Chapter V
CHAPTER V
AISLING
Time devoured their passage bite by bite. It swallowed days, grinding their bones till Aisling paced her cabin restlessly, glaring out at the ever-expanding horizon, the endless sea that tasted of the patience Aisling cared little to practice. The sooner they arrived at Lofgren’s Rise, the closer she came to discovering what she was. Who she was and what would become of her. Every day, every hour, every breath before then, would be torture to her impatient soul.
“You need to eat,” Fergus would say, bringing Aisling plate after plate of dried bread, cheeses, fruits, and salted meats. But no matter its form, Aisling felt compelled by the draiocht to vomit her meal.
“Here, take this, it will help.” Annind offered his sister medicine for the sea sickness. An anecdote for the perpetual swing of the ship beneath their boots. But it scarcely alleviated her symptoms. She expelled meal after meal over the side of the ship, thinning her flesh and paling her complexion. But Aisling knew well by now her sickness had nothing to do with the rocking of the ship. Aisling hadn’t been able to keep down her meals for weeks. Some strange tinkering of the draiocht as her blood thickened like the Aos Sí. It was only now, in close quarters, that anyone had noticed.
Thunder cracked across the sky, heralding the arrival of an impending storm. An ill-timed cloudburst considering the mighty crags that rose from the sloshing sea to surround the Starling . The first appearance of anything other than salt water, rising from the depths like the black spine of a beast.
Aisling raced from her cabin and onto the main deck, eager to understand. She’d faithlessly prayed and begged to forge-forsaken gods for anything other than never-ending waves. Anything other than the stench of fish, salt, and the bitter beating the Starling endured from pearl-tipped waves.
At last, there it was: jagged rocks, shards of ships, and the ruinous remains of marble statues whittled into the image of man, fractured but glaring at their ship from behind the veil of ocean mist. Hundreds of them, and as though frozen in time, they held weapons above their heads, faces contorted with rage or fear. Some statues climbed up the rocks, bodies half submerged in the sea. Some reached for the Starling . Some decapitated, amputated, chipped, crumbling, but all watching. All still as death. A city of ruins and ghosts hid amidst the Ashild.
A chill crept up the nape of Aisling’s neck, her hands growing cold as she gripped the boat’s edge.
“What is this place?” Aisling whispered to Annind, standing by the bowsprit beside her. His eyes narrowed, ebony hair curling in the fog and falling across his forehead.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly, frightening Aisling. For it was rare for Annind to be left unknowing.
Aisling glanced over her shoulder at Starn and Dagfin at the mainmast, both staring at their map in disbelief. They both gestured to the helm, considering how to avoid what they were sailing into. The Roktan seafarers scattered across the ship and to their stations. But the rocks multiplied, hundreds appearing as the mist parted, surrounding them from every angle. The Starling trapped between the ocean’s stone teeth.
“This wasn’t supposed to be here,” Annind said, clearing his throat. “There was a text in father’s library back in Castle Neimedh. The details elude me, but I remember the mention of land materializing and vanishing without rhyme or reason. Mortal men transforming, lost to sea but found as stone.”
Aisling swallowed, pointing at the marble statues. “These were once mortal men?”
Annind nodded his head, refusing to meet her eyes.
“What could do this?” Aisling pressed.
“ Murúch .” One of the crewmates moved to stand on the other side of Aisling. His doublet torn at the fringes, his tunic stained in sweat and salt. Skin as dark and rich as autumn’s last leaves, he was perhaps only a few years Starn’s senior. A ruthless sort of beauty.
“Unseelie donning the guise of beautiful maidens where the ocean falls most silent,” he continued.
Aisling turned to find the crewmate watching her. Eyes of brilliant amber, lined in coal and reflecting the gold star nailed to his left ear. He unlatched a crossbow from his back, readying it with an iron-dipped quarrel.
Aisling was familiar with this crewmate, often watching him ready the sails before they left, studying the map at odd hours, hushed conversations with Dagfin below deck, and overseeing the crew when they went about their hourly duties.
“Aisling, this is Killian.” Annind introduced them, eyes still locked on the statues glaring back and voice brittle with anticipation.
Killian smiled, offering Aisling his free hand.
