Page 11 of The Shadowbound and the False God

The pain that cracked through her chest was biting. Blinding. With gritted teeth, Aisling nodded once.

Lida studied her for a moment more, then sighed. “I’m not going to pretend to understand any of this, Ash, or what you’re going through now. But I’m here for whatever you need. I’ll take good care of Briar, you know that.”

Aisling nodded again. “I know.”

“And I’d take care of you, too. If you’d let me.” Lida squeezed her hand once, then again.

“I know,” Aisling repeated. She squeezed back. When Lida stood and made to leave, she asked, “You believed me back then, didn’t you? When we were kids?”

Lida stopped and turned back. “I wanted to. What kid doesn’t want to live in a world where faeries and magic are real?”

“And now?” Aisling tugged nervously on the hem of her sweatshirt.

Shrugging, Lida offered a half-smile. “Same answer.”

She’d tell Lida everything one day—every last detail—when she finally grew too weary to carry it all in her head by herself. But for now, Aisling just nodded and said, “Thank you.”

Once she was alone with Briar, Aisling’s throat tightened. She couldn’t avoid this part any longer.

She pushed the ottoman out of the way and slid off the couch to sit on the carpet. Briar ambled over and sat between her knees. He shifted forward to rest his forehead against hers—a habit of his since the day she’d brought him home. Sometimes, she imagined it was his way of trying to communicate. As if he could press his thoughts into her head.

Aisling wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her fingers deep in his soft white fur. His body was warm against hers and she thought, for just a fleeting moment, that their hearts were beating exactly in sync.

“I’m sorry,” she choked. The rest of her words were lost:I don’t want to leave you. I have to leave you. I promise I’ll come back.Unable to speak them out loud, she tried to press them into his head right back. He leaned into her as if to respond,I know.

And finally, finally, Aisling cried the tears that she’d been unable to bring forth since walking away from Kael’s burning body.

Before she would descend into the Undercastle, Aisling crossed behind the obsidian structure that housed the spiral staircase. Atop the hillock, beneath a naked blackthorn tree, she stood and looked down the ridge.

But the night garden was dead. Once a lush bloom of fragrant jasmine and moonflowers and branches heavy with Angel’s trumpet blossoms, the pale turquoise glow of the garden’s magic no longer shone. Now, it resembled nothing more than a tangle of blackened, withered vines encased in ice and half-buried under drifts of snow.

It had died with its king.

Aisling closed her eyes and imagined she could smell it again: the sweet floral perfume carried on the breeze, that scent so heady and thick she could have gotten drunk off of it. Indeed, those nights she visited with Kael, she felt dizzy as though she had. She stood still for a long while, imagining. It brought her some comfort—enough that the beginnings of a smile tugged at the corner of her lips when she heard in her memory Kael’svoice. That barely-concealed edge of exasperation in his tone when he found her reaching for the poisonous petals a second time.

When she heard Rodney calling out to her, she didn’t want to open her eyes. Not just yet. Not when she’d finally found a way to quiet the noise and ease the ache in her chest.

“Ash.” His hand on her arm dragged her back to the knoll where they stood. “They’re waiting for us.”

She nodded and, without looking again at the corpse of the garden, turned to follow.

Merak stood together on the dais in the throne room, exuding a calm that it seemed everyone but Rodney and Aisling could feel. Even Lyre’s gaze was gentle as he stood by, not calculating or measuring. Though she couldn’t feel it in quite the same way, the Silver Saints’ serene countenance and pale white light imbued a sense of peace and stillness into the cavern that comforted Aisling as she approached. The prickling pulse of their magic against her skin was enough that the sight of Kael’s empty black throne, with one of his crowns perched on its seat, didn’t evoke the tidal wave of pain she expected to drown under.

“The door to Elowas is open for you, child of prophecy.” Merak’s voices emanated in unison from their three smooth, featureless faces. “The god realm awaits you through the moon gate.”

“And Kael?” she asked, eyes flicking to the throne once more, then back to the Silver Saints.

“He is there.” Merak stepped forward in one fluid movement. The light they radiated moved with them, glinting off veins of white quartz that streaked the cavern walls. It was pure, that light, and out of place this deep underground. But instead of illuminating all the harshness of the Undercastle, those craggy stone walls seemed to soften in the glow.

“So this is part of it then—the prophecy?” Her words sounded far away when she spoke, the rough edges of her thoughts and her speech smoothed by their light just as the Undercastle around her.

“By some interpretations, it may be. Prophecies foretell destinations, less so the paths to reach them.”

Rodney shifted beside her, the toe of his work boot grinding against the floor. As though the sound had woken her from a dream, Aisling shook her head and the distraction of Merak’s placid, ethereal beauty no longer held her rapt. The thought of stepping blindly through a magic doorway into a broken, corrupted realm once again seemed absurd, and absurdly dangerous.

“Maybe we should slow down,” she said, turning to her friend. “We could go back to the Diviner.”

“You believe Sítheach might divine something we are not able to see? Might offer you something we are not able to tell?” Merak spoke a bit louder this time, voices echoing around the throne room. She couldn’t be sure, but Aisling thought she could sense an almost imperceptible shift in their once-calm magic.

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