Chapter XXXII
CHAPTER XXXII
AISLING
The forest was bleeding.
Sap oozed down its bark, freezing before it ever kissed the snow.
Aisling lay awake, listening to its pining. To the wind, the crackling of the fire, and the skittering of beasts prowling in the dark.
“You need to rest, Ash,” Dagfin whispered, startling Aisling from her thoughts. The same words the Roktan prince had spoken a thousand times, but always inside an iron embrace, mortal castles, and bastions, lest the wet-nurses discover them awake while the moon still reigned.
Aisling opened her mouth to speak but thought better of it, piquing Dagfin’s interest.
“I used to avoid the nightmares as well,” he said, understanding despite Aisling’s silence.
“You’re braver than I.”
“It isn’t courage. It’s a hardening of the heart. A refusal to feel if it means feeling afraid.”
Aisling shook her head.
“You’re too good, Fin. You cannot understand what it means to be haunted by innocent lives taken and to despise it not out of guilt but anger. Anger that it still bears any power over me at all.”
Dagfin rolled onto his back, glaring up at the canopies above. The rest of the Sidhe slept around them with the exception of Galad and Lir, pacing the periphery of their camp for the first half of the night. Then, Filverel and Peitho would eventually take their place until the sun rose, grinning at dawn.
“You speak of the men aboard the Starling .”
Aisling didn’t respond. There was no succinct method to explain every sin she’d ever committed and those she was destined to deal. To describe the chokehold prophecy bore over her.
“The Lady speaks of untold desolation in my future.”
“She’s wrong.”
“Is she?”
Dagfin hesitated.
“The night before your union, I offered to run away with you. Do you remember?” he asked, turning to meet her eyes. His own, the soft churning of a starlit sea.
Aisling nodded her head.
“We still can. We can cleave ourselves from the narratives of all that is fae.”
Aisling’s heart splintered, wishing he’d never spoken the words that Aisling knew he considered often.
“I will not run from those who seek my defeat.”
“You consider it a surrender, but it is anything but. It’s a victory, Aisling. To rid yourself of the power they hold over you and charter a life of your own.”
“And charter I shall, after I bring them to their knees.”
“At what cost?”
Aisling locked eyes with the Roktan prince. She’d weighed the cost time and time again and still she found herself wanting. Thirsting. Needing, what it is she craved. And so, she would pay it and relish the conquest.
“You’re meant to be king, Fin.”
“Damn my throne,” he said. “It isn’t mine and was never meant to be.”
“Your brother would’ve wanted you to rule, Fin. He never would’ve wanted this for you—throwing your future away to accompany me on this forge-forsaken quest?—”
“He would’ve wanted me to pursue what it is I love.”
Dagfin’s expression broke, the edge of his jaw sharp and his lips taut with emotion. As though the words had slipped from between his lips and found their way between both he and Aisling.
“ Who I love.”
Aisling paled.
The final word as tangible as though it were alive and breathing between them, wrist-deep in their chests and twisting their hearts.
“You’ve changed in ways I can’t understand,” he continued. “But that doesn’t and never could diminish what it is I feel for you. Rage for you. And if power, vengeance, supremacy is what you need to at last prove to your clann, the fae, this realm, and the next that you aren’t the pawn they once believed, then so be it. We could rule Roktling if you wanted, side by side. As it should’ve been.”
Aisling blinked, hot tears streaming down her cheeks.
“You were born to make the world a better place, Fin. To protect as you’ve done for me all my life. Even now.” Aisling couldn’t swallow, nearly choking on the stone in her throat. “I, Fin, was born to change. To reap it, to make it, to herald it. For better,” she said. “Or for worse.”
Dagfin shook his head. Deep sea tempests swelling behind his lashes.
“This isn’t your journey, and I should’ve never let you accompany me. If you care for me at all, then return to Roktling. Honor Feradach and accept the crown before it’s forced upon you.”
The Faerak scowled, his anger and sorrow rising. The sleeping Sidhe around them stirring in the commotion. As for Galad and Lir, Aisling only prayed they weren’t within earshot.
