Chapter XL
CHAPTER XL
AISLING
“Glad to see you alive,” Aisling whispered to Dagfin as they climbed the staircase upwards. Lir and Galad traveled at the front of their procession while Peitho trailed behind. The rest trekked at the center.
Aisling’s words felt criminally insufficient to the relief she’d experienced spotting him across the chamber. Dagfin was a flicker of warmth, of home.
Aisling wanted to embrace him, to hold him close or, at the very least, hold his hand. But she denied herself this comfort, knowing the pain it would inflict.
“You have no idea how often I’ve thought the same of you. Even when we were children. And yet, my concerns weren’t in vain: you encountered Fionn didn’t you?” Dagfin said, his brows furrowing the longer he considered the collar at her throat.
Aisling nodded her head. “He’s being aided by the Lady, but I can’t imagine he survived after his encounter with Lir.”
“If he were dead that collar would’ve shattered by now.”
Aisling touched the sparkling jewels absent mindedly. “I’ll tear it off like the last. Everything will be fine, Fin. Just like we always find a way back to one another.”
Dagfin didn’t seem convinced, yet, despite himself, he smiled.
“It’s not too late to turn around.”
“Are you asking me to run away with you again?” Aisling asked in jest, yet the words sounded more sober than she’d intended. A part of her, screaming to run away with him now. To turn and flee and never think of the past again.
“The offer always stands,” Dagfin said, meeting her eyes. He ran a hand through his soft brown hair, moving closer till their shoulders brushed.
Aisling cleared her throat, physically unable to process the pain, the hope, the confusion a single glance of his inspired. Not now. Not when she was so close.
“Starn is already at the top,” she said, diverting the conversation as they drew nearer to the peak. It was barely a whisper. Loud enough for only Dagfin to hear. But the sound of her eldest brother’s name rang back and forth inside Aisling’s mind.
“I knew he’d come but never realized he’d make it this far. When he left in Oighir, I assumed he’d be startled home. But it’s clear now: Starn would never return to Tilren lest he’d obtained what he wanted for Nemed or died trying, using some dead fae to weave his path through Ina’s defenses undetected as a mortal.”
Dagfin’s brow furrowed but he nodded his head.
“Have you told your fae?”
Aisling despised the way “ your fae ” sounded on his lips. Immediately glancing at the fae king at the head of their procession, Hiraeth in hand. But she opened her mouth to respond regardless, swiftly interrupted by a bead of moisture plopping onto the center of her forehead.
Aisling stopped in her tracks, glaring upward.
“What is it?” Peitho asked, halting a step beneath her own.
“Ssshh,” Aisling said gently, stilling the rest of their party with her voice. Her heart thudding inside her chest, loud enough for all Fjallnorr to hear as she wiped the bead away. A thick syrup.
Both the Sidhe and Dagfin followed Aisling’s line of sight, finding to their horror a single, glittering thread, vibrating above their heads. As though plucked and left to thrum.
Gilrel clenched her jaw, whiskers trembling with anticipation.
The silence swelled into a crescendo; the hiss and click of a body moving inside the nearest cavity of Iod, skulking closer, giggling and salivating. At first one and then many. Thousands, creeping to the mouths of their dwellings.
Aisling paled, realizing alongside the others, they were surrounded. Watched by a trove of reflecting eyes, peering back from the dark.
LIR
Before death reaped a soul, the air always tasted of smoke. And the moments after, stained the tongue with ash. With unlived nights and unspoken words.
Before a slaughter, the sun dimmed. Too ashamed by the blood rage to peer past its veil of clouds. But the moon always looked. Always beheld the shadows’ devilry.
And so, as Lir readied his axes, he gave fair warning to the pale, dying winter sun, studying the neccakaid’s every step as they crept from their nests.
“ Damh Bán ,” they hissed in Rún, bubbling over with laughter. “ We spin and we spin and we spin, century after century after century. And yet, the tapestry always weaves the same .”
“ You weave for the Lady ,” he replied. “ And she lacks creativity .”
“ We weave for the gods, Damh Bán , and so does the Lady. Nevertheless, your threads are exceptionally complex .”
“ So, I’ve heard .”
“ Turn back now ,” they said, creeping into the light. Giant, snow-white creatures, whose spindly legs clicked against Iod’s stone. “ This is your last opportunity to forgo whatever it is you covet in exchange for a future. Lest this day be your last .”
Lir, instinctively, searched for Aisling in his periphery. Daring not to turn his head lest they glean his priorities. The eight bulbous eyes of the nearest neccakaid studying the flashing edges of Hiraeth.
“Are you willing to spill your blood for the Lady?” Lir asked, stepping closer. The neccakaid hesitated, half retreating into their hollows.
“ Tis not for the Lady, Damh Bán ,” another chittered, “ but for the sake of both Seelie and Unseelie alike .”
“ I’m wounded .” Lir feigned offense.
“ The neccakaid are left with little choice but to align ourselves with both the Lady and Danu: those who fear their visions more so than you. You served the Unseelie well, Damh Bán, until you made the ill-fated choice to bind yourself to a mortal whore and forsake us .”
