Two corridors branched out from the sides of the staircase, one to the left and one to the right. The shadowy barrier only blocked the right—the way to the hall with the Tree. The thorns made a precarious bridge across the empty space between the landing and the beginning of the ceiling. Solmir stood just inside the curved lip that marked the start of the hallway, arms crossed.
“Don’t look down,” he repeated quietly.
Movements small and fear-precisioned, Neve slipped over the thorns toward the solid ground. She couldn’t help seeing what lay below as she worked her way across, and it made every nerve in the back of her neck tighten.
The brambles covering the stairs behind her slowly dissolved, fading into gray and silent smoke that drifted through the inverted castle like a ghost. The roof yawned below, what looked like miles of empty air, and her breath came shallow in her throat, a strangled gasp she couldn’t hold back.
She felt his hands on her arms, guiding her from the thorns and down to the solid stone slope of the hall’s ceiling. “Breathe, Neve. You’re fine.”
Solmir sat her down by the wall, and Neve pulled up her knees, pressed her forehead against them. She tugged in deep breath after deep breath until her heart no longer felt as if it were trying to break free of her ribs.
He crouched before her, face unreadable, hands with all their silver rings hanging between his knees. “Can you go on?”
One more deep breath, scented with pine and snow. She nodded.
He nodded back. Then he stood and turned to face the churning wall of shadow blocking them from the Heart Tree.
When Neve and Red were ten, a huge storm had rolled in from the Florish coast. Such things were fairly common in the summer months there, but this was the first and last time she could remember one coming close enough to see from Valleyda. They’d stood on the roof, necks craned upward, watching a mass of black cloud spread slowly over the sky, spangled with lightning. It’d raised the hair on her arms, made the very air feel charged.
That’s what this looked like. What it felt like. A storm of shadow, though not shot through with any light. Only churning darkness, covering the corridor, making it impossible to pass.
Neve stood, tried to step closer. But her bones buzzed against it, as if she and the shadow were the same polarity, repelling each other. “So what do we do?”
“I give you the power of one of the gods. I keep the other.” Solmir’s mouth was a grim line. “And then it will let us through.”
She thought of how they passed power, through a kiss, through a touch. She knew instinctively which it would have to be. Time was short, and the magic they exchanged was strong.
Solmir turned to her, jaw a pained ridge beneath his short beard, blue eyes alight. His shoulders tensed, making the sharp line of his collarbone stand out under moon-pale skin, casting a smoky shadow she could trace to his heart.
They didn’t speak. There wasn’t a need to, not now, and Neve didn’t think she could fit words to what she felt, anyway. Warmth he didn’t deserve and that she didn’t want to feel, magic-required closeness. A homecoming, an ending.
It made no sense, that she should feel this… this regret. Like she was leaving something undone.
Wordlessly, Solmir held out his hand. She placed hers in it. Magic sparked between them, cold and stinging, the prick of brambles in her veins.
He pulled her forward, slowly. He tucked her hair behind her ear, his hand fit to the side of her face. Intimacy beyond what the magic needed, but she didn’t stop him.
When his mouth lowered to only a breath away from hers, he was already changed, the power rushing forward and making itself known—teeth sharpened and elongated, eyes black around the blue of his irises, veins night-dark. He paused, looking down at her, monstrous.
“Remember what I said,” he murmured. “If you decide to keep it, I won’t stop you.” Then his lips were on hers.
It was gentler than before, when he’d kissed her just minutes after she’d awoken in her glass coffin, taking the power that would twist her out of being human. And her mind fought against that, the knowledge that this was for more than one purpose, but what was the point? Loneliness wanted easing, and if things went according to plan, she’d never have to do this again. Never have to seek solace from a former god who was a breath away from being an enemy.
Neve had kissed for comfort before, purely physical, with no feeling behind it deeper than attraction and opportunity. The son of a visiting duke who kept pronouncing her name wrong, the daughter of a marquess with pretty eyes. It wasn’t always an act that had to mean something important.
That’s what she kept repeating to herself as her mouth pressed to Solmir’s, as magic spilled down her throat and raised thorns in her veins. This didn’t mean anything. It was the passing of power, and if she derived comfort from it, what did it matter?
Neve had always been good at lying.
When they broke apart, both of them were breathing hard. She backed up before he did, putting space between them. His hands dropped to his sides. Neither of them spoke. There weren’t any words.
In tandem, they turned toward the shadows. Neve recovered her voice first. “What now?”
Casual, nonchalant. None of the churning emotion that both of them wanted to avoid.
“Now,” Solmir said, “you let it go.”
Deceptively simple, punishingly easy. Neve lifted her hands, she and Solmir acting as one, like the power was thread that strung them together and synced their movements. Palms out, bent fingers, thorns pouring from them both, the power of two gods spilled into the storm.
When it was all gone from her, all spun into smoke and thorn, Neve braced her hands on her knees, breathing hard. Next to her, Solmir shook out his arms. “It always gives me pins and needles,” he muttered.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a groan, like the air itself was tearing apart.
The shadowy storm split, slowly, the sides billowing away from each other with a grace that the shrieking sound it made belied. A path cut through the dark, leading into the hall beyond.
Solmir gestured toward the shadows. “After you, Your Majesty.”
And she rose to the title, her head held high, even as fear made her wrists flutter with her pulse’s tide.
Walking through the storm made every inch of her skin prickle. Neve felt her hair lift up from the back of her neck, wave around her head like a crown. Gooseflesh ran down her arms, over her shoulders, making each step forward a push through a thick current.
Reaching the other side felt like being released from a giant fist; Neve nearly stumbled. She caught herself on the curved side of the ceiling where they walked, as her hair settled back around her shoulders, unpleasant sparks itching at her nerves and slowly fading away. Solmir lurched out behind her, swiping a hand over his own hair, turning back to scowl at the shadows as they billowed back together, once again impenetrable dark.
Neve pushed up on shaky legs. “It closed again.”
“Yes, it did.” He strode forward, passing the upside-down stained glass windows, striped in light and shadow.
“Is that going to be a problem for you?”
Solmir paused, a muscle twitching in his back. “Don’t worry about me. Just focus on opening the Heart Tree.”