Chapter XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
AISLING
“How dare you?” Fionn stalked closer, expression warped with earnest outrage.
Aisling and Lir unfurled from their place on the floor of the bridge, gathering themselves once more.
“How dare you enter Oighir and repeat the crimes of your father?” Fionn continued. “You’ll be punished for such cheating.”
“Cheating?” Lir asked, his expression narrowing in response to Fionn’s accusations.
“The rules were simple: destroy the ice heart frozen against Aisling?—”
“The ice heart was destroyed despite being frozen against Aisling. Magic was allowed in the third and final test, as outlined by you. I’ve broken no rules.”
Fionn seethed, eyes wide and cruel.
“You will pay for this.”
“We had a deal, Fionn,” Lir said, already drawing both his axes and stepping forward so he stood a shoulder before Aisling.
The crowd fidgeted nervously, whispering like oaks before the tempest.
Even Lir’s knights leaned in closer, keen to see what was unfolding.
“Is that what you hoped for?” Lir asked. “A surrender?”
Fionn sneered. “It no longer matters, brother. You’re not leaving here with Aisling, deal or not.”
Lir grinned but it was wicked, heartless, and inhuman, his fangs flashing with promise.
“You always were a sore loser.” Lir swiped his axes and they sparked against one another, ringing while he positioned himself to battle Fionn for escape, for freedom, for Aisling.
“Let’s see how the woodland survives the permafrost.” Fionn spun his greatsword as he approached Lir.
Aisling shook her head behind them both, gathering herself. She was too angry, too frustrated, too annoyed to stand still and watch. She needed to feel vengeance on her own tongue, needed to exact her revenge by her own means, and watch as Fionn begged for mercy.
Aisling stepped around Lir. The fae king hesitated so Aisling glanced in his direction, hoping he gleaned the flicker of violent need in her eyes.
Fionn blinked, his patience growing thin. His attention shifting between Lir and Aisling.
“This is between my brother and me, Aisling," Fionn said.
“Is it? Because it isn’t me you’ve stolen, imprisoned, and brandished as a prize,” Lir said, straightening at Aisling’s side.
Fionn, son of Winter, frosted over with rage. White fury conjuring a blizzard that spun around their spectacle—the eye of the storm, the bridge where Lir, Aisling, and Fionn stood.
Lir moved till he stood shoulder to shoulder with Aisling, wrapping an arm around her waist to steady her against Fionn’s winds. Greum rose on his hind legs, but even the bear was aware he couldn’t intervene lest he contradict his lordship’s command. One that was yet to be given. This considering, if Fionn were to request aid from any of his guards or Oighir, it would be his humiliation and not Lir’s, as the son of Winter always intended.
“Aisling, think rationally,” Fionn pleaded with her, his waist-length hair billowing in clouds of silver. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Aisling focused, fingers moving at her sides, prickling with newfound heat.
“Show them how you burn, ellwyn .” Lir spoke to Aisling and only her. His voice slipping inside her mind despite the rage of the blizzard swirling around them.
“Call upon your wolf,” Lir told her. A reference Aisling understood, her eyes lighting in recognition and burning more brightly because of it.
Fionn shifted, baring his fangs as the winds increased their pace.
So, Aisling closed her eyes, hair whipping in the blizzard like a pool of bleeding ink around her head.
And when she opened her eyes once more, she was fire incarnate.
“By the blood of the Forge.”
Their audience hissed, drawing blades or fleeing from the spectacle entirely, unsure whether to intervene or allow their lord to duel the flaming queen in their stead.
Aisling inhaled sharply as she summoned more fire. The sound of a spell breaking, a deal ended and met, the sound of a string being snipped, echoing throughout Fjallnorr.
Aisling held out her hand and twisted, inspired by the draiocht within.
A giant serpent, shaped by fire, snapping its flame-forged fangs, rose from Fionn’s bridge.
Fionn’s jaw went slack, eyes wide as he beheld Aisling’s power anew. The serpent slithered toward him and raised its great head to peer down at its prey.
“Enough!” Fionn shouted, lifting his sword and spearing it into the floor. Ice exploded, splintering the bridge as it drove for the serpent, winter’s teeth rising and jabbing at Aisling’s fires. The serpent hissed, drawing back and away from the ice Fionn cast.
“Think rationally, Aisling,” Fionn repeated as he approached, sword in hand. “I could give you everything and anything Lir cannot.”