Lir wished the neccakaid hadn’t spoken those words. There was another path that could’ve been trodden. One that bore no violence. Now, Lir was forced to gut every last beast till they gargled their apology through lungs filled with scarlet.
“Lir—” Filverel started, swiftly cut off by the slash of Lir’s axe. In a blink, Lir was before the neccakaid, the blade slicing through its head with a hideous screech, splattering their crystal webs in gore.
“By the Forge,” Galad cursed, glaring up and around them as every neccakaid descended upon their small group.
Lir only grinned, gathering his axe from the carnage and launching toward another. It rose on its hind legs, spear-tipped legs jutting for him as he faced the foul underbelly. He cut through it easily, pivoting to lunge for another, casting its white string. Lir sliced through the thread, tossing his left axe so it plunged into one of many beady eyes, swiftly dodging the onslaught of three more beasts as they descended upon him. Summoning roots from the stone that impaled their thick bodies and tossed them down the chamber till they smacked against the furthest most floors.
“ I remember you ,” Lir heard a creature say through the mayhem, focusing on Gilrel, blade already decorated with Unseelie blood.
“ No, no, this one’s slightly different .”
“ How can you tell? ”
“ I ate the last, bone by bone. I know every meal by heart .”
Lir cut down five more, axes warm and guzzling death.
“And so shall you know the edge of my sword by heart,” Gilrel screamed, leaping atop the largest of them and running her blade through the top of its head. The others shot their webs, torn apart by Gilrel’s swift swing. But there were too many. The final web wrapped around Gilrel’s blade, cleaving it from her paw. The neccakaid smiled as it threw the blade down, clattering onto the marble floors distantly below.
Gilrel’s expression furrowed, balling her hands into fists as six more neccakaid approached. They reeled, standing on their hind legs and filling their fangs with venom.
Lir cut through three more Unseelie charging toward him. And the first free second he bore, he drew a dagger from his belt and flicked it at the neccakaid on the precipice of striking. The beast felled, its corpse offering Gilrel the blade as though served on a silver platter.
Gilrel nodded at Lir, gathering the blade and cutting through each neccakaid. She, a flurry of wicked vengeance as she made ribbons of those who wove threads.
“Ash!”
Lir spun, stomach plummeting the moment he heard the Faerak ’s voice. The sound of her name pronounced with such desperation, stilling his heart.
AISLING
Aisling reached for the draiocht endlessly, screaming at Racat, her magic, whoever it may be skulking in the abyss, to rise. To breathe through her. To light the entire chamber on fire. Yet all she found was silence. Fionn and the Lady’s magic having snuffed whatever power she harbored. Leaving Aisling as she was before she’d ever met the fae king, stepped foot into Annwyn, or defended herself against the fomorians. Without magic. Mortal.
The rest of their party blazed through the Unseelie by blade or strength, decorating the chamber with grisly remains and ear-splitting screeches. Peitho cleaved a neccakaid in two, Filverel plucked their legs from their bodies with the tip of his sword, and Galad danced through their hordes, piles of carrion left in his wake. Dagfin, on the other hand, stood beside Aisling, tearing down any and all Unseelie that approached her.
It’d all occurred so fast. Their swarms descended with wild abandon. Lir was surrounded by the majority of their nest, rising from the piles to spare Gilrel in her moment of need.
And Aisling was useless. Racing up the staircase with Dagfin by her side. Unable to aid their efforts even as the fiftieth? The hundredth? Aisling wasn’t certain, only that this neccakaid finally broke through Dagfin’s strike and pinned him to the stone.
They were so close. The dusky light of Lofgren’s peak blinding and an arm’s reach away, blasting into the chamber from a large, steepled threshold.
Aisling panicked, smoking without her flames. So, she ran for Dagfin, unsure what to do only that she’d do something. Anything. Sprinting when her body suddenly fell onto its knees, white-hot pain spreading from her shoulder and into her chest.
The threshold a pace away. Everything and all she’d pursued, so close.
“Ash!” Dagfin screamed, appraising her shoulder with horror-filled eyes. But the sound was distant and muffled, eclipsed by the ringing in her ears.
Aisling followed his line of sight, finding the tip of a neccakaid’s leg speared through her shoulder and slippery with her blood.
It wasn’t as painful as Aisling would’ve assumed, but she knew, even now, the lack of pain was most likely shock or adrenaline. Perhaps both, thrumming through her veins.
“Aisling!” Dagfin screamed.
DAGFIN
Dagfin nearly lost Fionn’s sword, digging it through the throat of the neccakaid atop him. He shoved the beast off, racing to where Aisling kneeled.
But Lir was already there, slicing the creature behind her in half and falling to his knees before her.
Dagfin despised himself for the jealousy he felt even now. Seeing for himself how the fae king’s expression was possessed. Riddled in panic, in despair, in anger, and fury, each emotion burning a fire in his eyes as he cupped her face with one of his blood-soaked hands, then her waist, bringing her against him.
