The Savage Queen (The Aisling Trilogy #2)

Chapter XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

AISLING

Stepping into Iod’s corridor was like waking from a dream. One Aisling found she clung to, despising herself for the tumbling of her stomach each time she dared glance in the fae king’s direction after their dance. The silver-eyed ravens that usually let loose within her gut, maddened and riled by the celebrations of Samhain .

Yet as they wandered further through Ina’s castle, the murals against the walls turned green with emeralds, depicting the forest. A viridescence that spread like swarms of beetles into the heart of the fae queen’s keep. As though her love for Lir’s father, Bres, had devoured her soul and bloodied her home with the gore of their binding.

Aisling approached a steepled door at the end of a dark, cobwebbed corridor, its fae light dim and wilted after a millennium. She sensed no witchery, no darkness on the other side. Heard nor tasted anything suspicious. So, Aisling pulled a ring lodged between the snarling teeth of a knocker in the image of Racat.

“Wait—” Lir piped but it was too late. The threshold slid open, releasing a cloud of age-old dust as it yawned awake.

Immediately, Lir moved in front of Aisling, shielding her from whatever might lie on the other side. The air this deep into the mountain was bone-chilling.

The room was cast in shadow. Still, Aisling could make sense of the darkness.

Two wispy figures laughed, raced, and opened the door on the other side.

Ina and Bres.

Lir’s bottom lip bled where his fang punctured it, aware their trail was marked by his mother and father’s ghostly footsteps. Ina and Bres, a pace ahead of both Aisling and Lir as they navigated to the top of Lofgren’s Rise.

The threshold behind them closed of its own accord. Creaking shut as the roses in the room flickered to life, illuminating a chamber cast in ice. Of the colossal statue of a maiden with two owl wings crowning either side of her head. Both eyes veiled by a supple cloak that spilled down her body and to her feet in great folds across the marble floors. Both palms extended before her and facing the mirrored ceilings, as though in eternal prayer. All bejeweled by the sparkling trove of winter’s keep.

Aisling now knew Ina’s appearance well enough to recognize her, even if etched in stone.

Yet Aisling’s attention was drawn to the ice. The frost coating every morsel of the room.

Realization dawned on Aisling; a curse hissed past her lips as the great body of a bear peeled forth from the shadows.

Greum rose on his hind legs, hurling himself at Aisling to pin her against the ground. Without hesitation, Aisling produced a bolt of fire, burning through the beast’s fur as it roared in pain. In the same heartbeat, a leaf-ridden root shot forth from the frozen trees surrounding them, wrapping around Greum’s mighty neck and slamming him into the floor.

Aisling spun on her heel, meeting Lir’s eyes as she made to run to him. His forest green eyes flashing with panic the moment something or someone wrapped their hand around Aisling’s wrist and held her in place.

Aisling turned, finding, to her horror, Fionn towering above her, exploring her with a gaze frosted by northern winds.

“I’ve missed you, mo Lúra ,” he said in a voice made of velvet, pulling her closer by the wrist. Aisling summoned her flames again but this time, her draiocht was met not with fear, but amusement. Fionn blew on her fist full of fire, and like a match, it extinguished, smoking. Her magic, gasping for breath the moment he clasped a collar around her throat.

Not again , Aisling screamed inside her mind.

Dread iced each of Aisling’s bones as she desperately clawed at Fionn’s jewels to no avail. Aisling tried over and over again, grinding her teeth, but the more she scavenged her abyss for Racat, her draiocht , she found it cold. Colder than it’d ever been inside Oighir. This collar somehow more powerful than the one that’d sealed Lir and Fionn’s deal in Oighir. The walls of her darkest corners glazed over with ice and made sharp with icicles like blades.

Please , she pleaded with her draiocht .

I cannot , Racat groaned in frustration, this Sidhe lord wields powers beyond his making. This is the Lady’s doing.

“Don’t look so surprised, mo Lúra ,” Fionn purred, leaning toward her. “Surely you knew I’d come for you.”

LIR

“Release her,” Lir growled from behind, his voice filling the chamber. The vines he’d wrapped around Greum’s neck, tightening like a noose even as the beast squirmed for breath.

“Are you threatening me, little brother?” Fionn laughed, and at its sound the room grew colder. Every mirror possessed by Fionn’s winter till they each splintered down the center. Verglas cutting across the marble floors and slithering around Lir’s vines, freezing and shattering his hold over Greum.

The bear gasped for breath, lumbering onto its paws. Fionn held up a hand, commanding Greum to stand his ground and allow Fionn this battle alone.

Lir squinted, resisting the urge to behead his brother with the mere flick of his wrist and the trajectory of his axe.

