Page 15 of The Shadowbound and the False God (The Red Woman #2)

A isling stood still with her eyes shut tight for several moments, listening.

For Rodney, for Raif, for Lyre. For even the smallest, most distant sound that would tell her that they were alive.

That she wasn’t alone. But as a dark fog around her thickened, she could hear nothing but the sounds of her own ragged, uncontrolled breathing.

Her chest heaved as panic tore at her mind, dragging her down and down deeper into a spiral.

She knew what waited for her at the bottom of that spiral, and she knew that there would be no clawing her way back if she allowed herself to reach that lowest point.

So she willed herself to move. One step at a time, she stumbled on, forcing herself to follow a singular line of focus: Kael. Find Kael.

She sought him out desperately—his face, his voice, his smell, all imprinted so deeply and permanently onto her as a tattoo that marked her very soul.

As hard as she had once tried to deny him, after everything they’d faced together, he was a part of her now.

And despite the risk of pain that came with hope, Aisling tried her best to let that tiny ember spark into a flame. She needed it now more than ever.

Though the centaurs had fallen off her trail and she couldn’t hear the whispering gwyllion in the trees, Aisling still felt as though she was being watched.

The sensation was unnerving; pins and needles prickled across her skin.

She glanced over her shoulder repeatedly, but the dense fog and towering trees obscured everything beyond a few paces.

Each shadow seemed to stretch and bend and take on sinister shapes in the edges of her vision.

Though she tried to tell herself it was only her mind playing tricks, the persistent feeling gnawed at her resolve.

As it always seemed to now when her mind began slipping down, the all-too-familiar tang of blood curdled on Aisling’s tongue.

The acrid stench of smoke and burning flesh filled her nose as though the ghost of it still clung to her hair.

She could feel those scorching flames on her face again, turning her cheeks hot and red despite the cold.

It was all she could do to keep herself anchored in the moment. She couldn’t stop again.

From the corner of her eye, Aisling caught a flicker of movement. A glimmer, faint. The briefest flash of silver. She spun, peering into the darkness.

Then again, another streak of movement darting between the trees to her right. Brighter this time—bright enough that she could make out exactly what she was seeing: starlight catching on moonspun tresses.

“Kael!” Aisling’s strangled cry was far too loud for this silent forest, echoing dangerously around her.

But she didn’t care what else heard her now, just so long as he did.

She raced towards his fleeing figure, coming close enough to just barely, barely catch his outline dissipating into misty black shadows.

Another trick.

Distraught, she tried to backtrack. She thought before that she was moving vaguely in the direction of the tree line where Raif would be waiting; now, through the blurry veil of tears that coated her eyes, she couldn’t tell where she’d come from or where she was going.

That ghostly fragment of Kael had turned her around so much so she wouldn’t have realized if she was doing nothing but walking in circles.

As tears began to roll down her face, the first fat droplets of rain began to fall from unseen clouds.

Every so often, she would catch another glimpse of a figure in the distance, only for it to vanish again as she approached. Each time, she was drawn a little deeper into the forest. Each time, her heart sank a little further. And each time, the rain began to fall a little harder.

Finally, she’d had enough of the forest’s games. Exhausted and broken and battling a deep ache caged inside her ribs, Aisling lowered her head and focused only on her feet. She couldn’t be toyed with if she wasn’t looking.

Until a thin, barely-there tendril of shadow grazed over the side of her neck.

This wasn’t Elowas; she knew it wasn’t. This was Kael. Aisling’s hand shot up to trace the path it had cut. Though it had felt like a caress, there was blood on her fingertips when she withdrew her hand. Slowly, she raised her head.

Kael was there. He was right there . Standing still, so close she could reach out and touch him.

She was staring at him—at him, and at herself.

Her head spun for a moment, fighting against logic to rationalize what she was witnessing.

It felt like those dreams she’d had sometimes as a child, where she’d be looking down at herself fast asleep in bed.

Then just as suddenly as she’d wake from one of those dreams, she was staring up at him, back in her own body.

Except it wasn’t her body, not really. This version of her was nebulous and swirling, Kael’s shadows producing her mirror image.

He was the same, yet somehow both were solid.

He could touch her. She could feel his touch on her.

“Walk with me, pixie,” he said, offering his arm.

Aisling faltered. She’d lived this moment before.

When she looked down, her skin shimmered a pale green beneath a dress of autumn leaves.

Wings tickled her back—there, but not there.

She struggled to make sense of it all as Kael led her through a spectral projection of the night garden.

It looked just as it did that night. It looked nothing at all like it did that night.

“You enjoyed Nocturne?” he asked.

“Very much,” she found herself saying. “I’ve not been to such an extravagant celebration in a long time.”

“I’m pleased it was to your liking. Though I know of one satyr who was particularly disappointed in how the night ended.”

“I think I made the right choice.” The words spilled from Aisling’s mouth unabated; she had no control over her speech or her movements as they walked.

She was a marionette held fast by invisible strings, dancing for another.

Using her own voice, her own words, but not of her own volition.

It was so easy to fall back into this memory, even despite knowing how it would end.

Her name was on her lips then, and on Kael’s as he repeated it back. Once, twice. It always sounded so beautiful when he said it.