“Hold still,” he whispered in her ear, just loud enough for Dagfin to glean, reaching around her with his free hand and tearing out the neccakaid’s leg.
Dagfin despised the sight of him touching her. Always protective and possessive as though she were the fae king’s. As though Lir had known her soul for an eternity and breathed every last breath in anticipation of touching her again. And it was so vastly unfair. As though the true life Dagfin had lived with Aisling was stolen from him. Everything he’d ever hoped for, given to another. No, not given, ripped from his hands by the fae before him.
Aisling screamed into Lir’s shoulder. Tears spilling and staining his already red-steeped leathers. Lir held her more tightly, running a hand through her hair and bringing her head into the curve of his neck.
“She needs a healer—she needs away from here,” Dagfin said, the body of the neccakaid that’d pinned him left mutilated behind him.
“Her fae blood will combat the venom,” Lir said. Yet Dagfin couldn’t see past the pool of blood beneath her, soaking through the dress she wore. As children, Dagfin had mended more than his fair share of Aisling’s cuts, bruises, and even broken fingers or toes. But this…this was gore. This was violence. This ripped his heart from his chest. The sight of so much blood loss puddling beneath her, unbearable.
“I can take her to the druid’s village. If I run, I can make it. The neccakaid are distracted, I’ll slip past?—”
“There’s no way out,” Lir growled.
“I’ll make a way out!”
Lir made to scoop Aisling into his arms, but she resisted.
“I can walk.” The words slipped through her gritted teeth.
Lir ignored her. “Don’t make me fight you, ellwyn .”
He lifted Aisling, carrying her in his arms as he started through the threshold and toward Lofgren’s Rise, Galad, Peitho, Filverel, and Gilrel still battling the army of neccakaid below them. A grisly muddle of blades, of screaming, of hissing, of the plucking of webs, and the penetrating of flesh. The darkest crevices of the Other somehow alive and well in their realm. Unseelie nightmares protecting Lofgren’s Rise.
“You’ll kill her if you continue,” Dagfin growled, grabbing Lir’s arm to prevent him from traveling any further, his breath heavy from having little to no Ocras left. The flask at his hip emptied after the last corridor they’d traversed to reach here.
They stood in the doorway, on the precipice of emerging at the utmost peak of Lofgren’s Rise.
“No,” Aisling mumbled, speaking through the pain. Dagfin bristled with frustration.
“If you care for her at all, you won’t do this,” Dagfin pleaded. “Let me take her back.”
There was a flicker of reason in the fae king’s eyes. A measure of hesitation as he weighed an impossible choice. But Dagfin knew as well as any that the fae king had just as much motivation for reaching the peak of Lofgren’s Rise as Aisling did.
“Going forward, she’ll die,” Dagfin pressed.
“And she’ll die if you turn back now! You think the neccakaid won’t try to finish what they’ve begun? That you, surviving on the last doses of Ocras, could race her back to a druid village in time?” Lir said, jerking his arm out of Dagfin’s grip and shoving past the Roktan prince. “She’s safest with me. With magic that can do for her what you cannot.”
Dagfin absorbed the blow, electric storms pulsing inside.
The Faerak drew two daggers.
“Don’t make me do whatever it takes to stop you,” he said, blind with rage.
The fae king turned slowly, appraising Dagfin’s daggers in his hands.
“I can’t return now, Fin,” Aisling said, squirming out of the fae king’s grip till she settled on her own two feet. The gesture stiffened the fae king, his body sharp as she leaned against the threshold. “I’m so close.”
“I won’t let you die, Aisling,” Dagfin said, spinning his daggers between his fingers. All he needed was to take her away. To save her body and soul from the nightmare the fae king was delivering for her. He could spare her and end the fae king.
“Don’t do this, Fin,” she pleaded, eyes wet with unfallen tears.
But the bleeding wound from her shoulder tore something apart in Dagfin he couldn’t quite describe. Fionn’s collar around her throat once more…Dagfin couldn’t let this proceed any farther. More than being king, more than being a son, a brother, a friend, Dagfin felt he’d failed in his duty to protect her. It was the only duty he’d ever cared to honor. And so, he couldn’t—wouldn’t let this carry on any further.
“I love you, Ash,” he said, words spoken into eternity. For he’d eternally loved her and known it all his life. Had forsaken her, wronged her, not been enough for her that entire life and he could be now. Could be what she needed but didn’t want.
“Dagfin, this is a death wish,” she said.
“I can’t die,” he said. “I haven’t kissed you again.”
Again.
Lir shifted, posture morphing into something lethal. Something that struck fear into both realms and gods. The forest beyond tossed violently to the thunder that groaned up above, flashing in splinters of light.
Dagfin’s words alone were enough to provoke the fae king into a battle. Lir’s eyes were riddled with jealous hate, till Dagfin only saw blood rage in his sage orbs.
“Stop this,” Aisling said, now swathed in smoke from failed attempts to summon her draiocht . Teeth bared as she leaned against the threshold.
Lir stepped past Aisling, axes in hand, a few steps above Dagfin on the stairwell.
“Very well, princeling,” he said. “Let’s end this.”