The click of the latch behind her made her jump, her back to the branch and knees bent to a crouch, hands outstretched like claws. Next to the door, Kayu stood statue-still, her eyes wide and her jaw clenched.
The priestess who’d pushed open the door gasped, a pale hand with bandaged fingers pressed against an ample bosom. “King’s mercy,” she murmured, voice touched with a Ryltish accent that made everything sound musical. But something about the glint of her eyes seemed more eager than surprised. She turned and looked behind her, gave a tiny nod to someone just out of sight. Then the door closed.
Red straightened out of her battle-ready stance, the feral look on her face melting away to anxiety. Being this close to an Order priestess still made her nervous, even with the Wilderwood contained beneath her skin, somewhere they couldn’t hurt it. “Sorry,” she muttered, making herself as small as possible to try to edge around the priestess toward the door.
“Don’t let me disturb you.” Oblivious to her attempted escape, the priestess stayed square in the path to the door, a gentle smile on her face. The hand she hadn’t pressed to her chest in surprise held an unlit gray taper. “Our Shrine is small, but more than one can pray here. Be welcome, Second Daughter.”
“Lady Wolf.” Not a growl, but close to it.
“Yes, yes, of course.” The priestess lowered her unlit candle to the flame of another until the wick caught. Still, she didn’t move away from the door, standing right before it like a sentry. “I’m Maera.”
Maera. The Ryltish equivalent of Merra. Red had always thought the practice of naming children after Second Daughters was macabre, but it wasn’t exactly uncommon. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling suddenly protective of her own name, the possibility of it being given to someone else who had no idea the true legacy they called back to.
The wavering candlelight caught the shape of a pendant on Maera’s chest. Pale bark on a thin cord.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Maera lightly touched the necklace. “It doesn’t allow us to speak to the Kings, not like the High Priestess can. But with the right coaxing, it allows one to feel their will more keenly.”
The bandages on her fingers left little mystery as to what the right coaxing would be. Red’s stomach curled in on itself; the Wilderwood within her shuddered.
“It’s a privilege to wear,” Maera said softly. Her eyes flickered toward where Kayu stood in the shadows. “One must prove themselves worthy to receive their pendant. Worthy to remain within our sisterhood, to take advantage of the protections it provides.”
Next to the door, Kayu’s face was bone-pale.
Red didn’t know what was going on here, but both the forest within her and what was left of her regular human intuition told her it was time to get out of this room.
“Thank you,” she said, though she was unsure what exactly she was supposed to be thanking Maera for, “but I have to go.”
She twitched her fingers, trying to call the Wilderwood to attention. There was nothing with roots in this room, nothing under her influence, but surely she could find something—
Her veins greened, but it was weak. So far from home, in this place made of shadows and rock, there was little forest to be called.
“You don’t need to go,” Maera murmured. “You should stay right where you are, Lady Wolf.”
And the door behind her slammed open.
Kiri. Of course it was Kiri. The High Priestess still looked frail, still looked sickly, but she stood tall in the doorway, and her eyes blazed bright.
“Second Daughter.” It was a sneer, emphasized, a clear choice to use this title and not the true one. “It’s time we finished this, don’t you think?”
The shadow grove was gone, there was no cold magic for Kiri to call. But she flew at Red with her hands outstretched, and in one was a dagger.
Red backed up, her spine knocking into the pedestal in the center of the room, the branch shard crashing to the floor. Her hands raised, fingers crooked and flushed verdant as the Wilderwood within her searched for something, anything—
Threading roots beneath the stone floor, grass and herbs snaking through the ground. Red grabbed on to them, directed them, the floor shattering with a crack of breaking rock as they shot up to follow her order. But Kiri was fast, and her knife was sharp, and even as the roots burst beneath her in a shower of shale, the shine of the blade kissed Red’s neck.
Then—something wrapping around Kiri’s throat, making her mad blue eyes go wide. A belt, a thin strip of leather that Red marked as familiar. Kiri still strained forward, veins bulging around the makeshift garrote.
Behind her, Kayu, teeth clenched as she twisted her belt around the High Priestess’s neck. “Go, Red,” she panted. “Go.”
“No!” Maera, her previously pleasant face alight with rage. She held no weapon except her gray prayer candle, and Red saw her intent the moment she decided it, moving to sweep the flame toward the loose fall of Kayu’s hair.
A flex of Red’s fingers.
The roots she’d called from the floor shot up through broken stone, twisted around Maera’s arms, her legs, her neck. Just enough to keep her still, not to hurt her.
Maera’s eyes flashed, her face scarlet and her mouth a grimace. “Unclean thing,” she spat at Red. “Abomination. Your sister is lost, Second Daughter. She’ll bow to the Kings’ wishes, and there’s nothing you can do.”
The decision was made in that split second, that mention of Neve, a reminder that even with all this power, she was helpless.
The roots tightened. Maera’s eyes bulged. And Red let them keep tightening until the life in them blinked out.
“Killing her won’t make it less true.” Kiri’s voice, hoarse. She still moved forward, impossibly strong; behind her, Kayu struggled with the belt, but the magic that let Kiri hear the Kings somehow lent her unnatural strength. “You can’t do anything to stop this. All of it rests on Neverah now, and I’ve seen her darkness. You’re the only thing that could make her hold on to herself, and when you’re gone, so is she. It’s over.”
“Yes, it is,” growled a voice from the door.
Eammon. Veins green, eyes afire, striding across the broken floor. Eammon, wrapping one hand around Kiri’s jaw and the other around the back of her neck. Eammon, twisting, a crack as the High Priestess’s neck broke.
Green-haloed eyes checked over Red, made sure she was unharmed, then turned to Kayu. “I just spoke with Raffe,” the Wolf said, his voice the sound of autumn chilling into winter as the body of the High Priestess crumpled to the floor. “You have some explaining to do.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Raffe
I only did it to escape my betrothal.”
The six of them huddled around a tavern table, shrouded in cloaks, seated in the darkest corner they could find. They didn’t attract much attention. Everyone here was very drunk or on their way to it.