The word made his fingers flex; Raffe tucked the note into his pocket with a scowl. “Sorry, but the only way you’re going to know the contents of my correspondence is if you steal it.”
“Sounds like a challenge.” But the words were softer than they should be; Kayu’s face was pensive. She sighed, eyes swinging from him to the jagged shadows of the branches on the walls. “It’s honestly remarkable that you’ve held everything together this long. I know the Valleydan court isn’t necessarily one for intrigue—the cold saps it out of them, I guess. But your luck won’t hold forever. Power is power, and eventually, someone will want it. The sooner you can find Neverah Valedren, the better.”
Truer than Kayu could know. There was no way to tell what was happening to Neve in the Shadowlands, how she spent the days that ticked by as they got no closer to finding a way to save her. He played it over endlessly in his head—the glass coffin, the churning hurricane the grove became, the way she sank into the dirt with only a glimpse of that gray sky, that inverted forest, that endless dead land populated by undead things. It was a world totally unlike their own, and he had no frame of reference for how it worked, what it would do to her.
What it had already done, even before she disappeared into it. He hadn’t forgotten that the last move of the night had been hers. How her eyes had opened, seeing Red—seeing him—and then closed as she pulled in all that darkness, let it overwhelm her. Became the shadows. Left him.
Which brought his thoughts around to Solmir.
In the months between Red leaving and the battle at the Wilderwood, Raffe hadn’t known what to make of the relationship between Neve and Arick. It wasn’t quite friendship, but wasn’t quite something more, either. Still, he’d thought they were falling for each other at first, and it had made his middle feel empty, twisted. Jealousy, yes, but almost something like… relief? It was all so much to be caught up in, royalty and betrothals and the geometries of love. Maybe conceding defeat was better.
As time went on, his thinking had shifted—he no longer assumed Neve was falling for Arick, but it seemed Arick was falling for her. It flew in the face of everything Raffe thought he knew about the man. Arick had loved Red since they were old enough to know what that meant; she’d been his first everything. And though Arick’s love wasn’t the kind you could build a foundation on, it hadn’t needed to be. They’d talked so much about trying to make Red run, but in the end, they’d all known she wouldn’t. Raffe had known before Arick and Neve, but no matter how poorly they took it, it hadn’t been a surprise.
So for Arick to suddenly decide he wanted Neve, his betrothed, even as they were attempting to bring Red home—it didn’t make sense. And that should have been his first clue that Arick wasn’t himself anymore.
Maybe want wasn’t even the right way to put it. Solmir had been tender with Neve, careful. It was clear that he wanted her safe, even as things veered wildly out of control. But maybe that wasn’t so much for want of her as it was for want of the use of her.
The thought made his fists clench even now.
By the time he’d figured it out, things had gone too far for him to halt them. He remembered running into the grove, seeing the coffin, flailing at it with his sword and his hands. Nothing.
Nothing.
And now Neve was trapped with Solmir in the underworld.
Next to him, Kayu was silent, watching the branch shards with her eyes narrowed and her full lips twisted to the side. Her manicured nails tapped on the silk sleeve of her dress, the picture of a princess.
He was too good at trusting people. Raffe wanted to believe everyone meant well, and he’d been burned by it more than once—though never scaled with these kinds of possible consequences, wars and successions and stolen thrones. Now it was an instinct he actively fought against.
But for reasons he didn’t quite understand, he wanted to trust Kayu. Maybe it was loneliness—he was holding all of this together by way of tightly clenched threads and willpower. It would be nice to have someone here to help.
It would be nice to have someone he didn’t have to hide from.
He could feel Red’s note in the pocket of his doublet, shoved in next to Kiri’s. He should’ve burned them both, but he kept rereading them instead, as if he could somehow wring sense from the words if he repeated them over and over in his head.
But if he knew nothing, and Red and Eammon knew nothing, who else was left to ask? Maybe Kiri would be more forthcoming with information in person.
“How much would it be for a passage to the Rylt?” he asked quietly.
Kayu, to her credit, didn’t appear surprised at the question. She gave a graceful shrug. “Depends on how many people we’re taking.”
“Three. Wait, five.” It might be a good idea to have Fife and Lyra there—he’d feel safer being around Kiri if he was surrounded by allies.
“Six,” Kayu amended.
Too late, he recalled her phrasing when she answered his question, the use of we. “Kayu, you don’t understand—”
“Do not say that to me.” Since he’d known her—admittedly not long—Kayu had been nothing but calm, collected. Even when she was breaking into his room and pretending to be an assassin, she had the air of someone always in control, who knew exactly what the next three moves were and was amply prepared for them.
But now her dark eyes were fierce, her hands clenched into fists by her sides. She’d whirled around and glared up as if she really could kill him now if she had a weapon on her. Raffe’s eyes widened, but he successfully fought the urge to step back, even when she advanced so close that her nose almost brushed his collarbone.
“Please don’t act like I’m too dense to understand, Raffe.” She was angry, obviously, but her voice stayed even. “If you want to go to the Rylt on my coin, I’m coming with you.”
A moment, a breath. She was standing very close.
He couldn’t afford to get them all to the Rylt on his own. And trying to bring Kiri back here would be both too visible and too dangerous—he didn’t want that woman anywhere near Valleyda. Not to mention the complications of bringing Red and Eammon to the capital. It would be nigh impossible to hide what they were, now that they barely looked human. Maybe he could cook up some kind of explanation, give a half-truth, but it would be strained, and he couldn’t stanch the gossip.
He didn’t have any other options, and it almost felt like a relief.
“Fine,” Raffe said, low and dark. “But if any of this gets out, I’ll know exactly who is to blame. And I will not go easy.”
“I would never expect you to,” she said coolly.
And there they stood, too close and too heated, until the tension in the room was broken by the earth shaking.