Page 2 of The Shadowbound and the False God

Rodney’s hand on Aisling’s shoulder wrenched her out of the memory, and it was only then that she noticed the pyre erected before the cracked stone steps leading up to the moon gate. It was tall and broad, all trussed bundles of sticks piled up to create a level platform. Runes were carved into every inch of the wood. Aisling recoiled, her chest seizing painfully, so Rodney took hold of her corner, too, and nudged her out of the way. A bed of fern fronds, brown and dry, cushioned the top of the pyre when Raif,Lyre, and Rodney hoisted the litter up onto it. They each wore the same expression: grim, determined.

Without glancing at the others, Raif withdrew Kael’s dagger from a satchel he carried slung over his shoulder. He brought the edge of the blade down swiftly against a flintstone before sheathing it, then reached out to place it beneath Kael’s folded hands. The sparks caught those dry fronds instantly and flared up, flames high and hot within seconds. They consumed the pyre first, growing and growing until they overtook Kael, too.

And just as she’d watched the light fade from his eyes as he bled out on his knees before her in The Cut, Aisling couldn’t look away from him as his body burned. His moonbeam hair blackened first, then his skin bubbled and blistered and melted away. Twice, she had to force back the bile that welled up in her throat at the biting smell of smoke and burning flesh, so thick in the air it felt almost solid as she drew it into her lungs. It was choking, that scent. Both Rodney and Lyre pulled fabric from their garments up over the lower half of their faces to shield themselves from it. Raif stood apart from them, stoic, the light of the flames illuminating his stoney glare and the tight muscles in his jaw.

Aisling wanted to cover her nose, too. And her eyes. And her ears—she hadn’t expected the fire to roar so loudly as it devoured the Unseelie King. Yet she couldn’t will a single part of her body to move any more than she could will herself to cry. She should have; she’d wept at her mother’s funeral, and at her father’s after that. She knew she held a limitless well of tears waiting to be spilled for Kael, but that night, and each night since, the dam that retained them was impenetrable. That night was not one for mourning, but for solemn resolve. The pyre cast a bright and blazing image that would stay with all of them and propel them down a new path. That would light her way back to Kael.

The fire would burn for hours yet, but their job was done. Merak took up watch from the stone steps and the tallest of the three nodded to each of them.

“Go now,” they said together. “We will send for you when it is time.”

The razor-thin edge of the page sliced through Aisling’s thumb, drawing her back from where she had wandered, wading into the fog inside her own head. She glanced down; blood was blooming from the cut in shining beads. Those beads multiplied and grew until each joined with the one beside it, on and on until they formed a solid, crimson line that rippled as her vision swam. The line swelled into a fat, round droplet that threatened to drip down onto the page of the book she was holding. Still, Aisling could only stare. And stare. And st—

“Hello?” A girl stood impatiently in front of the desk, one hand on her hip and the other supporting an overfilled plastic binder. She narrowed her eyes at Aisling. “I need to use one of the computers? School project.”

Mindlessly, Aisling raised her stinging thumb to her lips and sucked. The salty tang of blood filling her mouth threatened to drag her mind back into the dark, so she quickly pulled her hand away and tucked it between her thighs. She looked towards thetwo computers, where the librarian had taped anOut of Ordersign.

“Dial-up’s been down since the storm,” she said flatly. “Encyclopedias are in the back corner.” The sullen teen huffed and rolled her eyes. Not a Brook Isle native, Aisling recognized by the girl’s frustration with the island’s sparse amenities. Heaving another loud sigh, she pivoted on her heel and stalked from the library.

With only one hand now, Aisling worked her way through the pile of books on the desk in front of her. Open, turn to the title page, stamp.Property of Brook Isle Public Library. Close, stack, repeat. Once, she would have been enthralled to dig through the boxes of donated novels. It might have taken her three times as long to stamp them all, unable to resist reading the first few pages of each, and inevitably checking several out for herself before they could even be shelved.

Once.

Now, her body moved on autopilot so that her mind could be elsewhere—or, on those rare good days, nowhere at all. But those days were few and seemed to grow further and further between.

