Chapter XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
The fae procession rode when the moon sailed currents of midnight blue and slept when the sun blanketed them with rays of gold. But now, Lir challenged their harts, exhausting each stag until they collapsed against the clearings, mounds, valleys, and cliffsides where they rested. Aisling could feel Saoirse’s stress, the longing for water throughout the night, and the relief of sleep when the sun shattered the shadows and ascended come dawn.
“How much farther?” Aisling asked her handmaid, both kneeling beside Saoirse resting on her side at the center of a frosted valley. The rest of the Aos Sí spoke amongst themselves, built a fire, and argued over the coming weather. Lir, however, had disappeared into the surrounding forest.
“I’m not certain. I’ve never been to the Isle of Mirrors before,” Gilrel said, lovingly stroking Saoirse’s belly.
The Isle of Mirrors, where Danu had foreseen the outcome of centuries of blood rivalry between man and fair folk. Answers Lir needed. Wanted with a manic sort of thirst that frightened the mortal queen more than she’d admit.
“Have any Aos Sí gone there before?”
“None that I know of. It’s nearly a place of both myth and legend. ”
“I didn’t think the Aos Sí had those. To the mortals, the Aos Sí are myth and legend.”
Gilrel laughed. “Aye, we have many. Stories that aren’t recorded in the Lore but passed down generations with seemingly no beginning nor end.”
“Tales of gods and monsters and mystical lands,” Aisling said, hushing Saoirse’s restless snorts as the beast struggled to rid her muscles of the adrenaline purling within. “My father says there are no gods. That the Lore is forbidden to mortals because it is a deception of the true history.”
“And what is the true history according to the fire hand?” Gilrel asked, meeting the mortal queen’s eyes.
“Man was born of nothing, but nevertheless born first. Burned his way into the Earth and thus, became its master. Taking the Earth’s stone to build his castles, the Earth’s wood to burn his fires, the Earth’s water to propel his mills.”
“And yet, the mortals cower at the coming storm. Fear the beasts of the wood. Shut out the winter lest they die of sickness and frailty.” Gilrel huffed, averting her eyes to watch Rian and Cathan playfully wrestling on the ground. Snow dusted their leathers as they rolled around the meadow.
“And what of this Danu? The empress of the dryads Lir pursues?” Aisling asked.
Gilrel’s brow furrowed, turning towards the surrounding forests eavesdropping on their conversation.
“What of her?”
“Who is she? Lir seems to believe she holds the answers to his questions, the outcome of the feuds between our kinds.”
“If anyone does, it would be her. She’s one of the few to bear the sight .”
“So, she can foresee the future like Ina?” Aisling remembered Cathan’s story that night by the fire: a tale of one of the original fair folk sovereigns, one who fell in love and was cursed for it along with her kingdom of the mountains. Iod.
“Aye, like Ina,” Gilrel said, seemingly surprised Aisling knew that bit of their history at all. “An axis between the then, the now, and the will-be. One of the most powerful, chaotic Unseelie on this continent and beyond.”
“And the gods forged such a creature?” Aisling asked.
“The gods have created many monsters,” Gilrel said, eyeing the mortal queen knowingly.
“If what the others are saying is true, you cannot deny the gods or the gifts they’ve given you.”
“What are the others saying?” Aisling shifted her attention to the fae knights wrestling or jeering on the side.
“Filverel tells them your blood is steeped in the draiocht . Many believed him mad at first. But he wasn’t the only one to witness that fomori light up in flames.”
“He believes me to be a weapon.”
“Aye. Fire is powerful, Ash. No Seelie nor Unseelie can wield it. A mere spark can extinguish our kind. It steals what we create, what the Forge has cast in our bones, flesh, and veins. Devours what we breathe.”
“I cannot use it. I don’t know how…”
“But you will,” Gilrel said, her voice becoming hoarse. “And when you do…” Gilrel trailed off, her eyes growing distant.
“I would never hurt you,” Aisling said, the words as much a surprise to herself as they were to the chambermaid. Aisling couldn’t…The thought trailed off.
Before her marriage to Lir, there were many things Aisling didn’t believe herself capable of that now haunted her consciousness. With every passing day, she felt something waking within her. Something the mortal queen had kept catatonic.
