“Making you fall in love with me and thus setting all this in motion.” A mischievous smile twisted his mouth, made his eyes glimmer like autumn sunshine through leaves. “I should have tried to temper my raw appeal.”
She tugged on his hair. “I feel like I was the one who had to make you fall in love with me. You were infuriatingly noble about the whole thing.”
“I started falling in love with you the moment you crashed into my library,” Eammon said, matter-of-fact. “I was just very good at hiding it.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes that felt stolen. Red leaned forward and rested her cheek on his chest, listening to Eammon’s heartbeat, the thud of it cushioned with leaf and branch. He loosely wrapped his arms around her waist, his breath warm against her neck.
The key lay on the table next to her half-drunk glass of water; she reached over and grabbed it, sitting back and holding it on her palm between them. It still glowed, still felt warm to the touch. She could still feel the faintest thud of a heartbeat.
Eammon eyed it warily. “You were right all along. What you did in the clearing, trying to get to Neve. That’s what gave you the key, made the Heart Tree able to pull you to it when Neve arrived.”
“I had to give up something for her,” Red murmured, turning the key over in her hands. “She went into the underworld for me. I had to prove I was willing to do the same for her. That’s how it works, I think. The same kinds of love, whether they’re pretty or not.”
Deep within her, the Wilderwood bloomed, pushing new shoots through her marrow. Agreement, acknowledgment that she was right.
Her Wolf’s hands tightened on her thighs, his wary look at the key almost becoming a glare. “As long as it doesn’t ask you for anything else,” he said, low and fierce.
Red pulled her lip between her teeth. She didn’t respond.
Finally, she clambered off him, stretching. “I need to wash my face and get out of this room.”
He swung long legs over the side of the bed and stood. “Fife found a library while he was looking for the kitchen, said it was well stocked and had some volumes that weren’t at the Keep or the Valleydan capital. Might be worth investigating.”
“Somehow, you always find the books.” Red gently pulled the ends of his hair until he bent far enough forward for her to drop a kiss on his forehead, right between the points of his nascent antlers. “Go leave me for reading, I’ll be fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m not above punching a priestess if the need arises.”
Eammon nodded, kissed her one more time before heading toward the door. “The library is on the other side of the amphitheater, if you need me.”
She nodded, and the door closed behind him.
Red splashed some water on her face from the ewer in the corner and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Part of her thought of following Eammon to the library, seeing if there was anything they could find that mentioned the Shadow Queen or the Golden-Veined. But the thought made her stomach curl in on itself, her body signaling the need for a momentary reprieve, so she decided just to wander the halls for a bit first, work out some of her nervous energy.
The door closed quietly behind Red as she slipped into the hallway. The cloister room she’d ended up in wasn’t far from the main foyer, the nexus of the entire Temple. When she came out of the mouth of the corridor, the door to the amphitheater was open to her right, revealing a sliver of dusty and little-used curving stone seats. It seemed the Ryltish Temple didn’t see many worshippers.
She turned away from the amphitheater. On the opposite side of the foyer, a short stone hallway ended in a plain wooden door.
“Where are you going?”
Red’s hands closed to fists as she whirled, a promise of what she’d told Eammon about punching a priestess. But it was just Kayu.
Her hair was mussed, the usual pin-straight strands tangled and frizzed behind her head. She wore the same clothes she’d worn earlier, but the way they hung seemed subtly different, as if they’d been removed and then replaced. She looked tired, and her eyes were glassy, like she’d either been crying or was about to start.
“Just wandering.” The clear vulnerability on Kayu’s face made Red want to reach out to the other woman, want to trust her. But there was still a small part of Red that regarded everyone warily, sharp and feral and unwilling to open her safe circle to new people.
Kayu shifted back and forth, eyes flickering down the hall before coming back to Red. “Can I come with you? I don’t want to be alone. And you probably shouldn’t be, either.”
That made her brows draw down, but after a moment, Red nodded. Clearly, Kayu was dealing with something—she understood the desire not to be alone. And she was right; it might be safer for all of them to stick together.
“I was just going to see what this was,” Red said, gesturing toward the tiny hallway with its small door. “You’re welcome to come with me.”
Kayu nodded, mouth still pressed into a thin line, eyes still shining.
Red wondered if she should ask what had happened, but decided against it—were she in Kayu’s position, she wouldn’t feel like sharing. Instead, she went down the hallway and grasped the door handle. At first she thought it might be locked, but then the handle turned, smooth and soundless, taken care of in a way that seemed odd compared with the rest of the Temple’s obvious neglect.
The door opened into a small room lit only by flickering candles, all of them dark gray and dripping wax. In the center, a stone pedestal with a thick white twig, casting barred shadow on the wall.
A Shrine.
An instinct to flee flared from the woman Red had been before, the same one who pelted through a hungry forest with a bloody cheek, who’d knelt among the branch shards in the Valleydan Shrine and been prayed over by priestesses filled with piety for monsters. Lost and angry and helpless against powers she didn’t understand.
“Are you all right?”
Kayu’s voice shattered the memories, grounded her back into who and what she was. Not that woman anymore. Maybe scared, maybe out of her depth, but not someone who didn’t know who she was, not someone who didn’t understand the place she’d made for herself.
“I’m fine,” Red said.
She stepped over the threshold.
This Shrine was tiny, barely large enough for her and Kayu to stand shoulder to shoulder without knocking into the table full of prayer candles in the corner. The walls were the same dark stone, but they seemed darker with the absence of any light but the flickering flames. The barely there hiss of wicks was the only sound.
Cautiously, Red approached the branch in the center of the room. Slight threads of darkness traced the bark, nowhere near as thick as true shadow-rot, but enough to make unease sink a hook in her middle.