Page 23

C old, unrelenting dread pooled in Aisling’s gut.

It spread, minute by minute, down her limbs as she walked.

It froze her fingers and toes, made her muscles tense and twitch.

Ice had long since solidified in her chest to encase her lungs, making each breath she sucked through chattering teeth an increasingly challenging endeavor.

The Luna moth flitted on ahead, floating gracefully, carrying steadily on despite the way its glow occasionally dimmed.

If she could have kept her eyes solely on those pale wings and the iridescent light that trailed from their tips, she might have been able to ignore the ever-increasing trepidation that turned her thoughts grim and her mouth dry.

As it was, she couldn’t help glancing around every few steps when the feeling of being watched became too great to ignore.

She wished she’d resisted.

Not ten paces away, a male stood Fae-still in the deepening shadows, both arms outstretched to either side.

At the elbows, they transformed into spindly, too-long branches.

His head was wrapped in pliant bark like a crude mask, bound roughly with twine to hold it in place.

Though the mask obscured his lips, Aisling thought he’d speak to her if she lingered long enough nearby.

More of them filtered into focus, camouflaged amongst the trees and brush.

They’d been nearly invisible until she’d noticed the first. Now, they were everywhere, dozens of them, all frozen in the same position.

All waiting to whisper to her, to plead with her to help them—or, maybe, to remain there as one of them.

Had she been able to take in a deep enough breath, she would have screamed.

Instead, that release stayed trapped in her throat.

She could only stare back at the grotesque forms just as silently as they stared at her.

Rodney cursed under his breath and ushered her onward, and after a moment Aisling stumbled into motion again.

They didn’t make it much farther before the forest changed.

The trees there were different—they’d grown tall, but crookedly, with ugly bark and disfigured branches.

The soil was ripe and musty and the air was charged with such a harsh sort of magic that it stung Aisling’s exposed skin like nettles.

Without a breeze to stir it away, it hung heavy all around them.

This was a space unto itself; a forest within a forest.

Then: footsteps, belonging to a being so great the earth trembled under its feet. Aisling could only imagine the size of it. The power of it.

Roughly, Rodney pulled her to crouch behind a tangle of brambles.

Both pressed their palms to their mouths to silence their ragged breathing.

But each thud of Aisling’s heartbeat echoed like a somber drum in the cavern of her chest, so loud in the silence that she was sure it was audible to more than just her own ears.

“So you’ve come.” No longer a whisper, the Low One’s velvet, sonorous voice slithered into Aisling’s mind. He must have spoken the words aloud, too, because Rodney glanced around for their source. Golden eyes wide when they met hers, he shook his head. Don’t , his expression said.

Before she could find the courage to respond, a dark chuckle rumbled like thunder. “Do not hide from me, Red Woman. Come out of the shadows; I should like to greet you.”

This time, Rodney didn’t rely on eye contact alone to relay his message. “Don’t,” he hissed.

She didn’t want to. Aisling would have given anything to turn and run.

She wouldn’t stop until she’d passed back through the moon gate, then the Veil, and made it back to the familiar warmth of her apartment.

But the moon gate was lost, and the Veil closed, and Kael—Kael was here.

So she let the thought of him steel her, and the knowledge that this was fate’s plan harden her will.

And when she stood, her legs were steady.

“I’m here,” she said. Though she didn’t falter, she wished she sounded braver.

“Indeed, you are.” Another low laugh. “Come. Leave the púca.”

Rodney’s hands shot up to grab onto hers. “Aisling, please, ” he begged.

“This is what we came here for. I have to.” She’d never seen him so afraid; he’d never once begged her for anything. The panic in his eyes didn’t help to calm the panic in her own.

“I’m waiting,” the Low One goaded.

“Go find Raif. I’ll need the both of you to help me get Kael out of here.

” With those final words coming as close to a goodbye as she could manage, Aisling straightened again and moved towards where the Luna moth had disappeared into the densest part of the forest. She kept her gaze trained on the last trailing remnants of its light, if only to give her mind something to focus on besides the waves of fear breaking against her as though she were a dock in a storm.

“Ash!” She heard Rodney’s anxious hiss, but she didn’t turn around. She couldn’t look back; if she did, she knew she’d lose what little nerve she’d been able to muster.

