The Savage Queen (The Aisling Trilogy #2)

Chapter XXX

CHAPTER XXX

AISLING

Racat was obsidian.

Its sinuous shape tangled between two others of similar size, cut and glazed into stained glass portraits. One red and winged. The other green and three-headed, coloring the interior of the cathedral as morning light crept inside.

Aisling had never seen Racat in all its glory. Only in dreams, in darkness, beneath the boat that’d sailed her into Annwyn.

“Racat, Muirdris, and Aengus,” a familiar voice sounded from behind.

Galad stood a few paces from the entrance to the temple, appraising the stained glass for himself.

From Aisling’s vantage point before the altar, she could see Gilrel just outside the doors, Peitho and Filverel guarding the entrance from the now-frenzied mortals eager to set eyes on either the Sidhe or Aisling herself, Galad personally tasked to guard Aisling while Lir and Dagfin hunted the phuka. A partnership that might find the Unseelie unscathed and themselves both hunter and hunted.

“The dragún of power, prosperity, and immortality,” Aisling conjectured.

“Respectively.”

An awkward silence smoked the temple. The only respite, the druids just outside the doors, collapsed on their knees, bowing and chanting as though entranced. A worship Peitho seemed to enjoy, even if it were mortals who kissed the streets before her feet.

“You’re more than welcome to guard me from outside the temple,” Aisling said––for her own sake or the knight’s, she wasn’t certain.

“I was ordered not to let you out of my sight.”

“You’ve disobeyed orders before,” Aisling said, recalling how Galad allowed Aisling to leave her chambers in Annwyn to deliver a letter to the fire hand. A letter, that with hindsight, she wished she’d burned long before it ever flew across the Isles of Rinn Dúin.

“It isn’t the same,” Galad said.

“ It isn’t the same? Or we aren’t the same?”

Galad met her eyes. Sapphires that cut into her soul and forced Aisling to feel what she’d desperately attempted to stifle: uncorrupted guilt.

“‘ We ?’” Galad scoffed. “It has never been a ‘ we ,’ mo Lúra . Your lips have only ever known ‘ I .’”

Aisling winced.

“My decision to leave wasn’t meant to either forsake or condemn our friendship.”

Galad shifted at the final word.

“It hardly matters, mo Lúra ?—”

“Enough. Don’t call me that after my name has been spoken from your mouth before.”

Galad’s expression tightened.

“Very well, Ash .” Her name like venom on his tongue. “It means nothing what you intended. It only matters what you did.” His voice rose, slapping against the pews, the stone statues, the pillars. “You fled from my king, from Gilrel, from our friendship , without a glance back. Ran with he whose most forgiving crimes were my own branding. A crime I never blamed you for until that day.”

Starn.

Aisling’s eyes pricked with heat, but she willed not a single tear to fall. It wasn’t her place to cry. The stone lodged in her throat, making impossible the task.

“I only ever meant to pursue what it is I am. Could you truly say, without a morsel of doubt, you’d have done any differently, Galad?”

The knight studied her, as though he wished to understand but simply couldn’t. Wished to redeem her, to justify what she’d done, but found her unforgivable all the same. The pain such a realization evoked flashing across his expression. And the sight of it, enough to crush Aisling’s heart and fill her chest with blood.

“We will reach Lofgren’s Rise,” he said. “Yet you’ll find that whatever it is you were searching for––who you are, what you are, why you are––was never anything an Unseelie, a god or even the Forge could give you. It was something unraveling all around you. Something you ran from.”

DAGFIN

Dagfin had always cherished winter. It heralded the death of all the rot that’d grown throughout the sun’s last cycle. The death of everything unwanted.

The summer was hot and gave light to everything better left in shadow. Was endless. Was the anniversary of his eldest brother’s final words. The rightful heir to the Roktan throne.

Yet now, winter was tainted by Fionn.

Dagfin wove lithely between the trees, the Ocras more potent than it’d ever felt before. Near the brink of collapse, his body was suddenly renewed.

The Roktan prince spun his daggers between his fingers, half eyeing his surroundings for the phuka and half expecting the fae king to appear out of nowhere, swinging his axes.

It was Dagfin who’d been tasked to hunt the phuka and the fae king who’d bore a change of heart; for Aisling or himself, the Faerak was uncertain. Only that he’d cursed it, wishing to face the phuka alone rather than align himself with Lir. And mercifully, they’d wordlessly agreed to venture their separate ways the moment their boots stepped foot outside Bludhaven’s threshold.

