The Wolf huffed a sound that was probably meant to be a laugh. “That sounds about right.” He rubbed his magic-addled eyes with one heavily scarred hand. “Did Kayu say when we’d be able to get another ship?”
“We’re headed to the main harbor now,” Raffe said. “We’ll have one by tomorrow morning. Maybe even tonight—at this point, I’m willing to sail back to Valleyda on a raft. Or someone’s buoyant spare mattress.”
“You and me both,” Eammon muttered. But Raffe thought the tinge of green on his face at the thought wasn’t only due to forest magic.
“Did she say anything else?” Raffe asked quietly. “About Neve?”
That night on the ship, when he left Red right before the key in her pocket pulled her to… somewhere else… had been chaotic, to say the least. Whatever force brought Red and Neve together had physically taken Red away, made her vanish from thin air in a wash of golden glow.
Raffe had been the only one to see it happen—the sailor at the prow hadn’t been paying attention. And Raffe had seen only part of it, really. He’d been climbing back down the ladder when he saw a shower of what looked like sparks, heard something that sounded like a thunderclap, air rushing in to fill a space recently emptied. When he’d scrambled back up to the deck, Red was gone.
And, because Raffe had the worst luck, Eammon had chosen that moment to come up and check on her.
To say the Wolf had been frantic was an understatement. His eyes had blazed green, no whites in them at all, and vines had pushed from the ends of his fingers as he prowled around the deck, calling her name, half a second away from throwing himself overboard to see if she’d somehow fallen.
Thankfully, Red’s absence was brief. She’d come back in the same gold-and-thunder crash she’d left in, dazed and teary-eyed, and sank to her knees, hands curled around her key. “I saw her,” she whispered brokenly. “I saw her.”
It could only be one her. “Is she all right?” Raffe started forward, the words crowding together on his tongue in their rush to get out. “How do we get her out? What do we—”
But then Red’s face crumpled into a sob, and she buried her head in Eammon’s shoulder. And Raffe had known that he wouldn’t be getting any answers, and he didn’t much have the heart for questions, anyway.
Now, outside Red’s door in the Rylt, Eammon just sighed, hand dropping away from his face. “She said there was a tree,” he said. “That the key took her somewhere with a massive tree, and Neve was there. The Heart Tree, I assume.”
“And she can go back.” Raffe tipped his head back against the wall as he tried to piece together sense from Kiri’s words, the ramblings of a mad priestess whom they were supposed to follow into the shadows. “She can go back, but she can’t make Neve come back with her.”
Eammon nodded. His eyes slanted Raffe’s way, thoughtful. “Red said that Neve chose to stay there, Raffe.”
His spine stiffened. Kiri had said as much, in her circular and half-mad way, but to hear it from Red made it more real. Solid in a way he couldn’t dismiss. “Why would she do that?”
The Wolf shrugged uncomfortably. “She said something about a job left undone. About how she couldn’t leave until she finished what she started.” A pause. “She and Solmir are trying to kill the Kings.”
It made Raffe’s stomach pit, but not with surprise. Of course that’s what it was. Of course. He remembered Solmir’s shouting as he was dragged into the churning storm of the dying grove, after Neve pulled all those darkened veins connecting her to the trees inward. About how they didn’t understand. About how it would be so much worse.
This was always about the Kings. About monsters and gods and the worlds that either contained them or would be left to survive them.
Shadows damn him, he needed a drink.
“Why is that her responsibility?” His voice raised, though he didn’t mean for it to. “You and Red are the forest gods—why is Neve being pulled into it?”
Eammon shot a meaningful look at the closed door, and Raffe took a deep breath, trying for calm. “I don’t understand why she thinks she has to help him.”
Him came out like a curse, and the look in Eammon’s odd eyes was one of agreement. Neither of them had any love lost for Solmir.
“I don’t know Neve well,” the Wolf hedged. “Or at all, really, other than what I’ve heard of her from you and Red. But she seems like the type of person to make things her responsibility. She and her sister are similar that way.”
“Damned savior complexes,” Raffe muttered.
Eammon snorted. He crossed his arms, leaning against the wall next to Raffe. “I’m familiar with the need to take responsibility,” he said quietly. “With feeling like you have to fix everything that came before you. Especially when you’ve made mistakes that ended up hurting other people.”
Raffe tapped his foot, an outlet for nervous energy, and didn’t respond. He thought of Second Daughters disappearing into the woods. He thought of bloody branches in a dark Shrine.
A moment, then Eammon turned, looking toward the door. “I thought I’d get her some water.” Quiet, as if he thought he might wake Red even though solid oak stood between them. Maybe he could—the Wolves were tied together in ways Raffe didn’t fully understand. “For when she wakes up.”
It took Raffe a moment to figure out that he was waiting for a response. Asking slanted permission from someone else to leave. Otherwise, Eammon would just stay right here, staring at the door and straining his ears for any sign of wakefulness from within.
“I think that’s a good idea.” Raffe gestured down the hall. “Kitchen is that way, to the right. End of the short staircase.”
“I’ll find it.” The Wolf turned to him, a considering look in eyes that seemed to be all the colors of the forest at once. “Neve’s choice is about her, Raffe. Not anyone else.”
Not you, hung the unspoken addendum.
“I know,” Raffe replied. But it tasted thin and bitter.
Eammon nodded, giving one more look to the door before starting down the hallway toward the kitchen.
Raffe sighed, rubbing a hand over his short hair, and tapped the back of his head on the wall. Once, twice, three times, trying to gently knock away all the things he didn’t want to dwell on. He’d managed to stop thinking of them—at least, he had since that night when he told Red about how he didn’t dream of the Tree anymore—but they were hard to hold at arm’s length here, like the Temple called thoughts of Neve forward, tied themselves together with his memories.
He cared for her. Deeply. And while lately he cursed himself for getting involved in all of this, it was more with exasperation than regret. He didn’t regret being there for her, staying in Valleyda when he could’ve gone back to Meducia and avoided this entire situation. He didn’t regret trying to get her back.