Briar ambled back to Aisling’s side after having finished a lap around the library. He’d found the bowl of water she left out for him; his jowls were soaking wet when he rested his chin on her thigh. Aisling added the book she’d just stamped to the pile then dropped her hand to scratch his head absently.

The girl had been the first visitor to the library for hours, and although Aisling was usually glad for the silence, today it seemed particularly vacuous. There was too much space in it—too much space to think, to feel.

Abruptly, Aisling rose to her feet. She had half of her shift yet to go, and two more boxes of books to stamp and sort, but the task could wait for someone else to finish. She roughly pulled onher jacket and fished in her pocket for the keys with one hand while fumbling to clip the leash to Briar’s collar with the other. As she moved away from the stalwart protection of the desk, she felt as though she couldn’t get out of the library fast enough. The swell of her thoughts chased close behind, nipping at her heels until she slammed the heavy oak door against it and turned the key in the lock. For just a moment, she leaned forward and rested her forehead against the cold, damp wood. She waited there until the sounds of the street crept into her consciousness and slowed her racing heart.

She was fine. This was fine. This was home.

Aisling let Briar’s leash hang slack and nodded to him. “Go on,” she murmured. He obliged, towing her in the direction of the docks. He knew better by now than to lead her to the forest.

Burgeoning, ever-expanding dark clouds filled the sky and blotted out the afternoon sun. They’d held Brook Isle in a state of perpetual twilight since they’d blown in from the west. The lightning seemed to have slowed some today, but the frequency of its strikes waxed and waned like the ebb and flow of the tide: sometimes quiet for hours, only to pick back up once again.

To open the door to Elowas was a dangerous thing, and difficult—it had been almost a month since Aisling and Rodney left the Wild, but Merak was still casting. The echoes of their power rippled through the weakened Veil, gathering overhead and manifesting as this unending storm. Aisling had known it was unnatural from the lightning’s first strike, when she hadn’t smelled petrichor, but spent magic. No one else on the island would have known the difference, but to her it was as stark as day and night: one scent pleasant, the other foreboding.

The storm hung stubbornly over Brook Isle, those continuous strobing flashes relentless and without rhythm. The first night, it was nearly impossible for the island’s residents to sleep for more than a few minutes before the next flash lit up the sky, brighterthan any they’d seen before. The old adage about lightning never striking the same place twice didn’t hold true: there was a particular patch of mossy ground near the edge of the forest that was struck time and again, over and over until the soft green pillow had burned away to nothing, leaving only hard, cracked earth.

It had calmed since its onset, but still the storm lingered. Experts deemed it a true abnormality: a rare typhoon that had formed over the Pacific and was held in place by alternating streams of atmospheric circulation. A handful of environmentalists from the mainland had come to conduct a study on it. By now, it was little more than a nuisance to the island’s residents. But to Aisling, the storm was a dark reminder of what she’d been through. Of what was still yet to come.

“Ash!” A voice called out to her from the coffee shop up the street.

Aisling’s grip tightened on Briar’s leash. She was so close to the shore, had come so close to making it through town without running into anyone. She forced a smile to her lips that hurt her cheeks. “Hey Seb, what’s up?”

Seb jogged toward her, jostling his drink and wincing when the hot coffee spilled over his fingers. He wiped his hand dry on his jeans when he stopped. “I was thinking of getting the group together to go into the city next Saturday. See some Christmas lights, maybe get dinner. Are you in?”

She could hardly fathom returning to the city. Brook Isle felt foreign enough as it was; the rest of the world felt too distant and strange to exist at all.

“I’m sorry Seb, I promised I’d help Rodney with some maintenance on the trailer.” The lie rolled off her tongue. They seemed to be coming easier and easier lately.

“Do you need help?” he asked earnestly. “I have some tools; whatever I don’t have, my dad’s probably got laying around his garage.”

Aisling shook her head, still keeping that same empty smile plastered across her face. “That’s okay. You guys go have fun. I’ll come next time.”

“Oh. Sure, okay. I’ll see you around, then.” The disappointment was clear in Seb’s voice, and she had to turn away from his crestfallen expression. The island was too small to avoid her friends forever, she knew, and she was running out of excuses to stay away. She hoped that soon, they’d give up on her altogether.

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