Dagfin had never caught or slayed a phuka before. Yet, by the looks of the clumsy trail it left in its wake, the Faerak knew it’d be a straightforward hunt. Hoofprints in the frozen dirt, broken branches from a heavier gait, lazy lines in the snow—its tail dragging behind it. And most disturbing of all, children’s clothing torn and left billowing on tree branches, tiny shoes discarded atop piles of leaves, and blood, both fresh and old, splattered across a landscape of ivory.

So, it came as no surprise when Dagfin set eyes on the creature curled beside the edge of a steep drop.

It looked no different than a pale stallion. Magnificent in the light of a fair winter’s star, innocently sleeping. And had the phuka’s trail not led the Faerak directly to the cliff’s edge, Dagfin would’ve second-guessed himself.

The phuka startled awake, searching its surroundings.

Dagfin crouched between the trees, more silent than the chittering birches or the splintering ice. Steadying his breath and drawing Fionn’s longsword.

One flick of the wrist and the task would be done with.

The phuka stood, tossing its glittering, moon-white mane.

Dagfin hesitated.

It made no sound, yet the Faerak heard its lullaby. The soft humming of a woman emanating from its magical luster.

Unlike the murúch, the sound itself didn’t spell him. Only the question of how a creature so resplendent could commit such sins.

Dagfin shook his head. The distraction, he knew, was intentional. The sign of a beast designed to convey innocence so children might follow it into the feywilds of their own accord.

Quick as lightning, Dagfin defeated the distance between himself and the phuka, raising Fionn’s blade to sink into the beast’s side. The blade plunged the same moment an axe flew across the expanse, both striking the Unseelie with a fleshy thud. The phuka reared, eyes glazing back, its lullaby dissolving into an otherworldly scream as blood as black as tar stained its coat and pooled by its hooves. Collapsing against the edge of the cliff.

Lir appeared from the trees, swinging the other axe in his free hand.

“You’re free to return now, princeling,” the fae king said, eyes focused on the Unseelie’s corpse, transformed into something else entirely. A gaunt, spindly-looking creature whose hair was thin and gray, its mouth pulled to the knobs where its ears should be. A haggard, grotesque beast that gave name to the evil it committed.

“I’m not leaving without the creature’s head.”

The fae king fixed his eyes on the Faerak .

“The phuka is mine.”

“Yet felled by my sword.”

Lir’s expression sparkled, darkly amused.

“If you did anything, it was notify the phuka of your presence. You’re fortunate my axe found its throat to commit true damage, worthy of slaying it.”

Lir bent over the beast, wrenching the edge of his blade from the leaking wound. He lifted it above his head, prepared to sever the phuka’s head.

Dagfin reacted, shifting and unsheathing Fionn’s blade from the body of the phuka and toward Lir’s axe.

The arc of the blade whistled. Its tip knocking the axe from Lir’s hand and scraping the back of his palm as a result.

Lir hissed, fae blood sizzling after the kiss of the blade’s edge.

“Very well, princeling; I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t hoped to return with two heads instead of one.”

Lir threw his left axe. The weapon spun, wicked fast and straight. And had Dagfin been but an average mortal, it would’ve been a mere flash of color, finding his throat before he’d borne the time to react. But Dagfin stepped to his right, avoiding the strike by a mere hair’s length. The axe striking the birch behind him with an angry judder.

“How much Ocras did you take, princeling?” The fae king collected his second axe. He adjusted his grip and tossed it.

Dagfin moved, and the second axe sunk into another tree.

“Perhaps the better question is, how many days must bleed before you can’t survive lest you consume your Ocras?”

Dagfin wasn’t surprised Lir knew the limitations of Ocras. That for mortals, magic never gave but always took. And ever since he’d narrowly escaped Peitho’s blade at their union, the Ocras had become irresistible. The only means of surviving. For without the dust, his muscles ached, his head throbbed, his skin paled, and his bones became brittle. On the cusp of death lest he inhale the Ocras once more—both a surety of more time as well as the reaper of it. A cruel mischief Dagfin found the magic enjoyed. Found satisfaction in both the mortals’ denial yet thirst for it at whatever cost.

“Enough to ensure Aisling cleaves from you.” Dagfin swung Fionn’s blade, once, twice, three times. Yet each one ricocheted off the face of Lir’s blades, artfully and easily blocked. Sparks flying and blades ringing each time they connected.

“So, the Lady and Fionn gain a new ally.”

Dagfin frowned. “My motives are for Aisling and Aisling alone. I align with no one else.”

Lir’s shoulders tensed and the wind heightened. The birches lurching, grabbing for the Faerak and forcing Dagfin to strike at their branches. They recoiled like snakes, lashing at him repeatedly. The Faerak making ribbons of their wood.

