She swallowed against a barbed throat. “Is my sister alive?” She had a vague memory of seeing Red through smoky glass, but it wasn’t enough to trust, and she needed to hear it from his mouth. “If she’s not, I will kill you—truly kill you, not make you fly apart into magic smoke. And if I have to drag your ass to the surface to do it, I will.”
“She’s alive.” He gave her a tiny nod. “We’ll need her, I think, if this is going to work.”
Neve’s brow furrowed. “If what is going to work?”
“Killing the Kings, of course.” A jagged grin curved Solmir’s mouth. He turned, ambling back through the trees in the direction she’d run from, as if confident she would follow. “Funnily enough, dragging asses to the surface is exactly what we’re going to do.”
All in all, she hadn’t run very far. The tower loomed just beyond a thin lacing of inverted trees, visible through their leafless branches.
Though branch wasn’t exactly the right term. The trees grew upside down, the thick boughs cutting through gray, dry dirt, making ridges tall enough to knock shins. Above her head, roots spread in the colorless air, spindly and still, stretching up as far as she could see before disappearing into mist.
A forest in a mirror, the grove they’d grown in the Shrine expanded, magnified.
Beyond the trees, however, was a barren gray waste that stretched for miles, unbroken by any tree, upside down or otherwise. The tower she’d woken up in pointed skyward in the desolate expanse, weathered brick wreathed in climbing black thorns. Solmir headed toward the doorway, nonchalant, as if they’d taken a morning constitutional and were headed in for a leisurely breakfast.
“How exactly do you plan to drag asses to the surface, then?” Neve crossed her arms against a shiver, the cold of this place sinking into her skin. “You failed to bring the Kings through once, so now you’re just going to try again? Are you dull-witted as well as evil?”
Not one of her better insults, granted, but she’d just awoken in the underwold and escaped a monster; one couldn’t really expect cleverness right now.
Solmir gave her an arch look as he pushed the door open, standing to the side and gesturing grandly for her to enter. Her fingers worked into fists at her sides as she did, pressing close to the other end of the threshold. Her skin remembered his, and it made her want to claw it off.
“Extremely dull-witted,” he said as she passed. “And extremely evil.”
Neve held her spine as straight as she possibly could.
In the distance, something rumbled. The earth shook, the stone floor of the tower trembling beneath her feet. Neve’s hand shot out to steady herself against the wall, miraculously avoiding the thorns that lined the stairs.
Solmir’s hand closed around her arm again, hauling her backward before positioning her across from him in the doorway. Her nose almost notched into the gap of his collarbone.
“Safest place in an earthquake,” he said through clenched teeth, blue eyes scanning the horizon instead of looking at her. “Doorways. Remember that—it might come in handy.”
The ground rumbled once more, then settled, grew still. Neve clutched the doorframe behind her with white-knuckled hands. “Does that happen often?”
“More often now.” He turned from her, started up the stairs. “The Shadowlands are shaking apart. Growing more unstable.” He snorted. “At least there’s not much to hold back, not anymore. There’s barely any lesser beasts left, and only four Old Ones.” A pause. “Maybe three, actually. I need to ask the Seamstress.”
“You realize I don’t understand anything you just said.”
He gave her a razor grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “Who’s dull-witted now?”
A shiver kept her from giving a biting answer, the cold of the Shadowlands cutting through her nightgown. Neve tried her best to hide it, but Solmir noticed, mouth softening to be almost pensive. He shrugged out of his coat.
Her head was shaking before he had his arms completely free of it. “I don’t want—”
“Yes, I know, you don’t want anything I’m offering. Too bad. Take the damn coat.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she did. It was warm from where he’d worn it. Neve tried not to cringe away from the fabric.
A pause, then Solmir sighed. “I’m not exactly thrilled that you’re here, either, Neverah. This wasn’t what I wanted.”
“No, what you wanted was the Kings on the surface and my sister dead.”
“Not quite.” It came through clenched teeth, as if he was trying very hard not to give her the fight she was trying to push him into. “I told you want I wanted. The Kings destroyed.”
To show emotion was to show her hand, and Neve had given him too much vulnerability already. He didn’t deserve it, and she didn’t have much to spare. So she drew herself up, fought the way her face wanted to twist to anger. Donned the mask again, and if he could see through it, at least she was trying. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Again, you don’t have much of a choice. I might be a liar, and a murderer, and a whole host of other unsavory things, but I am also the only thing in this whole underworld that gives a fraction of a care about you.” His bared teeth gleamed. “We want the same things, you and I. I know you hate that.”
He stood too close. She wanted to back away from him, but it would be a capitulation, and Neve refused to let him think he’d won anything. She narrowed her eyes. “Presumptuous of you.”
“You want an end. And there were only ever two ways for this to end. Either the Kings are destroyed, soul and what’s left of body, or they escape the Shadowlands when it finally dissolves.” There were scars scored across his forehead, the most painful-looking on both his temples, lessening in severity in the center. He lifted his hand, rubbed them absently. “Believe it or not, I did try to take the easiest route for all of us, when I went to the surface.”
“When you manipulated Arick.” Nothing in his frame seemed penitent, and she probably couldn’t change that, but Neve wouldn’t let him hide behind half confessions. “When you manipulated me.”
“You didn’t have to be manipulated all that much, Your Majesty.” His blue eyes burned in the dim gray light. “You barely needed a nudge.”
She swallowed the taste of her pulse. Refused to duck her chin, refused to avert her gaze.
Solmir was the first to break eye contact, though the casual way he did made it feel less like a victory than Neve wanted. Another rub at his forehead, then his hand dropped, resting on the hilt of a dagger at his side. “I could’ve accomplished what I needed, what we all needed—really, Neverah, you should thank me—but your sister had to go and complicate things.” A pause. “I should’ve expected that, I suppose. Fate is a bitch.”
Her mouth opened to once again tell him to keep mentions of Red out of his mouth, but another quake came before she could.