“I have to go find him.” Even with all the Wilderwood spilled from her, the grove still felt repellent. Something that should never be under the sky. “I have to find my sister.”
Concern lit Lear’s eyes. “If she’s in there, I don’t know what exactly you’re going to find.”
“Me either.” Red swallowed. “But it’s our only chance of stopping this.”
Lear nodded. Then he inclined his head in a short bow. “Good luck, Lady Wolf.”
Before she could lose her nerve, Red ran forward, leapt over the furrow of growing shadow, and landed inelegantly next to the corpse of a priestess.
The grove was blanketed in silence, blocking out the roar of gods outside. The ground was dark but solid, even as it rumbled. Still, she could almost feel the fault lines forming beneath her feet, cracks something could seep through.
The sentinels bowed inward, ashamed. Red put her hand on a trunk like she could offer comfort. There were more of them than she realized, growing only inches from one another, the white of picked bones.
It gave Kiri plenty of places to hide.
The snap of a twig was Red’s only warning as the High Priestess lurched from behind an inverted sentinel, swiping wildly at Red with a bloodstained dagger. She ducked away, the slash catching only the fabric of her sleeve.
“Should’ve killed you before.” Kiri’s voice sounded ravaged, like she’d been screaming for hours. “Can’t do anything to stop it now.” Another wild swipe, weighed down by blood-soaked robes. “Our gods are coming, and you’ll—”
A hollow thunk, a hilt on her temple. Eyes rolling back, Kiri slumped to the ground.
Behind her, Raffe sheathed his dagger.
His fingernails were torn and bloody. The hilt of the dagger was pockmarked, chipped, like he’d slammed it repeatedly against a rock. “Took you long enough.”
Outside the grove, a muffled roar. He turned toward it with an arched brow, only mildly interested, then nodded at the body of the priestess near the edge of the trees. “How long do we have?”
“Not long. Eammon—” His name burned in her throat, made her swallow past a lump that felt bladed. “He’s keeping Solmir occupied, but he can’t for much longer.”
Another roar, another shudder of the ground, like it was the back of some slow-waking beast. Raffe nodded, then headed through the bone-like trees. Silently, Red followed.
The grove opened on a clearing with two things in the center. Arick, face caught somewhere between shame and resignation.
And a coffin.
It looked made of smoky glass, like shadows frozen in ice, but the figure inside was clear. Dark hair, closed eyes, face the same color as the bone-pale trees. At the edges of her body, veins ran black, and the threads of darkness continued past the bounds of her skin— down the stone sides of her grave-slab, down into the rotten ground with its twisted branch-roots churning through the earth.
Neve, tied to this inverse Wilderwood. The process of bringing the sentinels into the cavern had taken weeks, but with a willing sacrifice so close at hand— and unconscious— Kiri and her Order had grown a new grove in moments.
And anchored it within her sister.
A low, keening noise escaped Red’s throat. Next to the coffin, Arick’s eyes squeezed shut.
“I can’t move it.” Raffe’s voice was flat and emotionless, all feeling wrung out. “I pushed, but I was afraid I might hurt her.” His voice didn’t break, not exactly, but it wavered on a thin thread.
The bottom of Neve’s coffin— a coffin and Neve in it, her mind couldn’t fit the words together— looked fused to the ground, grown from the thatching white branches cutting through the rotten earth. Slowly, with the same fear Raffe had, Red stepped forward, making sure not to step on any of the dark lines connecting her sister to the grove. This close, she could see the shadow running through them, beating like a pulse.
Nausea churning her stomach, Red knelt, touched her fingers to one of those black veins.
Darkness behind her eyes, like her vision had been ripped away. A nightmare blur of images— a wide gray sea, something beneath it flashing innumerable teeth. A huge, scaled carcass, the size of a mountain and just as still. Wrong-shaped skulls in carrion piles. A thin, bony figure, a rotting floral wreath on its head, chained to a rock. Four monolithic men on monolithic thrones, shrouded in white, crowned in iron spikes. Next to them, a fifth throne, empty.
Red jerked her hand away, breathing hard, sweat on her brow. In her coffin, Neve didn’t stir.
“He promised.” Her teeth wanted to shred the words; her nails bit into her palms as she stood on unsteady feet. “He promised she would be safe.”
“She’s alive.” Raffe said it like he’d been repeating it to himself over and over. “She’s. . . . she’s like this, but she’s alive.”
Outside the grove, another roar ripped through the quiet. Soon Solmir would tire of being the shadow to Arick’s flesh, even if it gave him an advantage against Eammon. Soon he would let himself be made whole by the priestesses’ sacrifice, and the rest of the Kings would come to join him.
And the Wilderwood— Eammon— would die.
It was time for choices. She could see only one.
“Arick.” Her voice was hoarse.
At his name, Arick’s eyes closed tighter. “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “We were all just trying to save you.”
“Come here.” Tears choked her. “Come here, please.”
A pause, then a lurch as he moved over the darkened ground.
Red fought to keep herself steady against her childhood love’s broken stance and the sure knowledge of things vast and terrible stirring beneath her feet.
She reached up when he came close enough to touch, gently laid her fingers on his bloodied face. “I know you didn’t mean for
