Kayu stared into a tankard. Her third. Raffe wasn’t one for beer, but they didn’t have any wine here and a drink was a drink, so he’d downed two of his own. He stopped there, though—the look on the Wolf’s face was murderous, and Raffe had made a point of staying between him and Kayu.
He didn’t interrogate himself on why.
During their madcap flight from the Temple, the Shrine with its scene of bloodless death shut and locked and hopefully still undiscovered, they hadn’t spared time for discussion. It wasn’t until they arrived at the tavern, needing somewhere to wait out the two hours left until dawn, that the questions—and the anger—had time to reveal themselves.
“So you joined the Order.” Lyra had established herself as the go-between, the cool head that acted as a buffer between the Wolves and Kayu. “Because then you couldn’t be married off.”
“It was the only way to avoid it,” Kayu said. “I couldn’t run from my father forever. I chose the Rylt because it was far away, remote. I’d heard the Order was in some… turmoil… but I didn’t expect the Ryltish Temple to be caught up in it.”
Raffe grimaced. The same reasons Neve had packed the priestesses that didn’t follow Kiri off to the Rylt—the same reasons Raffe had sent Kiri herself and the remains of her followers to join them, after the shadow grove. But, apparently, adherents to a dying religion were willing to latch onto just about anything to try to keep it alive. The three-day voyage had changed the defecting priestesses’ minds about what was acceptable, and they’d spread the poison across the sea, making it the perfect place for Kiri to land. A ready-made cult, just waiting for their leader.
Shit. He really was starting to believe in destiny, in things you couldn’t escape. And destiny seemed to be a bastard.
“By the time I got here, the only priestesses left in the Temple were loyal to Kiri. And once they heard my story, they knew I’d be useful to her. As soon as Kiri arrived and found out who I was, she gave me an ultimatum.” Kayu spoke into her beer, the words kept low so they wouldn’t carry farther than their table. “Either I could go to Valleyda, or she’d send me back to my father.”
“Just go to Valleyda?” Red didn’t look nearly as angry as Eammon did—even though she’d been the one who was almost murdered—but there was a fierceness on her face that Raffe certainly wouldn’t want to cross. “Nothing else?”
The way she asked the question sounded like she knew the answer already.
“I was to go to Valleyda,” Kayu answered slowly, “and find a way to bring Red to the Rylt.”
Eammon was almost completely hidden in a heavy cloak, but his scarred hand was visible, wrapped around his tankard. Every vein went bright, blazing green, his grip tightening until Raffe thought he might break the thing.
Red’s hand landed on his, and from across the table, Lyra gave the Wolf a look that wasn’t quite reproachful, but cautioning.
“Why?” Lyra’s voice stayed even, but her own grip on her cup had gone tense, the slim lines of her hands etched in tendons. Across from her, Fife glared at Kayu, palm rubbing at his Mark. “So Kiri could kill her?”
A brief nod from Kayu. No change in Eammon’s stance, though Raffe saw Red’s grip on his hand tighten, as if she might have to hold him back.
It took Kayu a moment to answer, which seemed reasonable when faced with the ire of the Wolves and those who counted them as family. “Yes.” She sighed, spilling the rest without being asked. “Kiri thought that killing Red would solve two problems—make it so Neve wouldn’t have a reason to hold out against the Kings, and take away Eammon’s help, so he’d have to anchor the Wilderwood alone again.”
“What do you mean, hold out against the Kings?” Nerves sharpened Red’s voice. “What do they want Neve to do?”
Kayu shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Kiri did, either. To hear her tell it, she was taking orders from the Kings themselves.”
Silence at the table. Raffe took a long draft of his beer, even though it tasted like warmed-over piss.
Red’s face was thunderous, her eyes glinting brown and green from within the shadows of her hood. The nexus of her wrist flushed with emerald, one hand still atop Eammon’s. “So Kiri thought the Kings breaking free from the Shadowlands was inevitable.”
Kayu ducked a nod. “Not in the way it was going to be before. Kiri was clear on that. It was going to be different.” She rubbed a hand over her face, pushing back loose strands of black hair. A sleepless night had carved dark circles beneath her eyes. “How different, I never got a clear answer on.”
Down the table, Fife gnawed on his lip, one hand on his mug and another on his Mark. His sandy-red brows drew together, like he was thinking hard. Or listening hard. Maybe both—the forest lived in him, not in the same way it lived in Red and Eammon, but similar. It was probably telling him to get the fuck out of the Rylt.
Raffe would be happy to listen.
Lyra twisted her mouth, darting a glance at Red. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” she said soothingly. “We’ve well established that Kiri is mad.”
“Was,” Eammon grumbled. There was a note of satisfaction in the past tense that made the skin between Raffe’s shoulder blades prickle with gooseflesh.
“Was,” Lyra amended. She shrugged, the movement graceful, and took a sip from her tankard. “Maybe she just couldn’t fathom her gods failing.”
“She spoke to them.” Red slumped in her seat. “If she couldn’t fathom them failing, it’s because they couldn’t. What we don’t know is what that means for Neve.”
Nothing good. None of them said it, but it hung over their heads, storm clouds that hadn’t yet erupted into rain.
“We need to get back to the Wilderwood.” This from Fife, the first words he’d spoken since they flew from the Temple, trying to outrun the discovery of the priestesses’ bodies in the Shrine. “As soon as possible.”
“Dawn is coming.” Lyra gestured to the windows. The first fingers of pink light seeped slowly into the sky above the ocean. “But we can’t make the voyage go any faster.”
As if to punctuate her words, the floor rumbled.
Cutlery clattered, the surfaces of foamy beer disturbed, sloshing onto tables. The quiet drunks populating the tavern at this hour looked up with bleary eyes, confusion on drawn, sleepless faces.
The quake wasn’t enough to do any damage, and settled quickly, only a scant few heartbeats of shaking. When it calmed, the tavern patrons went back to their mugs, almost as if it had been a collective hallucination.
But Raffe knew it wasn’t. And, somehow, he knew it had something to do with Neve.
“What was that?” Lyra voiced the question, though it was clear on all their faces that they’d come to same conclusion Raffe had.
“Neve told me the Shadowlands are breaking apart,” Red said quietly. “I think that’s what the quakes are. I felt another one back home, but it wasn’t this strong.”
The implications of that made Raffe drain the rest of his beer and consider ordering another. If they could feel a quake here, how bad was it back at the Wilderwood?
“There isn’t much time.” Fife’s hand clamped over his forearm, like the Mark beneath his sleeve pained him. “We have to get back.”