Chapter XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIII

LIR

The tears spilt between his lips were not his own.

They were hers. Even now, in slow death, the bond between them renewed his soul. Coaxing his eyes open despite his suffering.

“Something must be done,” Galad said.

“The poison has taken hold,” Filverel replied, barely a whisper. “It cannot kill him. Not fully. Only iron or fire will.”

Peitho gaped. “You can’t possibly mean?—”

“If it will end his misery,” Gilrel said, voice shaking as she staked her blade into the earth beside him and bowed her head, “then perhaps it is the only solution.”

Beside him lay his wings. Bloodied at the appendages. The absence of them left him cold. The last vestige of his mother. Grief, a fathomless hole inside his chest, cannibalizing him from the inside out.

“No.” Peitho shook her head. “How dare you all give up so easily? Surrender to Danu, her legions, and forsake your king?!”

“Surrender?” Filverel narrowed his eyes, “You believe this the easy path? The flippant choice that spares us?! If there was a way, I’d risk it no matter the cost to either myself or anyone else here for that matter.”

Lir desperately tried to scream, to move, to open his eyes and fight for his life. He’d endure an eternity of pain to live another day. He was forever, destined for more than a death by Danu’s trickery.

“She’s right,” Galad said, expressionless, still stunned, staring at Lir’s wings. “We can’t do this.”

“And what then? We let him suffer?!” Filverel yelled, voice breaking mid-sentence—unable to separate his grief from anger.

Lir wasn’t certain how long the silence lasted. The stillness after death and, now, before it. The few birches, pearl pines, and silver spruces still loyal to him and untouched by Aisling’s rage, wept. Arching their wooden spines in the swelling, in the absence of the nuthatch melodies, the gale’s blow, winter’s sun veiled by clouds in mourning.

“You’re panicking,” Galad said, eyes drifting from Peitho to Filverel.

“What other options do we have?” the advisor said, his voice stripped as though he’d been shouting for the last several days.

“An elixir, an herb, a potion, a draught, a spell, a curse,” Gilrel offered, listing them without taking a breath.

“We don’t have that sort of time!” Filverel shouted.

“We’ll make the time,” Gilrel bit back.

Galad shook his head. “ His only salvation, the fire the fae rebuke .” Words Danu had spoken, silencing them each.

All shifted, finally drawing their attention to Aisling.

AISLING

“She’ll kill him!” Peitho screamed. “We can’t possibly trust her with this.”

“She’s his caera , Peitho,” Gilrel said, the word “ caera ” slapping Peitho in the face. “And the only one capable of wielding the fire necessary to destroy the poison.”

“She is by every definition his bane. His undoing. The ill-omen of the fae!” Peitho continued, as though Aisling weren’t kneeled beside Lir as she spoke.

“You saw the form her draiocht took,” Filverel said. “Somehow, impossibly, she summoned her flames and in so doing, summoned Racat in the image of her flames. That must mean something.”

“But what?” Galad asked, the only calm one among them.

“She’s been chosen, selected, or forged by either Ina or Racat.”

Aisling’s face twisted, her mind whipping violently from thought to thought. Her soul expanding and swelling with the extreme form of so many emotions.

“Perhaps she isn’t the enemy, the mortal weapon we once believed,” Galad said. He turned to Aisling, a soft gesture inherent in his gaze. As though, in this moment, he wanted to believe she wasn’t the traitor they’d witnessed at Dagfin and Peitho’s wedding. Wanted to believe she could still be an ally.

“If her draiocht manifested itself in the shape of Racat, it implies her destiny is with the fae. With the greenwood.” Galad exchanged glances with the rest of Lir’s knights. And at the words, Dagfin turned away. “So, give her an opportunity to prove it.”

They glared at Aisling, hatefully, intensely. A look that dissolved into hope when the silence became unbearable. Lir still clutched by otherworldly pain.

Aisling inhaled.

“ You perish in a world of your own making. An axe in your heart .”

The Lady’s words crept into Aisling’s mind, spoken on a loop until Aisling knew their cadence by heart.

This was not Lir’s death day. He would live to kill Aisling: this much was prophesized.

And if it was possible to change prophecy, Aisling’s choice here and now would speak of it. It wasn’t revealed when or why Lir would be Aisling’s end. Only that he would be. A mere fragment of the portrait drawn by the Lady.

One day, Aisling and Lir’s positions would be reversed.

Aisling turned to his knights.

They each beheld her in silence.

Dagfin, however, avoided Aisling’s eyes entirely. Head bent and eyes red.

In that moment, Aisling wished she bore the strength, the will, the courage to kill the fae king. Desperately tried to convince herself she could. That with so much blood on her hands already, another meant nothing at all. That he meant nothing at all. Especially he, the enemy of mortals, her own deceiver. He, who not only threatened her goals in the curse breaker’s name, but was also the reaper of her end.

And yet, Aisling was physically unable. Her body paralyzed, her heart thrashing inside her chest, stomach churning. Not only could she not stomach it, but she also found her soul would shatter. Not because of a bond or fate or prophecy. Something else. Something ravening, chaotic, and bonded to her.

Aisling bent over Lir.