“It’s because I care for you that I’m here at all.”
“I’m not your destiny, Fin. Our lives have forked. You will be honored, and I will be feared.”
“You are great , Aisling. Capable of both great good and great evil. I’m not naive to the forces that wage war within you. But a battle is a battle because it’s meant to be fought. So, fight for it, Aisling. Fight to be good. Fight for what’s right in place of those who have no strength to do so themselves,” Dagfin reached out and held her hand, as they’d done as children when the tales of fair folk became too frightening. “For every mortal village pillaged, every forest burned, every death committed in vain. Because above all, Aisling, I believe in you. In the heart that sacrificed everything for her race. A heart I’d die for again and again, if it meant fighting by your side.”
Aisling squeezed his hand, memorizing its pulse.
Dagfin loved a woman who’d died before she ever set foot in fae land. Her body burned and her ashes buried in a circle of fire. Offered by those she’d loved.
“You will accompany me to Lofgren’s Rise. You will discover what it is I seek alongside me: this much I owe you,” Aisling said, biting down tears. “And then you will go home.”
LIR
“ Turn around ,” the trees hissed.
Lir measured them, peering further into their depths. Weighing the density of the draiocht as it built, spell by spell till even Lir’s ears popped beneath its pressure. A consequence of Samhain or something else entirely, the Sidhe king had yet to decide.
“Turn around,” the trees repeated, “the forest here is not your own.”
The mount beneath Lir agreed, nodding its head forward in warning. Its heart beating swiftly.
Lir cursed, raising his hand to stop the others following shortly behind.
“ What is it ?” Filverel asked in Rún, suddenly more attune to the shift in the air. Peitho’s hand drifted to the haft of her weapon, quickly interrupted by the subtle shake of Galad’s head. A gesture the princeling noticed as well. So long as Danu believed them ignorant of her ploys, they bore the advantage.
The stench of forge-old rot rose like the fog.
“By the Forge,” Gilrel whispered a silent prayer as black sap bled from the birches like tears of ink. And the forest shifted to black.
“Danu,” Lir said.
Once identified for what it was, Lir could taste the poison of her influence as it spread through Fjallnorr’s northernmost woods. The envy, the resentment, the anger mushrooming till every pine, every stone, every river, and every beast of the feywild was touched by its mold.
The only path to Lofgren’s Rise was through Danu’s legions of traitors. Made obvious by the eyes of her dryads peering from behind their obsidian bark, the beetles that skittered between their branches, and the ice that made moist their wooden flesh. Like spiders on a web, salivating, believing Lir to be entering their trap, ignorant of their ready pincers.
Lir encouraged his mount, his knights shortly behind, choosing to ignore the warnings of those still loyal trees in favor of continuing onwards. Into Danu’s waiting embrace.
“Bring Aisling’s mare beside my own,” Lir ordered Filverel.
His advisor obeyed without complaint.
Aisling found Lir’s eyes but said nothing. So, Lir was left to hope Aisling sensed it too. Knew that the blood black of the surrounding woodland was no longer under Lir’s control, but Danu’s herself. And knowing the empress, whatever Lir coveted most would be what she sought to destroy.
And had Lir not heard the rapid beat of the dryads around him, the anxiety of the robins still bold enough to peer from their canopies, or the energy drumming through the mud, the ambush would’ve come without warning.
The trees bent backwards, reeling before crashing into the earth. The world shook, knocking the mares off balance in a violent, screeching explosion.
Lir dove for Aisling, shoving her off the beast before it crushed her. They flew to the earth, torn apart and a few paces from the other.
The Sidhe leapt lithely from their mounts, rolling and finding their footing. Even the princeling, turning to find the dryads in their tree forms growing thorns, stretching larger, tangling between one another only to hurl themselves into the earth in a thunderous burst of dirt, splintered branches, and blade-sharp ice. Stakes that jutted at Aisling, flame swathed fists digging their nails into the dirt in anticipation of the pain.
Lir turned ashen. Dread prickling the hair at his nape.
He cursed, sprinting for Aisling where she lay and crushing her beneath him.