“Forge be willing, you keep your word,” Gilrel said, averting her gaze. The marten feared her. And while the mortal queen would’ve thought such fear to be isolating, she found pleasure instead .
Before Aisling could respond, she followed Gilrel’s line of sight. Lir emerged from the forest, through the prickly curtains of pine, catching Aisling’s eyes across the meadow.
Aisling’s heart quickened, standing to her feet as he approached her. The northern wind tossed his dark hair, wrapping around his lean legs with every lithe step forward.
“I want to show you something,” Lir said, extending his gloved hand once he was a mere pace away. The mortal queen stared at his long, elegant fingers.
“What is it?” she asked, internally cursing herself for stepping closer to him.
“A surprise.”
Aisling hesitated, tilting her head to look past the fae lord and into the woods.
“ Her death will be requested by the Sidhe. Demanded. Better it be at the hand of her caera than another’s .”
Sakaala’s words had accompanied Aisling’s every waking thought since. There wasn’t a moment the mortal queen didn’t anticipate would be her last. For there was little if anything that Lir wouldn’t do for his people. Willing to make sacrifices as great as Aisling would herself. And Aisling knew the potent weight of duty all too well.
How long could Lir protect Aisling, she a symbol of this unity between the mortals, from the Sidhe and Unseelie alike? How long could he temper their rage, their hunger, before it came at the cost of both Aisling’s head and the treaty itself? Lest his alliance with the Unseelie and his dominion over his own kingdom implode.
“You aren’t afraid of surprises, are you?” Lir taunted, the ghost of a smile brightening his fae features.
Aisling straightened. The mortal queen wasn’t afraid. But she was cautious. Afraid to let herself believe, to trust in Lir and the promise he made her. The vows he claimed bound him to protect her. For up until recently, Aisling believed the Aos Sí to be liars. Manipulators. Now? She wasn’t certain what she thought. The fair folk were strange, different than anything she’d anticipated or been taught. And somehow, she found herself wanting to trust the fae king. When had that changed?
Wordlessly, Aisling placed her hand in Lir’s.
The fae lord grinned, dimples framing his broad beam.
“Follow me.”
“Are we close?” Aisling’s boots crunched the quilts of snow, stumbling to keep Lir’s pace.
“Almost.”
“And what of everyone else?” Aisling asked.
Lir glanced at her over his shoulder, the corner of his lips curling in the slightest. “They’ll continue setting up camp.”
Aisling steeled herself against both her nerves and the cold. Perhaps he was leading her to her own execution. Where the alder roots could taste her blood once the puddles had seeped into the frozen earth.
“Where are we going?”
Lir’s lips spread into a smile that stole the mortal queen’s breath.
“Here,” he said, guiding Aisling towards a row of trees. A wall of needles and chocolate bark. So, Lir peeled back the curtains of frosted pine and nudged Aisling forward till they emerged on the other side.
Nestled between the slick bellies of two neighboring mountains, were hot springs, countless individual cerulean pools spilling over until all gargled the same steaming waters. Snow clung to the steep walls of rock, ice beaded the forest’s limbs, branches that hung loomed over the springs in chandeliers of needles and icicles and snow.
Breathless, Aisling’s eyes grew wide with wonder. This was a palace. A fortress sculpted by the wild, every morsel of verglas carved by nature’s immaculate hands.
“Can you swim?” Lir brushed past her, boots stirring up clouds of snow
“Yes,” Aisling replied, considering the milky waters by the brim of the springs. Waters that rippled with the drops of melting ice, showering from the alders above. “There’s a lake beside Castle Neimedh. Where my brothers and I were taught to swim.” And Dagfin, but Aisling refused herself the permission to speak his name aloud.
“Good,” Lir said, shucking off his boots. “You reek.”
Aisling scowled, eyes darting between the waters and the fae warrior on her left. Her pulse pounding through the rivers in her ears, unsure whether she should be angry or terrified at the prospect of Lir intimating they enter these springs together. Regardless, the thought of bathing herself was too tempting to withhold from her consideration entirely.
“Are there…Is it safe?” Aisling asked, inching nearer.
