She nodded listlessly. “If she’ll come.”
There was the hardest part, the one that cut deepest. It wasn’t that Red had done something wrong, wasn’t that the Heart Tree wouldn’t let Neve go. Neve had chosen to stay.
And Red didn’t know how to process that.
On some level, she recognized the irony—Red had chosen to enter the Wilderwood, and Neve had chosen to stay in the Shadowlands. Both of them refusing to be saved. One more reflection.
And there were the things she said, about Solmir being on their side, about killing the Kings. Clearly, Neve thought she had a part to play in it. But couldn’t she do it from here, where Red could keep her safe?
Because there, sunk into the shadows, the only person to keep her safe was Solmir. And that thought made Red’s hands curl into claws, made tiny vines peek from her nailbeds and her veins run springtime green.
Eammon didn’t try to tell her everything would be fine. He didn’t speak empty words of pointless comfort. Instead, he put one large, scarred hand on her thigh and used the other to push her ivy-threaded hair behind her ear. “If she’ll come,” he repeated. Then, “And whether she does or not is her decision, Red. You can’t make her do something she doesn’t want to do.” His mouth tipped up at the corner. “It’s never worked out well for the two of you.”
She huffed a halfhearted laugh and drained the rest of the ale. “No, it certainly hasn’t.” Her lips pressed together, brows drawing down. “I just… I don’t understand. I don’t understand why she pulled all that darkness in at the grove, why she let herself get trapped in the Shadowlands in the first place. Surely there was another way.”
His green-and-amber eyes glinted in the dim light, gaze level. “She probably thought the same thing when you insisted on going to the Wilderwood.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“It’s close.” He shrugged. “You both got tangled up in something beyond yourself. With people who don’t deserve it.”
“Don’t you dare compare yourself to him.” It came out low, nearly a snarl. “He tried to kill you, Eammon. He killed your parents.”
“He had a part in it,” Eammon agreed softly, “but their death was a complicated thing. We could just as well blame the Wilderwood.” He paused, looked away. “Or blame Ciaran and Gaya themselves. Very rarely can the entirety of fault be held by one person.”
Red gnawed on the corner of her lip. She’d told him and the others what Neve said about Solmir while they were in the Heart Tree. That they were on the same side. Eammon hadn’t seemed as incredulous as she thought he should be. When they’d become the Wilderwood, some of the latent anger in Eammon had been tempered. Forests were old, slow-growing things, patient and even, and some of that had seeped into Eammon, too.
Red kept waiting for some of that patience and placidity to temper her. Thus far, it hadn’t happened.
“I’m not saying we forgive him. You know that.” He lifted a heavy brow. “If you already laid your claim on the first punch, I have the second.”
“Raffe can have third,” Red said.
“Working with Solmir doesn’t mean we forget what he’s done.” Eammon tucked another strand of ivy behind Red’s ear. “Once this is all taken care of—once the Kings are gone, completely—then we can talk about retribution. About fault and blame.”
“And we can kill him,” Red said brightly.
Eammon snorted. “We’ll see.”
She watched him, lip still between her teeth. A hulking shadow in dim light was her Wolf, his hair long, the bark on his forearms rough against her leg. “You,” she said softly, “are far more compassionate than you have any right to be.”
He leaned forward, lips brushing over hers. “Someone taught me that sometimes it’s all right to feel sympathy for monsters.”
One kiss, for comfort rather than heat. They’d broken away, foreheads tilted together, when someone darkened the doorway.
“Land on the horizon.” Kayu didn’t sound exactly enthused about it. “We’ll be at the temple dock by this time tomorrow.”
The Rylt looked very different from Valleyda.
All the greenery in Valleyda was carefully cultivated—flowers bred to keep hardy in the cold, banks of tough grasses that would survive short summers and long, bitter winters. Other than the Wilderwood, most forests were all pine and fir, more blue and gray than green.
But the Rylt was green all over. Even the beach beyond the small dock that serviced the Temple was fringed with waving fronds of grass, hillocks of it sprouting from the sand, like the earth here was so abundant, it couldn’t be held back. Flowers bloomed in the moors beyond, carpeted a deep and verdant green.
Red expected the Wilderwood within her to be pleased when they stepped off the gangplank, feet once again on solid ground, especially among all these growing things. But it stayed as it had throughout the voyage, still and close and on edge.
She shot a look at Eammon. He met her eyes, gave her a tiny nod. He felt it, too. This place might be abundant, but it wasn’t home.
And what waited for them here wasn’t welcoming.
Kayu strode past them, headed for the dunes. “Temple is just ahead.” Her voice was quiet, preoccupied. Nothing like the funny, playful woman she’d been in Valleyda and on the ship. She’d grown quieter and quieter as they drew closer to the Rylt, drawing in on herself. Even Raffe couldn’t get her to laugh there at the end, only give a wan smile.
The man in question walked up to Red and Eammon, all three of them watching Kayu climb the path cut into the dunes beyond the dock. “She doesn’t seem all that happy to be here,” Red said after a moment of quiet.
“No, she doesn’t.” Raffe frowned as he watched Kayu draw farther away. With a sigh, he started forward, tugging up his hood against the wind off the sea. “Though frankly, if anyone was enthused about visiting Kiri, I’d be concerned for their mental stability.”
Fife and Lyra were the last to disembark. Lyra looked around curiously, always excited to see somewhere new, but Fife seemed as apprehensive as Red and Eammon felt. He rubbed at the Mark hidden beneath his sleeve. “Well. Let’s get this over with.”
“At least the food will improve,” Red said, searching for a bright side as they started through the sand.
“If you like sheep’s stomach,” Lyra replied.
Red grimaced.
The Temple was immediately visible when they topped the dunes, gleaming marble amid all the green. A profuse garden of herbs and wildflowers grew around the plain driftwood fence and shallow stone steps that led to the Temple doors, ruffled by the ever-present breeze off the water.
Kayu stood by the door, shifting from foot to foot, not making eye contact with any of them. Raffe stood next to her, face drawn into uncomfortable lines.
When the rest of them reached the door, he was the one to turn and face it, drawing his spine straight and his shoulders back. His hand lifted to knock.