Aisling wrenched her eyes shut as Lir hid her, covering her body with his own. Her breath against his ear scalding and quick, the fluttering of her heart pulsing against his own and stressing the intangible cord between them. The intensity of it alone near capable of blinding him to the pain of the ice and wood flying from the mayhem and staking Lir’s back instead of Aisling.
Lir roared, the sensation somehow worse than an iron blade.
Six or so wooden stakes shimmied between his armor and slid into his back. Scarlet leaking from his wounds and dripping onto Aisling beneath him.
“Lir,” she breathed, violet eyes searching his own with horror. Feeling with her palms the warmth of his blood as he sheltered her.
“Lir,” she said again, this time more desperate. The Sidhe king struggled to answer as he uncurled, kneeling before her as every sliver of traitorous tree slid between his muscles and took root. Centimeters, perhaps inches from his heart.
Aisling reached her arms around him as if to embrace him, instead, unsheathing the stakes from his back. The pain euphoric when dealt by her hands. The smell of her so near, unbridling his power and renewing what was lost when apart.
His knights drew their swords, allowing Aisling the gruesome duty of drawing each stake from his back as they slipped through the mayhem like blood-bent shadows. A line of defense until the job was done.
“Lir,” she said again, after the last stake was removed. Already his body healing, made new when so near to her own. But time was fleeting.
They stood, swiftly dodging another tree as it pummeled into the earth, racing after the others. The world titling beneath the pressure of the onslaught.
“Aisling!” Dagfin screamed, still waiting—always waiting for her.
Lir cursed beneath his breath again, drawing his axe and severing a branch that whipped at them, splitting and writhing in the dirt as it fell. His movement slower than he was accustomed to, a sharp pain slithering through the flesh around his spine.
“Hurry!” Gilrel shouted, leaping from flailing branch to flailing branch, splitting its spindly claws till the dryads hissed, lurching in pain. Filverel, Galad, and Peitho soaking the earth in its sap. Their blades glinting despite the density of the canopies above, the showering of stones, roots, and soil. A choir of ripping, of groaning, of crunching as the discord ensued.
Aisling cast flame after flame, tearing through the trees and sizzling them to ash. Her violet eyes glimmering more brightly, dark hair fanning as she spun from one target to the next, the edge of her lips bent with determination.
Lir gritted his teeth through the pain, slicing through Danu’s legion. As though needles of undiluted iron buried beneath his flesh where the dryad’s stakes had penetrated his flesh. The torment, all-consuming as their party battled through the dryad’s ambush, until the world seemingly ended with a rock face.
A river poured over its edge but was frozen by winter’s will. A sparkling veil draped over and between the body of a colossal, obsidian ash. As though the giant once showered beneath the waterfall’s sheets, now bejeweled by its ice.
The ash twisted and the ice cracked. The body of a woman taking shape, blinking arachnids, thorns, and vermin. Peeling from its bark and shuddering with life.
Danu.
“Go on, Damh Bán ,” Danu said, her voice thrumming through the earth and echoing through her corridors of black. “Bend the knee to the true sovereign of the greenwood.”
Danu twisted one rotting hand wrapped in a gauntlet of thorns.
And at the gesture, blinding pain consumed Lir.
The agony of the dryad’s stakes, heightened, iron in his blood, his bones, his draiocht , eager to slowly devour him morsel by morsel from the inside out.
Lir collapsed onto his knees, grinding his fangs against his teeth, if only to brace against the pain.
“You’ve poisoned him,” Filverel realized, longsword dripping with sap at his side. Expression lit with desperate outrage.
“A combination of mortal hemlock and burning nettle, also known as Neantóg ,” Danu chuckled to herself. “A brew that mimics the effects of iron when exposed to Seelie. The Damh Bán should feel as if iron tangles through his muscles and between every nerve. And at my command, it will spread, seeping beneath his bones, having taken root the moment it plunged beneath his armor.”
Neantóg.
One of the poisons Fionn had used in his second test.
Her rage abounding, Aisling reacted and summoned flames of amethyst.
