Page 58 of The Shadowbound and the False God

“How do we stop it?” Rodney asked no one in particular.

“You don’t,” Sudryl said simply.

Though the torches still burned bright, the chamber felt suddenly dimmer. Smaller. Too small. One by one, they filtered back into the larger space. Aisling moved again to her spot near the fire. This time, she couldn’t feel its heat at all.

“Ash,” Kael said quietly. The truncated version of her name sounded foreign on his lips. Rodney noticed.

“Only her friends call her Ash,” he said pointedly.

Aisling gave him a warning look. “Rodney.”

“Well, I’m right, anyway,” he grumbled.

Kael was watching her from where he stood across the chamber. He looked like he was searching for something—comfort, maybe, or some sort of acknowledgement. She had neither the energy nor the willingness to give it. But when he said her name again and nodded to the cairn’s entrance, she followed him anyway.

It was darker outside, no longer that perpetual twilight it had been since they’d arrived. The stars were gone now, and a cold wind blew noisily through the wood. Aisling eyed the rowan trees apprehensively, unconvinced that such slight, twisted things could truly keep them safe and out of Yalde’s Sight.

“I should thank you,” Kael said at last. When Aisling glanced up at him, his gaze was on the trees, as well. His expression was impassive again, and his tone emotionless. She recognized this side of him: the Unseelie King, guarded and cold. This wasn’t the Kael she’d come to Elowas to find.

It made her heart ache, that realization, and so the only response she could manage was a noncommittal hum.

“For bringing me back—I should thank you.” Kael turned to her then, and Aisling mirrored his movement. He pushed a hand back roughly through his hair and added, “But you must know this was not my intention. I never meant for you to put yourself at risk on my behalf. If I’d known—”

“None of us knew,” Aisling cut him off, her words clipped. “None of us knew—Ididn’t know—anything.” She hadn’t known Kael’s plan, nor the price of calling the Silver Saints. Hadn’t known that he would end up in Elowas, trapped, or just how all of it—all of it—would break her.

It wasn’t until that moment that Aisling realized the true depth of her anger, and it took standing before the male she loved, and had been forced to kill, for all of it to come flooding to the surface. But she hid it, too, behind a similarly blank stare. Letting him see everything she was feeling now would be to bare herself to him, and she didn’t trust him enough to do so yet.

He reached out and brushed the back of his hand over hers. Gently, tentatively. “I would see my death a hundred times over if it ensured your safety.”

Aisling froze at his admission, paralyzed by the wave of hurt that washed over her. He would do it again—he would break her heart again. He would force her a hundred times over to give up her hope, her innocence, to drag that dagger across his throat. The one that now hung at her hip.

With shaking hands she tore at the belt around her waist, fumbling with the buckle until it came undone. She ripped it from her body and threw the whole bundle to the ground at Kael’s feet.

“And yet you would mourn the loss of a god that ordered you to kill me.” She spat the words like acid—they burned just as sharply on her tongue. She searched for something more,something profound and biting to say, but her mind had gone utterly silent with rage. His brows lowered in confusion when she took one step back, then another, then finally turned on her heel and stalked angrily back into the cairn.

And she realized that they weren’t going to have their moment: that beautiful reunion she’d wished for. Perhaps they never would.

From the depths of his shattered heart, Kael had meant every word: he would give up everything he had and everything he was to protect his Red Woman. It was something more, something deeper, than he’d ever felt for or said to another. Until Aisling, Kael had only ever been singularly focused on his own desire for power. That he was willing to give it all up—and that he would do so again, even knowing that his imprisonment in Elowas would be the result—surprised even him.

But telling her as much didn’t elicit the reaction he’d hoped for. The fire and pain he saw in her eyes before she left him standing there alone struck a chord in him, and the way she’d looked at him was sharper than the blade had felt when they’d run it together across his throat. He studied it now where it lay at his feet: housed in a new sheath, strapped to a much smaller belt than he’d ever worn. It looked so natural hanging at Aisling’s hip he hadn’t even noticed it there until she stripped it off.

She’d changed so much from the timid, shaken girl she’d been in his dungeon. It was a change borne of necessity, but no lessimpressive for it. He thought she was likely stronger than he was now. It was only for her strength that he stayed there in Antiata, hidden behind the magic that connected the rowan trees. Had it not been for Aisling, he’d already be back in the Low One’s—inYalde’s—cold grasp.

Yalde.The name brought bile to rise in his throat. Even after seeing the god’s history painted on the cairn wall, a part of Kael still refusedto believe it. The scrape of his shadows against his boneskepthim from believing it. They pulled agonizingly as they attempted to draw him back to the sylvan cathedral. Those shadows had overtaken him, had ownedhim. Had controlled him. They were angry now; angrier than he’d ever felt them. Kael’s magic was no longer his, and it no longer wished to be under his control.

He stooped and picked his dagger up off the ground. The leather of the belt and sheath still carried a hint of warmth from where they’d been pressed against Aisling’s body. He savored that feeling until the heat dissipated into his palms. After it had gone, he missed it. Even more powerful than the dark god’s pull on his magic was hers on his very being, and that alone was what kept him there.

Though for just a moment, when he sensed Rodney approaching from behind, he considered leaving the protective circle anyway and taking his chances in the forest.

“What happened to you?” Kael spoke first, hoping to head off whatever the púca had come to say. It would be some self-righteous lecture, he suspected, full of thinly veiled barbs and accusations. Kael’s limited patience was already thin, and Aisling had been foolish enough to leave him with a weapon. Whether he was her closest friend or not, Rodney was not immune to the Unseelie King’s wrath.

The púca stopped beside him, smartly maintaining a distance of several paces. “Your god stole my glamour.”

A muscle ticked in Kael’s jaw and he said through gritted teeth, “Not my god.”

“No, of course not,” Rodney acquiesced. The edge of sarcasm tightened Kael’s jaw further as he braced himself for the púca’s next quip. When several minutes passed in silence, and Kael relaxed slightly.

“How are you here?” he asked finally. The words came slowly, the question a difficult one to form—nearly as difficult as it was to comprehend in the first place. “How…how am I here?”

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