Page 3 of The Shadowbound and the False God

When she reached the shore, Aisling let Briar off the leash to wander on his own while she picked her way over slippery rocks to stand at the waterline. The ocean was dark, all choppy waves and churning sea foam. Wind whipped across its surface, sending a fine, salty mist spraying into Aisling’s face. She squinted against it. Idly, she considered that she should have been cold—freezing, even—but she wasn’t. Wasn’t cold, wasn’t anything, really, besides grateful for the noise of the waves and the wind and the gulls.

She hadn’t looked like herself when she returned from the Wild, but a broken, feral version of the woman she remembered. Her hair was unkempt and the clothes she’d worn for days—since Rodney had forced her to bathe and change after the battle—were wrinkled and loose on her too-thin frame. She’d stood before the mirror, eyes unfocused, and plucked the leaves and twigs and blades of grass from her hair. Her sweater. Her pants. Steadily, slowly. Methodically dropping each one by one onto her bathroom floor. She still hadn’t bothered to clean them up, instead just stepping around them to avoid standing directly in front of the mirror again. Aisling was sure each time she passed that the woman it would reflect back would be even moreunrecognizable than she had been that first morning. Hollower, probably. She’d seen as much in Seb’s expression when he looked at her, though he tried to hide it beneath his friendly offer.

She glanced down when something rough grazed her wrist. Briar held a stick in his mouth, tail wagging and eyes hopeful. Aisling took the stick and threw it down the beach, then tucked her hands into her jacket. The right pocket held two folded bits of parchment: the notes Kael had written her, both times he’d invited her to meet him in his study. Hurt shot through to her bones every time she felt them there, but she hadn’t yet been able to bring herself to remove them.

She lowered herself to sit on the ground, uncaring of the way the wetness soaked through her pants, and drew her knees in. Mindlessly, she tossed the stick a few more times for Briar to chase after. It wasn’t only for Kael that Aisling mourned now, but for herself. She’d lost something far greater than the male she’d come to care for—she lost her innocence. Her morality. She’d marked one faerie for death and had taken the life of another with her own hands. She would never again be ignorant of the way it felt to carve a sharpened blade through flesh or the stickiness of hot blood spraying her skin or the sight of a life fading before her eyes.

She’d killed the Unseelie King. Snuffed his light out like a candle.

The memory of it had brought Aisling to her knees over the toilet, sick to her stomach night after night when she woke in a cold sweat, tangled in her sheets, crying out so loudly it hurt her own ears. She was exhausted—mentally, physically, emotionally. She could scarcely keep up with even the simplest tasks: shopping, cleaning, cooking, eating. So, after a while, she stopped trying. She moved through her life like a ghost.

The events in The Cut shattered her in a way she was wholly unprepared for. In a way that frightened her, sometimes, when she thought about it too hard: it frightened her to know what she was capable of. It didn’t matter that she’d done it for the good of both of their realms, nor that Kael had willingly allowed her—hadaskedher—to do so. The anger it left Aisling with frightened her, too. That, she did her best to bury. It wasn’t an emotion she was well acquainted with; it felt dangerous and unkind.

A panicked yelp startled Aisling out of her thoughts and she was on her feet in an instant. Briar was further down the beach standing frozen at the water’s edge, now barking furiously at the waves. Hackles raised, he was so thoroughly transfixed by something in the churn that he didn’t so much as glance in her direction when she called him back to her side.

“Briar,” she tried again, louder. “Close!”

Aisling followed his line of sight to where a dark mass floated just beyond the break. It bobbed once before disappearing beneath a whitecap. She might have mistaken it for a harbor seal, but those rarely came so close to shore this time of year.

Briar’s baying sank to a low snarl, lips curled back to bare his teeth. The sound was so uncharacteristic of the gentle dog that it brought goosebumps to prickle along Aisling’s arms. He remained rooted to the spot when she approached, even as she leaned over him to examine a dark, muddy streak that stained his white fur—a streak that, if she squinted, looked almost like a hand with long, spindly fingers had snatched at his neck.

With a heavy shudder, she hooked the leash once more onto his collar and tugged. Still, he wouldn’t budge. Aisling bent to retrieve the stick that lay forgotten at his feet, hoping she might use it to coax him away. Beside it, a print depressed the wet sand.

A bare footprint, fresh but eroding quickly with the tide.

Aisling frowned, crouching lower to brush the tip of one finger over the curved impression twice the length of her hand. It was strange, slightly misshapen with odd proportions. The thin toes pointed towards the water as if someone had waded in.

