A tiny earthquake, there and then gone. Barely enough to mark. But to Red it seemed significant. Like something cataclysmic happening somewhere else, though she felt only the echo.
Whatever had seized Bormain let him go as abruptly as it’d come, his eyes clearing, his face rearranging itself into that sheepish half smile. He ran a hand through his pale hair. “Sorry, got lost in the clouds for a minute there.” His mouth slowly fell from half smile to confused line, brow furrowing as he took in their stares. “Did something happen?”
“You could say that,” Fife murmured.
Kayu, true to form, recovered from the strangeness more quickly than the rest of them. She gestured to the carving and the two flanking it. “These other markings… are they astrological? They look like constellations.”
“They are.” Valdrek spoke with forced good nature, trying to dispel the tightly coiled tension in the air. He tapped a finger on the carving that looked like the Sisters, oblivious to the shadow-touched wood that repelled Red, Eammon, and Fife. “This one is the Sisters. And that one, on the other side, is the Far-Flung Queen.”
“In Nioh, we call the first one the Sun-Handed and the Moon-Handed,” Kayu said. “And the other one the Blood-Handed. The story is that two rival queens harnessed the power of the sun and the moon, but the two powers were so balanced, they canceled each other out, and neither one of them could conquer the other. The Blood-Handed was another queen of a smaller territory, and she took over the other two queens’ countries without a fight after they both disappeared.” Her lip curled as she lifted a delicate shoulder in a shrug. “I assume the title was meant to be ironic.”
“Our ancestors had a similar story, but different names, though the direct translations don’t necessarily trip off the tongue or make much sense.” Valdrek moved his pointing finger to the carving on the right, the one Red had always known as the Far-Flung Queen. “This one is the Third Daughter,” Valdrek said. The ring-scabbed finger moved to the Sisters. “And they called these two the Golden-Veined and the Shadow Queen.”
Chapter Eighteen
Neve
Darkness was a thing she’d grown used to in recent months. Neve seemed to spend most of her time in it—in the gloom of the Shrine, bleeding on branches in an attempt to bring her sister home. Pacing in her room, unable to quiet her mind enough for sleep. And now, in the Shadowlands, not dark like she was used to but their own kind of flat, blank emptiness, all shades of gray.
She wasn’t used to darkness feeling restful.
There was pain. Sharp in her knee, a dull ache everywhere else. With a distant sort of clarity, Neve knew she teetered on the edge of consciousness, and the circumstances that had brought her there filled themselves in slowly.
The Oracle, an awful god in an awful bone-filled cave. Solmir, slicing its throat, taking its power. The mountain collapsing, all those fused-together bones finally breaking apart without the god to hold them together.
The way the Oracle had cut right through to the careful knot Neve had made of her emotions and unraveled it in an instant. Unspooled her soul like so much ragged thread.
A soft moan escaped her mouth, not just from physical pain. It was enough to jerk her from that wavering precipice of unconsciousness, ground her fully in her bruised body. Neve curled around her middle, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
“Neve?”
Solmir. He didn’t touch her, but she felt the way his hand hovered just above her shoulder, a slight disturbance in the cold, empty air. “Are you hurt?”
A ludicrous question, one she could’ve laughed at if her throat didn’t feel scraped raw. She shook her head. Solmir wasn’t asking about her feelings. He just wanted to know if she could move, if she could continue their journey to the Heart Tree. That’s what he needed her for—her emotional state was secondary, if considered at all.
But when she opened her eyes, saw the way his shone with worry, she wondered if maybe that wasn’t true.
Concern honed his already knife-sharp features even finer, made his mouth pull flat, his high forehead wrinkle. His long hair was streaked with blood; it fell over his shoulder, the ends brushing her cheek.
“Neve,” he said again, and this time the tone was different. As if he knew she was lying when she indicated she wasn’t hurt. As if he wanted her to talk to him.
And he was the only thing to talk to in this whole cold, dead world.
Gingerly, Neve sat up, wincing as she did. Rubble lay strewn around them, pieces of broken bone. She turned to look at what they’d escaped.
The mountain had flattened, but not all the way to the cracked ground. Some of the bones remained fused together, making a nearly smooth wall of ivory that still towered above her head. Rattling still echoed in the air, as if the mountain was caught in a slow-motion collapse, dismantling made graceful by lack of speed. She thought of the Oracle’s cave, how the dais had fallen through the floor and pulled the other bones into the hole it made, and shuddered.
“We can rest a moment, but we shouldn’t stay long,” Solmir said. He nodded toward the bones. “The mountain isn’t stable.”
“Did it hurt you?” Neve remembered the fall, in bits and pieces. Wind on her face and the groan of destruction, his arms holding her tight enough to bruise. He’d kept the worst of it from her, kept her as safe as he could, knowing they couldn’t die but wanting to save her from pain.
Because he needs you. She said it fiercely to herself, forming the words into daggers so she wouldn’t forget them. Only because he needs you.
He shrugged in answer, though the proof was all over him—abrasions on his arms, a bloody slash at the corner of his lip. It was strange to see someone bleed here, where there was no crimson to mark the cut. Just charcoal-colored liquid that could be almost anything. “My wounds are superficial, and not the kind that need to be talked about.”
A lead-in if there ever was one. He’d watched her crumple as the Oracle extracted its truth. He knew it left a wound.
“I understand that I’m not someone you would choose to speak to about such things,” Solmir said, sitting next to her on the ground with his knees pulled up, arms resting atop them. “But I’m here. And I’m willing to listen.”
She kept her arms protectively curled around her middle, as if all these shards of guilt and shame and anger were physical things she had to stop from pushing out through her skin, thorns of a different kind. They all swirled in her head now, unfettered by the ways she’d lashed them down, always saying she’d deal with them later later later. Later was now, and the way the Oracle had delved into her head made all of those buried feelings impossible to catch, like trying to cup a river in her hands, like lying at the bottom of a grave and trying to swallow all the dirt.
A slight rumble tremored through the ground, rattling the bones.
“I wish I hated you more,” Neve said softly.