Page 17 of The Shadowbound and the False God

“What the fuck,” Rodney hissed, backing away and pulling Aisling with him. “What thefuck.”

Raif raised his bow and aimed it at the faerie’s chest. “Stay back,” he warned.

But Lyre, bothered less by the sight of her than the smell, took a step forward and cocked his head to one side. He studied her as she moved, coming nearly close enough for Aisling to make out the delicate veining beneath her skin, before passing them right by. Her eyes were pale, unseeing. She hadn’t noticed them there at all.

“A morgen,” Lyre assessed. “They drown those poor souls who stray too close to the sea. It seems that she met a fitting end.”

The smell dissipated as the morgen drifted further away, a trace lingering faintly in the trail of water she left behind. Aisling wondered briefly about the boy she’d seen that day—whether he’d followed one of these beings over the edge of the dock.

“Why is she here?” she asked once she found her voice again.

Lyre shrugged, still peering after the faerie. “Trapped, I suppose, along with all the rest of them.”

“The rest?” Rodney demanded. He took another step closer to Aisling so his arm pressed against hers. She wasn’t sure if it was for her comfort or his own.

“You cannot truly believe that Kael would be the only aneiydh caught here.” The Prelate smiled excitedly. Wickedly. “I daresay she will not be the last one we encounter before we find our beloved king.”

Time didn’t flow linearly in Elowas. Just as a century could pass in the blink of an eye, an hour could stretch on for millennia. The sky darkened and lightened as they walked, but only by degrees. A sun never appeared, nor did a moon; the expanse remained smattered with only stars. Each time Aisling glanced down at her watch, her head spun. Sometimes only minutes had ticked by. Sometimes hours, sometimes days. Other times, it had skipped backwards. Finally, she’d had enough. She pulled it off and tucked it into her pack. Whether it was broken or it was truly following the bent rules of the god realm, she wasn’t sure.

She didn’t want to know either way.

It took Rodney tripping over exposed roots for the third time and nearly taking Lyre down with him—maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose—for Raif to agree to make camp for the night. All but the captain seemed exhausted; though he’d never admit it, Aisling guessed that he likely was, too. Still, whenthey all eased themselves down onto the ground, Raif remained standing.

“Is it safe?” Rodney eyed the small fire Raif had built, then glanced around the forest uneasily.

Raif’s jaw tightened. “It’ll keep the shadows at bay.”

Those figures that had followed the group’s progress across the plain, just out of sight, were still with them. They’d drawn nearer, pushing the boundaries of exactly how close they could come without being spotted. Aisling’s neck was sore from jerking her head back and forth, attempting to catch them as they darted past, dipping in and out of the underbrush and peeking at them from behind trees. Unlike the morgen, these beings were very much aware of the group’s presence.

She didn’t want to sleep—she couldn’t. But Lyre had already nodded off, leaning against the trunk of a tree with his hands folded across his chest. Rodney wasn’t far behind, stretched out on his back, eyes flickering open and closed despite his initial discomfort being there. Aisling shifted towards the fire, holding out her hands to warm her palms. Raif stepped over Rodney’s legs to crouch beside her.

“Look there.” He nodded towards a tree not far from the edge of their camp. Beside it, two glowing eyes blinked back at them. An arm, skeletal and far longer than should have been anatomically possible, reached out to wrap around the trunk. A loud scraping sound followed as the eyes shifted upward, bit by bit. It was climbing. When Aisling looked up higher into the trees surrounding them, she noticed several other sets of glowing eyes peering down from various heights.

A cold shot of fear swept through her, seeing them all there. Seeing how close they’d crept before she’d even noticed. “What are they?”

Raif held a finger to his lips. “Listen.”

Aisling screwed her eyes shut, straining her ears to hear past the crackling fire and Rodney’s quiet snores—the only other sounds in that vast, silent forest.

Then she heard them: the whispers. Faint at first, barely there, but they grew louder as she became increasingly aware of the hushed murmurs all around. The words were incomprehensible, little more than a long string of disjointed noises and syllables that sounded more like a poor imitation of speech than any actual language. But like those she’d heard on Brook Isle when she went searching for the Shadowwood Mother, they were insistent.

“What are they saying?” she asked.

Raif shook his head. “Gwyllion,” he supplied. “Outside of here, their whispers are powerful enough to lead even the strongest Fae off a path they know by heart. I’ve lost soldiers to them as we traveled across territories we’d traversed hundreds of times. The mind gets lost in their words.”

Aisling tried to bring her attention back to the fire, back to Rodney’s steady breathing. The whispers quieted some, blending once more into the background. Raif still kept his eyes trained on the figure in the tree nearest to them.

“This place takes things from the souls it traps,” he said quietly. He didn’t have to finish the thought out loud for Aisling to know where his mind had gone, or for her own to follow:what had Elowas taken from Kael?

Aisling turned, observing the way Raif held himself: muscles tight, eyes sharp and alert. Though his hands hung relaxed as he rested his arms on his knees, she imagined he could have a weapon in each of them faster than she could comprehend. Kael was the same way—supremely focused, always ready. Lifelong soldiers, the both of them. It had terrified her once, the threat in Kael’s countenance. The promise of violence in his posture. Until he allowed her to glimpse all the parts of him that warrior’sdiscipline masked, bearing the softer pieces of his hardened heart and trusting her to keep them safe.

She cleared her throat, pushing the guilt of being unable to protect those pieces down before it could overtake her once more.

“I didn’t realize—you and Elasha” Aisling trailed off, unsure of how Raif might react. The two weren’t close; the longest conversation they’d had prior to this was their argument over whether or not to come to Elowas in the first place.

“We met when we were both very young.” Finally, he tore his gaze from the grotesque form in the tree and shifted his focus to the fire. He reached out with a long stick and stirred the coals. The dying flames kicked back up as he did. “She was a nurse in the first camp I served in.”

“She healed you?” Aisling guessed.

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