Aisling considered his calloused fingers but ignored the gesture. There was something Aisling recognized in the curve of his expression and the glint in his eyes. Something hungry. Something predatory. The chains of iron beads and teeth wrapped around his throat, the knotted tattoos across his chest, visible only by the unlacing of his blouse. The iron belt chains, the iron rings. Something Aisling found she despised.
“You should make an effort to be more friendly, faerie.” Killian’s smile widened, at last lowering his hand. “Perhaps the others wouldn’t deem you an ill omen for sailing.” He propped his crossbow at the ready, glaring through its sight.
Faerie . Danu had prophesied humankind would refer to the Sidhe this way eventually. Yet Aisling hadn’t anticipated that fate would unravel so swiftly.
“You’d be wise to follow their example and keep your distance,” Aisling replied.
“You’ll find you prefer it when I’m near, faerie. Especially with signs of potential murúch close by.”
“Shh,” Annind warned them, but they continued their conversation. The rest of the crew drew their cutlasses and daggers and readied the cannons.
“I quite like these murúch,” Aisling said. “They seem to prey upon the weaknesses of man, of which there are many.” Aisling’s eyes flicked to the surrounding statues—all of which were male.
He laughed at that. “No one knows anything about the murúch, much less lived to tell the tale of experiencing one.”
Aisling opened her mouth to bite back but was stopped short. Her stomach catapulted into her throat. Realization dawning.
Aisling spun on her heel, taking in the sight of the crew eyeing the crags, the marble statues, and the all-too-still waters with lethal poise. Trained seafarers, either fond of sailor songs or having seen enough demons themselves to never turn their back on a silent sea nor ignore the strange. Sailors, among those few mortals, who understood the differences between Sidhe and Unseelie best.
Starn and Dagfin stood at the helm, exchanging glances with Fergus and Iarbonel positioned below the mainmast. Their muscles taut, their hands shifting to their weapons, their foreheads dappled in sweat.
Dagfin, at last, fixed his eyes on Aisling’s own.
Men. All of them. All save for Aisling.
A song rose from the currents, as soft and sweet as a drowning. It grew louder, a woman’s voice humming, then crooning a dreadful curse into the salt-ridden air. The melody, one of loneliness and shipwrecks. Of lungs filled with water and a mother’s, a lover’s, a goddess’s honeyed lullaby.
Aisling recognized the sound, its allure less potent the first time she had heard it, a meager whisper compared to the choir that thickened the air with a smell Aisling now recognized.
Lust.
At the fifth note, Dagfin shifted his attention from Aisling. An enchantment taking root.
“No,” Aisling breathed.
The Roktan prince searched for the source of the music, every step nearing the boat’s edge. Weapons lowering, cannons left unmanned, shoulders slackening, as the melody rippled from one crewmate to the next. Killian’s crossbow tapped his knees, lips parting as though drained of conscious thought. Only a man’s desire left behind.
“By the Forge,” Aisling cursed.
Once the murúch had sung that first note, it was already too late.
Aisling leaped from the forecastle, starting for a bundle of rope at Fergus’s feet below the mainmast.
“Ash!” Annind sluggishly reached for her. She was too quick, already untangling the pile of rope as her fingers soaked her gloves with blood. Her burnt palms ripe with blisters from conjuring the draiocht a few days prior.
How had they been so stupid? So foolish to set sail without the proper precautions when such dangers abounded?
Aisling tied Fergus’s wrists, then Iarbonel’s, making quick work of her knots before she strapped them to the mainmast.
“What are you doing?!” Iarbonel’s face contorted, the eyes he shared with their mother narrowing in a cruelty her brother didn’t harbor when fully himself.
“Aisling?!” He struggled against her, but his movements were sloppy, weaker than normal.
“Trust me,” she whispered, but the look in both Fergus’s or Iarbonel’s expressions told her they didn’t and hadn’t since the day they’d discovered what she’d become.
Aisling bit down as she worked, ignoring the agony of her blistered hands. Sprinting to her brothers first for, if truth be told, she bore little pity for a crew she knew despised her. Her only motivation for preserving their lives, the potential for a delayed arrival to Fjallnorr. As well as whatever humanity she still clung to.