They grew from the earth, hot and wild, barreling toward Danu.
The empress shifted her attention, lifting several behemoth roots and slamming them against Aisling’s draiocht . The flames flattened, suffocated beneath the dirt.
“You’ll have your turn as well, little beast.”
Aisling seethed. Both Galad and Dagfin moving more closely behind her should she try again.
Danu slid her attention back to the Sidhe king.
And at Danu’s smile, Lir screamed. The poison growing teeth and slithering around his heart.
Aisling reached for him. Without hesitation, Galad grabbed her arm and held her back. Danu hissed something Lir couldn’t understand. His ears ringing, stomach twisting as Danu moved again and Lir felt her intentions before the hemlock and nettle obeyed.
She forced Lir’s wings from his back. Wrenching them one by one from their hiding place in some draiocht -made cavern till they draped over his shoulders in a cloak of silver. Resplendent, shimmering, and capturing whatever light it reflected.
The forest stilled, his knights cursed, and the world beheld his Iod ancestry sparkling across his shoulders. Opalescent and dug from his body without his consent. Among the most gruesome, dishonorable crimes committed against any winged Sidhe.
Danu’s dryads lifted Lir with their branches and hung him by his wings mid-air. Aisling screamed; Galad held her in place while Filverel, Peitho, Gilrel, and even Dagfin swiveled, searching for an escape. A solution. But so long as Danu’s poison coursed through Lir, she was his to do with as she liked, lest it be a quick death.
“Rise, greenwood and the feywilds! Come and see your king in all his glory!”
Lir felt the edges of his wings pull and scrape against the dryad’s branches. Tears, punctures, rips, capable of being remedied slowly, if at all.
Wings to the fae were a vulnerability. A weakness and rarely, if ever, brandished lest they needed to take flight. But Danu knew this well. Savored the spectacle she’d created of Lir’s pain, his humiliation, finding his weakness and using it against him. A symbol of all the vices he’d inherited from Ina, considering only those Sidhe with blood from Iod bore wings.
Lir’s knights, Aisling, and Dagfin backed into a circle below him. For in Lir’s periphery, he knew who’d come.
Bipedal bears, foxes, rabbits, wolves, and badgers appeared from the hollows, their dens, their nests. Pixies, phantoms, ghouls, goblins, hounds, changelings, bánánach, among others, crept around the dryads to glean their king hung by his wings, frozen by pain. All those creatures who’d sided with Danu after his union with Aisling, now aligned with the empress’s efforts to usurp Lir, too frightened to show their faces until she’d proved her supremacy. Until Lir hung prone and unable to punish their treason. An audience of traitors come to scavenge their victory.
And had Lir bore the health, he would’ve disemboweled them each, nailing their skulls to pikes around Annwyn. The pain only rivaled by his wrath. His draiocht shredding the walls of its abyss, clawing to be set free so it might make blood and bones of Danu and her legions.
“Let it be known that the lineage of the original twelve Sidhe sovereigns will end, first with Lir, then his brother. The Unseelie need not be ruled by the fae lest our needs, our hungers be sacrificed in exchange for mortal acquiescence once more. A revolution that drips here but ripples throughout the realm,” Danu shouted, Samhain dissolving her words till they bled from the forest to the Other. “From this day onward, the feywilds belong to the Unseelie, the beasts beneath oak’s shadow, and none other!”
The beasts, the fiends, the creatures of midnight hours and woodland secrets, banged their fists against the earth, hollered, howled, barked, and squealed, growing more frenzied by the heartbeat.
Danu grinned and the trees obeyed.
They pulled Lir’s wings and ripped them from his back.
AISLING
Aisling screamed, Lir’s agony her own, coursing through the intangible thread between them and sinking its teeth into her soul.
Galad tightened his grip, arms wrapped around her waist as she struggled against him.
“He will rot, slowly dying as the poison seeps more deeply,” Danu said, voice bubbling with glee as dirt spilled from the corners of her lips. Salivating over her conquest. “And let the forest witness his death. Bury his body beneath its soil and return his corpse to the Forge, ashamed of his betrayal—his alliance with those who felled us, hunted us, burned us. Let the Other mock him as he enters their shadows broken. His only salvation, the fire, the fae rebuke.”