“So protective over what was never yours to begin with,” Fionn continued, doing his best to provoke Lir while he bore the upper hand. Aisling was swathed in smoke, draining her energy to conjure fire. Mischief on Fionn’s part, Lir already knew. He could taste the work of the Lady in his brother’s draiocht as it stalked up the walls. Of bloody stars, a shear’s edge, or a spider’s web.

“What makes you think we haven’t already truly bonded?” Lir said, padding nearer.

“So, you did?” Fionn asked, gathering Aisling in his arms. Lir felt his stomach drop, but he held back, refusing to give Fionn the satisfaction.

Aisling shoved against him, unable to best a Sidhe king in matters of brute strength alone.

“Tell me then, what was it like?” Fionn continued, face brightening the moment he’d spoken. Reading the hesitation flickering across Lir’s expression regardless of his attempts to mask it. “Did she scream? Did she squirm like she is now?—”

Lir threw one half of Hiraeth.

It hurled through the chamber, thirsty for the blood between Fionn’s eyes. Disappointed when Fionn raised a hand, freezing Lir’s blade mid-air and shoving it across the room with venom. The axe slapped against the wall before clattering against the ground.

Fionn laughed. “You think you can fool me? I can smell the unsatiated want on the both of you. Can taste everything unmet between the two of you.” Fionn bowed his head to smell the sweat beading at Aisling’s throat despite the cold.

Lir went rigid, rivaling the rage evolving into wrath within.

“Lir—” Aisling warned, but Lir couldn’t hear her above the storm of gore in his mind.

“Touch her,” Lir said, deathly slow, “and I’ll serve every last mortal a chalice of your blood as they bow before both her and I. Your head piked before our dais.”

“I’m afraid you’re envisioning both mine and Aisling’s future.”

“Never speak her name again,” Lir warned a final time, his fangs scraping against his tongue.

“Or what?” Fionn grinned as Aisling’s smoke thickened, her efforts to breathe her draiocht, stifled at once.

“Release me!” she hissed, the anger, the desperation in her voice staking Lir through the chest.

“Into the prison of another? My brother keeps you all the same,” Fionn said.

Aisling hesitated, violet eyes flashing with something Lir didn’t have time to explore.

Fionn pulled Aisling’s hair away from her face so her shoulders, her throat, her neckline, were all exposed as he tipped her face to his, mouth moving nearer to her own.

Lir felt the realm snap.

He exploded the chamber with great oaks and vines and roots, reaching for his brother as the statue of their mother, overcome with both forest and ice, cleaved at the center.

For the first time, Fionn’s smug arrogance collapsed, swiftly recovering as he froze every branch, every root, every growth, but it was already too late.

Amidst the mayhem, Lir tossed his second axe, finding Fionn’s wrist and slicing it clean off.

The son of Winter screamed, releasing Aisling so he could clutch his bloodied limb. Greum roared, chasing after Aisling. It was futile. Lir’s willows shielded her from the bear, collapsing over the beast even as Aisling reached for him.

Lir forced himself to turn away. She couldn’t stay. Not when Fionn had meddled with her draiocht at the aid of the Lady, his collar winking at Lir the moment it’d been placed around Aisling’s neck.

“Who amplifies your power?!” Fionn seethed at Lir, desperately trying to gather himself despite his severed hand. “What cursed creature favors you to share their strength?!”

Indeed, no Seelie nor Unseelie, no mortal nor beast, was made to wield enough power to grow an ash, a yew, an oak, an alder, much less a forest. But Lir found Aisling’s proximity, her smell, her taste, inspired unique strength within him. Brightened his draiocht and fed it new life. His sheer proximity to Aisling during the dance through the spirit’s Snaidhm , enough to embolden his power for sorcery such as this.

“You think this is power?” Lir asked Fionn as he drew closer. “Then imagine what’ll become of you if you so much as glance at my caera again.”

Fionn grimaced, maddened by his brother’s warning.

“You know good and well that if I can’t have it, I want it all the more,” Fionn said, unsheathing a new weapon from his back with the one hand still intact. A spear.

“Take it as a commandment from your sovereign then. High lord of all Sidhe and the rightful heir to Racat.” Lir smiled an easy grin, relishing Fionn’s reaction. “Come now, brother, where’s your decorum? You’re intended to bow.”

The forest around them, growing from the inside of Ina’s chamber, continued to break through Fionn’s ice, delivering Lir’s axes into his waiting palms. Lir twirled them between his fingers as he approached.

“You think I’d ever bow to you?! Only should my body rot beneath the earth would you ever catch my crown below yours!” Fionn’s face warped with anger, wrist dripping at his side.