So, she bounded toward Annind, snatching his hands.
“Clever, faerie,” Killian said as Aisling left him to defend himself against the murúch, his lids growing heavy, eyes losing and gaining focus, warring with the draiocht tangling its fingers around his heart.
“How’d you figure it out?” he asked, his speech slurring, his body stiff, fighting for agency as he dipped his hand into his breast pocket.
“As I said before, the weaknesses of man are many.”
Aisling left Killian untied, refusing to waste another moment tethering a stranger instead of finding Dagfin, already moving to the edge of the Starling . The same dreamy expression he’d awarded her each time she’d woken him in the dead of night to sneak past Tilrish guards written across his face.
“Fin!” Aisling shouted, smacking into him and nearly toppling him over the side of the ship. Hardly able to catch her breath from weeks of running and lack of nutrition. Lungs burning in her chest.
“Ash?” He turned to her, a brief flash of sobriety quickly muddled into whatever charms the murúch threaded into a man’s heart.
“It’s not real, Fin,” she hissed, knotting his wrists again and again.
“What do you mean?” he asked, as though the mass choir of celestial voices wasn’t staining the fog with magic, thick enough to gulp.
“It’s Unseelie, Fin! Their voices steeped in magic, meant to either drown you or turn you to stone. You have to wake up!”
“Unseelie?” Dagfin’s brows pinched, watching Aisling closely.
And once she’d knotted his wrists again and again, Aisling left him, setting to work on Starn’s hands. Starn scowled at her, jerking his arms away from his sister, as though repulsed by her touch alone. Nevertheless, Aisling continued, blood spilling from her gloves in creeks of red and dying the sleeves of her linen dress.
A splash ruptured on the other side of the boat. Aisling swiveled. Three men leaped off the ship as though their lovers waited on the rocks dressed in their deepest, most heartfelt desires.
“Ada?” a crewmate mumbled, an older man, strong for his years, climbing over the edge of the Starling . “Ada!” He dove from the side of the ship, crashing into the foaming waters below.
“Lucia,” another man groaned, following the older mortal’s lead.
Aisling shook her head in disbelief. She hadn’t had time to tether them each to the mainmast. Couldn’t have woven them each together while her palms screamed with pain.
Even Annind, Iarbonel, and Fergus challenged her knots, pulling until Aisling feared they’d break their wrists to escape. Their eyes glazed over, focused on the crags now scraping the edges of the Starling .
“That’s your voice, Aisling,” Dagfin said, peering over the edge of the Starling once more, searching the mist for something he’d never find, his hands still bound and the rope pulling at the mainmast. “I can hear you,” he said. The strain of his voice ripped Aisling’s heart in two.
“You’re out there,” he drawled on, his Faerak determination taking hold of his posture.
Wrists bound, Dagfin awkwardly drew a dagger from his belt and began sawing at the rope tied around his wrists, clearly having been tethered before in his years as a Faerak and well-versed in releasing himself.
Aisling blanched, glaring at the iron knife held backward and making easy work of her knots, unable to grab it herself without searing off her own hands. Such was the curse and weakness of magic. So, Aisling yanked Dagfin’s jacket, forcing him to face her.
“Enough Dagfin, I’m right here!” Aisling screamed, knotting her fists in his shirt. He shrugged her off, snapping the last cord of the rope and releasing himself. He shoved her against the ship’s edge with the iron knife still tightly clasped in his hands. His attention flickering between Aisling in his path and the rocks around them, the statues. Willing to do anything if it meant diving into a sea where the murúch’s anthem rose as their lust for flesh heated the air.
Aisling pressed her palm against his chest, pushing him away from the edge. Wincing at the sheer pain of the pressure on her wounds. The wild splashing of sailors leaping overboard driving Aisling mad.
“Dagfin!”
Dagfin leaned toward her. Those stormy eyes appraised her every feature as though calculating whether Aisling was real or a figment of his imagination as the murúch bespelled him to believe. But Aisling saw the moment she became not real, not imaginary, but a dream just within reach. The tormented longing splintering the softness of his heart.
