Chapter III
CHAPTER III
If the Aos Sí publicly beheaded their lovers as a marital custom, what did they do to their wives in private? Of course, if the fae king wanted Aisling dead, he could’ve already made it so. They were far enough away from any mortal that none could hear her scream nor find her body if the fae king wished it.
Still, that didn’t rule out torture.
Aisling shivered, shaking away the thoughts.
“Are you cold?” The fae king leaned down to whisper against her ear lest the wandering revelers overhear their conversation. His breath scalded the nape of her neck. But it was welcomed, warming her frozen skin and sending chills down the rest of her body.
Aisling, startled, turned towards the king.
“Aren’t you?” she asked the king in return for he wore less than she, dressed in nothing more than a loose-fitted shirt, trousers, and his axes. Improper for a gentleman, much less a king.
He grinned and exhaled a soft laugh.
“My kind rarely grows cold,” he began. “I’ve forgotten how weak humans can be.”
“Weak?” Aisling growled. “It is weak to complain of it. Not to bear that over which we have no say.”
“Perhaps fragile is a better word then?” he said, flashing his pointed canines like a wolf.
“The most valuable things are,” Aisling huffed, relieved her voice bore the confidence she didn’t yet feel.
They approached the largest tent at the center of the fae camp. Sentries stood guard at all four corners, their armor flashing with orange in the torchlight. But Aisling bore no illusions that the fae king couldn’t defend himself if necessary. Could not slay a horde of humans if he so desired. As soon as she thought it, the images followed shortly after, accompanying the horror of her assertions. Aisling’s tongue turned to ash that she forced herself to swallow.
The king spread apart the curtains and gestured for Aisling to enter. The queen held her head high, but she’d dreaded this more than the wedding itself.
The scent of freshly plucked pine needles greeted the queen first, then the miraculous heat of its interior.
Where Aisling had expected dirt and filth, the tent was adorned with rich, luxurious quilts and comforters, plump pillows, hand-woven rugs, and opulent animal pelts, skinned to perfection. How the fair folk had not only parceled and lugged such luxury across the northern landscape but also prepared it so charmingly, was a shock to the mortal queen. All and every piece were fabricated by fae hands. Mortal fingers couldn’t design nor use such rare and luxurious materials. Spider silk too delicate to weave, maiden’s moss too spongy to thread, and pale oak too susceptible to splintering to carve.
A bed large enough for three had been placed at the center of the room, crowned with garlands bubbling over with plump buds and blooming wildflowers. But some of the flora stole Aisling’s attention, shimmering with soft light. The flowers lit the room, casting a warm, hazy glow throughout the tent’s interior. Their glittering pollen floating in the midnight breeze––a wind stealthy enough to slip inside the moment Aisling had.
Within the tent, the air itself must have been enchanted, filled with some unspoken lullaby. A muffled melody that soothed even the mortal queen as she stood soaking in the canvassed chamber. Was this the magic the fair folk were known to practice? The wielding of powers they believed to be bestowed by the gods themselves?
“ The Aos Sí say their magic comes from the gods. There are no gods. Whatever abilities they wield are aberrations. Perversities of nature. As they are themselves. Do not let them convince you otherwise. ” One of Nemed’s many lectures she’d received since her marriage was signed and sealed by all mortal and fae sovereigns from the North and elsewhere. Words that she knew she’d do well to remember, aware she’d soon learn the extent of such fae abilities.
The fae king brushed past her and shrugged off his weapons. Weapons she hadn’t yet seen, belted against his trousers, in his pockets, behind his shirt, around his calf. Except for his axes. The only possessions he tucked neatly beneath his pillow as if afraid to part from them even in his sleep.
Aisling had overheard tales of warriors unable to find rest without first preparing themselves for an attack even if years had passed since their last battle. This was what war did to man, death crouched on their shoulders long after the ground puddled with blood. If they survived. Was this what afflicted even a barbarian king? Aisling swatted away the thought. These were beasts. Not men. They bore no such vulnerabilities. Emotions. Hauntings.
Without hesitation, he next removed his shirt. Aisling stifled a gasp, covering her mouth before she could utter a sound. She’d never laid eyes on a male so undressed, even if he still wore his trousers. But Aisling knew this was not what most men looked like; the fae king was tall, muscled, lean, and painted with complex fae tattoos that disappeared below his narrow waist. Black coils, symbols, knots, and braids that followed the curves of his broad shoulders, his neck, his hands, and Aisling assumed, everything she could not see.
The queen cursed herself silently for having indulged in those nightmarish tales, fireside stories that warned mortal women to resist fae charms lest they be taken how fae males took their own females against their will. No, Aisling couldn’t afford to think of such stories now, lest she surrender the courage she’d thus far fought to preserve. Even if said courage was nothing more than the scraps of what it once was back in Tilren.
For the longer she stood frozen at the foot of the bed, the more she lost feeling in her legs, her knees, her feet. Her palms and back beading in a cold sweat. She was a virgin, after all, primed and prepared to one day consummate her marriage with Dagfin, with a mortal man. Not the fae lord before her; to touch the body of he who’d used every muscle, every limb, every ounce of will in his accursed form to maim her kin for sport.
“ You will escort your betrothed to your bed the night of your union. This evening will be the first of many in your journey to gift him an heir. It will hurt and you will most likely bleed. But fret not, this act is not one of passion or pleasure. Rather your noble obligation to the North .”
