“No. But I didn’t care what was going to happen, not then.” There was shame in it, just barely. “I only wanted you safe.”
Red’s lips pressed white. All of them loved like burning, no thought for the ashes.
“I am safe.” Her hand left his face, fell to her dagger. She tried not to think on it, tried to let her body work without her mind’s direction. “I love Eammon, and he loves me. That’s safe.”
Another roar ripped through the grove. “Do you love what he’s become?”
“We’ve both been monsters,” Red whispered. “I’ll love him, whatever he is.”
“You loved me once. You never said it, but you did.” Arick’s dry throat worked a swallow, eyes still pressed shut. “Didn’t you?”
“I did.” It was barely a whisper, this gentle thing that existed beyond truth and lie. Her fingers closed around the dagger hilt. “Not the way you wanted me to. But I did.”
His eyes opened. “Do it quick, then.”
Near Neve’s coffin, Raffe was silent. When Red looked at him, his eyes shone, but his mouth was a tight line.
Arick bowed his head, and after a moment, he knelt before her. She wanted to grab his shoulders, force him up, but she stood frozen, her hand on her dagger and him like a supplicant at an altar.
“Blood to open,” Arick murmured, a last rite. “Blood to close. My blood brought Solmir here. My blood inverted the Wilderwood. A living sacrifice.” His eyes rose to hers, and the peace in them, the relief, was somehow worse than fear would’ve been. “This only ends when the sacrifice is no longer living.”
Her fingers trembled, sweat-slicked and sliding off the hilt. She’d known this was the answer. But now, when she could see his eyes . . . “I can’t.”
“I tried to do it myself, in the dungeon. It never worked. I can’t do it alone.” Gently, Arick reached out, closed his hand over hers. Together, they drew the dagger. He settled the blade against his throat. “You have to do it, Red. Let me save you this time.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks. The earth beneath her rumbled as she knelt, too, putting them level.
Arick pressed his lips to hers. She let him. “Find a way to get him back,” he muttered against her mouth. “You deserve to be loved, Red. You always did.”
His hand dropped, pleading in his eyes.
Red kissed his forehead, squeezed her eyes shut. She held the dagger still, but she felt Arick push himself forward, heard the soft sigh and felt the warm blood as it dripped, then sheeted. When he dropped to the ground, she dropped with him, forced her eyes open so she could see his.
He raised a hand. Tucked her hair behind her ear, just like he used to do before, when they lay like this. Then a light went out, and his mouth slackened, and he was still.
Red heaved one, racking sob.
The shadows at the edge of the grove paused. The roaring outside went silent.
On her grave-slab, beneath the shadowy glass of her coffin, Neve pulled in a ragged gasp.
Red shot up at the sound, sodden with Arick’s blood, rushing to Raffe’s side. Raffe used his dagger hilt, but Red just used her fists, punching at the glass, not stopping even when she felt her knuckle split, the crack of something fracturing beneath her skin.
But the glass held, and below it, Neve’s eyes opened.
She looked at Raffe. Then she looked at Red. Her face was expressionless, someone who didn’t know if they were awake or asleep.
“Neve.” It rasped from Red’s throat. She lashed out at the glass again, leaving a bloody streak. “Neve!”
Neve didn’t respond. Slowly, dream-like, her gaze turned to her arms, to the black lines emanating from her like external veins. If they horrified her, she didn’t show it, expression curious as her opposite hand reached out, brushed over one of them. It pulsed at her touch, and she shivered, like it was cold.
A moment, stretching long. Neve’s hand fell. She closed her eyes. Then, lip pulling up in something like a snarl, she closed her fists.
The dark veins shuddered. With a sound like a nest of vipers, they . . . retracted, pulling out of the grove and back into Neve. The air hummed as Neve reclaimed the magic that had been spooled out of her, the darkness that had used her like a seed. It flowed into her like a tide of shadows, swirling over her skin. A sound at the edge of Red’s hearing, almost like a sigh.
And the grove ripped.
The twisted sentinels crashed sideways, breaking and melting as the ground opened up. Red scrabbled against the sides of Neve’s coffin, trying vainly to shove it out of the collapsing grove. Raffe pushed with her, but neither of them could make it budge. The coffin sank into the dark-churned earth like it was quicksand.
Red screamed. Outside the grove, she heard an echoing bellow, one of tree and leaf and thorn.
“Red!” Raffe grabbed her hand, hauled her away from the rapidly growing hole. “Red, we have to get out of here!”
“We can’t leave her!”
“We don’t have a choice!”
The earth ate at the sides of Neve’s coffin, covered it in dirt and dark. One glimpse of a gray-scale world with a shadow-eaten horizon, and she was gone.
Raffe hauled her away, beyond the ring of churning dirt, like a hurricane burrowing into the earth. The only solid ground left in what had been the grove was where Arick’s body lay. Now that body was twitching, changing, becoming something different.
The flesh and the shadow, brought together again. She was almost sorry when the body finally looked like Solmir, alive, because it meant she’d have nothing to bury.
“You don’t understand!” he screamed, wild eyes finding Red’s. “You don’t understand, they’re still—”
A shadow curled around his throat and into his mouth, gagging him, the grave he’d escaped from eating him alive.
A shuddering boom, a spray of dust and rock, and the grove was gone. The door was closed.
With