Lir lay in the snow, fangs bared as he desperately battled the misery. Left to collapse, his wings discarded at either side of him. Muscles taut and runed fingers gripping the earth. The pain pulsing through, shadowing the sorrow of Danu’s dismemberment. The grief, the anguish, smoking his periphery as he fought to remain alive.
Aisling turned to face Danu. Their eyes met and the hordes of beasts and Unseelie hushed.
“And his last memory of the mortal realm? His bride, the fire hand’s daughter, the bane of our realm, dethroned with violence.”
Lir struggled to fight, reaching for Aisling despite the pain.
Galad, at last, released Aisling, raising his blade the moment Danu’s dryads swung for the not-so-mortal queen. His sword split their wood in half, sap spewing. Yet it wasn’t enough. Not for Aisling.
Aisling summoned the draiocht . Violet fire roared awake, seizing their branches, both severed and intact, and bled their limbs to ash.
More drove toward her, wielding their twigs, their vines, their roots like whips.
Aisling, swiftly, focused the draiocht , allowing it to slip from its abyss and rise through her, lurching and casting its fire till Aisling was forced to hold her breath a heartbeat longer than the last. Fires taking hold of the dryads and burning them alive. Their screams bloodying the air they each breathed.
Danu fumed, slamming her fists into the earth and tilting the axis on which they each stood.
“You know not the way the forest lives, little beast!” she screamed, swarms of beetles, of flies, of ants, pouring from her pale white eyes. “No matter how hard you try, your iron bones, your mortal flesh, will never fully burn. You do not belong and never shall you. You will rot having served your purpose and brought the Damh Bán to his knees.”
Aisling’s fists blazed, her gut lit with wildfire when she glanced at Lir, the suffering worsening. All because he’d sheltered her, protected her from Danu’s dryads. Taken the onslaught upon himself.
She should suffer, the draiocht whispered. She manipulates. She deceives. But she does not hold power over us.
Aisling could ignite the whole of the forest around them as she’d done the Starling . Could burn every last beast and Unseelie that’d celebrated Lir’s torment. That prayed for her own.
Yet Dagfin’s voice echoed in her mind, “ Fight to be good .”
She exchanged glances with the Roktan prince. He stood to her left, frustrated, furious, confused. Thrown into the center of fae conflict he bore no stake in other than Aisling’s role in it.
Perhaps there was a path to salvation that wasn’t as ruthless. A path Dagfin would recognize if placed in her position.
Danu laughed. “What do you say, little beast?”
The forest writhed, lashing at Aisling. Lir explained this to Aisling before. The forest didn’t concede to good or evil. It conceded to power. And it would concede to Aisling.
“Kneel,” Aisling said.
Aisling inhaled, trapping the draiocht inside her chest. She’d done the same in Nemed’s tent before Dagfin and Peitho’s union, except this time, it was purposeful.
She unleashed the draiocht , allowed it to grow, to swell, to explode from her lungs and rise, coaxed by her hunger. And this time, fire was not a serpent but a colossal dragún . A sinuous demon roaring into existence, crackling, morphing, shifting in licks of flame.
Racat.
The shape and spirit of her draiocht come to, at long last, unveil itself.
Danu’s pale eyes widened, her legions fleeing from whence they came, and her dryads, recoiling, pulling at their roots, unbinding themselves from the earth.
But before any could speak, before they could run far, Aisling allowed Racat to ravage Danu’s legions.
A beast of flame clawing between the trees, flaying every creature alive, the smell of their hides, their furs, their fear smoking the air, stoked by the dryad trees crackling with heat.
At last, the dragún flew toward Danu, the empress, who recoiled, drawing back into her tree form and burying herself inside the cave hollowed behind the waterfall of ice from which she’d emerged.
Aisling compelled the draiocht to find her. Slithering and disappearing inside the cave as the realm burned and Aisling memorized their howls for mercy. Writhing, bent over, kneeling on the ground.