“There are no Unseelie in these waters if that’s what concerns you,” Lir said, already pulling off his bandolier, his axes, and his outer jacket. And before the mortal queen could avert her eyes, she glimpsed the cut image that’d graced her at both the Snaidhm and in her dream, all save the wings she was more than curious to witness for herself.
Aisling stilled, her expression reddening till she lit like an ember amidst the landscape of white and hunter green. And in response, Lir bore his fangs wickedly, the corners of his lips twitching up.
“Relax, princess,” Lir said, unbuckling his belt. “I anticipated your mortal prudishness.”
“Modesty,” Aisling choked.
Lir gestured towards her leathers. “Enter with your clothes on, if you wish. The camp is near enough.”
“And yourself?” Aisling asked, deigning to meet his eyes. For now, all he wore were his trousers, lowly, indecently hanging from his narrow hips. Enough to summon her stomach up her throat.
“I’ll keep my trousers on,” Lir said, climbing down the rocks and into the pool. The waters seeped into the fabric of his pants and the steam danced around his perfectly muscled abdomen, near veiling him from Aisling’s vantage point. A small mercy.
“Unless you prefer otherwise.” The fae king flashed another wolfish grin, gleaming despite the mist. Aisling glowered in return, clenching her fists at her sides. Unfortunately, Lir was right. Aisling did reek, smelled of the fomorians and blood and dirt and stag and sweat. Even her long, dark hair was knotted and matted in its braid, loosely falling around her face.
The mortal queen swallowed, shaking her head. She couldn’t enter fully clothed. Not only would they weigh her down, but it was an admission that she bore any nerves, embarrassment, hesitancy around a creature she deigned to reveal any weaknesses to.
So, Aisling stubbornly slipped off her outer jacket and draped it over a nearby boulder. She removed her belt, her leather corset, then her boots, unraveling her hair from its plait. Lir watched as she undressed until only her trousers and blouse remained, eyes darkening. His regard warmed every inch of her flesh.
And there was a moment, a passing temptation, to remove everything. All her clothing till she stood bare before him. To see if she could wield the same sultry power as the merrow. An unprecedented urge that went against the world she’d been raised in. An impulse that became difficult to stifle.
The mortal queen lowered herself down the slick edge. After a few missteps, Aisling submerged herself in the pool. She gasped at the heat of the waters, near scalding against her frozen, dirty skin. But after a moment, the sensation was pure bliss, waters soaking and untangling her nest of hair.
She scrubbed her skin, clawing beneath her sleeves and the legs of her pants to reach every inch of herself. Nevertheless, it would take days, weeks, months before the stench of their travels fully left her. Was this how Lir always smelled of the woods? Of the hours after a storm, of wet leaves, of pine needles?
Aisling could grow accustomed to a life like this. Riding endlessly, venturing the wilderness, bathing in springs and rivers. It was a dream, a life she’d longed for. A wild fantasy her body craved, needed more than breath itself. Yet such a life, Aisling hadn’t realized, belonged to her enemy.
At the thought, the mortal queen met Lir’s eyes. His lashes beaded with moisture.
“Are you ready?” Lir said, his voice more rough than usual.
“For what?” Aisling eyed Lir as he washed the blood from his hands, his neck, his face, and the length of his arms. Aisling looked away, forcing herself to concentrate. Perhaps he really would kill her out here.
“Whatever it is you did to that Fomori, I want you to repeat it.” Fomorian blood and dirt clouded in the waters around him.
Aisling flinched at the memory of Gnoll igniting like a torch.
“The water will keep you from burning any trees should you make a mistake,” he said.
So that’s why he’d brought her here. For a moment, Aisling believed it to be a kindness, a moment for the mortal queen to bathe away the past several weeks, or however long it’d been. Instead, this was a plot, the Aos Sí’s premeditated attempt to control whatever abilities they believed Aisling could perform.
Lir stepped towards her, encouraging the wild thrashing of her heart.
“You’re going to show me how you summoned that fire,” he continued, his voice low.
Aisling straightened lest she expose the flock taking flight within her stomach.
“I don’t know how.”
But Lir already knew this. Had already witnessed her failed attempts to light a fire by the lake.
Lir moved closer still, a wolf padding towards its prey.
“I’ll teach you,” he said.
