Beside her, Eammon waited like a bow poised to fire, all tense lines. Fife stood just behind him, hand on his dagger hilt and body positioned between the priestess on the bed and Lyra, whose fawn-brown eyes were wide. On Red’s other side, Raffe had maneuvered himself between Kayu and Kiri, so subtly that she wondered if he even realized he’d done it. Only Kayu didn’t look surprised. She just looked worried.
Kiri’s eyes narrowed, unfocused. “You’ve seen her already,” she murmured, like she was reading it out of the air. “You’ve been to the space between. The Heart Tree. You took it in, carry it with you.”
The key in Red’s pocket burned, almost hot to the touch. She reached in and pulled it out—the pulse in it was faint again, but the golden lines tracing the bark flared, glowing bright against the white wood.
“And she has her key, too, now,” Kiri said, watching the gentle golden light in Red’s hand. “The way back, strung between you both, two points of a compass. Either one of you can enter now, you know.”
Red’s heartbeat kicked against her throat. “You mean I can go there again? I can bring her out?”
Kiri’s mouth opened and a laugh rang out, though nothing else about her expression changed. Her blue eyes still looked vacant. “Stupid wolf-girl,” she chuckled. “The Shadow Queen chose to stay. She chose to fulfill her destiny. To become the vessel.”
“Shadow Queen?” The title itched at Red’s shoulder blades. “What do you mean?”
“You’re the Golden-Veined, she’s the Shadow Queen. How it was always going to be.” Kiri turned back to the ceiling, as if looking at Red bored her. “They’ve whispered of you to me since I was a girl, you know. Since I bled on that branch at the edge of the woods. It lodged them in my head, and then I spent all my days just waiting for you. Listening to them whisper.”
Something like pity made the leaves between Red’s ribs stir. Here was another reflection, warped and twisted. “You bled on a branch, too. Like Arick did. That’s how they could talk to you.”
Kiri didn’t answer. Instead, she laughed again, but this time she closed her eyes, and the corners of her mouth twitched, like the laugh might become a sob at any moment.
“She’s mad,” Raffe whispered, coming up to Red’s other side. On the opposite, Eammon stood silent and stoic. “Does any of this make sense to you?”
“Almost?” Eammon murmured. Behind him, Fife nodded, rubbing at his Mark.
Red took a breath, tried to make herself calm and even. If she spoke to the High Priestess as if all of this was clear, maybe it would start to be. “So I’m the Golden-Veined, and Neve is the Shadow Queen.”
“As I just said,” Kiri singsonged to the ceiling. “You never were the smart sister.”
A low sound started in Eammon’s throat, but Red knocked their clasped hands against his abdomen, a silent request for him to hold his tongue. “All right,” Red said slowly. “So how does that help me bring Neve home?”
“Oh, she’ll come home. One way or another.” Kiri’s eyes twitched beneath her closed eyelids, back and forth, as if she were watching something play out in her head. “Solmir thinks he saved her. He knows nothing.”
The name made all Red’s muscles tense, but she stayed silent, hoping the mad priestess would fill the quiet.
“He knows there must be a vessel, and he thinks it can be him. It could’ve been, once, but now that they know there’s another option, they’ll never settle for him. Stupid. All of you, made stupid by your caring, over and over.” She shook her head, red hair scraping over the pillow. “There are two vessels, mirrors, reflections. That is how it has to be. It will be either an end or a beginning, and that is up to her.”
“To me?” Red asked.
“To the Shadow Queen.”
So it all came down to Neve. Neve in the dark with only a fallen god for company, Neve in the shadows she’d chosen.
“The Kings know the stakes are high.” Another smile crossed Kiri’s face, but this one was almost dreamy. “They know all of it rides on her shoulders, whether they will find salvation or annihilation. But they are confident. It came so naturally to her, drowning in the dark.”
“Tell me how to save her.” It sounded like begging. It was. In a rush of movement, Red stepped forward, letting go of Eammon’s hand. She heard him start after her, heard the low murmur of Fife’s voice, telling him to let her go. “Tell me how to bring Neve out of the Shadowlands. Please, Kiri.”
“You can do nothing. Even with your key, your way between worlds. She will not leave until her path reaches its end.”
Tears blurred Red’s eyes; she swiped them away with a savage slash of her hand. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Wait,” the High Priestess said. “You are to wait.” Her fingers twitched on the blanket, pale and thin. “You are a vessel, too. One for light, and one for dark. And what happens when they collide? Entropy. Emptiness.” A soft laugh, made chilling by its gentleness. “You, Golden-Veined, Second Daughter, Lady Wolf, can do nothing but wait. Just like they did, all those centuries.”
The last words faded, grew quiet. By the end, Kiri’s chest rose and fell rhythmically, like her doomsday words had lulled her back to sleep.
They all stood still, silent. The key burned in Red’s hand. Slowly, she closed her fist around it, the golden glow seeping through the gaps in her fingers.
“Well,” the dark-haired priestess said brightly. “I hope that was enlightening. I’ll show you to your rooms.”
“We can’t stay here.”
The whisper came from Fife, low and anxiety-churned, only loud enough for the rest of them to hear. Paces ahead, the priestess who’d bathed Kiri’s brow walked unhurriedly down the hall, apparently leading them to prepared quarters.
Red’s mind couldn’t catch up, still stuck back in the sickroom with Kiri. There was no way to bring Neve home. It reverberated, echoed, a constant tic at the back of her head. The key in her hand could bring her to the Heart Tree, but it couldn’t make Neve come out.
She made a small, pained noise. Eammon’s arm, wrapped around her shoulder, pulled her tighter.
“No, we can’t stay,” he agreed quietly. He glanced at Kayu. “The galley is still waiting, right?”
The Niohni princess had been silent since they reached Kiri’s quarters, her dark eyes fixed straight ahead, her mouth a thin line. At Eammon’s words, she seemed almost to rouse from sleep, shaking her head like her mind had been somewhere else entirely. “I think so,” she said softly. “I mean, yes, it’s been chartered for a week. They should still be at the dock.”
“Then that’s where we go,” Eammon said. “We found what we came for.”
Maybe, in the most stringent sense. They’d heard what Kiri had to say, learned that the key Red held would open the Heart Tree, learned that Neve had chosen to stay in the Shadowlands. But what they’d come here for was a way to get her out, and they still didn’t have that.
Red’s eyes pressed shut. Opened. Stung with tears she wouldn’t let fall.
As if the thought came collectively, the six of them sped up their stride, hurrying toward the door that would take them out onto the moors, away from the Temple and its mad High Priestess.