Aisling’s expression twisted.
“You know not what I want.” Aisling waved her fingers and the serpent lunged for Fionn’s ice.
Aisling’s work was clumsy. New. Yet it served its purpose. Fionn’s glacial onslaught burst into shards of glass, forcing every Sidhe surrounding the spectacle to stagger back several steps. His sleeping spells destroyed and burned to ash.
“You crave freedom.” Fionn swung his gleaming blade. From its tip, ice streaked for the serpent and wrapped around its neck.
“Power.” The ice squeezed Aisling’s thrashing serpent and snuffed out her fires, flame by flame. Aisling’s knees weakened, the force of the draiocht expelling more energy than she’d anticipated.
“And purpose.” Fionn swung again, this time, at Aisling’s fires. Her spells dissolved, captured by ice as Fionn defeated the distance between them, blade to Aisling’s throat. Lir started forward but Aisling held out her hand, stopping him. A command that corded Lir’s neck and locked his jaw. But he listened, awaiting her signal.
“You were meant to be mine ,” Fionn said.
Mine.
The word sounded different than when Lir had said it. From Fionn’s lips, it was spoken with a need to own her, but Aisling had already been caged behind castle walls before. Had already been owned and given away.
Aisling grabbed the edge of his blade with her bare palm, pushing it from herself.
Fionn’s eyes grew wide, glaring between Aisling’s eyes and her hand.
Their audience stilled.
Easily. Quickly. The blade cut into her palm. Blood trailed down her arms, dying the sage of her gown crimson.
By now, Aisling was accustomed to pain. To the exact temperature of her blood as it slithered down her hands and arms. The smell of its iron and draiocht alike. How the torment seeped into her bones. And she relished it. Not the pain. But that she could endure it.
Aisling’s body blazed. A wildfire blown into the shape of a woman. Casting Fionn off lest he burst into flames alongside her.
She watched as he collapsed backward and floundered, still clasping his greatsword, a blade sheathed in her blood. She released its edge, found its haft, and studied its fae forgery.
An exploding star, she carried Fionn’s weapon the way Galad and Rian had taught her what felt like a lifetime ago.
Fionn’s wintry elegance dissolved entirely, panicked and afraid as Aisling approached.
Unarmed. Defenseless. Fionn found himself trapped at the center of their ring. Aisling had already won the duel and yet, her body continued. Her thirst for this dominance, insatiable. The sins against her suddenly made more right with even this small victory.
So, when Aisling was near enough, she paused and appraised him, glaring down and into his glacial eyes.
“You were meant to be mine,” Fionn repeated, this time more desperate.
“No,” she said. “ I was meant to burn .”
Aisling raised the blade above her head and swung down.
The Forge didn’t spare the son of Winter’s life.
A mortal prince did.
Dagfin stood before Aisling, holding her hands, the haft, the blade mid-swing. The edge of it centimeters from slicing his shoulder as her flames beaded his forehead with sweat. His flesh glowing red with her kiss of fire.
Lir bristled from behind but held his ground.
“You’ve already won, Aisling,” he said, Roktan blue eyes searching her own.
“You fight to spare a fae lord’s life?!” Aisling bit, fighting his grip.
Dagfin shook his head, brow furrowed. “I only ever fight for you, Aisling.” He glanced over his shoulder at Fionn, rising to his feet. “And this is a decision you cannot undo. You’ll live with his death till you meet your own.”
“The Starling ?—”
“The Starling was desperation, survival. This—this is anger. This is vengeance and it’ll never remedy his sins against you.”
For a moment, they’d fallen back in time and were once more in Tilren, running through the thoroughfare with her brothers and a baker’s husband chasing after them with a rolling pin above his head. Fergus had fallen, the rolls in his pockets spilling across the cobbles. He’d glared up at Aisling, but she’d turned away, knowing Fergus’s failure was a success of her own. But it was Dagfin who’d stopped. Who’d raced back, lifted Fergus, and dragged him back toward Castle Neimedh.
She met Dagfin’s stare and held it. A part of her resentful for him always forcing her to acknowledge the kinder choice.
But resentment or not, it was enough.
Aisling released the blade. It clattered to the floor. The only sound until Dagfin exhaled out of relief, Aisling’s fires extinguished, and the Faerak collected the sword, brandishing it himself so that Fionn couldn’t wield it again.
