Page 6 of The Shadowbound and the False God

She shook her head once, then again a bit harder. Her thoughts were swirling, a destructive gale ripping through her head, and she couldn’t settle them enough to concentrate and make sense of what Lyre was saying. “I thought that was referring to my affinity to the White Bear, to Briar.”

“It’s how you gave Kael control over his magic. Toquell tempest’s surge,if you will. You pulled away his negative energy, settled his unrest, and you gave him something to replace it with,” the Prelate explained.

With the heels of her hands pressed to her eyes, Aisling recalled the times she’d sat with Kael, willing her calm into him to fill in all those cracks and voids his rage left gaping. The Diviner had known—she’d seen it. She’d pointed it out right there in that crystalline cavern, and still neither of them had made the connection to those three throwaway words in Aisling’s prophecy.

“How could no one have realized this?” Rodney gave voice to her thoughts.

Lyre chuckled darkly. “In all fairness, nothing about the late Unseelie King evokes anything even remotely spring-like.”

Dropping her hands to grip her thighs, Aisling looked from Lyre to Rodney, and back again. “So it isn’t over.”

“It is far, far from over.” Lyre stood then, bowing at the waist just as he had the first time he’d revealed his knowledge ofAisling’s true identity. When he straightened back up, he said reverently, “The Red Woman was made. Now, she must rise.”

Aisling’s lungs seized; the trailer was small, and getting smaller. Where before she’d sought out noise to dampen her thoughts, now she needed the comfort of quiet. Rodney’s breathing was too loud, and so was the rattling radiator, and the dripping faucet, and the wind outside, and the…and the…

“Ash?” Rodney’s hand was on her shoulder.

Quickly, Aisling stood. She lunged for her coat where she’d draped it over the arm of the couch. “I need to go.”

“Let me drive you.” Rodney began searching for his keys beneath the takeaway bags still sitting untouched on the table. The burgers would be cold and the fries stale by now.

Aisling shook her head again, already moving toward the door. The thought of being trapped in the car for any amount of time made her chest tighten further. “I’ll walk.”

“Come on Ash, it’s freezing,” he insisted.

“I said, I’ll walk,” she snapped. Her tone was biting. She meant it to be.

Rodney looked at her, eyes narrowed. Aisling crossed her arms to shield herself from his studying glare. “I’m going to drop by Ben’s sometime later tonight,” he said low.

A ripple of tension raised her shoulders slightly. “When?”

He shrugged, all false nonchalance. “Maybe in a few hours, maybe less. Who knows.”

“Then why are you telling me?” Aisling challenged. She was only vaguely aware of the amused expression on Lyre’s face as he watched their exchange.

Rodney took a step towards her. “So you can’t avoid me. Because if I find you there, it’s going to be ugly.”

“You can’t—” she started. He cut her off mid-protest.

“Yes, I can. If you can’t be responsible for yourself right now, then I’ll be responsible for you.” He paused, and his glare lifted a fraction when he added, “You’re my best friend, Ash.”

“Watch Briar.” A kinder response than that waited on her tongue, but she tamped it down and hurried out of the trailer. If she’d given it—and given in—she almost certainly would have broken down. Kindness wasn’t something Aisling could handle right now.

When she reached the road outside the trailer park, Aisling abruptly turned in the direction of the forest. It was so much more ominous now, filled with a rasping murmur that sounded closer to whispers than wind moving through the trees. She ignored the way the sound seemed to slither towards her out of the shadows and kept up a brisk pace. Even in the dark, even with the mask of gray slush camouflaging the trailhead, she knew the way. Each random flash of lightning illuminated a landmark that told her as much.

She needed to speak with someone that wasn’t Rodney or Lyre or Raif. Someone who didn’t care about her or about Kael. She needed an impartial perspective, regardless of how much it might hurt to hear.

It was freezing, and the light rain was quickly turning into sleet. But despite the cold, everything in Aisling was burning. Her mind, her marrow, every single harsh breath that sliced in and out noisily between her clenched teeth: all aflame with the fury she’d been trying so hard to keep at bay.

Once again—or rather, still—Aisling was trapped on a path not of her own choosing and unable to do anything but continue forging on ahead. The direction was determined for her: she could no more turn and go back than she could find a way off of it. Even in those moments when she had tried—when she’d been so sure that she was taking back control, blazing a new way forward—every branching trail she explored led her back to thesame destination she’d always been headed towards. One way or another, in any permutation of choices she could have made, Aisling would have killed Kael. She would have become the Red Woman.

Aisling shoved roughly through the underbrush, tearing and thrashing at the bracken. The raspy, whispers sound grew sharper, more insistent as she went. She might have stopped to listen if she hadn’t been so single-mindedly bent on reaching her destination.

After everything, it wasn’t Kael’s unspoken feelings for her that lingered—the way it had filled her heart and warmed the blood in her veins when he brushed his lips across her own—but anger and an insidious, aching hurt. A part of her hated him. It was the same part of her that hated Rodney for his betrayal, and had once hated her mother for choosing the Fae over her own family. The same part that hated herself for being the one left alive after failing to protect those she loved. All that hatred expanded in her ribcage until she scarcely had room to breathe around it; this time, she was unable to force her anger back down into submission.

Finally, finally, she tumbled out into the clearing. Eyes wild, searching.

But the glade felt the same as the rest of the forest, and the thicket was just a thicket. It didn’t breathe, didn’t beckon. The Shadowwood Mother was gone. There was no magic here. Still, Aisling dropped to her hands and knees and crawled through the tangle of twisted, grasping vines, uncaring of the thorns that caught in her hair and tore at her clothes. Where the brambles opened up, where the Shadowwood Mother had once crouched amongst books and scattered pages, there was nothing.

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