The shadow rushed into Solmir’s hands, and he fell to the shaking ground. Darkness covered his skin, as if he’d dipped his arms in ink. His irises shuddered from blue to black, blue to black, his soul at a tipping point.
Neve had to get up. The cave collapsed around them, bones sliding and rocks falling; but she had to take some of that magic, too, siphon it out of him so he wasn’t consumed. She lurched forward, ramming her knee against the broken end of a sharp tibia. It punctured skin, the warm weep of blood seeping down her leg and making her stagger. Between the wound and the weakness left over from the Oracle’s assault on her mind, Neve could barely stumble across the floor.
When she made it to Solmir, he was pushing himself to stand, darkness seeping away from his veins, out of his eyes. “Don’t.” Loud and commanding against the screech of the falling mountain. “Don’t take it, we’ll need it all.”
“But you—”
“I,” he snarled, shoving the god-bone in his boot, “am perfectly suited to this.”
Another shudder shook through the cave. A stone fell from the ceiling, careening directly toward Neve’s head; Solmir grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, out of the rock’s path, then immediately released her, unwilling to linger on her skin.
“Promise you won’t take it,” he said, shouting into her face to be heard over the crash and collapse around them. “Not until it’s time!”
“Yes, fine, I promise!”
“Good!” Then he grabbed her waist and swung her up over his shoulders so her stomach pressed against the back of his head, her legs over one shoulder and her arms over the other, his silver-ringed hands wrapped around both to keep her in place. It was uncomfortable, and she barked a wordless protest even as he started forward, running toward the pile of sliding bones.
Solmir wiped a rough hand over her knee, held up his bloodstained palm. “Do you want to walk? Then stop complaining!”
A grunt punctuated the last word as he jumped up on the bones; they slipped under his feet, but Solmir moved quickly, stepping to the next before the one he stood on fell. Neve glanced back—the dais had sunk into the ground, the bloodstained stone crumbled. The bones slipped toward the ever-widening hole, like the mountain was eating itself.
The rasp of Solmir’s breath was loud against her ear as he carried her out of the cave, onto the outcropping of giant femur that made the cliff outside it. Still not safe; the mountain trembled, all the bones fused over eons shuddering apart.
They turned in the opposite direction from where they’d come, Solmir running toward another short rise that crumbled even as they approached. Through the wild tangles of hair—hers and Solmir’s, knotting together with wind and sweat—Neve could see where the mountain abruptly ended, gray horizon, beyond which looked like a sheer drop.
He swung her around to his front; it hurt, and Neve made another sound of protest as Solmir pressed her tight against his chest. “Apologies, Your Majesty. Hold on.”
As the mountain of bones crumbled behind them, Solmir ran to the edge and tipped them over.
Chapter Sixteen
Red
The trek to the Edge took much less time than it used to, now that they didn’t have to be on the lookout for pits of shadow or rotting trees or escaped monsters. Under any other circumstances, it might’ve even been pleasant.
But, circumstances as they were, everyone was tense and silent. Especially Raffe.
Red watched him over her shoulder as she led their odd procession with Eammon, crunching through the leaves of eternal autumn. The other man’s brows drew low over preoccupied eyes, his gaze barely rising from his feet, deep in thought that drew his mouth tight. The only thing he actually appeared to see when he looked at it was Kayu, who, though quiet like the rest of them, took in the forest with wide-eyed delight. Even then, the look on his face wasn’t something Red could easily read.
This had to be awful for him. Raffe and Neve had never really been together, as far as Red knew, but the way they’d felt about each other was obvious. At least, it had been. Now things seemed more complicated. Layered in ways she no longer knew either of them well enough to interpret.
Not that Neve’s romantic entanglements were any of her business. The last time one of them had tried to wade into the other’s love life, it had gone poorly.
For all his awareness of her, Raffe kept a careful distance from Kayu. Occasionally, she’d try to speak to him, or point something out that interested her, and he’d bend a slight smile before going back to brooding. Lyra and Fife indulged her a bit more, answering her questions about the healed Wilderwood when she voiced them. It appeared the third princess of Nioh had read quite a lot about the forest, about Valleyda, and was eager to have someone to discuss it with.
“I’m not sure about her,” Eammon murmured, glancing back to follow Red’s gaze.
“Neither am I.” Red turned back around and leaned her head on Eammon’s shoulder, half to further obscure their conversation, half because he had very nice shoulders. “But Raffe seems to trust her. And beggars can’t be choosers—if we need to go to Kiri, we’ll need a ship.”
“I don’t recall begging to sail to the Rylt,” Eammon muttered.
Apprehension coiled in the muscle beneath her cheek.
“Maybe we won’t have to,” Red said. “If those key-branches are carved on the wall of the Edge, maybe Valdrek will know where the Heart Tree is. What it is.” She sighed. “Anything about it at all would be welcome, really.”
Eammon shrugged, jostling her head; when she frowned up at him, he dropped a kiss on her brow. “Maybe,” he conceded, “but even if Valdrek can answer some questions, I feel like we’ll have to deal with Kiri at some point. Call it Wilderwood intuition.”
“That’s what you call it?” She didn’t have to elaborate—he meant the feeling of something running just alongside your mind, the golden thread winding through their bodies that was both wholly them and wholly other.
Eammon shrugged again, this time purposefully dramatic, to send her head popping up from his shoulder. He grinned when she swatted at him, though his eyes were contemplative. “Seems as good a term as any.”
“Wilderwood intuition is a thorn in my side.”
“You have thorns everywhere, Lady Wolf.”
“Such a romantic,” she replied. But she sounded as preoccupied as she felt, and Eammon gave her an understanding look before reaching down and threading his fingers through hers.
“She’s fine,” he said quietly. “The mirror shattering yesterday means she’s done something, right? That’s what it told you?”
Red nodded grimly. The forest within her—her Wilderwood intuition—had imparted understanding after the mirror broke, in that voice she’d heard in her dreams. She no longer needed the mirror, because Neve had done… something. Taken in the dark the way Red took in the light.