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“A bit of patience!” Raif shot back. Despite half-dragging the better part of Kael’s weight, the soldier still ran faster than Aisling and Rodney both.

She could scarcely move two steps without twisting around to look over her shoulder, ensuring Yalde remained an unmoving heap on the ground.

Rodney yanked on her hand and finally, Aisling turned her back on the false god for good.

Kael’s brilliant fire followed them as the group ran through the forest, dipping around deforming trees and dodging those dark, empty spaces that were expanding between.

Shrill keening resonated all around them; had Rodney not kept a tight grip on her hand, Aisling would have covered her ears.

Rodney’s own twitched and turned, at once both attempting to track the sound as they moved and flinching away from it.

Another shriek from overhead, and Aisling looked up in time to see one of those spindly, haunting gwyllion vanishing from its perch on a twisted branch.

The aneiydh were being swallowed into the collapsing realm.

She hoped they’d find peace once they were no longer trapped here.

Having spent an entire afterlife being hunted down for sport and sustenance, the beings whose souls had been taken to Elowas might finally be free.

“This isn’t the way to the Enclave!” Rodney shouted. Gripping a low section of Fenian’s mane, Sudryl turned on his broad hindquarters to glare at them.

“I would not bring you back there; you have all been disruptive enough.” There was no real malice beneath the barb, though.

A furtive smirk tugged at the alseid’s lips before she fully righted herself, and Aisling noticed the way she couldn’t keep herself from glancing down awe-struck at the flames keeping pace with Fenian’s galloping hooves.

They were fading, ebbing and shrinking slowly, slowly as Kael regained his composure and footing.

By the time he was able to move without Raif’s support, however unsteady, the fire had died out entirely.

Aisling missed its light when it was gone, and missed the way it felt in her chest and in her veins as her affinity had been so eagerly answered.

Still, she continued to pour her calm and her strength into Kael, willing him to take it.

They were forced to slow once they reached the black sand plain.

It swallowed their steps, dragging at their boots and stealing their momentum.

Wind howled across the barren stretch and lifted swirls of the dark sand into the air.

It moved strangely, not always in keeping with the air’s current, but with a purpose of its own: slithering, stalking, watching.

Aisling kept her eyes fixed ahead on the distant threshold where the ebony horizon disappeared into the sky.

Every breath tasted of ash and reeked of stale, spent magic, thick and cloying against the back of her throat.

Beside her, Kael pushed forward in silence, his shoulders tight and steps uneven.

Somewhere behind them, the ground let out a low groaning sound. A new fissure broke open and the sand began to spill into it. Its flow tore at their feet like a receding tide, and it felt to Aisling like they were trapped inside a draining hourglass.

“There!” Sudryl called. “Just ahead!”

Fenian veered to the left and moved with renewed speed in the direction of some unseen thing that Sudryl drove him toward. Aisling squinted, but she was hardly able to discern the sand from the night. Whatever Sudryl was pointing to was well outside the spectrum of Aisling’s vision.

Fenian stopped first, and the rest of them followed suit.

Rodney skidded in the sand, nearly pulling Aisling down with him.

Sudryl dismounted gracefully and stepped forward.

Her hands were raised, fingers spread wide as she held them in front of her.

The howling wind picked up once more, thrashing against them and stinging their skin with flecks of sand.

Aisling tugged her sweater up to cover her nose and mouth.

Sudryl was unmoved by the gale, her stance solid and her focus unbreakable. Before her, the air shifted and whirled and began to glow. It was that same liquid silver light that shone beneath the stone arch of the moon gate, the same magic that had allowed them to enter Elowas.

Sudryl was opening the door.

“Come with us,” Raif said to Fenian.

The centaur shook his head, allowing himself a brief, sad smile. “I no longer exist where you’re going, my friend.”

Raif raised his fist to his heart and bowed to Fenian at the waist. Aisling turned to Sudryl then as the faerie lowered her hands and stepped back from the door. The alseid had the power to escape Elowas all along, and yet had stayed to doggedly tend her bygone gods.

“Sudryl?” Aisling realized she had never learned whether the faerie was aneiydh or whole, but she asked the question all the same.

In answer, Sudryl took Fenian’s hand and let him lift her again onto his back.

“I belong with the grove; I will not leave them to wither and die alone. Orist needs me.”

Aisling wanted to protest, but her throat was too thick with tears. Instead, she mimicked Raif’s gesture, bowing to the pair. Rodney followed suit, then Kael. Sudryl shooed them on, but her gaze was affectionate as she raised her hand to her heart, as well.

And with the god realm crumbling at their backs, the four returned to the Wild.