It looked like the Wilderwood had broken into the Black Keep more than once, leaving most of it a ruin. Not exactly a comforting thought.
Doors lined the hallway, but only one looked like it’d been disturbed recently. A jagged line of dirt and a green stain on the wood marked where growth had been cleared away, leaving a semicircle of bare wooden floor ringing the threshold. Already moss crept over it, taking back the space it had ceded.
Gingerly stepping over the moss, Red pushed the door open.
The room beyond was small and sparsely furnished. Dusty, still, but at least cleared of greenery. The walls were bare. A large window with vines crawling up the outside looked out on another courtyard, where a stone wall ran from the back of the hallway and down a gently sloping hill to meet the iron gate. Another tower sat directly behind the one she’d entered, short enough to be hidden from the front. Small trees grew around its base, and her heart stuttered for the half second it took to realize they weren’t bone-colored. Between the trees twisting around the structure and the flowering vines threading through them, the tower looked more grown than built.
A fully made bed stood in the corner by the window, linens faded but clean, with a fireplace set into the wall by its foot, neatly stacked with wood. To the left of the door, a small alcove housed a chamber pot and wide iron tub, already filled with water. A wardrobe was pushed into another corner, an age-spotted mirror hanging next to it on the wall. Large handprints marked the dust on the wardrobe’s side. The size of them matched Eammon’s.
He’d told her she could leave, but prepared for her to stay. It made her wonder how much of his insistence that she could return home was planned, and how much of it had been impulse, a knee-jerk reaction born from some emotion she wasn’t sure of.
Cautiously, Red walked over to the bed. With a quick breath, she ducked and peered beneath it, not sure what she was looking for, but sure she wouldn’t relax until she checked.
Nothing but remnants of moss. Her lips thinned as she straightened, headed next for the wardrobe.
She opened the doors quickly, prepared to snarl at anything that might rear up from the depths, but the snarl melted slowly to bewilderment.
Dresses. A row of them. Simple cuts in muted colors, jewel tones that would blend into a forest. Red pulled one out, deep green, careful not to let it brush against her dirt-smeared cloak. It looked like it would fit.
Red laid the gown out on the bed and closed the wardrobe. Then she stepped back, pressed her knuckles against her teeth, and let out one slightly panicked, slightly relieved, wholly confused sob.
This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To lock herself and her sharp magic away in the Wilderwood. To ensure that she could never bring harm to Neve or anyone else she cared about ever again; that the destruction she’d wrought with her power the first time was the only time.
This was exactly what she wanted.
The satisfaction was hollow at best.
She gulped in a deep breath, held it until the burn in her lungs canceled out the one in her eyes. Carefully, Red shrugged out of her cloak. Her flight through the Wilderwood had left it worse for wear, pockmarked with rips and dirt, but Red handled it like it was priceless finery.
It was ridiculous. She was clearheaded enough to know that. Ridiculous that she’d want to keep the thing that marked her as a sacrifice. But the memory it carried was the one of Neve, helping her get dressed, smoothing out the wrinkles as she’d done so many times before. Other than Red’s, her hands had been the last to touch the scarlet fabric.
There were other, fiercer reasons, too. Reasons that came from that same deep place that was ferally pleased with the cruel coincidence of her childhood name. The part of her that would smile as she grabbed a bladed legacy and felt it make her bleed.
Red held the cloak in her hands for a moment, working the weave of it between her fingers. Then, with the same care she’d used to take it off, she folded it so the worst of the rips didn’t show and placed it in the wardrobe.
Valleydan Interlude I
T here were no priestesses in the gardens as Neve walked to the Shrine. She’d expected to fight her way through a throng of them, white-robed and mealymouthed, waiting to see if their sacrifice finally brought back their gods. Official vigils for the Five Kings’ return started at midnight, she knew, so she had some time, but she was still surprised at the garden’s emptiness.
Her fingers arched like claws, her teeth clamping so hard into her lip she nearly broke the skin. It was probably good none of them were here. She might do something unbecoming of a First Daughter.
Her feet barely made a sound over the cobblestones, the moonlight soaked up by the dark fabric of her gown. It was different from the one she’d worn for the procession, less ornate, but still the black of absence. She didn’t know when she might bring herself to wear a different color.
Truly, Neve didn’t know why she’d bothered coming here. She’d never been one to take solace in prayer, though there’d been a time when she tried. Right at sixteen, after . . . after what happened with Red, she’d tried religion on for size for a week or two, to see if it smoothed the rough edges of her thoughts, made them harder to cut herself on. Her sister was a pawn, a piece to be moved— send her to the Wilderwood, and maybe this time, the Five Kings would come back. At the very least, she’d keep the fabled monsters away. There was nothing either of them could
