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A gony.

Blinding, searing, ruthless agony the likes of which Kael had never felt before. Not in battle, not The Cut when he’d attempted the blood ritual, not every time thereafter when his scars resurfaced and brought with them that ancient pain. Because this wasn’t pain; it was something entirely its own.

Another scream worked its way up his throat and out of his mouth before he could clamp his jaw shut to stop it. It was a fearful, feral sound that at first he didn’t recognize as his own voice—he thought it might have been Yalde in his mind, or perhaps even his shadows.

The wellspring of magic he’d harbored, nurtured, splintered now into countless searing, twisting tendrils that raced through his veins. They surged through him with blistering speed, flooding his body in less than a heartbeat.

That agony—that blinding, searing, ruthless agony—was unbearable.

Kael’s spine locked and his muscles responded in kind, pulling him up onto the balls of his feet as his body arched sharply like a bow drawn too tight.

His hands snapped out to grip Rodney’s shoulders in an unconscious bid for balance.

He was scarcely aware of it, nor was he aware when his legs buckled, or that Raif had wrapped a steady arm around his waist to keep him from collapsing.

Time lost all meaning. The agony stretched on, unrelenting. It came in waves, though it never fully abated. Each time it peaked he fought to stifle his anguished cries; each time it plateaued he fought to regain some semblance of control over his body and his mind. He managed neither.

Fighting, always fighting. He’d fought all his long, long life for dominance over the very thing he was giving up.

But his magic would not go easily; now, just as it had so many times in The Cut, it fought back.

Even as Aisling and Rodney drew it out of him, his shadows burrowed deeper, digging in with claws and teeth in a desperate bid for purchase.

They wound around his bones, tied themselves into knots in his veins and snagged on every raw muscle fiber.

Aisling. Aisling. Distantly, as if he existed as agony alone outside of his corporeal body, he felt the pressure of his Red Woman’s hands against his heaving chest. He’d have given anything, anything, to open his eyes and see her there in front of him.

To see her eyes, the lines of her face, the look of determination he imagined she wore now.

And just as distantly, he could feel—barely, faintly—the warm caresses of calm she was sending into him.

Her waves responded to his, crashing against each other, overtaking one another.

He drifted on the tide of torment and solace, the ebb and flow of raw affliction and fleeting warmth spreading through his limbs, sinking into his core.

She was fighting for him now, seizing the control he couldn’t attain for himself.

So, gradually, he let her. When the next wave of agony came, he didn’t brace against it, but surrendered to it.

He opened himself to it completely, let it fill the hollow chambers of his heart and gave it permission to ravage him.

His body was drenched in sweat, his breath coming in shallow gasps, but still, he didn’t pull away.

He didn’t fight, didn’t resist. He bore it all—the agony, the loss, the sheer magnitude of what was being taken from him—with a silent, staggering resolve.

And then: nothing. Like a flame snuffed by a rush of air, that unending agony was gone.

Kael’s body sagged forward and he clung weakly to Rodney.

Raif’s hold on him remained steadfast, the only thing keeping him upright as he trembled and sucked down breath after labored breath.

Unconsciousness grasped at him with greedy fingers, dragging him down and down into its depths as he struggled to stay afloat.

Yet the only thing Kael could discern in the emptiness numbing him from the inside was Aisling.

Her touch, her breath, her voice. Her hands were stroking his face, pushing back damp strands of hair and brushing over his cheeks, his forehead, his jawline.

“It’s okay,” she whispered over and over. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

With every bit of strength he could manage, Kael rolled his head to the side where it rested on Rodney’s shoulder to look down at her. His Aisling, his Red Woman.

“I promised,” he rasped. “Together.”

She laughed despite the tears glistening her eyes. She was shaking too when she pressed her palm to his cheek and said, “Together.”

Touching. Yalde’s saccharine voice leeched into Kael’s mind, bringing with it a feeling of icy dread nearly cold enough to contend with the lingering warmth of Aisling’s affinity. By the way her hand froze against him and the muscles in Raif’s arm twitched, he could tell they heard him, too.

“Can you stand?” Rodney murmured in Kael’s ear.

He hadn’t realized the púca was holding just as much of his weight as Raif; an embarrassment he would face down at a later time.

