Page 79 of The Shadowbound and the False God

Kael studied her as she pulled together the right words to explain.

“I thought the prophecy had taken away that choice; that I had to believe in what it foretold. But even what’s predetermined offers a choice, in a way. I choose how to interpret the lines. I choose to believe that this, bringing you back, is the right path. Revenant spring—that’s you. I choose to believe that’s you.” Aisling paused, then added tentatively, “And I chose—choose—to believe that…that you’re it for me.”

A smile lifted the corner of his lips. “It?”

She nodded. She imagined the future she’d once envisioned for herself, so different from what she saw now. She thought she’d be married, maybe with a child, maybe climbing the ladder at the job she’d left without notice. A quiet life, a reliable car, and a white picket fence. Kael, and a life with Kael, would offer her none of those things, yet she wished for it all the same.

Fuck the prophecy—she would bring him back for herself.

Outside the cairn, a low melody rose from the hush. Its notes were old and aching, steeped in memory as they filtered through cracks between the stones. It was hopeful, too, in a way. Aisling pictured Sudryl in the grove playing a flute for the trees, perhaps to encourage the one that had fallen to take root again. She tilted her head closer to the wall to listen. The muted refrain soothed her like a lullaby.

“My turn?” Kael prompted quietly.

“Tell me something true,” she whispered.

Kael’s thumb brushed over the back of her hand. The simple motion sent a wave of warmth through her, so fierce she nearly drew back.

“I would like to dance with you.”

His eyes were tired, and faint bruise-dark shadows clung to his jaw, his brow, the line of his throat. His tunic was wrinkled and torn down one sleeve, its collar darkened with sweat and soil. Unadorned by crowns or jewels or armor, he’d never looked more beautiful.

Her breath caught in her throat.

“Here?” she asked, her voice small.

He rose and stepped in front of her, that half-smile growing. “There are worse places.”

When she took his hand, Kael pulled her to her feet and swept her into his arms with that same powerful grace that propelled him across the battlefield. He drew her close, cradled against his broad chest with one strong hand skimming her waist and the other holding hers. Aisling rested her head over his heart. Its steady thrumming was a percussive beat to the song Sudryl still played. She wished her own would slow to match, but Kael’s nearness made it race.

They didn’t move at first. Just stood there in the dim light, music curling around them. Then, he began to sway with her. Barely more than a shifting of weight, the motion so slight it hardly counted as dancing. Still, with his arms around her and the rest of the realm held at bay beyond the stones of the cairn, Aisling felt like the earth had fallen away from beneath her feet. She was floating, weightless.

“I cannot tell you how much I’ve needed this. Needed you,” Kael murmured. He kissed the crown of her head once, then again.

She was enveloped by him—his scent, his presence. The way every shared breath pressed them tighter against each other. The heat of his palm on the small of her back. For a moment, when she closed her eyes, he seemed less like another being and more like an extension of her own.

The sound of Rodney and Raif’s idle talk was jarring when they returned to the adjacent chamber; Aisling was reluctant to pull back when Kael’s hold on her loosened. He didn’t allow her to get far.

“Another truth, then. In keeping with my earlier promise.” He smoothed a stray hair back from her face.

Aisling shook her head; she knew the truth he was prepared to share. “Wait.”

“What is it?”

Kael’s brow creased with concern, then smoothed when she bade him, “Say it again.”

All at once he’d pulled her flush against his chest and dipped his head low to meet her eager lips with his. Every bit of her lit up at the taste of him, the feel of him. Kissing the Unseelie King would never lose its magic.

“I love you, Aisling Morrow,” he said softly into her ear. “I am wholly yours.”

She wanted to say it back—and she would, in time. When it was right and perfect and likely when she least expected it. For now, though, she was content to make him wait a bit. So instead, she steeled herself and asked, “You said you know what you need to give?”

He pressed a featherlight kiss to her palm before he nodded against it.

“I do,” he acknowledged. “But it is not something I can give alone. I will need your help.”

Raif and Rodney had settled back down in the cairn’s main chamber, seated but tense. The sound of Raif’s whetstone on the blade was more grating than lulling now, his passes more aggressive.

“Sudryl said we’ve overstayed our welcome,” he said without lifting his eyes from his work. His tone was clipped. It surprised Aisling just how much he had come to care for the Enclave and its guardian. That he was so protective painted a portrait of a soldier who fought not for blood or power or territory, but for what he believed in and for those he thought needed defending. Just as she’d been wrong to blindly trust that the Seelie Court was all light and beauty, Aisling was reminded yet again of the depth veiled beneath the Unseelie Court’s shadows.

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