Page 46

F or some time after she awoke, Aisling lay still with her eyes closed, breathing.

Kael’s scent was all around her. For just a few blissful seconds, she imagined herself back in his bed enveloped in silken sheets and lush furs.

The daydream gave her some sense of peace until reason crept in to remind her that she was wrapped in his burial cloak on a dirt floor, and was faced with a stark reality: Elowas.

Yalde. Kael —back, hers, but not entirely.

He’d settled some after learning the truth about his god and after their argument outside of the cairn, but he was still so far away.

And so was she.

Aisling sat up slowly, careful not to jar her aching body.

Every inch of her was sore, her muscles still drawn taut.

The worst of the tension she carried in her upper back; the rigid knots there protested and strained each time she took in a breath.

She’d managed to sleep though, and her mind felt sharper for it.

Processing seemed a bit easier now; panic, a little more distant.

When she brought herself to join the others in the main chamber of the cairn, Kael was already on his way out. His cool silver eyes met hers, held them, but neither managed to speak. Instead, he only drew his lips into a tight line and gave a single nod before exiting.

Good morning. Good evening. Did you sleep? Do you want your cloak? In the wake of his quiet departure, Aisling could conjure up any number of things she might have said to him. Are you okay? Did you miss me? Do you still care for me the way you did before?

Those last few questions that flashed through her mind made her cringe uncomfortably, though she longed to hear those answers more than any others.

She realized, though, that for the first time since seeing him again, she had taken notice of his lips.

Memories drifted into her mind as ghosts the moment he’d turned and walked away from her: their taste.

What it felt like to kiss them. That trail of smoldering flames that followed their path when he dragged them over her bare skin. It made her shiver.

Only Rodney remained with her in the chamber, seated cross-legged beside the fire with his satchel in his lap. He cleared his throat as Aisling continued to stare after Kael. When she looked back at him, he withdrew a shiny silver packet and waved it slightly.

“Candy bar breakfast?” he asked, a smile brightening his foxlike features. It didn’t quite reach his eyes, though; Aisling knew by the sternness in them that he wouldn’t allow her to decline the offer.

“Sure,” she acquiesced. “Thanks.” It would satisfy him to see her eat something. She’d do it for him.

Sitting beside her friend, Aisling once more thought of Kael, of the flames he’d ignited in her.

And then she considered, or attempted to convince herself, that maybe what she had felt wasn’t love at all—maybe she’d been fooled by those lips, blinded by those flames.

It would have made her stupid for chasing him into another realm, but it would have been the safer thing to believe.

For a short while, as Rodney painstakingly portioned out the candy bar, Aisling tried to tell herself just that: it wasn’t love.

It wasn't love. She couldn’t convince herself of it, though.

The small voice that continued feebly to repeat it in her mind sounded unsure, too.

The exercise in its entirety was as futile as trying to persuade herself that Yalde was benevolent or that Elowas was a paradise or that three bites of stale chocolate would soothe the queasiness in her stomach.

It was irrational, she knew, to care for him this much, this deeply.

When she considered it, without pretext or sugarcoating, she understood how foolish she must seem.

She’d known Kael for such a short time—just months, just a fraction of her 31 years—and the better part of that was spent as his enemy.

To him, their time together must have felt even more fleeting than a single beat of a butterfly’s wing.

Except they’d shared so much in that short amount of time.

Had broken down so much, only to build something new and shared, something all their own.

So maybe it didn’t matter, really, the amount of time; rather, it was what they’d shared in that time that had earned him a place in her heart.

And maybe it was foolish, but maybe that didn’t matter, either.

Regardless, she couldn’t shake free from the hold the Unseelie King had on her.

She loved him. Of course she loved him. But if she was reticent to say as much before, she certainly wouldn’t admit to it now. Not without some degree of certainty that he felt the same.

“Don’t get lost in there,” Rodney tapped the candy bar wrapper teasingly against Aisling’s temple, then held out the rest of his portion to her.

She shook her head. “I had plenty. You finish it off.”

“Girl.” Sudryl’s sharp voice tugged Aisling roughly out of her thoughts and when she looked up, the faerie was standing in the cairn’s entrance.