His need was made heady with the murúch’s song, still entranced by their witchery. Only now, their tricks were twisted by Dagfin’s yearning, unaccustomed to women being aboard ships built for men. Dagfin’s pining made bold, unashamed, and starving.
Aisling tangled her fingers in his shirt, doing her best to restrain him.
“What will it take to keep you from leaping overboard, Fin?” Aisling asked, more to herself than him, heart pounding inside her chest.
“I don’t know that I can help it,” he growled, wrenching his eyes shut as he clawed for clarity. His hand moving to untangle Aisling’s fingers from his shirt so he could race to his death at the murúch’s command. Aisling shook her head. He’d cut her rope and her strength was no match for a Faerak ’s. So, Aisling leaned forward and grazed his lips with her own, pulse fluttering as he fought the murúch’s song. He resisted the undying urge to give in to their magic in favor of tasting her.
And then something snapped in his expression. A familiar glint of sanity.
Dagfin stilled, a battle waging in his mind. Such was the magic of more chaotic Unseelie: enchantments of possession, of manipulation, of soul-consuming consequences.
Aisling held her breath. A strange guilt tugging at her conscience the moment his hands moved of their own accord, finding her waist and pressing her against him.
Dagfin’s hands slowly slid up, finding her neck and tilting her head up so her eyes met his own.
“Kiss me,” Aisling said, the memory of Lir and the kiss they’d shared burning her lips against her own volition. Haunting her even now. Yet this was necessary. This kiss for Dagfin, a means to save his life. To prevent him from leaping overboard. A justification she repeated again and again in her mind.
Dagfin shuddered, moving his thigh between both her legs and raising it so they fit together.
Aisling’s stomach knotted, brows drawing together. The murúch’s song growing louder. The chaos around them, spinning faster.
Dagfin lunged forward, pressing his lips to Aisling’s, opening her mouth with his own. Tasting her as though she might vanish whilst inside the tight ring of his arms. She, a charm whispered between lovers, gone as fleetingly as it’d been spoken, making bloody his heart.
He weaved his fingers through her dark tresses. He appeared to relish the torment. The world tilted on the axis of the Starling as he became familiar with the shape of her mouth. Explored the curves of her body for the first time. The heat of his breath, burning her lips like the fires of salvation.
“Dagfin,” she said, straining for breath each time his mouth left hers. Unsure whether his name on her lips was designed to stop him or ensure he never pulled away.
Her heart thrashed against his own, her abdomen coiling hotly, pushing him back as her dress now dripped with blood. Pain and pleasure weaving artfully together. He’d always been physically stronger than her, they all were, but now that he was a Faerak , his grip bound her to the edge of the ship.
It was Starn who broke their kiss. Climbing up the ship’s edge and stealing Aisling’s attention.
Aisling reached for her brother with every ounce of strength she still harbored but she was a breath too far. Dagfin holding her in place. The edge of her brother’s coat slipping between her fingers.
“Starn!” Aisling screamed.
A blur of color flashed across the ship. Aisling blinked, processing the speed with which Killian grappled Starn to the floor. A flying comet, pummeling the high prince to the deck of the Starling so hard, Aisling believed the ship might crack in half. The sheer momentum pried Aisling and Dagfin apart at last.
Killian pinned Starn down, the backs of his palms scarlet with gore. Starn struggled beneath his grip, still dazed by the murúch’s enchantment as Killian retrieved a dagger from his breast pocket. Dipping its tip in the pouch at his belt, Killian began his strange practice, carving a knot into Starn’s palms as he’d done his own. Aisling gaped, studying the sight of her brother writhing in pain. A sense of reluctant satisfaction accompanying it. But the moment Killian’s blade lifted, the fog in Starn’s expression lifted, the cruel edge of his severity returning in full force.
Somehow, Killian had broken the enchantment.
Killian rose to his feet, wiping the sweat from his brow before finding Dagfin.
Dagfin was a harder catch. So, Killian hurled the dagger at Aisling.
Aisling raised her arms, instinctively reaching for the draiocht . But it was unnecessary.
Without hesitation, Dagfin moved, catching the blade and throwing it back. Unwilling for anything, or anyone, to stop him from obtaining what desires the magic made potent. The desires Aisling had twisted with a single kiss.
