Page 21

T he burning that beset the overworked muscles of Aisling’s legs paled in comparison to the pain tearing at her insides, ripping through her lungs and clawing its way up her throat. He’d killed her, again and again without hesitation or remorse.

His basest desires. His creation. His basest desires.

She didn’t want to believe the Low One’s whispers, but she’d seen a degree of that dark, hateful gleam in Kael’s eyes before.

It had been there in both instances: when she’d been pinned to the tree beneath his arm in the night garden and when she’d stood before him at Nyctara.

He’d hated her then, hated her so much that perhaps he really had pictured killing her.

Had fantasized about how it would feel to snap her neck or to let his shadows rip her apart.

She tried to recall exactly how he’d looked at her, if he’d truly worn his rage and intent so openly as that shadowy, vaporous version of him.

But it seemed that her memories were twisted, too, and had been replaced by those sick visions.

Now, all she could see was Kael’s cruel face and his imagined versions of her own death.

Aisling’s legs gave out beneath her and she sank onto the hard-packed dirt.

She struggled to get control over her panicked breathing and her insidious, intrusive thoughts, desperately clawing at the sweater that felt unbearably tight and the chainmail tunic beneath that now seemed heavy and constricting.

Her chest heaved beneath her grasping hands and her ribs felt like they could snap under the pressure.

The rain that had been chasing her down caught up to her finally, but the cool drops falling against her skin were somehow steadying.

Aisling attempted to count them, one by one.

Gradually, as she neared one hundred, their pattering slowed, and her breathing along with it.

Soon, only one drop fell for each deep breath of pine-scented air she managed to drag in, hold, and force out through pursed lips.

In, hold, out. All of her energy was singularly focused on that pattern and its rhythm.

Once she thought her legs would support her weight again, Aisling pushed up onto her feet. Just ahead of her, a crossroads spanned across a wide gap in the trees, its branching paths running off into darkness in each direction. She hadn’t even realized she’d left the forest behind.

Her hand found its way to rest on the pommel of Kael’s dagger, where it seemed to end up constantly now that she was used to wearing it there: a natural resting place.

Avoiding the puddles that had collected around her, she moved to stand in the center of the crossroads.

The four paths were illuminated by the stars.

The sky was pitch-dark again, an inky shade of indigo speckled with those tiny pinpricks of light.

There was still no moon, though. Aisling wished in vain for the bright wash of its glow to show her the way.

She was paralyzed by indecision, her body refusing to move in one direction or another. Something unidentifiable in her gut was telling her to stay, and it held her there just long enough to hear footsteps approaching from the road she had been moments from starting down.

A male was walking towards her, emerging from the mist and darkness.

He was tall and slender, and cut a relatively unintimidating figure in comparison to the other beings she’d encountered in Elowas so far that night.

Still, Aisling drew Kael’s blade and held it raised with both hands.

Starlight glinted off the metal as it danced in her shaking grasp.

As the male drew closer, she could just begin to make out his foxlike appearance.

A barely-there layer of pale hair covered the male’s angular face beginning below high cheekbones.

Aisling peered closer—it wasn’t stubble, but fur, smooth and fine.

A shock of it sat atop his head, too, a deep shade of russet red.

Long enough to knot at the ends, with a wide strip that grew down the back of his neck and disappeared under the collar of his jacket.

His nose darkened slightly at the tip. Two russet fur-covered ears rose tall above the crown of his head and tapered into points that ended in white tufts.

Foxlike, similar to the rest of him, but ribbed inside like the ears of a bat.

They moved like a bat’s ears, too, unconsciously tracking the quiet sounds of the night around them.

He stopped several paces away, hands raised. His fingers, spread apart to show he was unarmed, were long and mottled brown with dirt. Trembling, just slightly. He was breathing hard, too, as he looked at Aisling.

“Hey, Ash.” His voice was unfamiliar, with a hint of a lilting, broguish accent. It was his eyes that she recognized, though—they were a warm shade of gold, and upturned, but she knew them. She’d know them anywhere.

