She wanted to argue, but what could she say? Neve agreed, shadows damn her. She agreed.
Valchior’s smile widened. “We took similar paths, Neve. I tried to save my daughter from the Wilderwood, from the Wolf. Tried to get back the power that would keep us all safe from the gods this prison world couldn’t hold forever. Can you blame me for that, really?”
The King stopped his movement, standing still before her. The flicker of his features from bone to beauty stopped, leaving him only handsome, only regal. “This place wasn’t made for us. You’ve seen how it changes you. Are we to blame for what we’ve become?”
“You didn’t have to.” Sweat slicked the god-bone in her hand, made it hard to grip. The cold air on her fear-clammy skin made her shiver. “You didn’t have to keep pulling power up from the Shadowlands, tying your souls to its magic until you couldn’t even leave your Sanctum. Solmir didn’t.”
“Solmir,” Valchior hissed, “has not told you the entirety of his sorry tale.”
She knew that. Of course she did. He hadn’t told her, and she hadn’t asked, because there was too much to do and too much to worry about without shouldering the sob story of a fallen King who was both her captor and her way home.
She didn’t need to know how much he’d lost, too.
“This world wasn’t made to last.” The air around her shifted as Valchior leaned forward. “And your world above isn’t in the best shape either, is it? Murder and avarice, thieving and cruelty. Makes you wonder what good a soul is at all. But it wasn’t like that before, when we all had common things to dread. Monsters make men band together. And when the monsters are the gods, are the rulers, even better—when men are given much to fear, they draw together even more tightly.”
“Are you arguing that letting you and the others come back to the true world would be a good thing?”
“Merely making an observation, but yes, I think it could be.” Valchior shrugged. “So much can be solved by fear. It’s a most excellent tool. An excellent means of control.”
“You can’t rule through fear.” It gritted through her teeth, forced out.
“A noble idea,” Valchior conceded, “but empty. You never accomplished anything that wasn’t through fear when you were queen on the surface, Neverah. And you know it. Everything you did, all the strides you made, were because everyone in your tiny court was afraid of you. Afraid of what you might do, unhinged and grieving.” A warm laugh, incongruous in all this dark. “And you liked it.”
Weren’t villains supposed to lie? This would be easier if he were lying.
The thoughts of the Serpent still coiled around her own, tense but no longer fearful. Valchior had barely acknowledged the Old One. He couldn’t do anything to the Serpent in this form, couldn’t kill it to absorb its power.
Couldn’t do anything to Neve, either, other than talk. Other than spill truths like blood and leave her desperately trying to stanch the wound.
“You can talk until you run out of air,” Neve said, jaw set and fists clenched around her shard of bone. “But I will still do what I came down here to do.”
The King stepped back, spread his arms wide. “I wouldn’t dream of stopping you, Shadow Queen.”
He said the title slowly, deliberately. Watched it make her flinch.
“We know who you are,” Valchior murmured. “We know why you’re here.” He leaned forward to put his mouth close to her ear, and even though he was a shadow-made projection that couldn’t touch her, Neve shrank away. “And we welcome it.”
“Neverah?”
Solmir’s voice, halfway to panic. It echoed down the corridor that led to the cairn, his boots sliding down the smooth rock of the tunnels above.
Valchior’s dark-wreathed head turned toward the sound. Neve thought he’d fade away, but instead, his jovial smile widened. “Our errant King, back from his reunion. Calryes jumped at the chance to come see his son, you know. To keep him distracted, so you and I could talk. It was almost sweet.”
Distractions. She’d known it had all been distractions, but hearing it confirmed—spun out in directions she hadn’t anticipated—made anxiety curl through her middle.
“Neve, answer me!” It sounded like Solmir was sprinting now, rushing into the yawning dark.
Her shortened name. It still sounded strange to hear him say it.
“Quaint, that he comes for you,” Valchior murmured. “That boy is a knot of contradictions.” He chuckled. “Careful with that one, little queen. He might warm you in the cold, but he’ll burn you in the end.”
“Neverah Valedren!” Knife-edged with worry, her full name like a summons. The furthest thing from a knight in shining armor, coming to save her after she’d left him in shadow-shackles with a sadistic father.
In front of her, Valchior wavered. “And with that, I bid you farewell, Neverah.” His edges spun, the facade of handsomeness fading to skeletal remains before drifting into mist. “Until we meet again.”
Then Neve stood in the cavern, larger than she could fathom, alone except for the fallen King running toward her and the ancient god who wanted to die.
Shadow Queen. The Serpent’s voice in her head was strained. Please.
Neve shook her head, steadied her hands. The weight of the bone was anchoring, smooth and cool. When she turned and headed toward the Serpent in the dark, she heard the god sigh.
Solmir still made his way down the corridor; she could hear him, cursing, sliding over stones and around the bloated corpses she’d run past.
She stretched out the hand not holding the shard of god-bone, stopping when warm scales met her palm, dry and rasping against her skin. Neve sensed a great bulk before her, a creature whose size would make her mind scramble, and was thankful for the darkness that hid it from view.
The Serpent sighed again, a massive sound that reverberated in the dark and in her mind. I was not kind, it said, in tones that recalled neither confession nor rebuttal. Just a statement of fact. I crawled from the sea to the land with the intention of ending worlds. Sometimes, I did. A city is a world, to some. A village. Something like a rueful laugh, stretched to strange in a god’s mind. I made waters undrinkable, land barren, poisoned whole stretches of earth.
“What did they call you?” It seemed like the right question to ask. Neve felt strange taking the life of something without asking its name.
Many things. The Serpent settled, a rumble in the dark. The World Serpent is the one that will come most easily to your tongue.
“World Serpent,” Neve repeated. She steadied the bone in her hand. “I hope you… I hope you rest well.”
Anything will be an improvement, the god replied. Then, almost an afterthought: None of your decisions will be easy, Shadow Queen, but I will tell you this: The Kings would be worse than we ever were. Humanity breeds cruelty in ways my kind does not understand.
“We’ll stop them,” she murmured, not realizing until it left her mouth that she’d said we.