She ran her fingers through his hair, watching as he leaned into her touch, still overcome with torment. She brushed her lips against his ear.

“Do you trust me?” she whispered.

The corners of his lips curled despite himself. “No,” he managed.

The sound of his voice sweetening her hate. Her loathing an addiction if inspired by him.

Aisling pressed a palm to his chest and closed her eyes.

I wish to summon you , she spoke to the draiocht , watching as it stirred inside its abyss, angry it’d been woken after its recent battle.

I wish to summon you, Racat, dragon of power . The form her draiocht took, living within her since her union with Lir, perhaps even before, unbeknownst to herself. A magic unnamed until now.

The basilisk moved, popping its primeval bones and creeping into the light.

Enough to burn whatever poison threads through the fae king and no more , Aisling added.

Racat growled, rattling the interior of his lair.

You will kill him , it said.

This isn’t the end the Lady prophesied for him. He will not die , Aisling replied.

And you believe her? Have you considered it was all a deception? A trickery to ensure you unbind yourself from the fae king by slaying him yourself?

Aisling had already weighed this possibility. The Lady bore no motivation to speak the truth especially if it conflicted with her own goals. And so, what Racat suggested was likely.

I’ve made my choice , Aisling said, focusing her magic like Lir taught her and opening her eyes.

Embers bloomed from her fingertips.

Peitho sprung for her.

“Wait!” Filverel shouted, grappling the princess of Niltaor. “Let her do this.”

Had Aisling been aware of her surroundings, she would’ve been baffled alongside the rest. Filverel, who’d abhorred and distrusted Aisling since her union with Lir, desperate enough to let Aisling attempt to save Lir’s life.

Aisling burned all which had no place in Lir’s body. Finding the poison with her draiocht and devouring it. Precise magic carved by unsteady hands.

“ It’s feral, wild, seeking to either be dominated or dominant. It will learn from you which role it prefers .”

Aisling rehearsed Lir’s lesson from the apple tree in her mind. Her temples pulsing with pain in her concentration. Hardening herself against the draiocht wrinkling its muzzle and snarling.

Lir bared his teeth, finding her wrist and gripping it till Aisling believed he might crush it. Turn her bones to dust, as the fire seeped beneath the skin and traveled. Weaving, knotting, folding, tangling inside. Reviving the fae king. The remaining forest thrashing around them, monk’s moss, clovers, fresh mounds of emerald growing from where he lay, spreading, and transforming Fionn’s winter into everlasting green. The woodland exhaling in relief as the northern gale danced and new trees sprouted from the earth, spreading their branches like limbs, yawning and stretching after centuries of sleep.

The poison squirmed, leaping from his body and bleeding into Aisling’s own, crawling up her arm and scalding her bones.

Aisling screamed, releasing her hand and falling backward. An angry scar wrapped through her fingers and up her forearm. The poison burned, leaving its mark regardless on she who expelled it.

You didn’t think such precise magic came without a cost, did you ? Racat chuckled.

Aisling stood waist deep in a river: water gargled by this northern land. It ran from one side of Fjallnorr to the other. A corridor the Ashild had dug into the earth.

It was cool, speckled in fallen leaves and lined with precious stones made more vibrant by the life Lir’s healing inspired.

Aisling dipped her arm in the waters. It burned still, scarlet and blistering. The rest of her wounds from Danu’s ambush paling in comparison.

“Starn and I used to spar in rivers like this,” Dagfin said, appearing from the surrounding forest to lean against a boulder nestled beside the river. “Before the mortal sovereigns chose to build their walls. The song of running water veiled our ruckus and washed our cuts before supper.”

“That was another life,” Aisling said, surprised Dagfin spoke with her. Since their last conversation around the fire, the Faerak had been reluctant to glance in her direction or exchange more than a handful of words. His coldness was a punch to the gut, but Aisling didn’t push him. She knew he needed time to process the forking of their lives. A truth that’d been breaking Aisling’s heart since it first took root.

“Aye, back before we knew what true battle was. What it meant to harm another much less kill them.”

Aisling swallowed. The smell, the sound, the emptiness Aisling had felt when she’d slaughtered all who’d stood with Danu slipping into her mind.

“I don’t regret what I did,” she said, meeting the Faerak ’s eyes. “It was necessary. A means of survival.”

The image of every beast kneeling in flame flashed across her mind’s eye.

Dagfin weighed his thoughts, brow pinched and arms crossed.

“I’ve killed countless Unseelie in my lifetime, Aisling. I’m hardly one to judge.”

“Yet you do judge.” And Aisling didn’t blame him for it.

Dagfin’s brows drew together, furrowing his expression.

“It’s more so that I don’t understand,” he said. “I kill to protect the innocent. You kill for power.” He hesitated. “And for him .”

Aisling looked away. Mortal minds weren’t weaved with the capacity to understand survival in the same manner the wild understood. As for his mention of Lir…Aisling couldn’t think of it now, afraid to touch the Faerak ’s implication.

A passing gale sifted through her hair. One of the few sounds amidst the quiet. Dagfin’s anger finally breaking through.

“Whatever binds the two of you, Aisling, undo it. Before it costs you your soul.”

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