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She didn’t register his movement at first. Her jaw was tight, her eyes unfocused.

He approached her cautiously, as though anything more sudden might frighten her.

Then he reached out and ran his fingers lightly down her side, tracing a clean patch of skin between the runes. She was ice beneath his touch.

“You did everything right,” he said gently. She’d come for him, had brought him back from that dark place he was trapped in. She’d done everything. But despite his insistence, she shook her head.

“I left my bag,” she replied, hoarse. “Food, water. First aid. Everything. I just left it there like a—like a fucking idiot.” Her breath hitched, and she pulled the púca’s too-large sweater over her head in one rough motion, briefly hiding her face beneath the material.

Kael waited. When her head emerged, her eyes were glassy.

“Those are only things,” he said, smoothing a strand of messy hair behind her ear. “We have what matters. You. Us. We’re here.”

“We almost weren’t. I didn’t—I couldn’t control it.” She swiped a tear away harshly before Kael could do so himself.

He pushed away the image of his mimic’s sadistic grin leering at him from within the fog and the way those voices called to him so sweetly.

Pushed back against his shadows pulling and twisting in the hollow of his chest. He was torn in two now, one hand reaching for Aisling and the other for his god.

He could have both—he would have both. The Low One was angry, but He’d been angry before.

He’d always forgiven Kael for whatever misstep he’d made.

With enough time, enough piety, this would be no different.

“You were incredible, Aisling. We’re here, we are safe, because of you.”

She relented for just long enough that he caught the briefest glimpse of her: that open, honest kindness she carried so innately. But it didn’t last long before her eyes shuttered once again. She looked away and said, “He told you to sacrifice me. You would have.”

He couldn’t recall the words that were spoken to him when he was in the dark, not with any real clarity. But surely, surely, his god would not have demanded Aisling’s death. And surely Kael would not have abided if He had.

Kael frowned, letting his hands fall back to his sides. “Aisling, the Low One would not—”

“He’s not the fucking Low One!” Her exclamation brought a sort of still; a hush that fell over them more stifling than even the púca’s woven glamour.

Aisling was dressed now in Rodney’s overlarge sweater, eyes alight with rage.

They flicked from Rodney to Raif to Kael, only hovering on him for a fleeting moment before she turned to face Raif more fully.

“What?” Raif’s face remained neutral, but the word came out closer to a breath than a question.

“That god isn’t the Low One. The Low One and Aethar were lies. They were never real,” she spat.

The ground Kael stood on spun sharply then dissolved away beneath his feet. They were never real. If what she was suggesting were true, his god—his reason, his guide—was never real. That dark deity who’d imprisoned him in his own head was something else entirely.

But it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.

He’d heard the Low One’s whispers in his mind since he was old enough to venture out to The Cut on his own, had done His bidding loyally and faithfully for centuries.

Had prayed to Him on his knees time and again and had guided the Unseelie Court according to His answers.

It couldn’t be true.

“He’s called Yalde,” Aisling said, the edge of anger yielding just slightly. She still avoided looking at Kael.

“The Star-Eater,” the alseid whispered from behind them, somewhere between awe- and horror-struck.

Suddenly, the pain of Kael’s scarred flesh felt distant.

Aisling’s voice sounded muffled; Raif’s sturdy shoulder seemed far, far away.

Without another word, another thought, another breath, Kael turned his back on the party and walked away.

He followed the perimeter of rowan trees to the back side of the cairn.

It was so wide and so tall that the others disappeared entirely as he rounded it; not even the tops of their heads were visible over the crest of the stone structure, nor was the rest of their conversation audible.

He didn’t want to hear any more of it. There, alone, Kael sank down onto the damp grass.

It couldn’t be true. Aisling had been fooled somehow, or confused.

She didn’t know the Low One, didn’t understand Him as Kael did.

She’d feared Him; Kael had loved Him. The god was not always straightforward or clear in His addresses—even Kael, studied as he was, had misinterpreted His word more than once.

It only stood to reason that Aisling had done the same.

The very idea that He was a fabrication, a mere phantom of belief, was incomprehensible.

It wasn’t just Aisling’s words that he denied now; it was the unraveling of his entire world.

Kael felt strangely focused then, like the shock of Aisling’s misinformed revelation had turned off everything else and left his mind sharpened.

He was more in control: he could slow his breathing, quell the tremors in his limbs.

Though a pit of cold was expanding in his stomach, Kael pushed it back down.

He sat back on his heels and let his eyes fall closed and simply let himself be.

The air was cool and crisp, the ground a cushion beneath him.

A breeze stung his skin, but not overwhelmingly.

His shadows writhed in the dark cavity of his chest, begging to be set free.

A sign. The Low One may not have been able to see Kael there in Antiata, but his god hadn’t forsaken him yet.

It wasn’t true. Aisling was wrong.

Kael’s hands curled into fists in the grass, the smooth blades bending under the pressure.

The chill in his stomach persisted, gnawing at him, but he ignored it.

The Low One had always asked so much of him—pain, sacrifice, unwavering loyalty—and in return, Kael had been granted power and purpose.

This was merely another test, another trial of his faith.

He’d been through them before and each time had come out stronger for it.

Except this challenge felt different in a way Kael was unwilling to acknowledge. What if Aisling was right? He shoved the thought away violently, but it kept creeping back, grasping for purchase.

His breathing quickened despite his concerted efforts to keep it steady.

Once more, the world around him tilted ever so slightly as if he were standing on the edge of a precipice, looking down into an abyss he’d never known was there, realizing that it would take very little to fall in and be swallowed up and—

No. Kael forced his eyes open, focusing on the solid, tangible world around him—the grass, the stone cairn, the quiet rustle of the rowan trees. These were real. His shadows, stirring within him, were real. And the Low One—He was real too.

The magic was calmer there in the Enclave.

Mellower. Not so unruly as Kael worked to gather it and let it fall over him as his own glamour.

It wasn’t nearly as heavy or impenetrable as Rodney’s, but Athrealain would never be so strong as Saothrealain.

The glamour flowed into Kael’s scars, filling valleys and leveling peaks until, for the first time since leaving Wyldraíocht behind, his pain dulled to a level he could manage.

He could think past it now. Even still, those thoughts were singular and repetitive:

It wasn’t true. Aisling was wrong.