A shrug. “Holding on to a soul and that much power at the same time is quite a feat. Souls and Shadowlands magic aren’t things that can be held simultaneously—at least, not if you plan to keep them both.” His head cocked toward the gray sky, the wispy impressions of faraway roots looking like smudged clouds. “Maybe I do want that medal.”
The reference to an earlier jibe might’ve made her roll her eyes if she hadn’t been so focused on the matter of magic and souls. “Is that what happened to Red?”
Solmir stopped then and turned to look at her. His arms crossed over his chest, the diffuse light of the Shadowlands limning his frame. “No,” he said finally, almost soft, or at least as soft as his voice could get. “The magic of the Wilderwood is different. It… harmonizes with a soul, is the best way to put it. Amplifies it, instead of consuming it utterly. Redarys still has her soul.” His brow climbed, a smirk playing at his mouth. “Just as stubborn and irritating as its always been.”
Neve cracked a tiny smile despite herself. “Good,” she murmured. “That’s good.”
He watched her a moment more, face unreadable, still twisting that ring around his thumb. The arms of his shirt were hopelessly torn from the thorns he’d grown, the tattoo circling his bicep visible. Three lines, the one at the top thickest, the one in the middle marked through with tiny vertical dashes, the one on the bottom simple.
Solmir turned on his heel, walking into the wasteland again. “I’m glad you think it’s good,” he said. “I’m sure Redarys has more use for hers than I do for mine.”
Chapter Nine
Raffe
The Shrine gave him the shivers.
It always had, really. He’d never been much for religion—in most countries, day-to-day veneration was more for folk heroes and figures of local legend, faith on a smaller and more personal scale. If you weren’t an Order priestess—or an unluckily fertile Valleydan queen—your dealings with the Kings were few. One might light a red candle a couple times a year, and you’d be married in white and buried in black, but the religion that had sprung up around the Five Kings wasn’t one that required much of its penitents.
Raffe very much wished he could go back to that kind of distance.
He stood in the second room of the Shrine like one might stand at the edge of a cliff, hands held stiff by his sides, shoulders tense. The note from Red that Fife had delivered dangled from his fingers, so many words to tell him there was still no news, still no sign of Neve, still nothing. Another day passed with the Queen of Valleyda missing, and he was the only one who knew.
Well. Him and Kayu.
“Shit,” he muttered, crumpling Red’s letter in his hand.
The broken branches in the Shrine’s second room looked a little worse for wear after Neve’s campaign against them, but not by much. A little more crooked, a little more withered, but they stood strong in their stone bases, and though there were bloodstains on the floor, there were none on the bark.
Not that the Shrine was even necessary anymore, not really. Hardly anyone but the priestesses came to pray, and all of them were in the Rylt, either sent there by Neve or by him. He didn’t know if it was the same in other Shrines in other kingdoms, but Valleyda had always been the most pious. Their religion was dying a slow death.
Now that Raffe knew what the Kings were, that the whole thing was built on lies and half-truths and power, being in the Shrine at all made him feel slightly ill.
Raffe didn’t know why he was here, really. He’d searched the Shrine already, every inch of it, trying to see if there was some clue they’d missed, some leaving of Neve’s strange experiments that might reveal the way to save her.
Despite everything, he’d reflexively reached for the table of red prayer candles when he entered. When he realized what he was doing, he shrank away like it was a basket full of snakes rather than wicks and wax. The Kings were the last people he wanted to hear from. He could revert to his childhood ways, he supposed, praying to some folktale figure, or the Plaguebreaker—but after meeting her in the flesh, that felt strange, too. The idea had occurred to him that maybe Red and Eammon were the thing to pray to now, but that felt even more strange, and useless besides. They didn’t know what to do any more than he did.
His thoughts wandered to Kayu. He’d seen her this morning after breakfast, as he walked down to the Shrine—dressed in a sumptuous gown of purple silk with silver embroidery, her long black hair elaborately braided back from her face. She’d been strolling the gardens on the arm of Belvedere’s valet—the master of trade kept quarters in the capital city, even as the seasons dipped toward cold, though he generally stayed away from the palace unless he had to come balance ledgers. Her eyes had flickered his way even as she laughed gaily at some quip the valet made, but other than an inclination of her head, she hadn’t acknowledged Raffe at all. As if she hadn’t been in his room playing at assassination in the small hours of yesterday morning. Reading his correspondence. Offering help.
Raffe rubbed a hand over his face. He would say he didn’t trust Kayu as far as he could throw her, but she was a small woman, so he could probably throw her much farther than his trust would extend. Even still, he didn’t see a way around taking her offer. She was right. He needed money.
And with everything else he had to deal with, trying to head off a curious Niohni princess was one task he just didn’t have the mental capacity for. He’d let her help. And if things went awry… well, she’d played at assassin first.
Even as Raffe had the thought, his stomach went knotty. He wasn’t nearly as bloodthirsty as one needed to be for this.
So when he turned and saw her standing behind him, eyes wide and a lit candle clutched in her hand, the string of profanity he let loose was truly impressive.
She cocked her head to the side. When he’d first seen her, he could’ve sworn the look in her eyes was somewhere near panic, but now she seemed cool and unruffled as ever. “Feeling pious, Raffe?”
Raffe gestured to the candle in her hand. “Not as pious as you, apparently.”
Again, that flash of something wary across her heart-shaped face. But then Kayu shrugged. “Old habits.” She passed him in a flutter of silk, going to fix her candle before one of the branch shards. She did it carefully, he noticed, with graceful movements that spoke of practice.
Candlelight shimmered over her gown as she turned to him, her back now on her prayer. Her ink-dark eyes narrowed at the branch shards lining the walls. “Not much for decoration.”
“Is the Shrine in Nioh decorated?”
“It’s austere, but better than this. Only having one branch to display means we can do more elsewhere; having so many really overwhelms the room.”
“You could return to your stroll with what’s-his-name, if the lack of decoration offends you so much.”
“Don’t be jealous. Aldous is quite spoken for; he and Belvedere have been together for years.” She nodded at the note still held in Raffe’s hand. “More news about the Queen?”