“Hold out your hands,” the fae king ordered. Reluctantly, Aisling obeyed, cupping her palms above the surface of the water. Lir craned his neck to the forest, as though waiting for someone or something to emerge. And emerge it did.
A familiar snake slithered through the branches of glass littering the forest floor, hissing excitedly as it dragged its sinuous form down the rocks and into the waters. Nervously, Aisling eyed it but the fae king was unbothered. So, Aisling allowed the creature to approach her.
The snake coiled between her hands, tickling her fingertips with its forked tongue.
“You spoke to it?” Aisling asked, resisting the urge to smile.
“Aye,” he said, studying her, “and so can you, can’t you?”
Aisling met his eyes. Emerald pools brimming with the life-breath of the forest, the rage of the wolf, and the serenity of the stag. Filled with winds and shadows and hollows, tempered by the sunlit canopies, budding flowers, and sweet frosted earth. Aisling tore her eyes from the fae king, cursing the ache in her chest.
“I can, at times, sense something, a feeling that is not my own,” Aisling confessed, “a sensation separate from myself: the pangs of hunger from a fox hunting nearby, the anxiety of the doe caught mid-stride, but I cannot speak to them as I would with my voice. ”
“That’s how it begins,” Lir said, stroking the snake with his knuckle. And with every supple glide of his fingers against its scales, Aisling could nearly feel the warmth of his skin on her own.
“Once the ability matures, they’ll communicate with you and you them. Unknowingly. Effortlessly,” he said. “In time, you’ll be capable of many things.”
“How do you know?”
“When I was a child, my abilities were the same. I could only feel their most base urges as they brushed past. But as the draiocht matured, I learned to communicate with the wilderness. To summon the earth. To call upon the wind.”
Is that what Yddra had told him? What the trees whispered and sang to the fae king throughout the day and night alike?
“You remind me of this serpent,” he continued, allowing the snake to knot their hands together. “Scales as black as the crow, bedizened with rare shades of violet.” His eyes grazed her undone hair. Sable tresses that rivered down her back, glossy with spring water. “The most venomous creature in all the Isles of Rinn Dúin despite its size.” As if boasting, the serpent widened its maw and flashed two ivory, needle-like fangs.
Aisling held her breath, turning to the fae king. And once their eyes met, she wondered when he’d come so close, his breath brushing her lips.
Aisling didn’t know how long they looked at one another before the snake hissed, severing their line of sight.
“The snake agrees,” he said, toying with its bobbing head. “In time you’ll learn to use the draiocht like the Aos Sí and the forest.” The woods stirred then, swaying their great bodies to the melody of their king’s voice. So, the snake untangled itself from their hands and swam through the waters, crawled up the rocks and into the woods, lost to the glare of the rising sun.
Aisling faced Lir.
“Filverel calls me a weapon. Aren’t you afraid of what you claim I’m capable of?” Aisling asked.
Lir considered for a moment.
“My curiosity far outweighs my fear,” he confessed. “Besides, it’s unnatural to deny oneself power. There are few happy endings when it comes to those who refuse to wield their magic.”
“What do you mean?”
“For the Sidhe, not using the draiocht is suffocating. An essential need to survive and grow.”
“And for me?”
Lir considered her. “I don’t know what it’ll be like for you. But I do know the draiocht is a greedy creature. One that must be fed.”
“You speak of it as though it’s sentient.”
“That’s because it is a spirit with great agency. One the gods forged into the lungs of the Sidhe, the Unseelie, the forest, and the wilds, the draiocht lives within us all. Through us. With us. You, however…I don’t know how it found you.”
Aisling released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. If it were true—if Aisling did possess the ability to wield the draiocht —she couldn’t waste it. Couldn’t let such power slip through her fingers.
“Teach me,” she said, her voice more settled than she felt herself. “If it was indeed I who wielded those flames, teach me to do it again.”
Lir licked his lips, resisting the urge to smile ear to ear.
“Very well. Follow me.”
The fae king swam towards the other side of the spring. Where the waters sank deep, plummeting into the earth till only the black eye of the abyss glared back.
“We’re to swim down there?” Aisling asked, careful not to slip over the lip of stone beneath her bare feet.
