She felt it when she was close. The tunnel, somewhat narrow up to this point, widened out into a vast, dark space. The air of it crept over her skin, a sense of cavernous emptiness that felt somehow lonely. The darkness here was thicker, too—not like the shadows anchored to Calryes had been, not in a way that felt at all sentient, but just… dark. The deep darkness of something that had never been disturbed by light.
Tentatively, one hand held before her and the other clutching the god-bone, Neve stepped into it.
It swallowed her. No amount of eyes adjusting would make her see; here, there was nothing to brighten the gloom, and never had been. Only blackness, only shadows, sliding over her skin like dark velvet. Her breath seemed too loud, the cavern too silent.
So when she heard the moan, it came through bell-clear and ringing.
Neve froze, hands still before her. No words—what would they do? But she let her breath stay loud, a greeting any beast would understand.
There was no use in hiding, anyway. The Serpent knew she was here.
A fluttering against her temples, the touch of an alien consciousness scrabbling for purchase. It felt different than the Seamstress speaking into her mind, weightier, as if the thoughts trying to connect to hers had to translate themselves before they could be anything she’d understand. The Seamstress had been human once. The Serpent never had.
When the Serpent finally spoke, its words reverberated against her bones like they were woven into her marrow.
Shadow Queen.
“Yes.” It was cold enough that her breath probably clouded, but Neve couldn’t see it. Responding to the title felt natural, and hearing it from the Old One inspired no fear.
A sigh from a huge mouth, displacing the air. She felt her hair flutter.
You smell like stars and brimstone. I could tell you from the other, even miles away. You were the one I wanted.
Neve’s hands flexed by her sides. She thought of Solmir when they reached the tunnels, how he didn’t know where to go. The Serpent had called her here instead. Wanted her to be the instrument of its destruction, the vessel of the power it gave up.
“Why?” she asked quietly.
A shift in the dark, ponderous and cataclysmic movement that she couldn’t see but could feel. There must be two vessels. A vessel for magic, a vessel for souls. They cannot be held simultaneously, not when there is more than one. The Serpent paused, and Neve once again felt that scrabble against her skull, an inhuman mind translating itself for her. Perhaps it is not my place to decide which you will be, Shadow Queen. But I find you worthier of my sympathies than the other.
She didn’t understand, not really, but Neve wasn’t in the habit of admitting such things. She drew herself upright, bone clutched in her fist, and spoke the same words she’d said to Calryes. “You know why I’m here.”
Yes. A huff, blowing the tatters of her nightgown against her legs. I’ve lived this half-life much longer than I wanted to, holding out against the pretenders trying to draw me into their web, tangle my magic into theirs. A pause. But dying is hard business for one of my kind. We almost always need help. I’m glad it’s you.
The enormity of what she was about to do sat heavy on her shoulders. The memories of the pain she’d felt when she first used magic here, pulled from anything other than Solmir, made her want to turn around and run back through all that endless dark, run until she found some sort of light.
“Will it hurt?” she breathed. “Taking your magic?”
Important things often hurt, Shadow Queen. You know that.
She did.
But it will not be forever. Another sigh, stirring the air. The magic in me is not tied into the foundations of this place. It is free. It will not weigh down your soul in the same way pulling it from the Shadowlands itself does.
“So it’s safe, then.”
A laugh, echoing in her head. Nothing here is. But it is necessary.
Neve nodded, though she wasn’t sure if the god could see. Still, her throat felt as if she’d swallowed a rock, as her fingers tightened around the shard of bone.
“Hesitation? I didn’t expect that from you, Neverah.”
A new voice, slicing through the shadows.
The darkness ahead of Neve coalesced, like Calryes’s had above, shaping itself. Becoming a man, more solid than Calryes had been, as if he had a greater command of the magic here. Spikes growing from his head like a crown, strong shoulders under a rich purple robe, and a blaze of auburn hair, his handsomeness flickering to skeletal decay and back again.
She’d never seen him before. Still, she knew who he was.
Valchior.
The King smiled. “I expected you to stab our godly friend here the first chance you got. You like magic. You like control. And you’ll have all of those things when you absorb its power.”
Neve didn’t respond, didn’t move, faced with the greatest of the gods she’d been taught to worship and filled with a dread that was anything but holy. She could feel the Serpent’s displeasure in her mind, sparking with inhuman fear, though that fear was a distant second to her own. She wondered if the King could sense it. If he liked it.
Valchior might be more solid than Calryes, but still his edges feathered, features shifting. Man, skull, shroud. In every form, though, a sharp smile hovered around his mouth, lips fuller and more sensual than a rotting god had any right to have.
“Aren’t you lovely,” he murmured, stepping forward as shadows boiled around his feet. “It’s no surprise you turned our Solmir’s head.”
Even through the terror churning in her gut, Neve managed to twist her lips into a sneer. “We need each other. It’s nothing more than that.”
Valchior’s head cocked to the side, face shifting skeletal as he chuckled. “Perhaps that’s true. You did leave him at Calryes’s mercy, and that’s certainly not a pleasant family reunion.”
Guilt, again, digging claws into her chest. Neve gritted her teeth against it.
“Did you figure out what he was doing, all his plans for you?” Valchior asked. “Did he make you ruthless, there on the surface?”
“He didn’t make me anything.” Neve tightened her grip on the bone.
Was it giving something away to say that? The spreading of the King’s lips into a cold smile said it was. “Interesting,” he purred. “So the ruthlessness is all your own.”
His voice slithered over her, calling down to deep fears she hadn’t let herself examine closely. Fears of what she’d become. What more she’d do. She’d pressed all her lines until they gave way and hadn’t yet had the desire to redraw them.
“It’s a liberating thing to realize, Neverah.” Valchior wasn’t quite corporeal enough to pace around her. Instead, he appeared at different places in the shadows, drawn to cardinal points as the dark shifted to accommodate him. “All that striving for goodness does nothing but exhaust you. No one can even decide on what goodness really is. Such an arbitrary thing, and we use it like a noose.”
“Goodness is whatever you’re not,” she said, but it came out so small.
“Is it?” In front of her now, and close. Neve held every muscle frozen to keep from flinching. “Because I think goodness is more about trying to save those you love. Regardless of the cost.”