Page 49 of Alien God

I had to know, had to know, who my mortal mate was. Where she was. When she was. If she was somewhere out there, even now, or if she had yet to be born.

Born to die by her husband’s hand and blade...

Impossible.

It made no sense. That I would kill my fated one, the one I was destined to love above all others. And even more than that, it meant that I would be killing, by proxy, myself. Once a stone sky god claimed his mortal mate and sealed the bond by giving her his knot, his life became inextricably linked with hers. He died the same moment she did.

“You’re wrong, Rúnwebbe,” I rasped when she did not answer. “I would not, could not-”

“The whispersss are never wrong.”

“Curse your whispers!” I roared. My hands shook, my breath tearing in and out of my chest. The webbing began to vibrate again, and where it had once parted way for me, it now surged inwards, rising and falling like tempest-whipped waves, shoving me backward out of the cave as Rúnwebbe shrieked.

“Out, Wylfrael!” Her voice cut through the air like slashing wings as I was forced into retreat. “Out, god of stone sky and Sionnach! Out, bride-killer, with your questions and your curses and your blade! Out, out! Out, and do not dare return. For if you do, I’ll save your doomed mate by killing you myself.”

I fought with everything I had against the web as it bore me ever backward and upward towards the surface. I refused to go – not like this. I had to get back down there. I had to make the whisper weaver explain everything, make her go back on her word, admit that she was wrong.

But the webbing did not let me go, and all around me its strands shivered with the words it had caught out of the air, hurling them back at me in a cacophony that started as a hushed breath and ended as a scream.

The whispersss... The whispersss...

The whispersss are never wrong.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Wylfrael

I returned to Sionnach, landing among howling winds that made me think Rúnwebbe’s voice had followed me here. But it really was only the wind, rising in preparation for a storm. It made my tied-back hair whip and buffeted my wings as I descended to the stirring snow.

But those winds, the coming storm, were nothing to what I felt inside myself. The confused rage that churned, Rúnwebbe’s prophecy the catalyst. I still couldn’t believe what she’d said, but more and more I began to hate and fear the fact it may be true. That I would be the cause of my own mate’s destruction. Rúnwebbe’s prophecies were very rare – usually, she only had whispers of what had already come to pass, or what was happening right now, out among the stars. I’d only heard tell of two other visions of the future besides this one, and both others had come to pass, just as she’d said they would.

I will murder my own mate.

I roared, rage coming out as sound. I funnelled my power towards the ground, sending a wave of snow high as a mountain crashing into the forest in front of my castle. It did not make me feel better, so I did it again and again, sending huge walls of snow rising and crashing. The wind picked up further, catching drifts of hurling snow out of the air and sending the white spinning in a frenzy until it seemed as if I’d been caught in the centre of some white tornado.

I was using too much power, and I knew it. I was still healing, and I’d opened two sky doors – one to Rúnwebbe’s, and one back here – already today. But I did not care. The fury inside me was too great. If I did not see it mirrored back at me by the violent landscape, I felt as if I might fall apart.

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