Lir stilled his axes, readying himself for combat.

“So be it.”

Lir was a violent star, the arc of his axe a gleaming blur of metal as it swung for his elder brother.

Fionn parried the strike, raising his spear vertically. The clang of their weapons rung throughout the chamber, echoing off the icy walls and vibrating through Lir’s trees.

“You should’ve stayed in Oighir, brother.” Lir shoved Fionn a few paces back, spinning his right axe as he prepared for his next attack. Fionn was a talented fighter, having been trained by Ina herself the moment he’d bore the capacity to lift a sword in preparation for the Wild Hunt. Nevertheless, her lessons were short-lived, coming to an abrupt halt after her untimely death. Leaving Fionn’s talents, alone in bitter winter, to rust. Not even the mortals of Fjallnorr dared venture into the snow ridden feywilds of Fionn’s permafrost. A surety of death to all those who didn’t worship the Sidhe.

Fionn’s movements were, thus, slower and less agile than Lir remembered. His severed hand and the loss of blood, doing him no favors. His only saving grace against Lir, whatever the Lady had lent him.

“And let you condemn both Seelie and Unseelie on account of your ignorance?!”

Lir scoffed. “You always were so self-righteous.”

“This is no game, Lir. Both the Lady and Danu have foreseen the destruction you’ll yield should you truly bind with Aisling. Destined to reap the same mistakes as our mother.”

Like veins, needle thin cracks crawled up the statue of Ina at the center of the chamber.

“And do you also believe the Sidhe will lose this war to the mortals? That the Sidhe will be forced behind the veil while humanity plagues the Earth?” Lir deigned to dwell on Danu’s vision for long. It hardly mattered. Whatever the empress of the dryads believed was written in the stars could be slashed and bloodied till it no longer spoke the same truth. Stars could be changed, and fate bent to his will. For every vision, every prophecy, every omen by either the Lady or Danu was wrought with ulterior motives. With lies and deception and trickery.

“I believe you aren’t the Sidhe to change such prophecies,” Fionn said, thrusting the edge of his blade at Lir’s abdomen. Lir feinted left, leaping back, and slicing through the shoulder Fionn had left exposed, patient to wield more damage at the right moment.

“Your mind has grown muddled,” Fionn continued. “You’ve lost sight of both Seelie and Unseelie and everything Other. This isn’t what Ina would’ve wanted.”

Lir blocked Fionn’s lunge, shoving the edge of his spear to the floor with the lip of his axe. Circling him like a wolf skulking around its prey.

“Damn Ina!” Lir shouted, expression bridling with heat as the image of her spirit and Bres’s flashed across his mind’s eye without his consent. “Ina deserved everything. Committed a sin she deserved to answer for. And if you ask me”––Lir swiped at Fionn, drawing blood from across his cheek bone––“the gods should’ve damned her then and there. Ended her life as well as the legacy of Iod. Instead, they punished the rest of the Sidhe for her crimes alone, breeding the mortals that would burn our villages, our forests, torture our own. All in the name of my father, who died regardless.”

Fionn winced. “And yet you race to repeat her sins.”

“I race to correct them,” Lir seethed.

Fionn’s ice rose from the ground like giant thorns, immediately shattered by Lir’s axes. “Mine and Aisling’s binding will be successful, will bring the mortals to their knees, and undo anything and everything our mother committed.”

Fionn laughed, the room clicking as his frost creeped over every surface. He swung his spear, ice exploding from the tip and trapping Lir’s boots against the ground. The surrounding roots bursting through Fionn’s shackles, in time for Lir to raise his axes and shield himself against Fionn’s swing. The spear shimmered, its metal bleeding verglas and binding everything it touched with the cold. The statue of Ina weeping crystals from the edges of her stony eyes.

Lir shoved Fionn off, artfully striking twice in the same breath, summoning blood from both Fionn’s arms and legs.

Fionn braced the pain, leaning on his back leg before lunging forward with his great sword, the room speared through with monoliths of ice.

Lir weaved through the madness, lost in the labyrinth while Fionn hid amidst the discord. Leaving Lir to pray a faithless prayer that Aisling had fled when she’d bore the opportunity to escape.

“She will be your undoing, brother,” Fionn called through the freeze. “The Lady has foreseen it.”

Lir moved swiftly, silently navigating till he found his unassuming brother once more. Biding his time.

“I prefer the visions the Lady has seen of my victories, of my sovereignship, of my?—”

“Kin?” Fionn interjected, voice echoing through the labyrinth of ice he’d summoned. “Do you care for Aisling at all? Or has this all been some correction of the past? A way for you to undo our mother’s crimes, perhaps, but to also erase whatever grief Narisea and your child’s death cursed you with?”

