Page 29 of The Shadowbound and the False God

“You’ve met them?” Raif did his best not to sound smug.Currency, indeed.

“You stand amidst the gods who created them.” Sudryl gestured around the grove. Raif half-expected the appearanceof glowing, veiled deities, but no such figures manifested. “The trees,” the alseid clarified.

Raif raised an eyebrow, peering closely at their trunks, their branches. All indistinguishable from any other tree he’d seen, unmarked by sacred runes and absolutely motionless. “The trees are gods?”

“They were. And Orist—she is the oldest and strongest of them all.” Sudryl tipped her chin to gaze up at the blackened oak. Her expression was one of awe and adoration, as though she were seeing the tree for the very first time.

“How did the Enclave come to be?”

“A great stag was once buried in the cairn, and Orist grew from a seed in his stomach. An oak tree of pure white, she was.” Having recovered from her initial surprise, Sudryl bent and collected her bow. She slung it across her back and stashed the arrow away in her satchel. She rummaged inside for a moment, then produced a tiny wood-carved stag figurine. She held it in her palm for Raif to study, briefly, before stowing it away once more.

“There are legends of a white oak in Wyldraíocht,” Raif murmured pensively. A frown creased his forehead as he attempted to remember the old stories, ones he hadn’t heard since he was a child. “It protects theSíoranam.”

Sudryl hummed. “Orist’s mirror. The white oak of your stories is no legend. It is her foothold in your realm, just as other places of worship are the footholds of lesser gods.”

The Cut would have been the foothold of the Low One, then. And the temple Solanthis, for the Seelie Court’s beloved Aethar.

“And these?” Raif reached out and touched a low-hanging leaf of the nearest rowan tree. It was small, as were the others. Most barely stood taller than his shoulder.

“Orist has never needed worship to give her power as lesser gods do. The dark one weakened these over time as he stoletheir worship for his own. As Elowas collapsed, they gave every drop of power they had left to protect Orist in exchange for the preservation of their aneiydh. It was their final stand, at the cost of their own lives and freedom.” Sudryl crouched beside the tree, lovingly patting down the soil around its base. She picked up several fallen leaves and tucked them into a pocket in the lining of her tattered coat.

“In thanks,” she continued, “Orist made them each into their own tree. They are all interconnected, all sustained by a shared web of roots.”

“It’s beautiful,” Raif said sincerely. He hadn’t imagined he might find something so whole in a realm so broken. The way it felt all around him—the stillness, the peace—was almost enough to make him forget where he was entirely. “You have done a wonderful job caring for them.”

“Do not flatter me, soldier. It won’t endear me to you.” Sudryl shot him a condescending look, though her eyes shone with pride.

He smiled gently. “That was not my intention.”

Sudryl sighed, looking up at Orist once more. A shudder wracked her body and brought her wings to tremble. “She is dying. The sickness began at her roots, and it only continues to grow. If she dies, the lesser gods will follow. And with them, the last bit of light in this dark place.”

Raif’s smile faded. “I am sorry.”

“You should be—it is not only in Elowas that she is fading. It began here, closest to the dark one’s corruption, but it will spread. To her mirror in Wyldraíocht first, and the human realm after that.” Still crouching, the alseid drew three crude trees in the soil with her finger as she spoke.

Without allowing Raif time to respond to the revelation, Sudryl stood. She brushed the dirt off her hands with somefinality before she remarked, “You said we—you came with others?”

“There are four of us. I…we hope it will soon be five,” he said, focusing again on why he was there to begin with.

“You came here looking for someone.” Her eyes narrowed again; she wasn’t asking.

“The Unseelie King,” he confirmed, no longer so reluctant to share the full details of his party’s campaign.

The alseid’s verdant skin paled slightly. “Souls cannot come back from here. Not without—”

“We sent his body to collect,” Raif preempted her warning. “Merak has guided the process from the start.”

“Even still, he will not be the same.” She shook her head once, then again, harder. Trying to banish the thought of an aneiydh returning to the living realm, it seemed.

“I’ve come here to ask for sanctuary once we’ve found him, for myself and my companions,” he declared finally.

“And what do you have to offer in return?” Sudryl challenged, crossing her arms. A shrewd little faerie, no longer so bothered by the dark thoughts now that there was an opportunity to negotiate an exchange.

“What would you like?” Raif considered what he had with him, which was precious little if she didn’t care to wield a soldier’s weapons. Even the knife he carried in his boot was likely as long as her forearm, and even heavier besides.

“There is very little I want for. I’ve come to enjoy my simple life in the grove.”

“There must be something,” Raif insisted, his growing impatience only thinly masked.

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