Aisling clenched her fists at her sides, her mother’s words echoing between the wild thrashing of her heart. She’d agreed to this, to happily, willingly allow her father to sacrifice her to the fair folk in exchange for peace. She knew the risks, the responsibility to fulfill her duty to Tilren and all of Rinn Dúin, even if it meant marrying for a political alliance. Even if it meant sleeping beside this lethal stranger. Sleeping with this fae king. She’d serve her clann, her race, at whatever cost.
“Will you sleep in your gown?” he asked, flicking his eyes towards her dress. Aisling ran nervous fingers down its bodice, swallowing hard.
Sleep? Sleep was a distant concern in Aisling’s mind, and she’d assumed the king’s as well. In fact, she hadn’t even considered the fae king slept at all, a mythic warlord burdened by the same exhaustions as mortal man.
“I have none of my belongings to change into,” she said.
“Your belongings are being delivered to Annwyn as we speak,” he said.
Annwyn . Was this what they called the territory the Aos Sí stole from Nemed?
“It’s often assumed a bride needs no belongings the night of her union,” he continued, before a single flower’s glow suddenly extinguished. Then another. Descending the room into darkness. Flower buds dimming, untouched by either breath or wind or flesh.
Their floral perfume smoked the tent. Aisling turned in time to witness the fae king open his palm and close it once more. And in pace with the gesture, another flower faded till the ember of light within dissolved into shadow. It was then, Aisling realized, that it was the fae king’s doing, stifling the light of the flora, without touch or contact of any kind. Was it magic? An unholy warping of the laws of nature as Nemed would claim? Where she thought such abilities would strike fear in her, she found herself more curious than afraid.
Aisling inhaled, her chest tightening as the room grew dark. The first night would be the most difficult. She knew this.
“ Do not scream when he takes you, M’ Lady ,” her chambermaid had advised in the weeks preparing her for this night. “ Nor should you let your blood run freely too long, menstruating or otherwise. It will only encourage a demon such as he .” At the time, Aisling had merely nodded her head, mindlessly soaking up the instructions the whirlwind of advisors had given her over the past several months, educating her on the nature of sex and pregnancy. But never had such lessons felt more tangible, more petrifying, than they did now. This otherwise- customary female education was perverted by the circumstances in which she found herself. The thought of the fae king touching her, seeing her, impregnating her was enough to knock the wind from her lungs.
The mortal queen untangled her braids till the windswept torrents dripped down her spine, spilling against her back in garlands of black.
The fae king turned to face her, only a single flower left to be lulled to sleep. Enough to gild the queen in its ocherous light, shadows dancing across her undone locks.
He considered Aisling, tilting his head like a fox considers a mouse. With unrelenting focus. No man had ever seen her with her hair undone. A part of her missed the veil she’d worn before, and another part was eager to know what thoughts stirred in his fae mind. What those predatory eyes beheld and thought. Aisling only saw anger, conflict, and perhaps even grief vibrant in his irises. Of course, this was most likely a projection of Aisling’s own feelings rather than an accurate reading of the fae king, the mortal queen knew. Her own horror reflected in his sage orbs.
And as though dread had made her a disembodied spirit pressed against the steepled ceiling of the tent, Aisling watched herself unclasp her dress from above. She slipped its weighted, scarlet layers from her arms, her bodice, her waist, her legs. Her fingers moving of their own accord, fueled by terror, by expectation, by duty. And as the dress pooled around her ankles, her dagger’s fall was cushioned in the skirts.
All that remained was her cotton chemise, cinched together by a whale-bone corset. A thin layer hugging the supple contours of her form. And if none had seen her with her hair undone, certainly none had seen her so undressed. But where she’d expected mere embarrassment on this evening if wedded to Dagfin, nothing compared to the distress she felt now, bundling each of her muscles till they cramped and brought tears to her eyes.
Aisling flushed, her skin simmering as if lit with the fire from a blackened wick, writhing in a pool of wax.
The fae king’s face was unreadable now. He stood watching her, studying what mortal flesh was left exposed. They were now bound by law, recognized by the North in both mortal and fae eyes. Man and wife. No. Aos Sí and wife. Still, Aisling couldn’t shake the feeling she was somehow engaging in something deeply forbidden. This was a violation, a ritual void of the trust, security, and familiarity she’d come to look forward to, without knowing, all these years anticipating a marriage to Dagfin.
It occurred to Aisling then that the fae king had likely never laid eyes on a mortal this way. A wonder—a strange curiosity she harbored for the creature before her—threatened to eclipse her fear entirely.
The queen quieted her trembling fingers, gently tugging her corset strings. Clumsily, she untied them. The fae king watched; his cat-like eyes locked onto every slip of the strings as they came undone.
She’d had little experience undressing herself. A result of the countless handmaidens whose sole purpose was to assist the northern princess in all her passing whims since she was old enough to remember.
“ You’ll undress yourself for your betrothed this night: a symbol of your surrendering your body to not only to him but to all of mankind. An offer of ‘good faith’ for the treaty freshly sealed .” Her mother had attempted to encourage, to contextualize this atrocity. Her words nudged Aisling onward.
But just as Aisling made to loosen the last row of tethers, dropping her petticoat, the fae king extinguished the last flower, shrouding them both in darkness. Had Aisling blinked, she would’ve missed the fae king’s breath catching in his broad chest. A flicker of torment flashed across his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Aisling asked, her pupils dilating madly in the shadows.
“You must be tired,” he said. Submerged in shadow, the fae king left Aisling to find her own way through the dark and towards the bed. Untouched.