Chapter XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
“You’ll never kill a man like that.” Rian spun on his heel, catching Aisling’s wrist. The mortal queen attempted a strike with her left fist. She swung her knuckles towards the fae knight’s jaw, but Rian blocked her blow easily.
“Too slow.” Rian twisted her whole body, pulling her back towards his chest, captured and rendered prone, her arm shoved behind her back. “And much too loud. I’ve heard dragons breathe quieter than you.”
“Dragons?” Aisling asked, struggling to wiggle out of his grasp.
“Careful, you’ll break your arm,” Rian softened his hold. Aisling took the opportunity and stomped his foot, loosening herself enough to twist and knee him between the legs. Rian swiftly stepped to the side and Aisling flew. The mortal queen collapsed into a nearby bush bubbling over with plump berries and crimson buds.
“Not so rough, Rian,” Galad scolded. “I’d rather not be the one to inform Lir you’ve wounded his bride.”
“She pounced on me,” Rian lifted his hands up innocently. “Besides, she needs the practice.”
Galad extended a hand to Aisling. Once the mortal queen had floundered out of the bush, she took the knight’s offer and stumbled awkwardly to her feet.
“Dragon?” Aisling brushed the berries off her shoulders and the buds from her braided hair.
“You’ve never heard of a dragon?” Galad asked and Aisling shook her head in response.
“A peist? A wyvern? Any sort of drake?” Rian continued.
“No, what are they?” Aisling sheathed the dagger Galad had lent her after she’d lost Iarbonel’s gift. A gift she longed for like a severed limb. Iarbonel would be furious if he ever knew she’d lost it.
“Monstrous, glorious beasts. Some have fur. Most have scales. You’ll encounter them in oceans, mountains, forests. Greedy bastards, though. Always hoarding whatever they get their claws on.”
“Are they rare? Will I lay eyes on one?” Aisling asked, following Galad back through the forest. Only she, Rian, and Galad travelled through these icy woods now. Lir had ventured on ahead, eager to scout the path ahead, commanding even the stags to stay behind and wait for their return. The Isle of Mirrors was close. Aisling could feel it. Taste it in the air. Hear it like drums, running into the earth and thrumming through her bones.
“Forge be willing, you never will,” Rian said, plucking twigs from the mortal queen’s curls.
“And why’s that?”
“They’re primordial, dangerous beasts, Ash,” Galad said, her nickname on his lips strange yet…welcome. Initially, Galad had begun calling her Ash to ridicule the mortal queen after reading the way Dagfin had addressed her in his letter. But now, it felt comfortable coming from him. It was a sweet sound amidst the animosity she’d received from the Aos Sí thus far. Rian, Galad, and Gilrel were her only friends , if she could indeed call them that. They were as close as she would come to such a word while amongst the fair folk. And Lir—Aisling wasn’t certain what Lir was.
“And? The first ancient, dangerous beast I ever encountered I married.”
Both Galad and Rian laughed. A sound that inexplicably warmed the mortal queen’s heart, for none had laughed with her since she’d left her mortal world; the sound of her brothers’ howls while they chased the feast pig down Castle Neimedh’s corridors echoed in her heart.
“I agree with the mortal queen,” Rian said. “She might even find herself right at home amongst the dragons.”
“Some breathe fire.” Galad’s eyes shot towards her hands.
“I thought the Sidhe and Unseelie were unable to wield fire,” Aisling asked, clumsily doing her best to match their lengthy strides.
“The Sidhe cannot. But the Unseelie don’t follow the same rules as we do. They are a subspecies. A variation of the original race that is the Sidhe and so, the gods created rare but few exceptions for a select few.”
Aisling opened her mouth to respond but before she could, Lir made himself visible amongst the trees.
Immediately their eyes met, his emerald pools glittering even from a distance and piercing her, a spear straight to her chest.
Aisling’s breath caught, unable to look away. The fae king’s face was just as forlorn as it’d been since their last conversation at the cliff’s edge. Not even Galad nor Rian dared provoke their king in such a state. He was the image of a wounded wolf, burdened by the pain of his afflictions. Surely it hadn’t been Aisling’s words that had affected him so. No, there was something more. The way his expression had twisted at the mention of Ina and Bres…there was something the fae king wasn’t fully prepared to divulge.