“How dare you!?” Fionn straightened, ice jutting from the floors in great pillars of glass. “Try as you might, Aisling, you’ll come to recognize the better choice between Lir and I, whether willingly or by force.”
The world erupted into chaos.
Ice blasted from the ground, threatening to implode Oighir entirely. Sidhe raced for all and every escape, guards, bestial or fae, swarming. Arrows raining from the plucked strings of fox bows.
Aisling spun on her heel. It was time to run.
On her right, Galad, Gilrel, Peitho, and Filverel held off Fionn’s guards. Lir waiting for Aisling, hand outstretched. Something desperate flaring in his eyes.
On her left, stood Dagfin and her brothers shouting Aisling and Dagfin’s names, gesturing to flee with them while they still bore the opportunity, at last freed from Fionn’s deal. Voices masked by the sheer volume of the discord.
“We need to leave, Lir!” Peitho screamed, unpinning herself from Greum’s oppressive weight and swiping his right paw as he swung for her again. “ Now !”
Lir’s jaw tightened, never once unleashing Aisling from his regard.
“Ash,” Dagfin said, unable to force himself to glance in Lir’s direction.
Aisling shook her head, temples throbbing. Heartbeat pulsing in her throat.
“Go and live to be king, Fin,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
And a part of her was. Fionn was right about one thing: this journey wasn’t fit for mortal souls. And Aisling knew, of all the crimes she’d willingly commit in exchange for what she craved, being the reason Dagfin’s life ended wasn’t one of them.
Aisling turned and stepped toward Lir.
The fae king wrapped his arms around her, sheltered her in the curve of his chest as he raised one of his axes and shielded them both from the reeds darting for Aisling’s heart. Not a second, a moment to bid Dagfin farewell as he no doubt already raced for Starn, Iarbonel, Fergus, and Killian. Out of time.
Lir swiveled, searching for a path out of Oighir. But there was no passage, no trail, nor a way left unmarked by chaos. Even as Fionn approached from behind. Rage freezing the edges of his eyes with ice.
“The mirrors,” Aisling said to Lir, pointing to the one cracked and splintered, leading into Castle Oighir.
“Fionn’s most likely bespelled them, to ensure we couldn’t flee regardless of the outcome of his test. It could lead straight into Oighir’s dungeons,” Lir said, the cord in his neck tightening.
“Fionn described it to me,” Aisling said, awarding herself Lir’s full attention as he searched her expression for answers, the sensation of it bone shuddering. “The mirrors harbor all the mischief and agency of the draiocht . Simply asking the draiocht for access might be enough to circumvent Fionn’s orders and open the door we covet.”
Lir weighed her words. “A door to where?”
Aisling bit her bottom lip, shaking her head. “I suppose we’ll soon discover.”
“Lir!” Galad growled, elbowing a Sidhe guard in the jaw with one arm and punching another with the pommel of his greatsword.
Fionn neared. His eyes locked on Aisling and Lir, rendering his palace to rubble with the sheer force of his temper.
So, Lir wasted not another moment, running to the mirror, Aisling’s hand in his own, cutting down Sidhe after Sidhe, beast after beast. Any that threatened their path. The perfume of their blood sprayed the air and painted Fionn’s landscape of ivory, red.
At last, he paused before the mirror, waiting for the others to join them. And once they had, he met Aisling’s eyes.
“Hold onto me,” he said, picking Aisling up and pausing a breath before the mirror. His grip impenetrable, reminding Aisling of how they’d been torn apart when Danu had sent them forward in time. Aisling wrenched her eyes shut and called upon her draiocht .
Fionn approached, a few paces away.
“YOU WILL NOT LEAVE!” he screamed, aiming at the mirror with his longsword.
Grant me access , Aisling spoke to the draiocht . Open the door .
The draiocht cackled, thrumming with an energy that drove Aisling wild. So unlike how it’d behaved over the last several weeks.
Fionn’s ice struck the mirror, splintering it. The horrible crack of it echoed off the crumbling walls.
Grant me access ! Aisling yelled.
The draiocht leaned a little closer, Oh dear friend, you’re never satisfied with where you are, are you ?
And the door opened.
“NOW!” Aisling screamed, as she, Lir, Galad, Gilrel, Peitho, and Filverel tore into the mirror just as it burst into shards.