Page 78 of The Shadowbound and the False God

Kael fell back a step, and Aisling moved to stand at his side. She put a protective hand on his arm.

“He’s been with us this whole time. He couldn’t have—” she started.

“The sentinels have poured everything they have,morethan they have, into guarding you from Yalde’s Sight. They aren’t strong enough for this; it’s killing them!” Sudryl’s voice wasshrill, wavering and cracking as she fought back another wave of tears.

“Can he see us now?” Raif asked quietly. Aisling studied the perimeter. The space left by the felled tree seemed to stretch wider and wider the longer she stared. Kael’s eyes were focused on the forest beyond, looking through the gap as though it were an open door. She tightened her grip on his arm.

“If he hasn’t yet, he will,” the alseid snapped.

“It isn’t dead; not fully.” Rodney had lowered himself to crouch beside the tree. He gestured to its roots. There were two that still tethered its trunk to the earth. They were thin, and stretched taut, but they held.

Sudryl turned from them and Aisling used the momentary distraction to urge Kael away.

“Let’s go back inside,” she whispered, pulling on his arm. He let her guide him from the scene, back into the cairn. Raif passed them carrying an armful of stones. Rodney was already working to push the tree back up to stand.

Aisling didn’t let go of Kael until they were back inside in a chamber towards the rear of the cairn, well out of earshot of the tense conversation that continued in the grove. He was stone-faced, stoic. Walls up high and thicker than ever.

“It’s still alive,” she prompted.

He hummed absently. Aisling pulled him down to sit on the dirt floor. She shifted so their shoulders and knees touched, leaning into him until he relented and relaxed slightly into her.

For a while, they sat like that: quiet. Breathing. Aisling stared at the curved stone ceiling, tracing its uneven lines with her gaze. She thought of the rowan tree outside, still barely clinging to life. Of how much strength it took, sometimes, just to hold on.

Kael’s jaw was clenched. He sat Fae-still beside her, as if by sheer force of will he could keep the grief and the guilt and the rising panic all locked inside. He was someplace else entirely,trapped in his own mind. Aisling knew what that was like. Knew how it felt to spiral inward under the weight of things that seemed unfixable and insurmountable. She hated the way the quiet swallowed him whole. She itched to break it, not with empty comfort or more of the same grief, but with something else that might loosen his hold on those things he grappled with now.

Idly she recalled long bus rides on school field trips, when her friends would start mindless games to pass the time, batting around prompts like “would you rather” or “never have I ever.” Games that felt silly at first, but had a way of cracking open the silence and letting in something real.

So she leaned in a little closer and said, “Tell me something true.”

“Is this a riddle?” Kael looked at her sideways, one brow raised. “How very Fae of you.”

Aisling gave a quiet, breathy laugh, shielding herself from thoughts of Yalde with barely-there humor. “Not a riddle; I’ve had enough of those. A game.”

“Something true,” he considered. “I don’t believe I have ever played a game before.”

“Is that your something true, or just an observation?” Aisling turned to face him more fully and let her knees fall, folding them beneath her to sit cross-legged. She rested her elbows on her thighs and gently tugged Kael’s hand into her lap.

“Methild might have tried, had I come to her when she was much younger. She was kind when I deserved it—and sometimes when I did not—but never playful.”

His childhood was so different from hers, so far from anything she could relate to. Aisling’s was bright and hopeful and full of games, full of love and light and learning—at least, until it wasn’t. And yet here they sat together, their vastly different paths having been somehow divinely and inextricably bound tolead them to this point. She wouldn’t let his branch from hers again.

“It’s not too late. I’ll teach you some good ones,” she offered.

He squeezed her hand. “I would like that very much. Take your turn now.”

She thought for a while, weighing what she might choose. There were so many things she wanted to say to him, so many truths she’d held close that she might share—good and bad and in between. She settled finally on one she hadn’t even fully fleshed out for herself, but that begged to be shared now.

“You’ve been here with me this whole time, I think. Some part of you, anyway.” The pale Luna moth had found Aisling when she’d been lost and had led her to Yalde—to Kael. It had found her in the trials, too. It dawned on Aisling then that it had tried to give her the answer to Yalde’s riddle in the Undercastle: the mirror in Kael’s room. It had perched there, waiting for her to understand its unspoken message. Then again in the labyrinthine night garden as it lingered beside the reflecting pool. It was Kael; she’d felt him in it the very first time she touched its spectral wings. He’d been there through it all, watching over her. Guiding her back to him.

When she told him as much, his brow furrowed as he racked his brain for a glimpse into those scenes she described. After a moment, he shook his head.

“How do you know it was me, if I cannot recall myself?”

“I don’t,” Aisling admitted. “But it’s what I’m choosing to believe.”

“You consider belief a choice?” he challenged.

“I do.” She hadn’t for a long time. It was a new understanding, and one that she’d been slow to come around to. In truth, it was Rodney who had inspired much of the shift.

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