Whatever Neve had expected, it wasn’t that. “What?”
“The power of the Wilderwood, its magic… it came into me, partly, when I bled within the forest’s border. And I didn’t know how to control it, and when the thieves came, I… I killed them… but the power wasn’t under my control, not fully. I didn’t know how to rein it in, and it almost killed you.” Her eyes opened, green glowing around the brown. “That’s why I wanted to go to the Wilderwood, Neve. Not to get away from you. To protect you.”
Even in that, they were mirrors.
“I thought the only way to keep all of you safe, from me, from the monsters”—Red snorted, a quick acknowledgment that they both now knew the monsters were real, that they’d become them—“was to leave.” She sighed, flicked her eyes up to Neve. “But then I met Eammon.”
Not so long ago, that name—one she didn’t even know existed until she heard it on Red’s lips—had sparked visceral rage in her. Anger that the monster’s name made Red light up, proof that he’d made her care. Made her think that she belonged to him, to the Wilderwood.
Now it just sounded like a name. She knew monsters, and he wasn’t one.
And it wasn’t like she really had a leg to stand on anymore where that was concerned.
“So all we ever wanted to do was save each other,” Neve said.
The corner of a smile on Red’s mouth, as fierce and wild as the rest of her. “And we’ve done such an excellent job.”
A moment of silence. Then, improbably, they both started laughing. Shouts of it rang through the mist and off the massive trunk next to them as they fell together, tears streaming from their eyes, caught in paroxysms somewhere between joy and sobbing.
“Kings.” Red mopped at her streaming eyes. “Kings, Neve, what did we do?”
Neve shook her head, banishing tears with a swipe of her wrist. “If what every Old One in the Shadowlands has told me is true, nothing the stars didn’t lay out for us.”
“Old Ones?”
“The monsters. The gods the Kings imprisoned.” Neve waved a thorny hand. “Long story, and you already know the important parts.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Red shook her head, crossing her legs beneath her with a thoughtful look in her eyes. “Stars, though… when we went to the Edge, to see the carving of the key grove, there were carvings of constellations, too.”
“The Edge?”
“Another long story. There’s a country behind the Wilderwood. The people there are our friends.”
A click as Neve’s mouth closed. There was so much about her sister’s life she didn’t know. So much she had no reference for. For all that they’d grown up together, and shared a womb prior to that, sometimes it seemed like they barely knew each other.
Red dug her hand into her pocket, then cursed softly. “The key. I had it when I…” Her brows drew together. “How did you get here?”
Neve’s cheeks heated, the name she’d been trying to avoid creeping closer to being inevitable. She took in a deep breath, blew it out. “Solmir brought me.”
Silence. Red stared at her, face expressionless, though the hand hanging by her side curled slowly into a fist. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.” At least, not in the way Red was thinking, not in any way that lent itself to easy explanation. “Red, he’s on our side. Well, he’s on his own side, but his side is our side. Mostly. He’s against the Kings. When he was trying to bring them through—”
“When he almost killed my husband, you mean?”
“I’m not making excuses for him.” That would be a useless endeavor. “But we have a common enemy. He was trying to bring the Kings through to kill them. Their souls are mired in the Shadowlands, and the Shadowlands are breaking apart. If they dissolve while the Kings are still here, they’ll be freed—not their bodies, maybe, but their souls. They’d find a way to come back, and they’d be even worse than the Old Ones were.”
Red’s jaw worked, her eyes bright and fierce. Her fist still clenched by her side, nearly shaking with the force of her grip. But when she spoke, it was even. “Fine.” She loosened her fingers with marked effort. “If you trust him, I will… not kill him.”
That was the best Neve could expect.
“But if he ever hurts Eammon again,” Red said, “I will pull each one of his organs out of his mouth. Individually.”
“Noted,” Neve replied. She would tell Solmir that exactly.
If she saw him again. Was she going to see him again?
Red was here, and she was here, and clearly something had happened to the Heart Tree—the door open, the way cleared. She could go home now, leave the Shadowlands behind, let Solmir do what he needed to do and call it all as out of her hands.
But it didn’t feel… right. There was something more for her to do here, and the shadowy magic Solmir had passed to her right before she entered the Tree nearly hummed with it.
“So how did you get here?” Neve asked, rubbing her thorn-laced arms to try to dispel the magic’s itch.
“I had a key,” Red said. “I got it… well, when I tried to reach you, the first time.” She shifted uncomfortably, like the memory wasn’t a pleasant one. “I tried to let loose a sentinel. From inside me. Make a tree, and then make that a doorway.”
Neve cast a glance behind them, at the massive trunk of the Heart Tree. “I suppose you weren’t that far off.”
Red snorted. “Anyway, it clearly didn’t work. But it gave me a key, one made from white bark with golden veins. I was holding it, and it started to pulse, and then I was here.”
Neve’s brows drew together. “I don’t have a key. Am I supposed to?”
Only if you choose to see this through.
The voice. The one from her dream, the one she’d heard whispering right before she stepped into the Tree. She and Red turned, back to back, facing down all the fog.
“You’ve heard it before?” she murmured to Red.
“Yes,” Red replied. “You?”
“Me too. In dreams, and other places.”
Red shook her head. “I don’t know whether I’m excited or terrified to hear about everything you’ve done in the Shadowlands.”
She said it lightly, but Neve chewed her lip.
The key is the Tree, the voice continued. It seemed closer somehow. The timbre of it easier to pick out, still just at the edge of being recognized. The key is the Tree, but you are not yet the mirror, though you draw close.
“Does she need a key?” Red’s voice cut through the fog, sharp and demanding. “Or are you spouting cryptic nonsense? Just tell us if I can bring her home!”
A pause, hanging heavy.