Overhead, those disfigured branches soon began reaching for each other, knitting together into a steepled roof.

It was nature’s own cathedral; a primitive house of worship so ancient and wild she imagined it must have been older than her own world.

Maybe even older than Wyldraíocht. Fallen logs scattered haphazardly served as pews upon which shrouded figures sat like statues.

When Aisling dared glance at one, her brow furrowed.

The shroud was suspended, empty. Molded to the form of a body, but devoid of one entirely.

Like the plaster-dipped cloth she’d draped over balloons once in elementary school—they’d popped the balloons after the plaster had hardened and turned the crude sculptures into hanging ghosts for Halloween.

The church was long and tunnel-like. She couldn’t see where the pulpit might have been; that far end was pitch-dark and filled with swirling shadows.

The footsteps—those rumbling, thunderous footsteps—sounded again from within their depths, moving in her direction.

Her hand gripped the hilt of Kael’s dagger so hard her knuckles blanched, but even through the fear she knew better than to draw it.

The blade would do little good against a god.

But it kept him—Kael, her purpose—at the forefront of her mind, and kept her own feet anchored in place as she waited for those footsteps to finally emerge.

Aisling recalled the painting of the dark god that hung in the Prelates’ cavern in the Undercastle.

Even just that artist’s rendition of the deity had terrified her.

She drew in a sharp breath and held it, held it so long her lungs burned, waiting for the figure from that painting to materialize before her.

His hands appeared from the shadows first. Long-fingered, tipped in black so she couldn’t tell where His flesh ended and the obsidian talons began. He swept his arms outwards, sleeves nearly brushing the earthen floor when He parted the shadows as curtains and stepped forth.

The Low One was tall—so tall Aisling had to crane her neck to look up at His long, slender, and jarringly angular face.

His skin was pale and translucent, spiderwebbed with veins.

It shone, not with the glow of starlight like Merak’s, but like it was coated in a layer of smooth wax.

A heavy brocade robe hung from sharp shoulders, the silk black as a void.

Black as nothing. A strip of that same fabric was tied over His eyes like a blindfold.

He was strikingly Fae, strikingly male, but uncannily so. His proportions were off, only slightly, though noticeably enough to make Aisling’s skin crawl. He wore a wolfish smile that was too wide for His face and looked like it had been carved there with a knife.

This wasn’t the figure from the painting.

The sound of her own blood, rushing and throbbing in her ears in time with her racing heart, was deafening when she asked, “You’re the Low One?”

“Yes,” He confirmed in that same voice that had earlier infiltrated her mind. Then His smile grew wider as he added, “And no.”

A third arm reached out from inside His robe to flick a lock of hair out of His face. It was long, flowing weightlessly over his shoulders to stop at His waist, and tinged the same deep blue as the night sky. He chuckled when Aisling visibly recoiled and withdrew the arm back into His robe.

“Is this not a pleasing visage? I did so try to design a form you might find…relatable. I was never meant to be looked upon—by Fae or mortals or otherwise. This is quite a new experience, but not one I especially dislike.”

“Are you Aethar?” Her words came out strangled. She knew it wasn’t—this wasn’t the light-enveloped deity worshipped within the white marble walls of Solanthis—but the Low One and Aethar were the only Fae gods she knew. And this was, without question, a god. She could feel it.

His wicked smile spread further, curving unnaturally up toward his ears. He said again, “Yes, and no.”

Aisling’s head spun. The deity was looking at her, into her, through her, despite the blindfold.

She had to lock her knees to keep them from buckling.

The walls of trees warped and wavered, transforming into towering white columns.

She had to squint against the sudden brightness, but when her eyes adjusted, she was standing in Solanthis, gazing up at Aethar’s portrait as the hazy ghost of Laure drifted by and draped a phantom pendant around her neck.

The Breath of Life. She’d left that pendant behind when she’d fled the Seelie Court.

“Ah,” the deity breathed. He was behind her now, standing so close she could feel the cold emanating from him. “Solanthis. I haven’t visited this place in a very, very long time. A bit gaudy for my taste, really. But better than the bundle of sticks those others call their altar.”