Chapter XI
CHAPTER XI
AISLING
Aisling crashed against stone, washed ashore by her dream’s black sea. She dragged herself to her feet, at once searching for Lir through the veil of thunderhead tears. But where he usually appeared without warning, without word, without summons, he was nowhere to be found.
Against her own volition, Aisling’s spirits fell. She found herself searching the forest, twirling in a shifting kingdom, calling his name with no response. Aisling couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t visited her dreams, forcing her to wonder if they’d always been just that. Dreams. Or, if this were an ill omen. The beginning of something strange afoot.
The woodland chuckled, amused by her search, so Aisling ignored it, traveling deeper into the forest. But even after hours, after peering behind every maple, yew, and cypress, after speaking his name like a spell, he was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly endlessly far. Gone and alive only in her memory.
After several days, their mares refused to run, eating snow and licking ice whenever their riders would allow it.
Annind grew weaker by the hour, forced to share a horse with Iarbonel. His wounds fought infection but refused to close entirely. And every day spent on horseback, traversing the ice-ridden landscape, trees sheathed in glass, he spoke a little less. Kept to himself beside their brittle fires and braced against the cold.
This deep in the forest, the branches knotted their fingers overhead like fae interlace, shielding them from the brunt of both snowstorms and highland winds. Aisling found logs, wrapped their ends in linen and spare furs, burning fire after fire to give them a beacon in the shadows. To warm them when teeth began to chatter, and eyelashes sharpened with frost. And while Aisling found she could go days without food, what little she managed, the others struggled to keep their appetite at bay.
Dagfin and Killian scoured the periphery of their camp, but were only fortunate to find a single hare to split between the six of them. Hunger carving their features till they scarcely bore any resemblance to the day they’d first set foot in the Fjallnorrian wilds.
So, Aisling bid the wolves that visited her in the dead of night, when everyone else slept, to hunt hares, foxes, pheasant, deer, and any other creature with a beating heart for their party. To sustain them. Yet Starn refused every offering and so, the others did as well.
“Where are you going?” Starn asked, unable to mask the venom in his voice. He caught Aisling’s arm just before she was able to slip between the trees, her mare beside her.
“The horses are hungry,” she said. “There’s a creek not far from here so I was hoping to find some sort of vegetation by its shore.” Indeed, the wolves and the owls whispered this to Aisling when they believed none others listening.
Starn considered her, weighing her words as though she spoke in riddles.
At last, he nodded his head.
“Killian,” Starn ordered, and the Faerak at once stood from where he sat beside the camp.
Aisling’s brow furrowed. “Scared I’ll set the wood aflame?” And by the expression on Starn’s face, he might’ve been. She despised his suspicion. His watchful glares, his paranoid glances. Loathed the self-righteous tilt of his head each time she spoke until Aisling wondered if it was just his gestures she despised or him as well. The prospect of burning his tongue from his mouth, more reasonable by the day.
“I’ll go with her,” Dagfin piped, flipping his dagger into his belt.
Aisling ground her teeth but said nothing, preferring Dagfin to Killian and recognizing this wasn’t a battle she cared to fight. Nor that she found it worth her while. So, she conceded to Dagfin’s company as she ventured further into the forest.
“His distrust for me grows by the hour,” she said, aware that Starn eyed her from their camp as both she and Dagfin faded between the trees.
“He feels responsible for all of us.” Dagfin unstoppered his flask and gulped several mouthfuls.
“So why has he come? Why risk his own life and those of our brothers––yours––to help a sister he hardly tolerates much less trusts?”
Dagfin’s expression narrowed in thought.
“Starn always has his own agenda. One he’d rather take to his grave than share with anyone other than himself, Fergus, Iarbonel, or Annind.”
“He hardly needs to share it, for his motivations to be clear. His actions make it obvious.”
Dagfin turned to her. “What do you mean?”
“He’s in pursuit of the curse breaker for our father.”
And Aisling knew the moment she spoke the words aloud and Dagfin didn’t immediately deny them that she was right. That Dagfin knew as well.
Aisling hadn’t heard a whisper of the fire hand, nor a sign. Starn’s ambition and need for approval was the only suggestion Nemed was still alive after Lir’s ambush.
With two legs of iron, the great fire hand of the North could scarcely ride, much less venture through the wilderness in pursuit of myths and legends. Nevertheless, Aisling had seen the potent longing in his eyes when he’d beheld Aisling’s flames for the first time. The emotion in his voice when he spoke of stealing back what he believed was rightfully humankind’s.