She carried under one arm a roughly woven basket; her other hand rested on her hip.

Once she had Aisling’s attention, she nodded for her to follow then turned and walked outside.

“You’ve been summoned,” Rodney teased.

Outside the cairn, Sudryl waited impatiently for Aisling to join before she said, “No one stays in Antiata without giving something back. You’ll help me tend the grove.”

Aisling nodded and took the basket the faerie held up for her.

There was a short blade inside along with a small bowl filled with a thick white paste.

Sudryl knelt at the base of the nearest rowan tree, parting the tall grass to peer at its roots.

She scanned over each visible curve and knot, pausing now and then to push a finger into a divot in the wood.

“You’ve tended them for a long time,” Aisling said. Sudryl leaned in closer and pressed both hands flat against the tree’s twisted trunk. The way she touched it so gently, she might have been comforting her own child after a nightmare.

“They tell me what they need.”

Aisling gazed at the tree, imagining the dryads who had materialized from the bark of the hawthorn trees to open the Thin Place to the Seelie Court. She searched its rough grain for any hint of a face, but found none. “You can speak to them?”

“I can hear them,” Sudryl murmured in response, paying Aisling little mind as she concentrated on her task.

The pair worked in silence for a time, moving slowly from tree to tree, Sudryl listening and tending to each diligently.

It was a labor of love, and Aisling found something soothing in watching her.

More soothing, at least, than watching Kael.

He paced the short distance between two of the trees on the far side of the cairn, stalking back and forth like a caged animal.

Every once in a while he’d pause to look up, staring out into the forest as though something in its depths was calling to him.

Yalde, perhaps, attempting to draw him back.

Each time Aisling glanced in his direction, she half-expected to see his retreating form as he heeded the call.

“The Star-Eater calls to him,” Sudryl observed. She’d paused her work to watch Kael, too. “The grove is unsettled by it. I fear your king’s connection to him is wearing on our sentinels. They are tired—even more so than they have been, fighting as they must for Orist.”

Their safety came at a greater cost than Aisling had realized, and a part of her regretted that they’d entered the Enclave at all.

“I’m sorry.”

Sudryl waved her apology off. “I would have much preferred your party without the corruption he brings to it, but Antiata was formed for a purpose far greater than simply existing. As long as they are able, these gods are here to protect those who need protecting.”

Far beyond the Enclave’s perimeter, almost further than Aisling could see clearly, movement rattled the stillness of the forest. Treetops shifted and bent like a giant hand was sweeping them aside.

Immense swaths of them were left warped, one melting into the next, into the next, into the deep cobalt sky.

“He is hunting. Mark my words, girl, he will tear apart what little remains of this realm searching for what is his.”

Let him, Aisling nearly shot back. Yalde could search until the end of time; she wouldn’t allow him to make Kael his puppet again—no matter whether some part of Kael might still wish to be.

“The bowl?” Returning her attention to their task, Sudryl had vaulted with that ethereal Fae grace up into the branches overhead and was perched close to the trunk of the fourth tree they’d worked on.

Aisling stood on her toes to pass the bowl up to her waiting hands.

“I had to remove a dead branch some time ago,” the faerie explained as she scooped out a handful of the white paste. She smoothed it over a deep divot in the bark. “This helps it heal.”

“Does it rain very much here?” Aisling called to mind the instances of her gathering rainclouds overhead, the droplets cooling and calming the hot flames of panic and anger. Surely if she could call the rain, it must exist naturally, too.

“Rarely,” Sudryl said as she swung down from the branch and landed soundlessly at the tree’s base. Anticipating Aisling’s next question, she added, “Antiata gives them everything they need.”

“Water?”

“Underground. Here—” Sudryl grasped Aisling’s wrist and pulled her to kneel in the dirt. She pressed Aisling’s hand flat beside a small green sprout. “Feel it.”

An order, not a question. At first, Aisling felt only the damp soil, until she shut her eyes and concentrated on the earth beneath her palm. There was a vibration—faint, barely noticeable. But she felt it, just. She nodded.