“We’re here,” Lir said once he was within earshot. “We’ve reached the Isle of Mirrors. ”
Aisling couldn’t see the draiocht , but she could hear and feel it rising from the earth and evaporating into the woodland air. Such magic danced alongside the fog billowing playfully at their knees, tickled the trees, and skulked amongst the shadows. Watching, listening, clouding the world around them in a dreamy haze. As invisible yet forceful as a pungent fragrance, straight from the bottle of an empress.
Lir pulled the thread of starlight from his pocket, spreading it out and reaching for Aisling’s wrist. The fae king wrapped the tether around her joint. One, two knots this time. Their eyes met and Aisling held her breath unwittingly, eyes that mirrored the chartreuse, peppermint, and juniper of the forest around them.
The snowy land they’d trekked through thus far was swiftly melting away. The nearer they approached, the greenwood transformed into a world of eternal spring: mighty oaks and firs, ashes and cedars, bedizened with needles and leaves like verdant jewels. Blooming with pastel buds and ripe fruit.
“Don’t leave my side,” Lir said, his voice low and quiet enough that only she could hear.
“Lir,” Rian interrupted, approaching alongside Galad. “They’re here.”
The fae king nodded in response, tearing his gaze from Aisling.
Aisling bit her bottom lip, following Lir onward. Galad and Rian walked shortly behind.
It began as a single whisper, a woman’s voice slithering through the undergrowth. Then it became a chorus, a symphony of unintelligible sighs, a collective susurration of phantom breath. A sensation that reminded Aisling of her first journey into Annwyn and all she’d experienced while cloaked by Lir’s glamour. Now, she wasn’t glamoured. There was no magical barrier or bubble to muffle the dryad’s spell. It was overwhelming. All consuming. Hauntingly divine. Sinister and seductive. Both a caustic clamor of mismatched ruckus and the supple glide of voices made of rich velvet. All reaching towards her, pulling at their disembodied joints to come closer. To see her, to hear her, to smell her.
Aisling willed her gaze straight. Despite fear’s pleading for her to swivel madly on her heels, searching to the right and left, above and below. Instinct told her to swallow hard, to grind her teeth, and keep one foot in front of the other. Lir’s stride beside her a steady beat beside the staccato of her own heart.
The trees ahead, at last, bent on their sides till their branches connected at the top. A steeple made of birch, groaning as the bark snapped and pulled beneath the bend. Impressive, fearsome if not for what came next. The skin of the trees peeled forward, as though duplicating themselves, stretching from the body of the birch until another entity stood before it: two females, one from each tree, whose skin gradually shed the layers of the woodland’s sheathing like a snake strips its old flesh. And once every morsel of the birch was clawed away by an invisible hand, the strange women stood before them, mossy hair billowing in the sighs of the forest, embellished with berries and twigs. Their wood-like complexion was a canvas for their sharp features: onyx eyes, pale lips, and two pairs of finely tipped ears. Ears far longer than their Aos Sí counterparts.
“At last, mo Damh Bán .” The one on the left spoke first, her voice as ethereal as Aisling had anticipated. A sound so delicate, it could very well be an echo in her own mind.
“The wait has been excruciating,” the second purred, both inching forward on bare feet. The vines coiled around each of their limbs, crawling like serpents whenever they moved.
“How long has she known?” Lir said, his expression bored. And if it weren’t for the grip he held on the tether of starlight, wrapped around his wrist and bundled in his fist, Aisling would’ve believed him entirely unamused.
“A few weeks. Perhaps more. She saw you with the fomorians first. The merrow. But before she saw you coming, she smelled you,” the dryad said, eyes flicking towards Aisling.
“Take me to her,” Lir commanded, stepping forward. Where Aisling believed the dryads would hiss with disapproval for their sovereign’s boldness, instead they flinched, pacing back like cornered cats. Their gowns of greenwood scrap, swaying around their lithe forms.