Nevertheless, it was not enough. Lir approached, shoving Fionn’s blade to the side. Dagfin recovered lithely, striking again, but the fae king was too quick, his branches latching around the Faerak ’s ankles, as Lir drove his axe for Dagfin’s heart.

Dagfin slammed his right fist and the butt of his sword into the fae king’s jaw. Lir, impossibly feline, didn’t stagger but stepped to the side, bottom lip bloodied by the sword’s pommel.

He grinned, licking his own blood off his lips.

Patience thinned.

A sure sign of defeat for Dagfin, as the whole forest twisted, grabbing Dagfin and shoving him onto the ground and on his back. The wind knocked from his lungs.

Lir plucked one of his axes from the nearest birch, crouching over Dagfin as he’d done the phuka, and positioning the axe’s edge beneath Dagfin’s chin.

Dagfin laughed beneath his breath, still recovering what little he had left of it.

“That took longer than expected,” he said, wrists chafed by the grip of the forest around him. “The great, mythic barbarian lord of the fae, stalled by a mortal.”

Lir considered him, head tilting to the side, but said nothing. Only rage and fury and something else entirely, brewing in the nuances of his expression, knocking Dagfin off guard.

Envy.

“So, what took you so long?” Dagfin pushed.

“What fun would your death be if not first relished?”

The trees tightened their grip, slithering around his legs, his torso, his arms, and even his throat. Threatening to bury him alive.

“Do you relish, or do you hesitate?”

Lir pushed the blade till it conjured a bead of Dagfin’s blood.

“You won’t kill me,” Dagfin said, despite the bone-white of Lir’s knuckles on the haft of the axe.

“I wouldn’t be so certain, princeling.”

“To kill me would be to lose Aisling.”

Lir’s expression narrowed. Dagfin had noticed that Aisling’s name on his tongue inspired unmatched rage in the fae king, so he said it often.

“You and I both know forgiveness isn’t among Aisling’s virtues,” Dagfin continued. “And despite whatever fated cord your gods claim knots between you, Aisling’s future isn’t guaranteed yours.”

Dagfin gambled his life with those words: this he knew. And yet, Lir didn’t flinch. Didn’t move nor scarcely breathe. The inhuman edge of his glare made more severe.

“I think of your death often, princeling. And one day it’ll be dealt richly by my axe, I swear it to the Forge.” His voice thrummed through the forest, weaving his vow into the roots of the earth. “Aisling’s future isn’t guaranteed mine, perhaps,” he forced out. “A part of her still clings to her past. And to you.”

“You believe me a burden.”

“I believe you a hero. A slave to your desires; among them, proving to your mortal clanns and tuaths that your purpose isn’t to rule atop a throne but in the shadows, vanquishing the demons that hunt your kind. Including myself.”

Dagfin despised that the fae king was, in part, correct. Had accurately measured even a fragment of the Faerak ’s motivations. Yet, it was both the fear and the nausea the Roktan throne inspired that compelled Dagfin to reject it. For to sit upon it, to claim it, was to inherit the ghost of his sibling.

“A fact for which you envy,” the Roktan prince said instead. “If only for Aisling to admire you instead of despise you; you, the villain of her people.”

Lir grimaced, his scowl deepening.

“You misread me.”

“That’s why you chose to hunt the phuka, wasn’t it? To prove to Aisling you aren’t the demon she believes you to be.”

Lir ground his teeth, jaw flexing at his words. Seemingly wishing to speak but thinking better of it.

But by the hesitation, the thoughts visibly blooming behind the fae king’s glare, the Roktan prince knew his assumptions were wrong. He’d indeed misread the fae king.

To Lir, the phuka had nothing to do with Aisling, at least not directly. So, was it somehow possible the fae king bore sympathy for a mortal child?

Lir focused.

“The eve of prophecy is swiftly approaching, and Aisling will be forced to make a choice: to forge a future or revive the past. And that choice will be hers alone.”

Lir lifted his axe from Dagfin’s neck and uncurled from his crouch. The forest released him, groaning as though protesting their lord’s final verdict. Dagfin gathered to his feet. The Ocras healing the aching in his limbs, his muscles, and his bones.

“What makes you so confident?” Dagfin asked, crossing his arms as Lir returned to the phuka.

“You’re a hero, princeling. But a good heart is only ever appealing until you’re forced to make a choice between what’s right and her.”

This time, Dagfin didn’t interrupt Lir as he lifted his axe. As he severed the phuka’s head, the feywilds memorizing the sound of its flesh ripping and bones splitting, bound to repeat it to those who wandered too far within their keep.