The Savage Queen (The Aisling Trilogy #2)

Chapter XVI

CHAPTER XVI

AISLING

“Cold, ellwyn ?” Lir’s voice echoed through the ballroom, finding Aisling’s heart and impaling it where the Lady’s sword hadn’t.

He stood taller than Aisling remembered him, forest green eyes searching Aisling’s own, ripping apart her soul, and promising both violence and mischief. Aisling’s chest hitched, her eyes glassy as she processed his presence, half wondering if he were still a dream come to haunt her when she needed him most. Realizing now, when her heart lifted at the sight of him, she’d found relief in salvation from the dark lord of the forest. Relief and terror, her hunter a few paces away at long last. He who she’d fled from, feared, anticipated like an arrow to the heart.

The room stood petrified, unmoving, as Lir stalked forth. Every step echoing into eternity while the realm held its breath. His axes glimmered beneath Fionn’s fae light, he alone, a forge-brewed demon delivering day’s death. A woodland’s every ruthless promise. A glittering nightmare more inhumanly gorgeous than any vision Aisling could conjure.

“Aren’t you?” Aisling said with whatever breath remained.

“My kind rarely grows cold,” he continued. “I’ve forgotten how weak humans can be.”

“Weak?” Aisling repeated. “It’s weak to complain of it.”

“Perhaps fragile is a better word then?” he said, the corners of his lips curling.

Aisling couldn’t help herself. Her mouth moved of its own accord, splitting into a smile herself. The same conversation they’d shared the first time they’d met, ringing inside her heart and ravaging her whole. “The most valuable things are.”

Lir smiled a devastating smile, framed by dimples Aisling had desperately tried to forget.

It was then Aisling noticed the other armored Sidhe behind him. Fae knights dressed for a bloodbath.

Galad.

Gilrel.

Filverel.

Peitho.

The backs of Aisling’s eyes pricked, bleeding her heart and clouding the room with Annwyn’s perfume. Of forest festivals, of herb-lit pipes, bluebell castle corridors, of heady music, and barefoot dances.

They were each clad in hunting leathers and armor, each appraising Aisling in turn. Gilrel spinning her small blade between her paws, itching to be unleashed. Galad and Filverel tight-lipped behind their king, expressions resolved for bloodletting. And Peitho, hair dripping like the rays of a liquid sun, tossed the strands from her face, freeing her vision but also exposing the right side of her face.

She whose beauty was poetry personified, every nuance pieced together thoughtfully; now, her face was the host of great scars. Burn trails.

Aisling’s stomach dipped. She’d almost forgotten. Aisling had nearly burned Peitho alive in her efforts to save Dagfin after their union had gone awry.

A snow-soft laugh sounded behind Aisling as Fionn stepped forward, seemingly maintaining his calm, if it weren’t for the ice crawling up the sides of the hall and jutting into icicles like thorns.

“Well done, brother.” Fionn clapped, the only sound in an otherwise silent room. “What wicked heroism.”

Brother.

Aisling’s heart stuttered. The air in the room suddenly thinner than it’d been before. But the moment and the word were quickly gone. A piece of the recent past as Lir approached.

“Heroism?” Lir padded closer, nimbly spinning one of his axes between his fingers. “Is that what you call what I’m here to do? To rip your heart from your chest and stake it before Oighir?”

Fionn laughed again, but this time it wasn’t as convincing.

“By Sidhe law, you’ve entered on diplomatic authority but if you don’t leave now, you’ll wish you had.”

Oighir, indeed, listened intently. Every guest staring at both Fionn and Lir, approaching an inevitable collision. The bestial guards moving through the crowds, eager to make themselves known before Lir tried anything on their lord. This in addition to nine or so foxes, Aisling counted, crouched in the upper arcade, prepared to let their reeds fly.

“My court will not hesitate to descend upon you.”

“Do you make a habit of offering your people to the wolves in place of yourself?”

“Oighir and I are one. Of all Sidhe, you should understand that, Lir. Or did you inherit our mother’s flippancy for her own kind?”

Our mother.

Aisling’s stomach lurched.

But it was Lir’s expression that sparkled with bloodthirst. His fangs, at last, visible at the edge of his feral grin. Galad, Gilrel, and Filverel twitched behind him, expressions hungry to satiate their tempers.

The guards reached the lip of Sidhe and beastly spectators, awaiting their sovereign’s command. Fionn need only give them the word and the whole ballroom would descend into chaos.

Aisling glanced at Dagfin, her brothers, and Killian standing to her right. They each found her stare and held it, perhaps waiting for the precise moment to flee Oighir while all were still distracted.

“Then fight for them in their stead,” Lir said, pausing but a few paces from where Aisling still stood frozen, captured by Fionn’s ice. Her stomach knotting and the cord between she and her fae king, pulling.

“Are you challenging me to a duel, Damh Bán ?” Fionn scoffed, stepping directly behind Aisling till there was scarcely more than ice between them. And at the gesture, a muscle flashed across Lir’s jaw.

Fionn swept Aisling’s hair to the side, leaving her neck exposed. Aisling held her breath.

“You see, mo Lúra ?” He bent lower, whispering in her ear and chilling her flesh with frost. “He considers you a possession, a trophy, a treasure to be won, collected, and hoarded. Not the partner, not the equal you and I bear the potential to be.”

Lir squeezed the haft of his axes, near crushing them beneath the strength of his grip.

“If you’re afraid, Fionn, just say so.”