The two dryads nodded their heads in response. And with their long thin limbs, they gestured for the Aos Sí and their mortal queen to follow.
With each of the dryad’s steps, flora sprouted from the earth. The chorus of whispers continued but dampened slightly. A great, invisible council murmuring to one another as their guests passed. Aisling swallowed, glancing back at both Galad and Rian. Their hands rested on the hilt of their greatswords hooked to their belts.
Up ahead, the dryads guided them towards an audience of weeping willows. These trees swayed to the hums of the dryad’s song, but Aisling knew they weren’t normal trees. They were dryads themselves. Waiting, watching, leaning closer to behold their guests. Their giant bodies stretching to the heavens and canopies above, like the cross-vaulted ceilings of a cathedral, flowered branches hanging like chandeliers that dusted the floors beneath with sweetest pollen.
Across the fluffy, green field that stretched before them, countless pools glimmered in the afternoon smog. Aisling gaped at their still bodies, reflecting the dancing of the dryad willows. Sheets of finest, thinnest glass whose depths dove into the earth in blue, crystal-clear waters. Separated only by the thin paths of softest moss. The frothy breath of the forest, bridging a trail for the fae king.
This was the Isle of Mirrors.
Leaning over the brink of a pool, the mortal queen peered down. Deep, bottomless ponds filled to the brim with sparkling waters. A looking glass that faded into endless black below. Somewhere far within them, Aisling could hear the draiocht murmuring to itself. Swimming and calling her under. Then it showed her an image. A strange, blurred vision of another place. Perhaps another time. A mountain valley filled to the brim with winged Sidhe.
Aisling craned her neck. She needed to see more. To understand. But it was a mistake. The mortal queen’s boot slipped and she flew towards the pool, the waters rushing towards her face. Aisling wrenched her eyes shut, waiting for impact. Instead, two hands reached around her waist and pulled her up. Aisling spun, colliding against Lir’s chest, his arms wrapped firmly around her.
“Watch your step,” he said with the ghost of a grin, pulling her back onto her feet. Aisling tilted her head up to face him, shivering at the sensation of his arms around her.
“And don’t look too closely,” Rian added.
The dryads escorting them giggled beneath their breath.
“What’s down there?” Aisling asked, carefully placing her boots from here on out.
“Some are nothing more than mirrors, glaring back at what glares in. Others are passages,” Lir said, spinning his axes in his hands.
“Passages? Like doorways?”
“Aye, thresholds to another place. Sometimes another time.”
“And what would’ve happened had I fallen in?” Aisling asked, following closely behind the fae king and tiptoeing along the narrow paths of grass interspersed between the pools.
“Depending on the pool, you could’ve been soaked for the rest of the evening. Or, you could’ve been lost to both time and space. ”
Aisling’s violet eyes snapped towards the fae king. But before she could reply, the rows of willows stirred around them. It didn’t take long before the dryads, just as the two guiding them forward had done moments ago, peeled from the bark of their trees, leapt down from the canopies, crawled down the trunks like spiders, and perched atop the highest branches, all ogling the fae king, his bride and his two knights approaching. There were hundreds of them. Creatures part flora and seemingly part fair folk. As though the two were once blended in some primordial soup and spat out with a vengeance. But most impressive of all was what awaited them.
A gargantuan ash stood at the end of the field of mirrors, a tree so large that a kingdom of Aos Sí couldn’t wrap its arms around its grooved body. One whose branches exploded from the trunk in a great web of wooden limbs, hungry to expand as far as its branches would allow. Tangling amidst the willows surrounding it. And beneath it, unravelling like colossal snakes, its roots burst out before diving deep into the earth below them.
A groaning that nearly stripped Aisling’s ears erupted. The mortal queen pressed her palms against the sides of her head, wincing at the sheer volume of the noise, a roar as great as any fanged beast’s. The skin of the tree then, as if dissolved into a liquid form, began to move. Creaking and growling, from the ash a giant female took form, pulling against the bark to release herself like the dryads before her. Hair of flowering vines and thorny branches braided down her shoulders, sweeping the pools and stirring their depths. A woman as colossal as the tree itself, she knelt on her knees, blinking open eyes of glorious grey. For she bore no pupils nor an iris. Bulbs of smoke considering her guests with wicked delight.
