Page 70 of The Shadowbound and the False God

He was so impossibly gentle with her, as though she were something precious, something fragile. The realization twisted painfully in her chest, because she wasn’t fragile—not anymore. She may have been, once upon a time. She’d changed so much; she felt she’d become hard and unkind and detached from her friends, her life, herself. Yet under Kael’s touch, she felt soft again, and that terrified her.

“Come with me, Aisling,” he murmured, still with his hand on her cheek. “I’d like to speak with you.”

Aisling sensed what was coming; somehow, she knew exactly the conversation Kael wanted to have. It was written on his face, the seriousness etched into the set of his brow and the hard line of his jaw.

“Later, maybe.” Her throat was tight around the words.

“We need to talk, Aisling.” He spoke low, but his tone was earnest. Still, she shook her head.

“I don't want to.” She could hear how juvenile she sounded, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She was raw and worn thin and they’d been putting this off for so long now—why not just a little longer?

Kael ignored her dissent and held out his hand. “Come with me. Please.”

Aisling studied the creases of his palm and the calluses that dotted them from centuries of war and sacrifice. Finally, she slid her own into it. He curled his fingers around hers, warm and strong, then pulled her to her feet. He didn’t release her handwhen she stood; his grip only tightening as he guided her out of the cairn.

The air outside was biting as ever, with a frost-laden wind that sliced through Aisling’s layers. She barely felt it. Her focus was on Kael, walking just ahead of her with his shoulders stiff and his head lowered. He didn’t stop until they were just at the very edge of the cairn’s glow, right on the precipice of the god realm’s impenetrable darkness.

“What will you give?” he asked, his gaze locking with hers when he turned.

The weight of his stare made her stomach twist. She hated how it pinned her in place, how it peeled back the layers of her defenses so easily. She hated how just one look from him could so effortlessly stir such a maelstrom of feelings within her—both good and bad. He could see straight through her, she knew, but still she deflected: “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does; it matters to me. I need to know if it…”

If it will be something about me,he might have said, had he not cut off the thought with a sharp exhale. That was his concern now: not for what she felt; rather, for how it might affect him. Or, them—what little ofthemthere was left.

“Not everything has to do with you, Kael.” The barb was out of her mouth before she could bite it back. He winced, and for a brief moment she regretted the sharpness of her tone. But that regret was short lived.

“You’re angry.”

His observation was nearly enough to make her laugh. Nearly.

Aisling rolled her eyes. “Of course I’m fucking angry!”

“So be angry,” he implored her. “Be whatever you need to be, just do it with me. I’m trying, Aisling. I can’t be what you need, I can’t give you what you need, unless you tell me what that is. And I want to. So, so desperately.”

She didn’t know herself—didn’t know whether she needed space, or an argument, or to pretend that everything was fine and that none of this had ever happened. It seemed to change from one minute to the next and she could hardly keep up with her own mind, her own moods. Aisling was exhausted just from being trapped in the ever-shifting labyrinth she’d let grow in her head.

When he reached for her again, she flinched away. It wasn’t a choice—it was instinct, unbidden and uncontrollable. But the way the starlight filtered through the rowan trees and broke across his face in jagged shadows drew an icy chill across the back of her neck. For one horrible second, he looked like the version of Kael that Yalde had shown her: merciless, unfeeling, wholly devoid of anything but hate.

The flicker of hurt in his eyes was immediate before he forced it away, masking it behind a careful neutrality. It still showed in his body, though. His hand froze in midair, then dropped to his side. The motion was slow, deliberate, as if he were afraid any sudden movement might startle her further.

The distance was at once both a comfort and a torment.

“You thought about killing me,” she accused, wrapping her arms tight around her waist to hide the way she shivered. “I saw it.”

He nodded once. “I did. A number of times. You are the Red Woman; you infiltrated my court. How could I have not?”

Like it was the most rational, reasonable thing in the world. His blunt candor sent another rush of cold through her, but was soothing, too, in a strange way. That he didn’t attempt to hide that fact from her now brought down her guard, just a little. “Why didn’t you?”

“Something always stopped me.”

Her chest tightened. “Something?”

“You,” Kael confessed. “Something in you. Something between us.”

“You hated me,” she said. The bite was gone, though; the accusation had no real force behind it. She knew it was true, she always had. But she had hoped she’d never be forced to bring it up, that they could leave that particular wound to fester quietly, unacknowledged.

“And yet I was still yours. Even when I hated you—and I did, Aisling, Ihatedyou—I couldn’t have kept myself from you if I tried. Though I did try.” Kael didn’t break eye contact as he said this, didn’t shy away from the roughness of the truth.

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