Fionn straightened, frustration lining the curve of his mouth. He feared Lir; that much was clear. But there was also undiluted envy blistering the black of his irises till it bled across the entirety of his posture.

Fionn raised his hand above his head.

“ Reacht ,” he said in Rún.

At the word, his blade unsheathed itself from his throne atop the dais and shot into his hand. A translucent, glass-like blade, taller than himself.

“Now, now, brother, you’re in my court. Perhaps in Annwyn, sovereigns would duel to the death but in Oighir, we prefer something far more entertaining.”

“Speak it then,” Lir said, eyes tracing where Fionn touched Aisling.

“A test of your valor, of the lengths you’ll go to prove yourself to your caera .” Fionn chuckled to himself, waving his sword as he spoke. “How far would you go to preserve your binding?”

Lir considered for a moment, Gilrel, Galad, Filverel, and Peitho weighing the son of Winter’s words alongside their sovereign.

“The rules are simple: Only you may take part, lest you grant another the right to take your place, and in that case, you cannot re-enter the test. Secondly, you’re forbidden to wield your magic during the first two tests.

“It would be three rounds, brother. A single loss would signal the loss of the test at large. And when you lose, I’ll carve out your heart with your own axe, presaging the forever Aisling will stay here with me in Oighir.”

Aisling grimaced in horror, jerking her head in Fionn’s direction. Cursing the draiocht for abandoning her now. Lir never let his axes out of his sight. The idea of Fionn wielding them, much less using them to harm Lir, was unthinkable.

Lir tilted his head back, his easy arrogance spellbinding.

“Your games are as tedious as ever, brother. I’d prefer to end this here and now, blade against blade,” Lir said.

“A duel against me is a duel against Oighir,” Fionn argued.

“All the more fun.” Lir glanced around the room. There must’ve been hundreds, if not more Sidhe and their bipedal beasts spectating the interaction. And yet, Aisling knew as well as Lir it wouldn’t be a challenge for the Sidhe king of the greenwood to fell them all, one by one.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to be slaughtering your own people, Lir. Especially when Danu offers a far more…forgiving alternative to your rule. Besides, do you really want to give the Sidhe another reason to question your loyalties?”

Lir flexed his jaw, considering. So Fionn hadn’t been lying about Danu’s attempts to usurp Lir nor the legions she’d amassed to betray him. All because Lir had bound himself to Aisling in an effort to quell tensions between mortals and fair folk. A treaty that had ended in violence regardless.

“Should I win this test of yours, Aisling is mine,” Lir said.

Aisling bristled, souring at the thought of belonging to anyone. But given the current circumstances, she stifled her objections for another day. Hopefully, one where she was free from Oighir and Fionn’s mischief. Lir may be her direct competition for Lofgren’s Rise, but as it currently stood, he was a necessary means to an end to escape Oighir. And as for the frenzied pace of her heart, the heating of her skin, or the cord that jerked her toward him, Aisling despised it. Wished she could burn all her feelings for they made her weak. Made her want to return to him despite knowing her greatest chances were forged alone.

“Agreed.” Fionn grinned, releasing Aisling from his touch.

Lir met Aisling’s eyes briefly. And at the gesture, Aisling’s heart raced a pace quicker. Lir’s mischief always a step ahead of all others.

Both Fionn and Lir approached, all of the realm and its spirits holding their breath. The fae sentinels of Oighir and Lir’s knights tensing in response.

Reluctantly, both kings reached forth and took hold of the other’s forearm.

“By the Forge,” they said in unison. “I vow it.”

Aisling could feel the magic of their draiocht and the deal it sealed. It popped her ears with the shifting pressure, the smell of its plum-like fragrance weaving a noose around each of their throats, tightening should they betray their promise. Fae deals, bargains, and vows weren’t to be taken lightly. They were met with either utmost triumph or complete death.

The ice Fionn had conjured to keep Aisling in place, dissolved and puddled atop the ballroom floors, at last releasing Aisling. Lir moved toward her, but Fionn stepped between them. A newfound pain, wrapping around her neck and forcing a gasp from her lips.

Aisling reached for her throat, finding to her horror a collar of crystal shards.

“What is this?!” she asked, desperately clawing at the contraption in hopes it might shatter, break, tear, and release her.

“Our deal’s manifestation. Should Lir win the tests, then the collar will shatter. Should he not, well, consider it a gift to commemorate our true binding. One you’ll look fondly over in the eternity to come. This way, even if Lir tries to take you from me after the tests have been lost, he cannot. The collar threads you to Oighir.”

Aisling gaped, beyond outraged, maddened, furious, her draiocht kindling despite Fionn’s and the Lady’s dulling spells. This was no deal’s manifestation. This was Fionn’s way of claiming Aisling as his own. His way of boasting to Lir that, for now, Aisling was Winter’s possession.

A muscle flashed across Lir’s jaw, his hands white-knuckled on his axes. The glimmer of his expression violent the longer he appraised the collar. His deal with his brother made real around Aisling’s throat and the stakes raised.

Fionn turned from Lir, retreating to Aisling.

“I’m nothing if not a gracious host, so you’re free to stay in Oighir throughout the duration of the tests, brother. Three days’ time. But should you be found speaking or lurking around the not-so-mortal queen, I’ll interpret that as a forfeit and that you’re surrendering to an execution.”

Fionn grazed Aisling’s cheek with his knuckle and frost crawled up her skin.

“Let’s see how much she’s worth to you, brother.”