Red went toward the back of the small galley, the wooden boards rough beneath her bare feet. When she reached the railing, she pulled off her hood, tipping back her head and letting the wind pull at her ivy-threaded hair. It was too dark for anyone to see, unless they were standing right next to her.
“So you couldn’t sleep, either?”
She jumped back, hands raised defensively. “Shadows damn me, Raffe!”
Raffe just quirked a brow and drank from the chipped ceramic cup in his hand. “No wonder, if you’re this jumpy.”
The trajectory of her raised hands went from defensive to deprecating. Red snorted, settling her elbows on the rail. “I think I’m entitled to a little jumpiness, all things considered.”
“You’ll hear no arguments from me.” The sound of liquid swirling—Raffe took a sip of wine, then held out the cup to Red. She accepted, took a swallow. Made a face.
“Not Meducian,” Raffe said, taking the cup back.
“Not Meducian,” Red agreed.
They lapsed into comfortable silence, listening to the rhythm of the tide against the hull.
“Do you think she’ll come back different?” Raffe asked finally. “I mean, it’d be impossible to not be… changed by all this, somehow. But do you think…” He trailed off, like he didn’t quite have the words for what he wanted to ask.
Red knit her fingers together. Even in the color-stealing dark, the green tint of her veins was evident, incongruous in the grays and blues of the sea at night. “You’re wondering if she’ll come back as changed as I was.”
No response from Raffe, but that told her she was right.
The Wilderwood rustled down her spine, spread new leaves toward her shoulders. Almost like an offered answer.
“She made a choice,” she said quietly. “There in the grove. You saw it. She pulled all that shadow in, made it part of her.”
“But it wasn’t a choice, not really.” Raffe’s voice was harsh in the quiet. “Not like yours was. You fell in love and took the roots, she… she had to close the door, and she did it the most obvious way she could. It wasn’t the same.”
“No, not exactly the same,” Red conceded. “But it was still her decision.”
Silence, again, but she felt the way he tensed, the way that this quiet was no longer the comfortable kind between friends. It was something waiting for a shattering.
Red sighed and started braiding her hair, for something to do with her hands as much as to keep it out of her face. “Neve’s taken the first step to becoming my mirror. That’s why the mirror in the tower shattered. She’s taking in the Shadowlands like I took in the Wilderwood.”
Another bloom along her rib cage, flowers opening wide in the gaps between organs. The forest agreeing.
“Then what will it make her?” Raffe’s whisper was agonized. “Red, if she has to do for the Shadowlands what you did for the Wilderwood, what will she be when she comes back?”
“She’ll be Neve. She’ll be who she always was,” Red answered automatically, and waited for the stretch and sprout within her, the Wilderwood’s sign that she was right.
None came.
Her teeth set on edge, animosity for the forest she carried rising for the first time since it’d given her Eammon back. “Whatever she is, she will still be my sister. And I will do whatever she needs.”
She held her breath. One twitch of branches, curling around her hip.
Next to her, Raffe took a deep breath. Nodded. “I trust you.”
Red turned away from him, looking out at the water instead. “Speaking of trusting,” she said lightly, “bringing Kayu in seems to have worked out well.”
He said nothing, but his hands tightened on his cup of wine. A moment, then he tossed the rest of it back, grimacing as he swallowed.
She drummed her fingers on the rail. “You never told me how she figured out Neve was gone.”
“She intercepted a letter from Kiri,” Raffe answered, looking at his cup as if its emptiness was a personal offense.
“How’d she manage that?”
Raffe shrugged. “She saw someone delivering it to my chambers late one night and told them she was coming to see me. They gave it to her.”
“That’s odd,” Red murmured. “I never had a letter delivered at night. Granted, I never received many letters.” She paused, frowned, unease the plucking of hair on the back of her neck, a subtle twist in her gut. “You should probably—”
“Spare me your advice, Redarys.”
Her teeth snapped closed.
Raffe didn’t look at her, staring instead out over the water, his jaw clenched tight and his fingers blanched around his empty cup. He closed his eyes, took a breath. When he spoke, it was calm and even, though fire lurked just beneath. “You don’t understand how difficult it’s been, trying to keep people from prying, trying to pretend like everything is fine when the fucking Queen is missing.” He shook his head. “So please don’t presume to give me advice. I am doing all I can.”
“I get it,” she said quietly. “I understand that it’s been hard.”
“Do you?” His eyes glinted at her in the dark. “You’ve been living a fairy tale in the woods, busy being some kind of forest god, while I try to hold things together in a country that isn’t mine, for a woman who never told me if she loves me back, and now I don’t know exactly how I feel about her, either.”
The middle of the night had always been an opportune time for confessions.
Red sighed. “You’re right. I can’t understand, and I shouldn’t tell you how to deal with things.” She paused. “I’m sorry, Raffe. For all of it.”
“Me too.” A stretch of quiet where she could tell that he had more to say but wasn’t quite sure how to say it. There weren’t easy words for things like this.
“Have you had more dreams?” he asked finally. “With a tree, like the one you told me about?”
“One or two,” Red answered. “Why?”
“Because I haven’t.” He sounded almost ashamed by it, like the lack of dreams was some cosmic allegation. “Just the one.”
She picked at the skin around her nails. “Is that… bad?”
“It feels like it is,” Raffe murmured. He ran a weary hand over his face. “I stopped having them when… when I realized I didn’t know how I felt about her anymore.”
Ah. “Raffe,” she said gently, “it’s fine. Really.”
“It doesn’t feel fine. It feels like I’m failing her somehow.”
“Being honest about how you feel isn’t failing.” The voice in the dreams told her the Heart Tree could only open with matched love. And Raffe didn’t know what kind of love he had for Neve anymore. That had something to do with who had the dreams, she figured.
The Wilderwood bloomed along her vertebrae. Another reassurance she was right.
“You are an excellent friend, Raffe,” Red continued quietly. “And that’s what Neve will need, when she comes back.”
When. Not if.
The other man took a breath. Nodded. But his jaw was still held as tight as a prison lock.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad we brought Kayu on board.” She gestured to the ship with a snort. “It got us a way to Kiri. Surely, if anyone has answers, it will be her.”
“Let’s hope,” Raffe murmured.
They stood there a moment, rocked by the swaying ship. Raffe yawned into his hand. “I’m going to actually attempt sleeping.”