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A isling stood before him, shoulders trembling, eyes wide with fear.

Fear of him. Of what he knew he would do to her.

It didn’t matter if he looked away—she’d be there too.

She was all around him, she was everything.

And he’d kill her again, just the same as he had over and over.

In The Cut, on the battlefield, before the moon gate.

In his study, too, and in the night garden.

Several times in the dungeon, but only a handful of times in his chamber.

Her deaths repeated; a constant, infinite loop, punctuated only by brief moments of respite during which he was killing someone other than Aisling. Raif, sometimes. Then an entire company of his own warriors. Laure. Werryn. Then, Aisling again.

And all the while, deep in the darkest corner of his mind, another’s voice repeated: This is what you wanted. This is what you wanted. This is what you wanted.

It was difficult for Kael to deny that truth when, in some of those bloody visions, he felt his face twisting into a sick grin.

When he caught himself enjoying his power.

It was what he’d always wanted: his magic unfettered, unrestrained.

The death of the Red Woman, whose prophecy had haunted him since he learned what it meant for the supremacy of his court.

The Low One showed that to him, too, in a wavering vision from his youth when he’d knelt alone in The Cut and the god had told him of the one thing in all of Wyldraíocht that might threaten Kael’s rule.

In a rage, Kael had ordered the prophecy torn from books and forbidden from discussion.

If the Red Woman came to rise during his time as king, he would do anything, give anything, to keep her from fulfilling her prophecy.

The Low One did not hesitate now to remind him of that commitment, and of how he had failed to uphold it.

Kael was adrift in the visions, disconnected as he moved from one to the next without warning and without end.

He saw himself as a child, playing with his shadows like friends.

The Low One’s voice was affectionate then, gentle with Kael as he learned the limits of his magic.

Encouraging, as he learned next how to push those limits by introducing tethers to his rituals.

He saw the moments of self-doubt overcome by His word, either whispered in Kael’s mind or recorded in tomes by Unseelie Kings who had known Him long before.

And in between waves of worship and death, sacrifice and redemption, the Low One allowed Kael glimpses into a different story altogether: His own. They were visions of another time, another place. Things the Low One wished for Kael to see, accompanied always by His velvet whispers.

He was weak, once. Kael remembered as much from the lectures Werryn used to deliver at length when he was small.

The Low One had been just as fragile when the first Unseelie Fae came upon Him as the beginnings of the court itself.

He grew in strength as they grew in devotion.

He led them into the first age, and through all those that followed.

The next vision was blinding, engulfing Kael in a light brighter than any he’d seen.

Three glowing, ethereal figures bore down on the Low One as His shadows battled great white flames.

They were in The Cut, or a version of it—the trees that towered above the space as Kael knew it were younger here, the runes etched into the earth less refined.

Outnumbered and outmatched, the Low One fell to His knees before them.

As viscerally as if he were experiencing it himself, Kael felt the Low One’s pain as the beings carved out His eyes with a shimmering blade.

They stole from me, His voice whispered as Kael pressed the heels of his palms over his own eyes. They trapped me here.

The Low One was crouched in a warped cathedral of trees, tracing runes on the floor with one finger, shadows pooling around him.

Kael saw, too, that vision’s mirror: a different king kneeling in The Cut, opening himself to receive the Low One’s shadows and to hear his edicts.

The first Unseelie King that would serve as the deity’s vessel.

Kael was in a dimly lit room then, looking down at the lifeless body of a woman on a blood-soaked bed. His mother. A male wept at her side as two robed Prelates murmured over a swaddled, screaming babe.

I chose you to bear my magic. You, out of all others.

“Why?” Kael couldn’t tell if he’d spoken the question out loud or in his mind as he watched the Prelates carry the bundle away.

It was his beginning. Their beginning. He wondered whether his mother had known all along what she carried, or if the violence of his birth had been the first sign of what he would eventually become.

I could sense your strength, even then. I have known many Kings, Kael, but none that I have loved as I love you.

It was a vicious sort of love, just as the Low One was a vicious sort of god.

He needed to be: the Unseelie Court would not have followed any lesser deity, with any gentler virtues.

Kael had always felt that love. Each time the Low One had reminded him of it in his darkest moments, he always found himself willing to endure a little more, to work a little harder.

He so desperately wanted to feel worthy of it.

Aisling once again: this time, smiling at him through her pixie glamour as she led him away from the Nocturne revelry. A lie , the Low One hissed. Another reminder of Kael’s mistake.

The first time he’d killed Aisling, and the second, and maybe even the third, some small part of whatever he was now, floating as he was, had fought against it.

He’d searched for truth in the visions, for a kernel of what was real.

They always started as he remembered before twisting into something far darker, and no matter how hard he fought he couldn’t stop it.

At times, he questioned how much he truly wanted to.