She snapped her head back up to peer into the waves once more, cold apprehension solid as a stone in her gut. There were only whitecaps and gulls now. Still, it felt as though she’d seen something she wasn’t supposed to.

The creature in the water now gone, Briar gave into her urgings and eased his defensive posture somewhat. He kept himself as a sentinel between Aisling and the water as she towed him hurriedly away from the beach. But even as they left the solitude of the shore behind and reached the busier main street, the sense of disquiet never lessened. Without thinking, Aisling let her hand dip into her pocket again and felt for Kael’s notes.

She had been the Red Woman, and she had been his. As hard as she’d tried at first to reject that title, she wasn’t sure now who she was without it. She wasn’t sure she cared, either.

It had made her into someone not entirely herself.

The only bar on Brook Isle had been a stalwart fixture since the early days of the mine. The workers would gather there after their shifts, still covered in sweat and earth, and lament the better days when the lead was plentiful and easy to dig. Ben’s had been new then, and usually crowded, but no less dim. Now, the stools were timeworn and the bar scratched, the dark red vinyl booth seats cracked and peeling. Smoking inside had been banned nearly a decade prior, but the stench of cigarettes still clung to every surface. And until the handful of regulars arrived in the early evening, it was mercifully, blissfully empty.

Aisling had never been much of a drinker save for a short period of time when she’d first moved to the mainland, but as she sat on a stool at the far end of the bar, she found a strange sort of comfort in the feeling of a glass beneath her fingers. The sturdy weight of it in her hands. Sometimes, it was filled with only water. Other times, something stronger. Today, the beer was lukewarm and flat as she took another sip, but its flavor didn’t register regardless. Even the burn of the rail whiskey shechoked down next wasn’t enough to chase the taste of Kael’s blood—thick, sharp, coppery—from her mouth. It had lingered there for weeks, and she knew it would last longer still. Months, certainly. Years—at least in the nightmares that plagued her fitful sleep. It was especially strong today.

Briar stayed close to her there, having carved himself out a section of stained, threadbare carpet to curl up beneath Aisling’s feet. They were regulars now, and the bartender cared very little that they spent the better part of most days in that same corner so long as Aisling made good on her tab before trudging back to her apartment after dark.

It was her stronghold, a safe haven where she could keep herself detached and hidden away from real life for a time. Lida was looking for her, she knew, along with Seb and Jackson. They’d try to make another pass at inviting her to visit the city. But they wouldn’t think to check for her at Ben’s—especially not before noon on a weekday. The boys wouldn’t pry, but Lida would see straight through any excuse Aisling threw at her. Aisling could no more fathom crafting a clever enough lie than she could telling the truth, and Lida would believe neither. So it was there she remained, emptying glass after flavorless glass to mask the ache and anger and tamp down the rampant noise of her thoughts.

She could tell it was Rodney who’d come in behind her by the steady thumping of Briar’s tail against the floor. She didn’t turn to look, instead ordering another glass of whiskey for herself and a beer for him. When he slid onto the stool beside her, he said, “You look like hell.”

Aisling ignored the gentle barb; she knew it was the truth. She’d only put on a clean shirt because another bar patron had spilled his liquor on her the night before, and had tied her hair back rather than washing it. It didn’t matter how hard she scrubbed, or how much shampoo she used—the acrid stench ofsmoke and burning flesh still clung to the strands like a ghost. She couldn’t rid herself of it.

“Lida came by the dock this morning looking for you,” Rodney added. “I sent her to the library.”

Aisling nodded her thanks. Sipping her drink, she drew her free arm tightly around her waist, shrinking into herself. Taking up as little space as possible in the emptiness of the bar. A long rumble of thunder rattled the glasses on the shelf, and the hanging lamps flickered once as a bolt of lightning arced through the storm clouds. The flash of light brought a lifelike glimmer to the glass eyes of a six-point elk bust mounted on the wall. It unsettled Aisling, the way the creature seemed to flit between dead and alive and back again in less than the span of a breath.

“Generator’s low on fuel,” the bartender warned. “If the power cuts out again, I’m closing down for the day.”

“We’re not staying,” Rodney assured him. His tone was pointed, and though Aisling didn’t miss the implication underlying it, she ignored it all the same.

“How was work?” Her voice was rough from disuse; she hadn’t spoken out loud more than a few words since her brief conversation with Seb two days prior.

Rodney finished his beer in several large swallows then fished a handful of bills out of his pocket and tossed them onto the bar. Aisling wasn’t sure whether they were real or glamoured, but she didn’t care to challenge him this time. “Come on, Ash. We’re going.”

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