The two fought hand to hand, dealing ghastly blows while their crewmates continued to dive overboard, those quick enough to reach the crags shifting to stone before Aisling’s eyes. The others disappeared beneath the surface. Their last bubbling breaths were all that was left in their wake.
“Steer the ship!” Starn screamed, to anyone who would listen, as the edges of the Starling splintered with each scrape against the crags.
Starn ran for the other crewmates, slamming his fists into their jaws so hard, they collapsed unconscious. The charm cleaved. His knuckles bruised and split by the third strike.
But any longer and the Starling would be without a crew. Without a ship. Without the means to race to Lofgren’s Rise.
Aisling swallowed, stripping her gloves from her hands. She closed her eyes, preparing to call the draiocht .
And perhaps the murúch smelled her potent magic. Perhaps they felt it sparking in the air around them. All the same, they poked their heads from the water, from behind their stone statues, breaking their song to shriek at a decibel high enough to shatter their eardrums.
The Unseelie were stripped of all gowns, coat, or chemise, nude and in the image of lovely mortal females. Their lithe bodies were half mist, half material, as pale as bone and slick with the sea. Hair the material of windswept clouds, glittering in the fog like snowcaps and shimmering fae wings. Mouths agape and filled with teeth designed to scrape flesh from bone.
“ Skalla !” they screeched. “ Thief ” in the fae language Rún.
Aisling fell to her knees, pressing her palms against her ears and bloodying her hair.
She whispered to herself, doing her best to focus on the draiocht .
I wish to summon the fire.
“Enough, Aisling!” Starn shouted from across the deck, swiping another sailor’s legs and sending him smacking into the floorboards, preventing him from leaping to his death.
Aisling whipped her head in his direction, searching for a reason.
“There’s no other way!” she shouted back, face streaked in tears and warm crimson.
“Do not wield your magic, Aisling!” he commanded, freezing Aisling with the black ice of his eyes. And then it occurred to Aisling how much her brother loathed and was repulsed by her magic. To condemn the draiocht even when it was their salvation.
Aisling looked around and saw only chaos.
The Starling ’s crew wailed for their lives, flailing amidst the rapids, having woken too late from the murúch’s enchantments. Hordes of murúch swarming both rock and sea. Dagfin pinned to the deck, screaming as Killian carved another rune into the center of his chest. And worst of all, the Starling barreling into the crags with no man, no soul at the helm to guide it onward.
“The Starling , Starn! We will die if this isn’t ended!” Aisling yelled, straining to find her voice amidst the discord.
Starn ran toward her, knocking down crewmate after crewmate, each clamoring to die.
“Let me end it!” she shouted.
He glared at her for a moment too long. Loathing personified, a high prince orbited by the screams of the dying and the song of lust and hunger. Every second a second lost to eternity, forever gone and hurtling them toward death.
At last, he shook his head.
“No,” Starn spoke, and Aisling’s heart shriveled. “There are mortal men in the water still. Wield your magic and they die, Aisling!”
Aisling watched as sailor after sailor turned to stone, joining the civilization of skeletons buried in the ocean’s dark bed or crag statues already lost to the Ashild. Relics for the murúch to brandish for the centuries to come. But indeed, many men still splashed about the waters, fighting to climb aboard. Digging their nails into the wooden boards and peeling skin from the tips of their fingers. The Starling careening toward the jagged crags like a dying star.
“Aisling!” Dagfin shouted, at last awakened, reality hitting as he covered the bloody rune Killian had carved into his chest. Slowly he staggered to his feet, wearily making his way to the helm. The murúch dragged the men clawing up the side of the ship back into the ocean’s frigid embrace, returning them to the sea. Some of those Unseelie were even determined to make it aboard the Starling , to claim the ship for their own. All of them destined to die lest Aisling intervene.
So, Aisling wrenched her eyes shut and bundled her fists.
“STOP, AISLING!” Starn roared, racing toward her with violent intent. He, on the precipice of sealing their death in the tales chronicled by ocean-gleaned stars.
Come , Aisling called to the draiocht . Inhaling as it cackled and crawled from its ancient lair to greet her and explode from her palms.
There was quiet.
A steady inhale before the exhale.
Before the water exploded with violet fire.