Lir continued moving, afraid that should he stop, his mind might register Fionn’s words. The sound of Narisea’s name, a damnable curse, tossing Lir back in time. A time better left forgotten along with whatever love he’d ever felt.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Fionn pressed. “You’ll use Aisling for your own completion and then what?”

Lir shook his head, grinding his fangs against his teeth. Fionn’s voice growing louder and closer.

“Then her purpose will be fulfilled, ended by my axe.” Lir forced the words out, physically pained by the sentiment that’d once been common sense. Before he’d ever met Aisling. Before he’d been forced to realize she was his counterpart. For no matter how greatly the sun despises the night, the moon carries its torch till morning. Life to fire. Magic to iron. Green to violet.

“That’s odd,” Fionn said, his voice directly behind Lir. The fae king swiveled, coming face to face with his brother. Fionn jabbed his spear, avoided by Lir, yet not quickly enough. The tip of his spear scraped across Lir’s shoulder, summoning blood. “Because I seem to remember the Lady telling me a similar tale. One where both Aisling and you are coated in one another’s blood. An axe in her heart and a flaming dagger in yours.”

Lir cursed beneath his breath, parrying and striking with his axe. Fionn stepped lithely back, narrowly dodging the attack. Doing his best to mask the terror, the fear, the horror of Fionn’s words. That it was possible the Lady had foreseen a future where Aisling and Lir were one another’s end should they truly bind. Destined to destroy the realm then leave it, death gleaned by the other.

Lir shook his head. No. It was all a lie. A manipulation to breed doubt.

“What allegiance do you bear to the Lady?” Lir sneered, stalking toward his brother as the son of Winter backed away.

“Common goals. Common enemies. Ultimately, to spare both this realm and Aisling from you .”

Lir allowed his rage to build. Fanning the embers of his fury so his draiocht might breathe more thickly.

“You’re right to spare the world but not from me. Aisling will wreak ruin in her wake if met with the full force of her power.”

“‘The full force of her power,’” Fionn corrected, “ influenced by you. There is still time for her to choose the correct path. To be good.”

Lir laughed but it was humorless. “All these years trapped at the edge of the north has made you sound so… human .”

Fionn lifted his spear above his head, striking Lir with ice. The frost seeped into his bones, freezing him from the inside until Lir broke through the sheets in an explosion of translucent needles. His magic was powerful, emboldened by the Lady and still, not enough.

“You will die with a dagger in your heart,” Fionn repeated. “A blade wrapped in flames of violet. And she, an axe in her heart.”

Lir defeated the distance between himself and his brother, slashing with wicked ability. His axes grazed Fionn’s ears, his cheekbones, his throat as his brother desperately moved to avoid the onslaught.

“It has been foreseen. It has been written in the stars. And it cannot be outrun.”

Lir felt the madness overtake him. The frustration. The fury. The aching of his heart as the cord between him and Aisling jerked and flooded him with emotion.

Fionn caught Lir’s axe, freezing it with ice and twisting. Lir flipped and slammed against the crumbled floors, beneath the shadow of their mother’s statue. Ice creeped over Lir, imprisoning his wrists, hard as Forge-cast stone. Lir struggled against their grip, finding the Lady’s aid growing more formidable the longer Fionn battled.

Fionn raised his blade above his head, prepared to deal the final blow. And yet he hesitated.

Fionn ripped open Lir’s jacket, exposing the scars where his wings had once been sheltered away.

“So, it’s true,” Fionn said, eyes wide and glazed with tears. A shimmer of sadistic triumph in his opalescent eyes. “Danu ripped them from your back.”

Lir dug his nails into the debris beneath him, the black of his most shadowed depths chomping, clawing at the walls within to, at long last, slake their thirst. To sink their teeth into Fionn’s death.

“So it is: you never deserved our mother’s wings.” Fionn pressed his boot on Lir’s back. “Enjoy the Other, brother. I welcome your haunting so you might overhear your caera ’s screams during hers and my true binding.”

Whatever humanity, starved and forgotten inside Lir, broke.

Burst into madness as he tore the ice from his wrists and the feywilds erupted from inside the castle, devouring all and everything in its wake. Thrusting Fionn off Lir and into chaos. A chamber of groaning alders and rowans, heaving, stretching, thrashing against the vaulted ceiling for escape. Crushing all and everything in its sight with the snap of their spindly, gruesome limbs and thorns.

Lir searched for Fionn, unable to find him or Greum through the growing thicket.

The fae king cursed beneath his breath, turning on his heel to throw himself through the following threshold. A threshold where he found Aisling’s violet eyes, wrought with emotion.