Red tousled his hair before pulling up his hood, then walked to the prow, leaning on her elbows to look out across the water as the ship skipped over it. She’d never spent much time on boats and didn’t feel a particular affinity for the sea, but there was a freedom in it, salt-soaked and coarse. The Wilderwood in her was quiet, far more settled than she’d anticipated it being, so far away from earth and growing things. Experimentally, she flexed her fingers. The veins along them blushed emerald.
She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, letting the briny wind whip at her hair.
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes opened. Fife stood next to her, staring down into the water, hiding his expression. He held his scarred hand close to his middle, the other gripping the railing. “I chose this, to save Lyra,” he continued, like he was afraid he wouldn’t start speaking again if he stopped now. “I chose to be bound to the Wilderwood. To you. And I shouldn’t have taken it out on you the way I did.”
Brief surprise chased itself into relief. Fife and Lyra had made up, but he hadn’t made any such overtures to Red or Eammon—though they all behaved mostly normally, it’d been a cloud over them, a tension in the air that wouldn’t dispel. Having Fife finally decide to speak to her about it felt like laying down a heavy pack she hadn’t remembered picking up.
“I’m sorry, too,” Red murmured. “I’m sorry we haven’t figured out a way to let you out of your new bargain. I’m sorry that we don’t understand much about it.”
“Not your fault.” Fife shrugged, but it was stilted. “Everything’s changed now. None of us really know what the new parameters are. And I would’ve done it anyway, no matter the cost.”
Red glanced over her shoulder. Lyra stood above them, on the platform that housed the ship’s wheel, talking animatedly with Kayu and one of the hired sailors. The wind snatched their words away and covered Red and Fife’s from being overheard.
“I understand,” Red said softly. “I’d do the same thing.”
“I know you would.”
“When you were called, there in the clearing…” Red shook her head, looking back to the sea. “Fife, I promise it was an accident. Eammon didn’t mean to do it.”
“I know. He was just trying to protect you.” A flicker of his eyes to Lyra above them. “Not one of us has ever been smart about the people we love, have we?”
Red snorted.
They lapsed into silence. Red knotted her fingers, lightly misted with salt spray. “Have you talked to Eammon about it?”
“I suppose I should, shouldn’t I?”
“I’m honored to be the first stop on your apology tour, but yes, probably.” Her lips quirked, half a smile, then pressed together. “The three of you… you’re tied together in ways I can’t even begin to understand. He loves you and Lyra, Fife. So much. It’s killed him, thinking he hurt you, but he didn’t know how to approach it. Wanted to give you space.”
She’d pushed Eammon, at first, to find Fife and apologize, to make him talk it out. But Eammon had gently refused. “I told him I was sorry,” he’d said, “and trying to make him forgive me is about my feelings, not his. We’ll talk when he’s ready.”
Fife sighed. Pushed off from the railing. A moment later, she heard the soft rumblings of Eammon’s voice behind her, a creak as Fife settled in beside him.
She smiled down at her hands.
“Is Eammon going to live?” Kayu moved gracefully down the stepladder from the crow’s nest. She still wore a tunic and trousers, both soft and cut large, and a multicolored scarf that bound her dark hair back from her face. She smiled brightly, but something in her expression was faraway, preoccupied. She kept glancing westward, toward the Rylt, almost apprehensively.
“He’s survived worse,” Red answered.
“I suppose that’s true.” Kayu turned, elbows propped on the railing, back to the sea, and eyes canted toward Red. “So. You and the Wolf.”
Red leaned back, stretching out her arms with her fingers still curled around the rail. A frisson of discomfort tightened her shoulders. “Me and the Wolf.”
“You’re immortal now, like him? Unable to die?”
Red’s brow furrowed, sudden tension in her straightened arms.
Kayu shrugged, casual despite the baldness of the question. “He can’t die, right?”
“No.” Clipped and short and not entirely true. “He can’t.” Not of natural causes, anyway, not unless he was killed. That’s how it had been when he was just the Warden. Now that he was the whole Wilderwood, that both of them were, Red didn’t really know.
But she wasn’t going to tell Kayu that.
“Quite a deal,” the other woman said. A lock of black hair had escaped her scarf to dangle by her temple; she idly twirled it around her finger. “Getting all knotted up in a forest in exchange for immortality. Especially if you get a hulking tree husband in the bargain.”
Red bit back a huff of laughter at that, though now that Kayu had mentioned the issue of immortality, her mind wouldn’t let it go. Her concentration had been on other things for the past few weeks, but it was certainly something she’d thought about, the magic of the forest in her bones extending her life like it had Eammon’s. There was joy in it—of course there was, spending an eternity with him—but trepidation, too. Everyone knew forever was a long time, but staring down into the pit of it was a special blend of awe and terror that her mind shied away from.
“I have no complaints on the tree husband front,” she said.
“I bet not. He looks at you like you’re personally responsible for the sunrise every morning.” Kayu quirked a brow. “Or, usually he does. Right now, he looks like he’s about to lose whatever is left in his stomach.”
Red grimaced. “Hopefully he gets used to it.”
“For all our sakes.”
Kayu stared off into space, but when Red followed her gaze, space was Raffe. He stood at the opposite end of the ship, much like they did at the prow, leaning on his elbows and gazing at the receding horizon. At Valleyda.
Her eyes swung between them, her childhood friend and the far-flung princess, lips twisted.
“He loves your sister.” A statement rather than a question, as if Kayu had seen the play of thoughts across Red’s face. She shifted against the railing, face unreadable. “Always has.”
A pause before speaking—it might not have been phrased as a question, but it still wanted an answer, one Red didn’t quite feel qualified to give. “Raffe and Neve grew up together,” she said carefully, eyes on her dry knuckles. “And yes, they love each other. But it’s… it’s complicated.”
Kayu snorted. “I don’t expect anything to be simple with you lot. All tangled up in forests and gods.” She shook her head. “More fool me, I guess.”
Red made a rueful nose of assent.
A moment, and Kayu pushed off from the railing. “I’m going below to see about some food. Dinner should be soon.”
As she walked away, Red went back to Eammon. He and Fife sat beside the wall of the ship in comfortable silence, apologies having been made and accepted. She smiled to see it and felt a subtle rustling of leaves in her ribs, like the Wilderwood had wanted them to make up, too.
“I think I feel better,” Eammon said as she came to stand in front of him. He looked up at her, squinting, half a tired smile picking up his mouth. “As long as I don’t have to move.”
She settled in next to him. “Do you plan to sit there for the entire voyage?”
“Yes.”