“You won’t need to,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her under. Aisling inhaled as deeply as her lungs would allow, holding her breath as she sank deeper into the spring. They descended, ears popping from the pressure, until both floated at the center of an enormous cylinder of jagged, black rock. The surface rippled a few meters above while the bottom was lost in the clouded distance below.
Bubbles beaded around them, dancing through her ebony hair as the fae lord held her under.
Panic swelled within her chest. So, Lir tugged Aisling nearer to himself, releasing her hand and bringing her body against his own. If Aisling were capable, she might’ve pushed him away, but within this sub-aquatic realm she could only trust the fae lord lest she drown, held beneath the world by a strength far more potent than her own. So, she did, allowing him to hold her. His flesh to touch her own and coil her lower abdomen. The rapid pace of his heart against her breast.
Lir closed his eyes.
Pressed against him, Aisling could feel his body still. His legs stopped moving and his arms loosened around her. Aisling’s heart stuttered, fear gripping her from the inside out. They floated, tangled in one another.
At last, Aisling felt the rhythm of his chest rise and fall. The great sweep and brush of his breath against her own chest. Aisling hesitated. His breath?
Lir opened his eyes, reaching out to cup her cheek. And from his palm bloomed rare violets, weaving through Aisling’s hair and tickling her ears. Aisling’s eyes grew wide. And the flowers floated towards the surface like maidens twirling their ball gowns, their skirts ballooning around their green and slender legs.
An explosion of breathy bubbles escaped her lips. She’d witnessed the draiocht before but still, it impressed her. The ability to grow and create green life from the palms of his hand. Aisling didn’t think she’d ever grow accustomed to it. But to breathe under water—Aisling was left stunned by such an enchantment.
Lir wrapped his arms around her once more, tipping his head towards her.
Your turn , he said wordlessly.
So, Aisling closed her eyes. Her lungs burned and her vision blurred, dark shadows dancing at her sight’s edge. She was running out of breath.
Aisling concentrated, searching for that sentient push she’d felt in the fomorian crater. All she felt, however, was as she always had: mortal. No other foreign will to accompany her own.
Aisling opened her eyes to find Lir watching her, his grip tightening around her torso. Still, his chest rose and fell against her own. Perhaps the fair folk were wrong. Perhaps she knew no magic and now she’d drown, attempting to do the impossible. Mortals and magic were unsuitable.
“ The Aos Sí say their magic comes from the gods. There are no gods. Whatever abilities they wield are aberrations. Perversities of nature. As they are themselves. Do not let them convince you otherwise .”
Wordlessly, Lir encouraged her to try again. The world around Aisling spun as she closed her eyes, clawing through the caverns of her mind for that creature, that incorporeal will that pleaded to be let loose. The panic, the anger, the frustration sparked as she felt herself losing consciousness, slipping away. Aisling clawed at Lir’s arms till she believed she’d tear through his skin.
Where are you ? she called the draiocht.
No answer.
She had but a breath left.
Where are you ? she said again, grinding her teeth.
Silence. Ruthless silence. A stillness that struck fear in her, her body instinctively resorting to panic or fight till she reached the surface of the water. Until at last, Aisling felt that spark, crawling from some ancient depth. Its fingers latching onto the corner of whatever cavern it occupied .
Here , it replied.
It burst forth like a broken dam.
On the brink of exploding, her chest heaved, forcing Aisling to inhale. A sharp pain was stripping her lungs. But such pain was brief, for then she breathed underwater. Not as the fish do with their gills. Not as the mortals do with their lungs. Not by inhaling the steaming currents of the springs. But through magic.
“ What the mortals call magic we call draiocht . In your tongue, it means breath .”
And despite her newfound ability to respire alongside the fae king, her hands lit with fire, flames of plum and lilac, flowering from the palms that clung to Lir’s arms and illuminated the fae king in its heated luster.
Aisling released him, shock muddling every coherent thought. The mortal queen held her hands between herself and Lir, floating in the throat of the abyss. She wiggled her fingers, cupped her hands, capturing and releasing the flames, allowing them to dance across her fingertips like amethysts.
Both she and Lir watched, transfixed. Bewitched. Enchanted by the fire that bubbled deep below the surface of the water. A rare gem, alive and glittering between the mortal queen’s hands.