Page 24 of The Shadowbound and the False God

“I think I made the right choice.” The words spilled from Aisling’s mouth unabated; she had no control over her speech or her movements as they walked. She was a marionette held fast by invisible strings, dancing for another. Using her own voice, her own words, but not of her own volition. It was so easy to fall back into this memory, even despite knowing how it would end.

Her name was on her lips then, and on Kael’s as he repeated it back. Once, twice. It always sounded so beautiful when he said it.

“A pretty name for a pretty faerie,” he purred. The pond beside them glimmered, but it looked off, too. The water wasn’t reflecting quite right; the starlight refracted and bent in ways it shouldn’t. Some pinpoints of light seemed to almost be absorbed into the pool’s glass-like surface.

“Will you tell me yours?” Those weren’t the words Aisling wanted to say. She wanted to yell at Kael, to grab him and shake him and pull him out of this vision they were caught in. But she could only let the memory run its course.

And then her back was against the trunk of a tree, its bark scraping her skin roughly. She could feel the sting of it as real and true as she could feel the panic rising in her chest as she waited for Kael’s reaction.

His eyes hardened as he reached for Aisling’s throat, wrapping his long fingers around her neck and squeezing tight.

Aisling clawed at his arm as she realized too late just how wrong this was. He hadn’t grabbed her this way, and he hadn’t been smiling so viciously besides. This time, instead of pulling his arm away, he drove his hand upward. Aisling grasped at his wrist, fighting to keep her feet on the ground as he lifted her. When she could no longer keep her toes on the ground, she kicked and flailed desperately. She needed to breathe. She needed to breathe.

She was wholly unprepared when, with the subtlest movement, Kael snapped her neck.

Aisling was in a state of shock as her body fell to a crumpled heap at his feet when he released his grip. But somehow still alive, still conscious despite the sound that came from her windpipe and the vicious crack of her vertebrae—the injury was as much an illusion as everything else around her. Slowly, painfully slowly, she dragged herself backwards away from him as he continued to advance, looking at her with the same cold, unyielding expression in his eyes. Far, far crueler than she remembered him being that night.

Her hand plunged into the water and she tumbled backwards, pitching head-first into the pond. She was falling, hurtling down and down and down. She wasn’t drowning—this wasn’t water. It was a different substance entirely, unidentifiable as it whispered over her skin and rushed past her face as she plummeted.

She landed not on her back, but on her feet. At first, the jolt rattled her so sharply that she was blinded by a brilliant, glaring white light. Somewhere tucked away in the depths of her mind,a silken voice crooned to her so faintly Aisling was sure she imagined it:How does it feel, dear one?

A metal-clad hand clamped down on her arm and pulled the scene around her into focus. Kael stood before her again, towering over her, this time dressed in that stark black armor that his enemies so feared. His white hair hung in sharp relief against the dark metal and his silver eyes shone with unquenched bloodlust when he looked at her.

With her free hand, Aisling fumbled in her pocket. She tore into the envelope she’d stowed there, digging wildly for a cluster of rowan berries. This was all illusion, nothing more than wicked enchantments. If the berries were as strong as Rodney had said, maybe,maybethey could somehow break her out of the magic’s hold. She chewed them only twice before swallowing them back hard; they were so bitter her eyes watered at the taste.

That voice vibrated through her again, teasing gently:What a quaint folk remedy.

The voice was nearly overpowered by the sound of racing hoofbeats and the din of scores of soldiers marching towards them. The Seelie front was advancing quickly—Aisling could see their movement behind her reflected in Kael’s gleaming chest plate. She shivered; she was dressed in just a thin white shift now, covered in mud and grime from the dungeon and the long ride to the Nyctara front. She’d almost forgotten how utterly exposed the diaphanous garment left her.

He should have tossed her aside into Werryn’s waiting grasp. She’d have watched his shadows surge from atop the High Prelate’s mount, ripping through both armies and felling soldiers on either side. But in this version, Kael held fast to her arm even as the opposing line was nearly on top of them. In this twisted, horrible version, Kael’s shadows shot forth from his skin and plunged straight into Aisling. She felt his darkness, his hate, his greed, all so overpowering that it stole her breath awayas those snaking currents drove into her, taking and taking and taking until she wasn’t sure there would be anything left.

This was what it should have felt like to be his tether, had her affinity not stood in the way. This was what the faerie in the Unseelie dungeons had warned her about.

“His magic is an entity unto itself. It needs to consume. Life—breath, blood, bone—makes it stronger. That’s if it doesn’t tear you apart first.”

And it was—tearing her apart. And by the desperate, frantic screams around her, she could tell it was tearing everyone else around them apart, too. Seelie, Solitary, Unseelie. His shadows didn’t discriminate as they swept across the battlefield. Soon, they’d engulfed Aisling entirely. His shadows wrapped around her, burrowed into her skin and wove themselves into her veins. Strangled her from the inside out until there was nothing but oppressive, choking blackness.

From deep inside that blackness, the voice chuckled smoothly.

The Low One was there with her, watching it all unfold.

“Where is he?” Aisling asked out loud. The sound of her own voice seemed to have an effect on the vision. It rippled, warping and pulsing around the edges. Gradually, the darkness began to dissipate.

He is all of this, all around you,the Low One whispered in her mind.His basest desires, his nightmares, his fears. All of this is his creation. Beautiful, isn’t it?

“Where is he?” Aisling demanded again, yelling this time. The last remaining fragments of the vision evaporated, leaving her standing back amongst the ancient pines in Elowas. But the Low One offered no response; He had disappeared along with it.

Aisling stood before him, shoulders trembling, eyes wide with fear. Fear of him. Of what he knew he would do to her. It didn’t matter if he looked away—she’d be there too. She was all around him, she was everything. And he’d kill her again, just the same as he had over and over. In The Cut, on the battlefield, before the moon gate. In his study, too, and in the night garden. Several times in the dungeon, but only a handful of times in his chamber.

Her deaths repeated; a constant, infinite loop, punctuated only by brief moments of respite during which he was killing someone other than Aisling. Raif, sometimes. Then an entire company of his own warriors. Laure. Werryn. Then, Aisling again.

And all the while, deep in the darkest corner of his mind, another’s voice repeated:This is what you wanted. This is what you wanted. This is what you wanted.

It was difficult for Kael to deny that truth when, in some of those bloody visions, he felt his face twisting into a sick grin.When he caught himself enjoying his power. It was what he’d always wanted: his magic unfettered, unrestrained. The death of the Red Woman, whose prophecy had haunted him since he learned what it meant for the supremacy of his court. The Low One showed that to him, too, in a wavering vision from his youth when he’d knelt alone in The Cut and the god had told him of the one thing in all of Wyldraíocht that might threaten Kael’s rule. In a rage, Kael had ordered the prophecy torn from books and forbidden from discussion. If the Red Woman came to rise during his time as king, he would do anything, give anything, to keep her from fulfilling her prophecy.

The Low One did not hesitate now to remind him of that commitment, and of how he had failed to uphold it.

Kael was adrift in the visions, disconnected as he moved from one to the next without warning and without end. He saw himself as a child, playing with his shadows like friends. The Low One’s voice was affectionate then, gentle with Kael as he learned the limits of his magic. Encouraging, as he learned next how to push those limits by introducing tethers to his rituals. He saw the moments of self-doubt overcome by His word, either whispered in Kael’s mind or recorded in tomes by Unseelie Kings who had known Him long before.

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