Page 8 of The Shadowbound and the False God

“What was it?” Lyre asked.

“Nothing good.” Rodney reached out and pulled a twig from Aisling’s hair. “Where did you go?”

“To look for the Shadowwood Mother.” Aisling pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and fixed her gaze on theraised corner of a linoleum tile. The subfloor was beginning to show beneath the peeling glue. “I couldn’t find her. She’s gone.”

Rodney shook his head. “Go take a hot shower, Ash. You can have my bed tonight.”

“But that thing….” Her attention strayed towards the window. The blinds were lowered, but she half-expected to see a long finger reaching between the slats to beckon to her once again.

“It’s gone,” he assured her, stepping into her field of vision to block the window. “It won’t hunt where it knows there’s other Fae.”

That word—hunt—set Aisling shivering anew.

Lyre rose languidly from the couch. “I’ll take a stroll around on my way out. I mean no offense, but you sorely lack the sort of deportment that we nastier Fae tend to find intimidating.” He smirked at Rodney.

“A bit of warning next time before you just show up, Lyre.” Rodney made no attempt to hide his irritation.

“Consider this your advanced warning, then: the storm has ended. I do believe I will be seeing the both of you again sooner rather than later.” With a characteristic flourish, Lyre swept his cloak aside and strode out into the night.

Once he’d gone, Aisling stood in the shower until the water ran cold, watching bits of leaves circle the drain. As the adrenaline from her encounter with not-Cole waned, her mind wandered back to Lyre’s revelation.

The Red Woman was not born, but made. Forged by the blood of the Unseelie King. In the end, as hard as Aisling had tried, her fate had never been hers. The ending written for her, for Kael, was never hers to rewrite.

Though she’d never say so out loud, healing might have been easier if this had all ended with his death. Aisling could scarcely fathom what more she could give to the prophecy, which seemed only to take and take and take. But Lyre was convinced thather role as the Red Woman was not merely in seeing Kael’s destruction, but further in bringing to bear his resurrection.Revenant spring—it was staring them in the face all along. Kael was meant to die so that he could return. It was a cruel twist, really, and one that tore at her heart.

She was dangerously close to hoping the High Prelate was right. To thinking that maybe, maybe, she truly could bring him back. But hope was no longer a safe space, no longer a comfort to hold close. It was a risk, and torturous—where once it let Aisling look bright-eyed at the future, it now left her fearful. She knew what could come of feeling it, of clinging to it. Hope was a set-up, and this was a stupid hope to cling to. She had only ever been a pawn. All of her efforts and cunning and plotting had brought her right to where she would have ended up all along. And that realization—the understanding of how little control she’d actually had the entire time—was a deafening roar that drowned out everything else around her.

Yet even still, the ember of hope burned on. It was dim, and it flickered often, but it remained lit despite it all.

After she changed into a pair of Rodney’s threadbare sweats, Aisling returned to the living room and wedged herself between Rodney and Briar on the couch. There was hardly space for the three of them with the way Briar had stretched himself out.

“You okay?” Rodney asked gently.

Aisling just shook her head. She wasn’t. She hadn’t been.

He held a takeaway bag full of cold fries out to her, eyebrows raised pointedly until she took one. When she fed it to Briar instead of eating it herself, he sighed. As if he could read her thoughts, he said, “You planned to go after him either way.”

“By choice,” Aisling shot back. “I wanted to do it—to dosomething—by choice. Not because a prophecy dictated it.” She was done with the prophecy and sick of fate. She wanted back control over her own life.

Rodney shifted in his seat to face her and waited until she did the same before speaking insistently. “Put aside the prophecy, Ash. You made this choice.You. Whether or not it was foretold doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Rodney insisted. “When you decided you’d go into the god realm to find Kael, did you know it was a part of the prophecy?”

“No, but—” she started. But Rodney seized on the hesitation in her tone and stopped her with a shake of his head.

“You made that decision on your own. You fell for Kaelon your own. The prophecy may tell us the end of the story, but you’re the one writing the book. You’re the one turning its pages.” To punctuate the sentiment, he tossed a cold fry in the air. He missed his mouth by a mile.

Maybe he was right—maybe she could somehow reclaim her role in all of this. She hadn’t before considered all the choices she’d made in the dark. Hadn’t considered that perhaps she had more room than she realized to steer and grow within the framework of the prophecy. The parameters may have been set, but what she did within those boundaries was up to her alone.

Rodney tried again, this time landing a successful catch despite a lazy attempt by Briar to snag the fry for himself. He pumped his fist in triumph.

Aisling leaned her head back against the couch, suppressing a smile. “How can you be so wise and so dumb at the same time?”

Rodney grinned and said, “Lifetimes of practice.”

First thing in the morning after that long, long storm finally ended, Lyre returned to Rodney’s trailer. This time, with Raif in tow. The soldier stood behind the High Prelate, eyes dark andface drawn, and Aisling avoided his gaze. She hadn’t been able to meet his stare since they’d carried Kael’s body to the moon gate and set it ablaze. And so amidst the silence that stood between them all, it was Lyre who spoke first.

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