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K ael was waiting for her when Aisling returned to the fireside.

He didn’t speak—he didn’t need to. Everything was plain in his gaze, whatever he might have said written there on his face.

He looked at her like she was his salvation.

With only a brief touch of his fingertips against her wrist, he disappeared down the passage to find Rodney in the distant chamber.

His touch lingered on her skin long after he’d gone.

She could feel it still when he emerged again.

Aisling had settled down beside the warming flames to attempt to process what she’d just experienced, what she’d just given up.

It was a strange feeling, that new emptiness, though not altogether bad.

Still, it made her nervous. Despite that initial feeling of lightness and possibility, she wondered if she might accidentally fill it with the wrong thing.

The different kind of guilt she would forever harbor over the events in The Cut, perhaps, or something new entirely.

She wanted to believe she was strong enough to reserve that space for something more than the cruel words she spoke to herself in quiet moments, but she wasn’t sure anymore.

Except almost in the same breath, she’d gained something, too.

He loved her.

He loved her.

He loved her.

The declaration was simple, without embellishment or pretense. Truth in its rawest, purest form. And it was so, so beautiful.

Aisling hadn’t realized just how much she needed to hear it—not to guess at it, not to feel it, to hear it.

She wasn’t alone; she hadn’t imagined this or dreamt it or fooled herself into thinking it was more than what it seemed.

Kael Elethyr Ardhen, King of the Unseelie Court, loved her.

She could have laughed at the absurdity of it.

All was not forgiven; that would take time, and a hell of a lot more effort on both of their parts. But this—where they’d landed tangled and tearful on the ground beneath the god realm’s pitch-dark sky—was enough for now.

When Kael sat down beside her, Aisling moved closer to him instinctively, seeking out that reassuring contact and relishing every bit of it she could get.

It was yet one more thing she had missed.

Rodney followed close behind and dropped to the ground with far less grace.

He looked exhausted, with dark circles dulling the brightness of his golden eyes.

Even his tail sagged; it rested limply on his shoulder instead of flitting around behind him. Still, he seemed in good spirits.

“Well, well, well,” he teased when he noticed their closeness. “It’s about goddamn time.”

Aisling’s cheeks flushed crimson. The blush was so intense it spread to bloom color across her chest, too.

“Shut up, Rodney,” she muttered.

Raif cut Rodney a disparaging glance. The soldier had taken up almost half of the chamber, having emptied his satchel of weapons to take stock of what remained.

Three fletched arrows lay beside him with freshly sharpened tips, and he was working a whetstone over his longsword.

All of them too deep in their own thoughts to speak again, the periodic scraping was the only sound they allowed.

Their reverie was shattered by a sudden scream: a wail of grief, high and keening.

Raif slipped from the cairn first, sharpened sword aloft.

Kael followed close behind, pausing only long enough to push Aisling toward Rodney—a wordless instruction for him to keep her there.

It didn’t matter; they chased quickly after the males towards the disturbance.

Sudryl knelt in the grass, weeping loudly into her hands.

One of the rowan trees lay on its side before her.

It was the smallest one, the one she had taken special care with when she and Aisling had tended the grove.

She’d been so gentle with each leaf and ridge and twig; now, roots exposed to the cold night air, the tree looked lifeless.

The others creaked and moaned as they shifted with the breeze, exhaling sounds of mourning for their fallen companion.

“Sudryl—” Raif started.

The faerie sprang to her feet and rounded on Kael. Her tear-soaked face was full of a fiery rage so ancient and deep Aisling felt it curdling in her own stomach.

“You,” she accused, leveling a trembling finger at Kael. “You did this; this is your fault!”

Kael fell back a step, and Aisling moved to stand at his side. She put a protective hand on his arm.

“He’s been with us this whole time. He couldn’t have—” she started.

“The sentinels have poured everything they have, more than they have, into guarding you from Yalde’s Sight. They aren’t strong enough for this; it’s killing them!” Sudryl’s voice was shrill, wavering and cracking as she fought back another wave of tears.

“Can he see us now?” Raif asked quietly.

Aisling studied the perimeter. The space left by the felled tree seemed to stretch wider and wider the longer she stared.