“Rodney,” she breathed. She fumbled the dagger, nearly dropping it in her haste to slide it back into its sheath without looking away from the male before her.

“Yeah.” His tone was apologetic. He moved one of those grimy hands to rub at the back of his neck, as though the fur there irritated his skin.

Aisling approached him cautiously. She couldn’t help letting her gaze roam over his new form—so close to the Rodney she knew, yet entirely different. Entirely Fae. He stayed where he was, shifting his weight from foot to foot uncomfortably as she observed him.

“You—” she started, then stopped. She cleared her throat and tried again. “What happened?”

“Something stole my glamour,” he muttered.

He dropped his eyes and dug the toe of one of his boots under a stone before kicking it off to the side.

A subtle movement over his shoulder drew her attention when something long and covered with short, fine fur snaked up behind him, twitching and curling.

“Holy shit,” Aisling breathed. “You have a tail?”

Rodney grimaced as if he were noticing it for the first time, too. He reached back and swatted at its tufted tip. “One of my worst characteristics. And, coincidentally, the most difficult to keep glamoured away.”

A laugh bubbled up Aisling’s throat before she could stop it. Slightly hysterical, slightly delirious. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle it as Rodney looked at her. She didn’t know his new face well enough yet to tell whether he was exasperated or amused by her reaction.

“I’m sorry,” she giggled from behind her palm. Trying to hold back the laughter only made it that much worse; now, her eyes were beginning to water. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t find it at all amusing,” he mumbled gruffly, despite the corner of his lips quirking up into a half-smile.

He swiped again at his tail, which nearly made Aisling double over.

She wasn’t entirely sure whether it was funny or frightening, but either way it took several more seconds to get herself under control.

Finally, she straightened up, wiping her eyes.

“Are you quite through?” His voice was teasing now. He was still Rodney.

“I’m so sorry,” Aisling apologized again breathlessly. “I just never expected…”

“This?” Rodney gestured to himself. “Me neither, to be fair.”

“Is this you? The real you?” She took a moment to study his vulpine features once more.

He didn’t possess the delicate beauty of the more ethereal Fae, but he was striking in a wild, animalistic sort of way.

In a way that seemed somehow older, untamed.

Primal, even. Looking at him gave Aisling a similar feeling as gazing up at the towering old-growth pines that dotted the Washington coast.

Rodney nodded, fidgeting with the zipper on his jacket. “My original form. Whether or not it’s still the real me, though, I couldn’t say.”

“Should I call you something different?” she asked.

“I like Rodney,” he assured her. “It’s grown on me.”

Aisling stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his middle, hugging him fast to her like it had been years, rather than hours, since they’d seen each other. With the way time moved in Elowas, it very well could have been.

Rodney pulled her in closer and relaxed into the embrace. He rested his pointed chin on the crown of her head. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “Not really. You?”

“Not really,” he sighed. His low voice vibrated in his chest against her ear. “Why are you all wet?”

“There was rain,” she said. Then, after gathering the courage to speak the words out loud, she whispered, “I saw Kael.” She tightened her grip on him to ward off the chill that raked down her back when his face flashed in her mind again.

Rodney squeezed her back. “The real Kael, or a vision?”

She shrugged and swallowed hard to keep her voice from cracking. “I don’t know. I’m not sure there’s a difference.”

“I saw one, too. Not Kael—someone from my past.” He shuddered; Aisling hadn’t been the only one to suffer the horrors of Elowas. “I think this place takes memories, our worst ones, and twists them. Lyre thought they were outcomes we’d imagined before.”

Aisling pulled back a bit to glance around, then looked up at him, frowning. “Lyre’s with you?”

“I should have said, it wasn’t really Lyre. It was something playing Lyre. I’m not sure where he is.”

“And Raif?” Finally, she let go and let her arms drop back to her sides.

Rodney shook his head. “You’re the first one I’ve found. I’ve been looking for the tree line but this fucking forest…” he trailed off.

“It feels endless,” Aisling agreed.