prison that’s meant to be impenetrable. It’s going to take more than… than hunches and mirrors to pull her out of that, and we need to make sure we know what we’re doing before we try anything.”
Anger made her veins blaze bright green. “So you just want to read some more,” she hissed, “while my sister is trapped with the monsters? With the Kings? I’ve seen what’s down there, Eammon, and I’m not going to leave her.”
“Of course we aren’t going to leave her. But we need to take the time—”
“She doesn’t have time!”
Red didn’t mean to scream it; her voice was hoarse, and it made the words almost a half sob. Eammon’s hands reached out, an instinct to comfort, but she backed away. His hands fell.
She held up her arm, traced in green veins, delicately braceleted in bark. “We have all the time in the world,” she whispered. “But Neve doesn’t. Neve is still human.”
Eammon stood stiffly, eyes unreadable. “And do you regret no longer being human, Redarys?”
He still used her full name sometimes—in bed or in jest. But this was formal. Distant.
Her stomach bottomed out.
“Of course not,” she breathed, but she couldn’t quite make herself reach out and touch him. “You know that.”
He didn’t respond, just kept looking at her with that level amber-and-green gaze.
Finally, Eammon sighed. “I’ll be in the library.” He turned toward the staircase. “Come when you can.” His footsteps echoed down the stairs, the door creaking at the bottom as he pushed it open.
Red crossed from the mirror over to one of the vine-carved windows, watching him trek across the courtyard to the Keep. Part of her wanted to call out to him, to reel him back, to let him take her on the floor of the tower until both of them forgot their argument.
She didn’t.
Instead, she thought of all the trees within her, the Wilderwood she carried beneath her skin. The sentinels she and Eammon had absorbed, the sentinels whose rotting had opened doors into the Shadowlands.
Eammon wanted to wait. Wanted to find a way to Neve that was perfectly safe, one that didn’t carry any risk. Red knew that wasn’t possible. She understood his fear—the thought of losing him twisted everything in her middle into barbed knots—but Eammon didn’t have a sibling. A twin. He couldn’t understand this, the unique pain of it.
Red couldn’t leave Neve in the Shadowlands any longer. She couldn’t wait for Eammon to find his mythical perfect plan that didn’t risk anything.
And she couldn’t let him keep her from trying something that might work.
A rustle in her head, like wind through trees. A warning? A benediction? She didn’t care. Her plan was loose and ill formed, but it was the only thing Red could think of that had a chance of working, and desperation covered a multitude of holes.
Down in the courtyard, Eammon paused at the door of the Keep. He turned, looked back up at her, eyes shadowed by noonday sun. Then he disappeared inside.
If she told him, he would stop her—might go so far as to lock her in the damn library. If Red was going to do this, it had to be now, and it had to be alone.
So as the door of the Keep closed behind Eammon, Red made her way to the stairs.
There was no threat to her in the Wilderwood now, but going beyond the gate still made her heart kick up against her throat. Red closed it quietly behind her, though she knew no one was listening. Eammon would be nose-deep in a book by now, as much to forget about their argument as to find anything useful, and Fife and Lyra would still be on their way back from meeting Raffe after spending last night in the capital.
Still, she watched the trees warily as she slipped between them. Old habits were hard to break.
Moving quickly was a challenge with the mirror clutched to her chest. Red tilted it away from her abdomen, frowning into the surface. Still clogged with that strange and layered root-darkness, nearly impossible to make out if you didn’t squint.
Surely, the roots meant she needed a sentinel. Needed to tug one from within herself, make a doorway to pull Neve through. What else could it mean?