All this time, Aisling was glancing over her shoulder afraid of her competitors, while one of her greatest adversaries slept around the same fire. Drank from the same flasks. Rode at their side. Killian brought along to protect this rival, forged with the same blood that once flowed freely through Aisling’s veins.
“Did he tell you?” Aisling asked, holding her breath.
Dagfin looked straight ahead, eyes pinned to the approaching creek babbling to the stones.
“No,” Dagfin said. “But he didn’t have to.”
Against her own volition, Aisling’s heart ached, punctured inside her chest and bled out slowly. She cursed herself for it. For having hoped for anything else. For wanting to believe Starn had come along for her. The memory of a doll he’d whittled for her ninth birthday, flashing across her mind’s eye. A memory that felt stolen. Taken from a girl that no longer existed and planted inside Aisling’s mind.
So, Aisling shoved away the sadness, replacing it with something else. Something grim, cold, and unforgiving. The draiocht purring at the taste of it.
“And you?” Aisling asked. “What was your plan?”
Dagfin reacted viscerally, whipping his head in her direction. Anger, frustration, and guilt making crooked the curve of his mouth. A mouth Aisling could still feel pressing against her own near as tangibly as she’d felt it aboard the Starling . The memory, dipping her stomach.
“To be by your side like I should’ve always been. Perhaps then, you would’ve never wed him .”
Aisling cringed at the venom in Dagfin’s last word. But she was never given a chance to respond.
The wintertide birds whistled for Aisling to turn around. She listened, peering between the branches, finding a figure nestled between the glass oaks. One who already studied them in return.
Aisling’s boots froze in place. Their mare panicked, yanking at the reins to be released.
She sat upon a throne––an old, gnarled, winterkill oak, bowing atop the snow. Its branches moving, slithering, forming, and reforming long after they’d molded a seat from its body. Fawning over she who sat upon it, absently glaring at the glittering loom before her.
The Lady.
“ There is a lady who wastes away in a cave, century after century, weaving. Every thread a thread of fate. There are some who believe that once these threads are placed upon the spindle, woven and knotted together, there are none who can undo its tapestry .” Lir had spoken such words just moments before he’d betrayed the treaty between man and fae. Had vowed to claw that very tapestry apart till nothing but shreds remained, refusing to concede to Danu, the empress of the dryad’s, prophecies. To make certain the Sidhe vanquished mankind.
Every hair on Aisling’s body stood and stiffened the moment the Lady turned to face them both. Her horse eager to flee far from this place.
And although the Lady’s eyes were hidden by an enormous ivory spider pinned to the bridge of her nose, Aisling felt the weight of her gaze. Smelled the magic in the air: of the earth, of forgotten, forbidden spells, and frostbitten nights of yore. Her robes spilling around the loom as she worked, shimmering, arctic white, seemingly threaded with the silk of concentrated starlight. Trees stretching, craning, for the Lady to weave their branches into her blinding loom.
“You blunt my shears,” she said abruptly. A voice that spilled and flowed, guzzled by the ears of those who listened.
Dagfin shifted, one hand instinctively reaching for Aisling’s own, while the other wandered to his daggers.
“And you.” She tilted her head at Dagfin. “You knot my threads.”
“You’re the Lady.” Aisling exhaled, both afraid and in awe. The draiocht within her inclining its head to better taste her magic-sweet aura.
“I am,” she said, skin of polished obsidian stroked by the branches of loving trees. “I’ve come to warn you, Aisling.”
Aisling blinked, curiosity compelling her to take a single step forward. Dagfin held her hand tight, falling into step beside her.
“I braid your thread again and again, but it always frays, snaps, hardens against my shears. I cannot compel your thread, manipulate it, weave it, so I’ve come to speak with you instead. To prevent you from lacing the way I expect your thread will.”
Her fingers moved swiftly across the loom, strings of pure, radiant light.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s not for you to understand, Aisling.”
“Then speak, Lady, and enough with your riddles,” Dagfin chimed, his posture shifting from prince to Faerak .
The Lady’s fingers tensed at the loom, snapping a string. Her nostrils flared at the smell of Ocras on his breath. A potent warning.
“You and I, Faerak , want the same,” she said, the spider atop her face twitching as she continued her work on the loom. “For this violet thread not to indulge a hand of thorns, lest she find herself forever tangled in a greenwood, slaked only by strength and power.”