Kael nodded and pushed himself back off of Rodney’s shoulders.

His vision flickered and dimmed, growing hazy around the periphery until he blinked it clear again.

Raif, too, released Kael hesitantly, though he kept one arm extended, ready to catch him should he falter.

His other hand twitched toward the hilt at his side.

A reflex, Kael knew, but he stilled his commander with a subtle shake of his head.

No steel would touch Yalde, save for the blade imbued with pieces of each of them.

The false god materialized slowly, coalescing out of the murky darkness of the forest and the blue-black space between the stars overhead, the night a liquid that formed itself into his phantasmal figure.

Kael’s resolve was shaken at the sight of him.

He hadn’t been able to fully recall Yalde’s visage after fleeing the sylvan cathedral; the crude drawings of him on Antiata’s walls felt only vaguely familiar.

A too-wide mockery of a smile split his narrow face and long, black-tipped fingers curled and uncurled at his sides, flaunting tapered talons.

Yet it wasn’t Yalde’s monstrous features that so stirred Kael; no, it was that dark brocade blindfold tied over his eyes.

It was the knowledge of what was missing beneath the fabric—and the feeling of being seen so clearly under Yalde’s eyeless gaze.

But even as the god’s appearance was unfamiliar, Kael would have recognized that voice anywhere. It seeped slowly from his lips like poisoned honey, languid and dripping as he taunted, “My, don’t you all look lovely next to one another? Especially my two lovebirds, together at last.”

Kael’s hand found Aisling’s. He didn’t take it, but ran his knuckles across hers.

“I did so hope we’d meet this way,” Yalde continued.

“I quite like a final stand, and I find it particularly quaint that you’d attempt to turn my own magic against me—the last vestiges of your strength, wasted in a futile effort to bait me.

A bold choice from one who has never possessed true control. ”

“Bold enough,” Rodney shot back. “It worked, didn’t it? You’re here.”

Kael might have cursed him for the unsolicited challenge had he not been so utterly enraptured by the deity before them. Disturbed, and revolted—but enraptured all the same. He couldn’t look away if he wanted to.

He didn’t want to.

“I am indeed.” Yalde’s fingers toyed idly with the collar of his robe, teasing it open enough that they could see, just barely, the glow of the cosmos that swirled in the void hidden there. “My shadows called to me, and so I have come to answer.”

“Your shadows have called you to your death.” Kael found his voice, finally, and took a step forward. He held himself tall, though his every muscle screamed in protest.

“That, I sincerely doubt,” Yalde teased. “You cannot kill a god.”

“At the very least, we have trapped one. Look around you: the crossroads will not allow you to leave.” Kael braced himself for a teasing laugh, for Yalde to step out of place and drift away to demonstrate just how wrong they’d been.

But the god remained still where he stood, rooted in place—whether for effect or because he was truly captive, Kael was unsure.

The only reaction Yalde gave was a subtle tilt of his head as though considering the group, long cobalt hair sliding over one shoulder.

His taunting smile never wavered; the unnatural shape of it made Kael’s skin crawl.

Instead of addressing the revelation, he turned his attention to Rodney. “You are the Weaver, yes? Your Red Woman once offered that you might Create for me whatever I desired. Would you still?”

Anticipating another poorly timed sarcastic response, Aisling spoke before Rodney could: “You refused that bargain.”

“Oh, but you have Created something, haven’t you?” Yalde crooned. “I can hear it singing so sweetly.”

Indeed, the blade still emanated a quiet hum that persisted even as Rodney had finished weaving in the last of Kael’s—of Yalde’s —shadows.

Kael had thought it lost beneath the ambient sounds around them, but Yalde was too keen to miss the disturbance.

And if his shadows truly called to their master, as he’d said, then he knew precisely what Rodney had Created.

He knew precisely what they had planned.

Kael’s stomach twisted at the realization, though he fought to keep it from showing on his face. They’d been foolish, so foolish, to think they could defeat an omniscient deity in his own realm, with his own magic.

“A weapon, perhaps? I would very much like to see it.” Yalde’s wicked grin faded. “Show it to me.”

Rodney’s hand rose and his sleeve fell back to reveal the dagger he’d slid beneath it. His face twisted in horror as he watched his arm move independent of his own will.