Kael’s eyes were focused on the forest beyond, looking through the gap as though it were an open door. She tightened her grip on his arm.

“If he hasn’t yet, he will,” the alseid snapped.

“It isn’t dead; not fully.” Rodney had lowered himself to crouch beside the tree. He gestured to its roots. There were two that still tethered its trunk to the earth. They were thin, and stretched taut, but they held.

Sudryl turned from them and Aisling used the momentary distraction to urge Kael away.

“Let’s go back inside,” she whispered, pulling on his arm. He let her guide him from the scene, back into the cairn. Raif passed them carrying an armful of stones. Rodney was already working to push the tree back up to stand.

Aisling didn’t let go of Kael until they were back inside in a chamber towards the rear of the cairn, well out of earshot of the tense conversation that continued in the grove. He was stone-faced, stoic. Walls up high and thicker than ever.

“It’s still alive,” she prompted.

He hummed absently. Aisling pulled him down to sit on the dirt floor. She shifted so their shoulders and knees touched, leaning into him until he relented and relaxed slightly into her.

For a while, they sat like that: quiet. Breathing. Aisling stared at the curved stone ceiling, tracing its uneven lines with her gaze. She thought of the rowan tree outside, still barely clinging to life. Of how much strength it took, sometimes, just to hold on.

Kael’s jaw was clenched. He sat Fae-still beside her, as if by sheer force of will he could keep the grief and the guilt and the rising panic all locked inside.

He was someplace else entirely, trapped in his own mind.

Aisling knew what that was like. Knew how it felt to spiral inward under the weight of things that seemed unfixable and insurmountable.

She hated the way the quiet swallowed him whole.

She itched to break it, not with empty comfort or more of the same grief, but with something else that might loosen his hold on those things he grappled with now.

Idly she recalled long bus rides on school field trips, when her friends would start mindless games to pass the time, batting around prompts like “would you rather” or “never have I ever.” Games that felt silly at first, but had a way of cracking open the silence and letting in something real.

So she leaned in a little closer and said, “Tell me something true.”

“Is this a riddle?” Kael looked at her sideways, one brow raised. “How very Fae of you.”

Aisling gave a quiet, breathy laugh, shielding herself from thoughts of Yalde with barely-there humor. “Not a riddle; I’ve had enough of those. A game.”

“Something true,” he considered. “I don’t believe I have ever played a game before.”

“Is that your something true, or just an observation?” Aisling turned to face him more fully and let her knees fall, folding them beneath her to sit cross-legged. She rested her elbows on her thighs and gently tugged Kael’s hand into her lap.

“Methild might have tried, had I come to her when she was much younger. She was kind when I deserved it—and sometimes when I did not—but never playful.”

His childhood was so different from hers, so far from anything she could relate to.

Aisling’s was bright and hopeful and full of games, full of love and light and learning—at least, until it wasn’t.

And yet here they sat together, their vastly different paths having been somehow divinely and inextricably bound to lead them to this point.

She wouldn’t let his branch from hers again.

“It’s not too late. I’ll teach you some good ones,” she offered.

He squeezed her hand. “I would like that very much. Take your turn now.”

She thought for a while, weighing what she might choose. There were so many things she wanted to say to him, so many truths she’d held close that she might share—good and bad and in between. She settled finally on one she hadn’t even fully fleshed out for herself, but that begged to be shared now.

“You’ve been here with me this whole time, I think.

Some part of you, anyway.” The pale Luna moth had found Aisling when she’d been lost and had led her to Yalde—to Kael.

It had found her in the trials, too. It dawned on Aisling then that it had tried to give her the answer to Yalde’s riddle in the Undercastle: the mirror in Kael’s room.

It had perched there, waiting for her to understand its unspoken message.

Then again in the labyrinthine night garden as it lingered beside the reflecting pool.

It was Kael; she’d felt him in it the very first time she touched its spectral wings.

He’d been there through it all, watching over her. Guiding her back to him.

When she told him as much, his brow furrowed as he racked his brain for a glimpse into those scenes she described. After a moment, he shook his head.

“How do you know it was me, if I cannot recall myself?”