For the Throne

The second and final book in The Wilderwood duology picks up after For the Wolf, in which Red, the Second Daughter of Valleyda, was sacrificed to the Wilderwood, a sentient magical forest, and bonded with its guardian Eammon, known as the Wolf. Red's twin sister Neve, the First Daughter and Queen, was dragged into the Shadowlands. This inverted underworld beneath the Wilderwood imprisons ancient gods called Old Ones and the Five Kings, once-human rulers who banished those gods and became trapped alongside them.

A prologue set three years earlier shows Neve searching the palace library for any way to save Red. She finds a cryptic handwritten book referencing "the Shadow Queen" and "the Golden-Veined," prophetic titles tied to Neve and Red respectively, but dismisses it and burns it.

In the present, Neve wakes in the Shadowlands, a monochrome world of inverted trees and gray skies. Solmir, a former King, explains he needs her help to kill the other four Kings before the dissolving Shadowlands frees their souls into the living world. Neve is furious: Solmir spent months inhabiting the body of her betrothed, Arick, manipulating her and causing Arick's death. When shadow magic nearly destroys Neve, Solmir forcibly kisses her to draw the energy into himself, becoming her "vessel" so the power won't corrupt her soul. She despises the arrangement but has no other ally.

On the surface, Red and Eammon have absorbed the Wilderwood's magic, including its sentinels (the forest's living magical trees), into their own bodies. An enchanted mirror that once connected the sisters shows only tangled roots, and Red has recurring dreams of a white-trunked tree and a bloody apple. Fife, Eammon's longtime companion, carries a new Bargainer's Mark, a brand marking a magical contract with the Wilderwood. Meanwhile, Raffe, Neve's closest friend and unofficial regent, holds Valleyda together by pretending the Queen is ill. Okada Kayu, a Niohni princess next in line for the Valleydan throne, arrives and deduces Neve is missing; Raffe reluctantly accepts her financial help.

Neve and Solmir visit the Seamstress, a spider-limbed woman transformed by her love for an Old One called the Weaver. She explains that reaching the Heart Tree, a doorway between worlds, requires the power of two Old Ones and recommends they kill the Serpent and the Oracle. She gives them a sharpened bone from the Weaver's body, since only a god-bone can kill a god, then asks Solmir to end her life so he can absorb her remaining magic. She calls Neve "Shadow Queen."

Red, frustrated by Eammon's caution, tries to force open a doorway to the Shadowlands by pushing one of the absorbed sentinels out of her body and into the ground. The attempt nearly transforms her into a tree, but Eammon pulls her back. Though the breach fails, it leaves Red holding a key of white wood threaded with gold. A prophetic dream follows in which a voice speaks of "mirrored power and mirrored love" and the Heart Tree.

In the Serpent's lair, projections of Calryes, Solmir's father, and Valchior, the Kings' leader, ambush Neve and Solmir. Neve reaches the dying Serpent alone and kills it, absorbing its power before transferring the magic to Solmir. On the surface, Red's mirror shatters. Neve and Solmir then face the Oracle, a chained god that demands a truth from Neve, forcing her to confront her deepest failures. Solmir kills the Oracle, and the mountain of bones collapses around them. Solmir later reveals his father had his family killed to force him onto the throne and that his first attempt to reach the Heart Tree ended when Gaya, Eammon's mother, died trying to reach through to him.

Red's group visits the Edge, a hidden settlement, where carvings reveal information about the Heart Tree and two keys. Flanking the key are two constellations: the Sisters, known at the Edge as "the Golden-Veined and the Shadow Queen," and the Far-Flung Queen, called "the Third Daughter." The group sails to the Rylt, the island cluster where the exiled High Priestess Kiri was sent. Kiri confirms Neve as the Shadow Queen and Red as the Golden-Veined. The visit turns violent when Kiri attacks Red; Kayu intervenes, and Eammon kills Kiri. It emerges Kayu was sent by Kiri as a spy, though she never intended to harm Red.

At an inverted castle in the Shadowlands, Neve and Solmir use their god-power to breach a wall of shadow guarding the Heart Tree. Solmir tells Neve he loves her and pushes her into the Tree. Inside, Neve reunites with Red in a fog-filled space between worlds. The sisters embrace and confess the truths that divided them. A voice tells Neve she can go home, but becoming the Shadow Queen requires her to stay. Neve chooses to remain, receiving a key of white wood threaded with black veins.

The Leviathan, the last and most powerful Old One, captures Neve and Solmir. In a coral cell, Solmir confesses his original plan: He intended to let the Kings' souls pour into Neve and then kill her. He changed his mind because he could not kill her. The Leviathan, dying and being drawn toward the Kings' Sanctum, asks Neve to kill it. She does, and the Shadowlands begin their final collapse.

Pulled to the Sanctum, a hollow mountain built from a dragon's skeleton, Neve faces the Kings in their true forms: massive, immobile stone effigies. Valchior tries to persuade her to become their vessel. Neve severs her own finger against Valchior's spiked crown, creating a god-bone, since absorbing the Old Ones' power has made her a god. She destroys Valchior and throws the bone to Solmir, who kills the other three Kings but is overwhelmed by their souls. Neve kisses him and pulls all four souls into herself.

On the surface, the Heart Tree bursts from the ground. Fife's true role is revealed: His bargain allows him to transfer the Wilderwood's magic between vessels. He pulls the forest out of Eammon, leaving the Wolf human, and passes it all to Red, who becomes the Wilderwood entire. The Tree shatters, and Neve emerges wreathed in shadow, an iron crown growing from her brow. Red grasps Neve's hands, and their opposing magics crash together, canceling each other out and killing them both.

In death, the sisters find themselves beside the Heart Tree in a pastoral field, where Arick appears restored. He has existed in a half-death as the voice that guided them through their dreams and explains that their mirrored souls were needed to hold the Wilderwood and Shadowlands in stasis. Rather than remain trapped, the sisters smash their apple-shaped souls, freeing all magic back into the world. All three return to life, soulless but still themselves.

Neve abdicates the throne in favor of Kayu, fulfilling the "Third Daughter" prophecy, and she and Raffe acknowledge their love has changed. Red punches Solmir before allowing him to leave; Neve runs after him for a proper goodbye. An epilogue one year later shows Raffe married to Kayu, now Queen; Red and Eammon in a seaside cottage; and Arick at peace in Floriane with no memories of his ordeal. Neve, traveling through Alpera, Solmir's homeland, finds him in a tavern where a musician plays the lullaby he once sang to her. She grabs his hand and pulls him upstairs, a reunion suggesting their story will continue.