Page 85 of The Shadowbound and the False God

Raif bowed to his king, then moved to stand behind him. His hands hovered at Kael’s sides, ready to catch him should he fall. Kael widened his stance and pushed up his sleeve to expose his forearm. There was a thin scar that ran the length of it, so faint Aisling hadn’t ever noticed it, even those nights they’d spent exploring every inch of each other. She almost reached out to run a finger down it. She didn’t want him to notice how hard she was trembling, though. Not when his arm was as steady as ever.

Rodney grasped Kael’s wrist in one hand and raised the blade, hesitating as its tip hung just above Kael’s skin, then glanced at Aisling. Waiting for her response.

Calm. Calm.

Aisling laid both hands on Kael’s chest, this time biting back the urge to hold onto his tunic. She kept her palms flat, her fingers spread, and her touch featherlight. And she could feel it there, his magic: the raw, pulsing energy beneath his skin, coiling and writhing like a living thing desperate to escape. It was powerful, and terrible, and vicious, and yet it called sweetly to her affinity as if pleading for release.

Kael exhaled sharply, his breath ragged and uneven. His eyes were shut tight.

“Get rid of it,” he gritted out through clenched teeth.

So Rodney began to dig the tip of the dagger into Kael’s forearm, right down the line of that barely-there scar.

The moment the first tendril of shadow was coaxed free, Kael’s body seized violently. A sharp, visceral sound erupted from his throat, half growl, half gasp, as the dark energy began to unravel from within him. His shadows spilled forth in spiraling threads, flowing from him—bleeding from him—inky black pouring from the open wound, mixing with dripping crimson.

Hot blood welled around the shining blade. Red, staining Kael’s pale skin. The smell of copper, its biting tang on her tongue, its warmth—

“Aisling!” Rodney barked her name and it brought her back to the crossroads, back from The Cut.

Calm. Calm.

Closing her eyes, Aisling called to Kael’s shadows. Coaxing them out, drawing them from his chest and towards the blade. As they emerged, she poured every ounce of calm she had back into him to fill those gaps his shadows left behind. With her eyes closed, she could feel them almost as tangible things, and she could feel the emptiness around them.

Kael screamed, and the sound of it—ragged, desperate, broken—rocked Aisling to her core. She faltered only for a moment before regaining her focus, pressing harder against his convulsing frame. Her fingers curled into him instinctively as the shadows responded to her. They latched on like they recognized her, their movements erratic and wild as they threaded between her hands.

It was etched on Kael’s face: a fierce determination that burned even through the haze of his agony. He wasn’t giving up. He wouldn’t give up. And she wouldn’t, either. So she continued to fight with him. For him. Pulling, calling, coaxing. Pulling,calling, coaxing. Using her affinity to tame those savage shadows and guide them into the humming dagger buried in his arm.

But as she pulled at his shadows, she felt something else there, too. Something buried beneath all the rest. Something that felt almost as though it was helping her. As she pulled at Kael’s magic, there was something else pushing it out from deep inside of him.

Agony.

Blinding, searing, ruthless agony the likes of which Kael had never felt before. Not in battle, not The Cut when he’d attempted the blood ritual, not every time thereafter when his scars resurfaced and brought with them that ancient pain. Because this wasn’t pain; it was something entirely its own.

Another scream worked its way up his throat and out of his mouth before he could clamp his jaw shut to stop it. It was a fearful, feral sound that at first he didn’t recognize as his own voice—he thought it might have been Yalde in his mind, or perhaps even his shadows.

The wellspring of magic he’d harbored, nurtured, splintered now into countless searing, twisting tendrils that raced through his veins. They surged through him with blistering speed, flooding his body in less than a heartbeat.

That agony—that blinding, searing, ruthless agony—was unbearable. Kael’s spine locked and his muscles responded in kind, pulling him up onto the balls of his feet as his body archedsharply like a bow drawn too tight. His hands snapped out to grip Rodney’s shoulders in an unconscious bid for balance. He was scarcely aware of it, nor was he aware when his legs buckled, or that Raif had wrapped a steady arm around his waist to keep him from collapsing.

Time lost all meaning. The agony stretched on, unrelenting. It came in waves, though it never fully abated. Each time it peaked he fought to stifle his anguished cries; each time it plateaued he fought to regain some semblance of control over his body and his mind. He managed neither.

Fighting, always fighting. He’d fought all his long, long life for dominance over the very thing he was giving up. But his magic would not go easily; now, just as it had so many times in The Cut, it fought back. Even as Aisling and Rodney drew it out of him, his shadows burrowed deeper, digging in with claws and teeth in a desperate bid for purchase. They wound around his bones, tied themselves into knots in his veins and snagged on every raw muscle fiber.

Aisling. Aisling.Distantly, as if he existed as agony alone outside of his corporeal body, he felt the pressure of his Red Woman’s hands against his heaving chest. He’d have given anything, anything, to open his eyes and see her there in front of him. To see her eyes, the lines of her face, the look of determination he imagined she wore now.

And just as distantly, he could feel—barely, faintly—the warm caresses of calm she was sending into him. Her waves responded to his, crashing against each other, overtaking one another. He drifted on the tide of torment and solace, the ebb and flow of raw affliction and fleeting warmth spreading through his limbs, sinking into his core.

She was fighting for him now, seizing the control he couldn’t attain for himself. So, gradually, he let her. When the next wave of agony came, he didn’t brace against it, but surrenderedto it. He opened himself to it completely, let it fill the hollow chambers of his heart and gave it permission to ravage him. His body was drenched in sweat, his breath coming in shallow gasps, but still, he didn’t pull away. He didn’t fight, didn’t resist. He bore it all—the agony, the loss, the sheer magnitude of what was being taken from him—with a silent, staggering resolve.

And then: nothing. Like a flame snuffed by a rush of air, that unending agony was gone. Kael’s body sagged forward and he clung weakly to Rodney. Raif’s hold on him remained steadfast, the only thing keeping him upright as he trembled and sucked down breath after labored breath. Unconsciousness grasped at him with greedy fingers, dragging him down and down into its depths as he struggled to stay afloat. Yet the only thing Kael could discern in the emptiness numbing him from the inside was Aisling. Her touch, her breath, her voice. Her hands were stroking his face, pushing back damp strands of hair and brushing over his cheeks, his forehead, his jawline.

“It’s okay,” she whispered over and over. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

With every bit of strength he could manage, Kael rolled his head to the side where it rested on Rodney’s shoulder to look down at her. His Aisling, his Red Woman.

“I promised,” he rasped. “Together.”

She laughed despite the tears glistening her eyes. She was shaking too when she pressed her palm to his cheek and said, “Together.”

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