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I n Elowas, even the tiniest seed will grow into a mighty oak. The smallest spark will ignite a blazing wildfire.

At first, the light was blinding. Aisling shut her eyes instinctively against it, doing her best not to cower against Yalde.

She could feel the emptiness of the void at her back, could tell by the way his hands pulled at her that he wished to take her into it.

The blade the dark god held to her throat now was just a blade; broken bits of steel without any sort of fortifying magic at all.

Rodney’s efforts, strong as they were, had been in vain. Yalde was stronger.

Kael would have agreed to Yalde’s bargain.

Though he’d hesitated, she saw it in his eyes.

Despite his promise, he’d have once more given his life for her, for all of them.

So when Aisling moved, she didn’t have to think.

There was no hesitation. The moment she felt the weight of the dagger in her hand, she knew there was nothing left in it—not Raif, nor Rodney, nor Kael.

Aisling couldn’t feel any of herself in it, either.

But in spite of that she hadn’t faltered.

This time—for the first time—she grasped the blade with confidence.

Her mind had finally caught up; for once, it wasn’t urging caution.

For once, the voice there sounded brave.

She was no longer the frightened girl that had entered Elowas, nor was she as na?ve as the one who had donned a pixie glamour to seduce the Unseelie King.

She was the Red Woman, and she was powerful in her own right.

If nothing else, the Red Woman would die protecting her White Bear.

It was a sacrifice Aisling was prepared to make with pride.

But Yalde had countered her attack with ease, and Aisling couldn’t determine whether the fury that hardened Kael’s expression was meant for the god or for her. Likely, it was both.

The sudden brightness washed all color from the crossroads and the forest around them, bursting upwards and extending rapidly out in every direction.

And at the center of it all: Kael. He had dropped to his knees, absolutely consumed by the inferno.

Aisling couldn’t see him clearly for the brutal brilliance of the magic save for the outline of his trembling shoulders and his lowered head.

A bone in her wrist cracked when Yalde’s third hand shot out to catch her, the sound almost more sickening than the pain that followed. She was so thoroughly transfixed by what was unfolding before her that she felt it only for a moment.

She knew this magic. Sudryl’s stories had taught her its name, but even had Aisling not known what to call it, something in her recognized it. Something intrinsic, deep in her bones and her mind and her heart. It called, and her affinity answered.

Seren.

Aisling had felt it inside Kael as she’d drawn out his shadows, but it hadn’t been strong enough to know for sure.

Then, still buried, it had seemed only an internal resistance—perhaps a manifestation of Kael’s own fortitude driving out Yalde’s savage magic.

The smallest kernel of something brighter.

Now, though—now, the kernel of light had grown into a wild, explosive force within him.

It had for so long been caged in by shadow, dampened by the darkness he carried.

Now, unabated and undeterred, it flowed forth almost just as violently in flames of pure, blazing white.

There was no heat to them as they cascaded from him in great surges, yet still they seared as the boundless energy flared and the realm ignited.

Yalde hissed. For the first time, his confidence wavered. His grip faltered, then tightened again. The cold steel bit deeper into her throat.

Aisling kept still in his grasp and watched those flames leap towards them.

She could feel every bit of Kael in the energy they emanated; every chaotic, riotous thing he carried inside him.

Seren wasn’t just magic, it was Kael: raw and real and truer than the shadows that had ruled him for so long.

In losing control, he was seizing it back.

His power responded to Yalde’s darkness not only with defiance, but with utter devastation.

Aisling braced for pain as the blaze engulfed her, but none came.

Though the light had swallowed her whole, it was tame and delicate against her skin.

It was not so for Yalde. He fell away from her, his shrieks piercing and otherworldly.

In a final, desperate bid for dominance, he sent his shadows in droves to push back against the flames.

They swirled together, the light fighting the dark, both sides gaining and losing ground in equal measure.

It was breathtaking to behold in the most nightmarish way, and it wasn’t until the obsidian ribbons began to wither under the touch of those heatless flames that Aisling was able to tear her eyes from the battle and find Kael once more.

