Chapter Thirty-Five
T he tall, dying grass itched through Red’s dirty clothes. She sat silently next to Fife, both of them looking down at Lyra. Time had passed in an uncounted blur, and every time she blinked, all she saw was dirt closing over Neve’s face.
Lyra’s breathing was steady, her heartbeat sound. Still, Fife cradled her wrist in his lap and kept his fingers closed over it, counting up the signs she was alive, if not awake.
“Neve isn’t dead.” Raffe sat with them on his knees. After the grove had disappeared, he and Red had drifted toward Fife and Lyra, the four of them drawn together by loss like they could band against it. “I know she isn’t dead.”
“She’s alive.” Red’s lips barely moved, her eyes stayed fixed on the waving grass. “Just . . . trapped.”
“We have to bring her back.” Raffe’s face was tearstained, his jaw a hard line. He’d pressed his hands into the dirt, like he could dig his way to the Shadowlands. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Red answered. “I don’t know.”
Silence. Then, Raffe swore, standing. “That’s not good enough, Red.” He stalked away through the dead grass, and all she could do was watch him go.
When the grove disappeared, it had taken the corpses of the priestesses with it. But Kiri’s body, not dead, still slumped in the grass a few feet away. Her chest shallowly rose and fell, her blood-crusted hands curled into claws. Red knew she should feel anger, revulsion. All she could dredge up was pity.
“I’m sorry,” Fife said quietly, still watching Lyra. “I’m sorry about your sister.”
Red opened her mouth but found no sound. She’d left Neve, again. Left her in a coffin, and let that coffin be pulled into the Shadowlands. Failed her, again.
She bit her lip against its trembling.
Fife’s swallow was audible. When he looked up, his eyes sparked, determination in the line of his mouth. Gently, he placed Lyra’s limp wrist in Red’s lap. “Stay with her,” he said. “There’s something I have to do.”
He got up, walking with purpose toward the tall, antlered figure at the edge of the forest. Red’s instinct was to close her eyes, to block him from her sight. But she took a deep, ragged breath and made herself watch. Made herself look at what Eammon had become.
What had replaced him.
The line of the forest-god’s profile was unchanged as it turned toward Fife’s approach, still angular, shadowed by dark hair. He only watched the other man for a moment before his newly green gaze fixed on Red.
There was no light of love in it. Barely recognition. Every beat of her heart was a pained rattle against her rib cage.
Too much. Red looked back down at Lyra. Her sleeve was still pushed up where Fife had checked for the Mark, her skin still unblemished. When Eammon had taken in the Wilderwood, become the Wilderwood, he’d let them go. Released them from the bargains they’d made.
Bargains. The word stuck in her head, bent her thoughts around itself.
Her hand closed over her own sleeve, where her Mark had been.
She knew it wasn’t there anymore, but she didn’t have the bravery to look. Instead, her eyes tracked to Fife, still striding toward the forest-god, and she knew exactly what he was going to do.
The same plan she was forming, both of them hoping it would be enough.
Her legs were coltish when she stood, stabbed with pins and needles. She felt guilty leaving Lyra alone, but the plain was peaceful now that the grove was gone, and nothing would bother her here. Stumbling, Red made her way over the field, hand still clutching her empty arm.
They were aches of two different kinds, Neve and Eammon, pulling at her heart. If she saved one, could she save the other? She remembered the glow of the Wilderwood in her bones, light to hold a shadow. The same shadow that trapped Neve now. The two people she loved the most, the two people she had to save. Light and shadow, snared together, horrific and beautiful and each taking something from her.
If she became something horrific and beautiful, could she take it back?
She stopped a few feet away from Fife and what had once been Eammon. The shorter man glared up at the god who was the Wilderwood with fire in his eyes. The Wilderwood looked down a crooked nose with minor curiosity.
His nose was still crooked. Still him, in there somewhere, lost in all that magic, all that light.
“You took my life once, bound it up for someone else. Take it back.” Fife pushed up his sleeve, bared his arm. “Give me the damn Mark, and heal Lyra. Make her . . .” He trailed off, swallowed. “Make her whole.”
The god cocked his head. “You wanted your freedom,” he said musingly, in a voice that held echoes of leaves falling and branches creaking in wind.
“All I want is her,” Fife replied.
A pause. “I understand.” There was something almost puzzled in that layered, forest-laced voice. The god understood Fife’s desperate want, his willingness to do anything to save someone he loved, but didn’t quite know why.
Red bit her lip.
An emerald-veined palm reached out, fingers closing around Fife’s arm. Fife gasped, just once, then gritted his teeth. When the god’s hand dropped, a new Bargainer’s Mark bloomed on Fife’s skin.
Behind them, on the ground where Lyra lay, there came a deep breath, stirring the grass.
No words, just a sharp nod. Then Fife turned, all but running to Lyra. The freedom he’d wanted so badly, finally earned and then traded away.
The Wilderwood watched him go. Then green-drowned eyes turned to Red.
She wondered if she should approach like a supplicant, if she should kneel. Fife hadn’t, but Fife’s bargain had been more straightforward than Red’s would be.
She did neither of those things. Instead she stepped forward, looking up at him with her teeth set and her eyes narrowed, the same determination she’d once shown him
