Page 64

Yalde inclined his head to the other side, appraising. “It is rather small, isn’t it? Surely, surely you did not think a weapon so slight could accomplish the impossible. Why, it’s hardly the length of my forearm.”

A third arm appeared from the opening in Yalde’s robe to illustrate his point.

Kael nearly recoiled; Raif was unable to stop himself from doing so.

Kael had never once imagined the Low One in any form but that which was illustrated on the canvas that hung in the Prelates’ chambers.

Though not particularly appealing, that artist’s rendition still possessed a sort of dark and barbaric beauty.

He had been drawn to that painting even as a child—that was the figure that visited him in his dreams, that he envisioned watching over him from the periphery of The Cut.

This deity was so grotesque, and so wholly unlike anything his imagination could have conjured.

A surge of loathing pulsed through him, quickly dampening all else.

Kael seized the blade from Rodney’s grasp and stepped forward, fighting to keep a firm grip on its hilt despite the way it vibrated violently against his palm. He raised the dagger as he moved, calculating with a warrior’s practiced precision the most lethal place to strike.

Yalde stared him down and that obscene grin spread across his face once more as he laughed.

The jarring sound echoed off the trees around them, mingling with the dagger’s discordant hum.

Its vibrations made the bones in Kael’s arm ache, while Yalde’s laughter grew louder and louder and louder still.

And then the blade cracked straight through and shattered like fragile glass.

Kael halted, releasing the hilt and letting the fragments of metal drop to the ground. A cold numbness spread through him as he watched waves of inky shadow flow from the metal, bleeding and expanding and curling their tendrils around Yalde, into Yalde, as the deity just laughed and laughed.

His robe fell open and those shadows surged, called into the glittering, swirling void beneath.

Had Kael not felt Aisling still by his side, still sending her soothing warmth rippling through him, he might have followed.

It was beautiful, Yalde’s darkness, and it called to Kael, too.

The pull was strong—so very nearly stronger than he was.

The magic he and Yalde shared had its roots so deeply burrowed into him, wrapped around his bones, his being, that Kael thought he had once been wholly made of it.

That now, having let it go, he might crack apart just as had the dagger without it bonding him together.

“Another bargain, then: this one by my terms.” Yalde’s three hands were outstretched, playing with the shadows that greeted him as an old friend. They writhed against his skin, a loving caress. They had never been so kind to Kael.

“Name them.” Kael ignored the sounds of protest from the others.

“Remain here with me, sweet king, and I will allow your companions to leave Elowas untouched. No riddles, no games. You are the only plaything I care to keep.”

It would have been an easy bargain to agree to: Raif would return to his love; the púca to his tricks.

And Aisling…to her world. Her life. His Red Woman would grow old, would find happiness.

Would forget him, with time. The thought was at once both comforting and aching; the agony of imagining Aisling so very, very far from him was more acute than even that of his magic being torn out of him.

He should agree. He would agree.

But he’d promised. Where we go now, we go together.

Together.

That single word echoed over and over in his mind, his heart.

Would it be more selfish to save her or to keep her?

At his feet, the dagger’s hum had faded to a faint whisper.

There was still a bit of blade left: short, jagged, but sharp.

Kael barely registered it, so captivated by the shadow-filled deity before them and the weight of his decision—until a sudden movement broke him out of his daze.

A blur of motion, a brush against his arm.

Kael snapped his head to the right just in time to see Aisling lunge.

His breath locked in his throat as she stooped, fingers closing around the hilt in one swift motion. No pause. No hesitation. Only action, swift and certain, as she propelled herself toward Yalde. Toward the endless void that churned beneath his robe.

Too quickly. Too recklessly.

Raif and Rodney both pushed forward. Kael followed, but he felt as though he was wading through thick, sticking mud.

The scene playing out before him seemed so surreal as his mind detached itself, protecting him from the outcome.

Aisling had nearly reached the god. She raised the broken blade.

And in that moment as Kael wrestled himself back into reality, he saw it—saw her.

The way she didn’t falter, didn’t second-guess.

The way she looked straight into the abyss and struck.

Except Yalde was faster.

A human versus a god—there was no realm in which the match would have ended in any other way than this: Yalde’s long, blackened fingers catching Aisling’s descending arm, using her momentum to spin her back to face them and holding her frozen with that broken blade pressed against her throat.

Her eyes were wide and fearful when they met Kael’s.

There was no sense of detachment now; Kael was honed in with predatory focus.

Tension rippled through his body and a faint, threatening growl rumbled in his chest, a warning sound he made no attempt to rein in.

His heart hammered like the drums of war as his gaze flickered between Aisling and Yalde.

Kael studied them for another moment until a twisted sense of calm settled over him and his thoughts finally arranged themselves into something he understood: rage.

Familiar, burning rage. It bubbled up and filled every inch of him before the words finally escaped his lips in a vicious, broken whisper: “Let her go.”

“I think not. You spent far too long considering my offer; now, my terms have changed.” Yalde tightened his hold on Aisling and she whimpered as he drew a talon down her cheek, leaving behind a thin red line. A bead of blood bloomed in the center.

He’d marked her.

Kael bared his teeth in a savage snarl that stilled both Rodney and Raif behind him. This was his fight—this would be his kill. He shifted his weight, poised and battle-ready. It was not love that moved him now, but hatred, as powerful and all-consuming and cleansing as fire.

“Understand this, King: without everything I am, you are nothing at all.” Yalde opened his mouth unnaturally wide once more to laugh, and Kael’s reaction to the sound was visceral. A force built deep in his core and rose within him, flooding his veins and scorching everything in its path.

His shoulders trembled with rage; so too did the earth quake beneath their feet.

Kael was shattering and he was powerless to stop it—and he didn’t try.

He let himself shatter, let himself break apart into an infinitesimal number of jagged pieces that split along the fracture lines that had been spreading through him for as long as he’d lived, and as long as he’d belonged to Yalde.

And from those cracks and fracture lines, that blazing force exploded.