“A pretty name for a pretty faerie,” he purred. The pond beside them glimmered, but it looked off, too. The water wasn’t reflecting quite right; the starlight refracted and bent in ways it shouldn’t. Some pinpoints of light seemed to almost be absorbed into the pool’s glass-like surface.

“Will you tell me yours?” Those weren’t the words Aisling wanted to say. She wanted to yell at Kael, to grab him and shake him and pull him out of this vision they were caught in. But she could only let the memory run its course.

And then her back was against the trunk of a tree, its bark scraping her skin roughly. She could feel the sting of it as real and true as she could feel the panic rising in her chest as she waited for Kael’s reaction.

His eyes hardened as he reached for Aisling’s throat, wrapping his long fingers around her neck and squeezing tight.

Aisling clawed at his arm as she realized too late just how wrong this was.

He hadn’t grabbed her this way, and he hadn’t been smiling so viciously besides.

This time, instead of pulling his arm away, he drove his hand upward.

Aisling grasped at his wrist, fighting to keep her feet on the ground as he lifted her.

When she could no longer keep her toes on the ground, she kicked and flailed desperately.

She needed to breathe. S he needed to breathe.

She was wholly unprepared when, with the subtlest movement, Kael snapped her neck.

Aisling was in a state of shock as her body fell to a crumpled heap at his feet when he released his grip.

But somehow still alive, still conscious despite the sound that came from her windpipe and the vicious crack of her vertebrae—the injury was as much an illusion as everything else around her.

Slowly, painfully slowly, she dragged herself backwards away from him as he continued to advance, looking at her with the same cold, unyielding expression in his eyes.

Far, far crueler than she remembered him being that night.

Her hand plunged into the water and she tumbled backwards, pitching head-first into the pond.

She was falling, hurtling down and down and down.

She wasn’t drowning—this wasn’t water. It was a different substance entirely, unidentifiable as it whispered over her skin and rushed past her face as she plummeted.

She landed not on her back, but on her feet. At first, the jolt rattled her so sharply that she was blinded by a brilliant, glaring white light. Somewhere tucked away in the depths of her mind, a silken voice crooned to her so faintly Aisling was sure she imagined it: How does it feel, dear one?

A metal-clad hand clamped down on her arm and pulled the scene around her into focus.

Kael stood before her again, towering over her, this time dressed in that stark black armor that his enemies so feared.

His white hair hung in sharp relief against the dark metal and his silver eyes shone with unquenched bloodlust when he looked at her.

With her free hand, Aisling fumbled in her pocket.

She tore into the envelope she’d stowed there, digging wildly for a cluster of rowan berries.

This was all illusion, nothing more than wicked enchantments.

If the berries were as strong as Rodney had said, maybe, maybe they could somehow break her out of the magic’s hold.

She chewed them only twice before swallowing them back hard; they were so bitter her eyes watered at the taste.

That voice vibrated through her again, teasing gently: What a quaint folk remedy.

The voice was nearly overpowered by the sound of racing hoofbeats and the din of scores of soldiers marching towards them.

The Seelie front was advancing quickly—Aisling could see their movement behind her reflected in Kael’s gleaming chest plate.

She shivered; she was dressed in just a thin white shift now, covered in mud and grime from the dungeon and the long ride to the Nyctara front.

She’d almost forgotten how utterly exposed the diaphanous garment left her.

He should have tossed her aside into Werryn’s waiting grasp.

She’d have watched his shadows surge from atop the High Prelate’s mount, ripping through both armies and felling soldiers on either side.

But in this version, Kael held fast to her arm even as the opposing line was nearly on top of them.

In this twisted, horrible version, Kael’s shadows shot forth from his skin and plunged straight into Aisling.

She felt his darkness, his hate, his greed, all so overpowering that it stole her breath away as those snaking currents drove into her, taking and taking and taking until she wasn’t sure there would be anything left.

This was what it should have felt like to be his tether, had her affinity not stood in the way. This was what the faerie in the Unseelie dungeons had warned her about.

“His magic is an entity unto itself. It needs to consume. Life—breath, blood, bone—makes it stronger. That’s if it doesn’t tear you apart first.”

And it was—tearing her apart. And by the desperate, frantic screams around her, she could tell it was tearing everyone else around them apart, too.

Seelie, Solitary, Unseelie. His shadows didn’t discriminate as they swept across the battlefield.

Soon, they’d engulfed Aisling entirely. His shadows wrapped around her, burrowed into her skin and wove themselves into her veins.

Strangled her from the inside out until there was nothing but oppressive, choking blackness.

From deep inside that blackness, the voice chuckled smoothly.

The Low One was there with her, watching it all unfold.

“Where is he?” Aisling asked out loud. The sound of her own voice seemed to have an effect on the vision. It rippled, warping and pulsing around the edges. Gradually, the darkness began to dissipate.

He is all of this, all around you, the Low One whispered in her mind. His basest desires, his nightmares, his fears. All of this is his creation. Beautiful, isn’t it?

“Where is he?” Aisling demanded again, yelling this time. The last remaining fragments of the vision evaporated, leaving her standing back amongst the ancient pines in Elowas. But the Low One offered no response; He had disappeared along with it.