Aisling felt the electricity of Dagfin’s temper before she saw it. The heavy, open sea storms thundering in his eyes.
“A hand of thorns,” Aisling repeated. “You reference Lir.”
Dagfin frowned at the mention of his name.
“The dark lord of the greenwood, the white stag, the Sidhe king, your caera . Aye. Every breath nearer to one another, every touch closer, will only ever herald desolation in both this realm and the next.”
Aisling’s eyes pricked with heat.
Dagfin’s attention darted between Aisling and the Lady.
“ Caera ?” he asked.
“Woven together by my threads of fate, dipped in the Forge, and made potent by blood. I created the first threads but from then on, they take a life of their own. Growing, traveling, choosing what they will until it is entirely outside my control. My only duty to the loom.”
Aisling dared not glance at Dagfin, bracing against the cool edge of the woodland breeze.
“Stay away from the Sidhe king, Aisling,” she commanded, fanning embers of rage in Aisling’s chest.
Dagfin rolled his shoulders back, cracking his neck side to side, teeth bared. “You did this. You bound her to the fae king.”
The Lady laughed, the sound of it shattering the ice clinging to every branch till it showered in knife sharp blades around them all.
“No, Faerak . You did.”
Dagfin didn’t hesitate.
The insinuation he’d bound Aisling to Lir because of his complicity in trading her to the fae striking a furious chord.
He threw his dagger, its iron cutting toward the Lady with unparalleled accuracy. But the Lady didn’t flinch. Instead, she smiled, watching as the surrounding trees intercepted the knife and slammed it into the earth, knocking Aisling, Dagfin, and their mare off their feet.
Aisling cursed beneath her breath. Trees of all shape and form were under the sovereignty of Lir, so what magic did the Lady boast that snuffed that of others?
“What say you, Aisling? Heed me and prosper. Disobey me and breed ruin.”
The pines thrashed violently, roots rising from the earth as the Lady sat still as the moon, orbited by the crystal limbs of the winter woodland.
Aisling found her footing and glared at the Lady in return. Arrogant, she sat straight before her tapestry, twisting threads and pulling at their bodies with her slender fingers. Each thread, one of fate. A life controlled, dictated, spun, and put to use. A life stolen. A life lost. As Aisling’s own had once been: used by kings and discarded when necessary. Only for the Sidhe to call her “thief” and the mortals to whisper “traitor” behind her back.
Aisling shook her head, ignoring the angry turning of her stomach. The heat pricking her fingertips. Danu had foreseen a similar fate between Aisling and Lir. And warned them both of its outcome.
Yet Aisling found she cared little for either the Lady’s or Danu’s visions. They were manipulations. For what was seen had not yet come to pass.
This was never about Aisling and Lir. Whether she and the fae king were near, far, together, or apart was irrelevant. This was rather another means of manipulation. For the Lady was accustomed to snipping, threading, and weaving her threads, grown frustrated with one that refused to comply with her work. To be sown, pulled, and cut into strict order. A fact that rippled through Aisling with incomparable satisfaction.
Aisling lifted her chin.
Screaming, the mare reared. The wind howled through the trees and danced with Aisling’s hair till it fanned around her, as though submerged beneath the water. Inky black and alive. Her eyes glistening a shade brighter.
“Disobey me and breed ruin!” the Lady said, this time louder.
Aisling gritted her teeth. “I say ruin.”
The spider atop the Lady’s face bled black, shuddering with the Lady’s rage. The world upturned, folding the Lady in a pocket of the Other, and leaving devastation in its wake.
The strings of her loom, awakened like serpents, darted at Aisling and Dagfin, tangling around their ankles and dragging them into oblivion. A fathomless abyss of white light, shimmering with eternal intention.
Aisling raised the draiocht , but the strings weren’t made of linen. No, they were rather braided by mystical light. Immune to her fires. Cackling at Aisling’s and Dagfin’s efforts to snip their strings with the Faerak ’s blades. Ripping the flesh of their joints raw as it pulled them under and into the Lady’s abyss of blinding light.
Until frost crawled down the cords, freezing each string solid, then bursting into thousands of jagged shards like stars. The Lady shrieked, a sound like glass cracking and echoing into eternity. The world blurring as the Lady vanished and both Aisling and Dagfin were freed.
But Aisling and Dagfin didn’t find salvation.
Hands of ice rose from the snow. The hands clasped both their wrists and lifted them to their knees so that when they met his eyes, they already bowed to a fae king.