She crawled towards him. The jagged stones that dug into her palms were nothing compared to the sharp sting of Yalde’s last remaining shadows as they lashed out, still attempting to reach their former vessel.

Aisling kept her body between them, shielding Kael.

They carved thin lines into her exposed skin and seemed to lick up the blood that spilled from each new wound.

It hardly mattered; she was singularly focused. She had to get to him.

“Kael.” Aisling reached out both hands and took his face in them gently.

His pale eyes—unfocused and wild and burning with something she’d never seen there before—locked onto hers.

She swept her thumbs over his cheekbones, doing her very best to keep herself steady for him, to anchor him in the crossroads with her and ease him back from the precipice his rage had driven him to.

Yalde’s howling cries faded, almost indistinguishable now beneath the rush of magic around them.

It was loud, a constant whooshing gale more akin to a hurricane than flames.

Yalde’s shadows, too, had faded—only a few filaments still fought against the light, but they were vaporous now, their once-defined edges hazy.

“Enough, Kael,” she soothed. “That’s enough.”

A harsh shudder raced through him at the sound of her voice and the softness of her touch. The panic in his eyes waned, just slightly. Just enough that Aisling felt she could shut her own. She leaned closer and pressed her forehead to his.

Calm. Calm.

It was easier to tame, the Seren magic. More responsive than his shadows had ever been—like it craved her affinity’s quieting comfort, welcoming it rather than simply submitting to it.

The flames igniting the crossroads continued to burn, but the raw power of them was tempered as Kael’s breathing slowed.

“Ash!” Rodney called out to her from somewhere to their right. He sounded relieved, if shaken, but uninjured. Aisling didn’t raise her head to look, still keeping that contact with Kael. She needed it just as much as he did.

“Aisling!” Raif this time: sharper, more commanding. An order. Aisling looked up and squinted to peer through the flames.

Elowas was coming undone.

The forest twisted in on itself, warping and wavering as reflections in a rippling pool.

In some places, the realm simply ceased to be, unraveling and dissolving bit by bit until nothing remained but gaping darkness.

Overhead, the stars slipped free of their celestial moorings and slid from the sky.

Like sprinkles melting off an ice cream cone .

She imagined a galaxy melting in her hand, rivulets of stardust dripping between her fingers.

The idle thought came to Aisling unbidden, utterly absurd in the face of the destruction. It nearly made her smile.

Where the stars struck ground, great booming peals resonated that sounded at once both perilously close and infinitely distant.

Craters erupted in their wake, and the force of their impact splintered the earth with sprawling fractures.

Fissures yawned wider and wider; jagged chasms split open the landscape.

Without Yalde propping it up, the broken realm was collapsing in on itself.

Then, beneath the cacophony, another sound. Those thunderous crashes took on a different, more rhythmic cadence, pounding closer and closer and faster and faster. She realized then that it was not the falling of stars, nor the ground giving way, but hoofbeats.

At the edge of the distorting forest, Fenian waited with tiny Sudryl astride his hindquarters. She looked fierce—and fiercely annoyed.

A half-brained plan, indeed.

Gratitude swelled in Aisling’s chest, and with a gentle squeeze of his hand she lent the overflow to Kael. That Sudryl would abandon the safety of the Enclave to come for them was a kindness she’d never expected.

Rodney and Raif were at her side, lifting both her and Kael to stand.

White flames still smoldered at their feet, curling around their ankles in flickering, harmless spirals.

They banked around a dark mass lying at the heart of the crossroads: a crumpled heap of heavy brocade, draped over a vaguely body-shaped silhouette.

No more shadows crawled from Yalde, his vile, ruthless magic having been devoured entirely by Seren’s fire.

Even as Rodney tugged on her arm, Aisling dared a long look at the god’s contorted body.

In death—or whatever it was that befell a deity in the end—he was hardly any more frightening than the fading echo of a nightmare upon waking.

“Move!” Fenian barked. His hooves stamped anxiously and he snapped a long whip back and forth. The ball at its end skittered across the ground.