Aisling sucked in a breath and trapped it in her chest.
“Hush now,” the giant cooed to the surrounding dryads, who whispered furiously to one another. “We’re in the presence of a king.”
A king. Not ‘our’ king, Aisling noticed. The beast’s voice boomed, a song of silk and velvet rattling through Aisling’s core to the soles of her boots.
She bent her head and knelt before the fae lord.
“Danu,” he said in greeting. “I’m assuming you know why we’ve come.” Lir tilted his head in return, his expression unreadable.
The empress grinned, her dark skin stretching. Vines of leafy hair falling around her rounded features and cloaking her bare breasts as she cocked her head to the side.
“I do, mo Damh Bán . I know what each of your desires are. Those that were, those that are, and those that will be.”
“Then you know I’ve come seeking what you’ve seen : the end of the war between the mortals and the Sidhe.”
The empress laughed then, feirdhris, aiteann, and dris berries blooming across her arms, her chest, her hands, her hair, with every gleeful sound.
“I’ve seen the end of your petty feud. I’ve seen the end of everything. I’ve seen the beginning as well. But what’s more interesting is everything in between. For that isn’t the only thought that occupies your mind, is it mo Damh Bán ?”
Lir considered for a moment, toying with the thread of starlight in his fist. But there was no fear in his posture. Rather, he was rather angry. Resolved to do what he must to get what he wanted.
Danu leaned closer, eyes wandering from Rian to Galad before landing on Aisling herself, standing on Lir’s left-hand side. The hair on Aisling’s arms stood to attention, Danu’s steely eyes like those of a spider studying her insect locked in the web.
“One of which being this beastly thing beside you,” Danu purred. “Don’t be rude, Lir. Introduce us.”
Lir hesitated, his body tightening as he considered. “This is Aisling, queen of the greenwood and of Annwyn.”
Aisling lowered her eyes out of respect .
“I dream of you often, little beast,” Danu said. “And so does he.” The empress gestured towards Lir, watching Aisling closely. A wolf hungry to pounce at a moment’s notice.
Danu turned towards the fae king, releasing the mortal queen from her regard.
“So, your mother’s prophecy at last came to be. Did you know that? When you agreed to the union did you foresee your mother’s prophecy fulfilling itself? Or did you intend to behead the mortal princess?”
Lir’s eyes flashed like lightning. Sage storms thrashing behind his thick lashes.
Aisling held her breath. For Danu had asked the same question that’d plagued the mortal queen’s mind since Peitho’s revelation during their outing. One she herself desperately craved an answer to, an answer void of deceptions, spells, glamours, or lies.
“I knew,” Lir said, before tightening his fists at his sides. Aisling whipped her head in Lir’s direction, studying his tormented expression. “I knew of my mother’s prophecy before the union.”
“What prophecy?” Aisling blurted, the words spilling out of her mouth before she had an opportunity to stop them.
“Ash,” Galad warned from behind, but Aisling shrugged him off. His words but a distant chime beyond the buzzing in her ears.
“He hasn’t told you?” Danu asked, grinning from ear to ear. “Shame, Lir. Must I always be the one to tell the story? I suppose I’m best at it.”
Aisling’s head swiveled between the empress and the fae king. Her temples throbbing, her mouth going dry till her tongue was nothing but ash between her teeth.
“Before his mother and the people of Iod were cursed, she gave one last prophecy, for she was blessed with a sight like my own, a warning to her only son, the heir of the greenwood. A promise that he’d be bound to not one but two caeras . And the second would be a love unmatched, a reckless, ruinous love capable of destroying kingdoms and plaguing the Earth. A harbinger of great upheaval and certain death.”
Aisling took a step back, wobbling on her weak knees. She couldn’t look at Lir. Not now. One glance in his direction and she didn’t know what would become of her. But she could feel the heat of his gaze on her. Cutting into her skin.
“Aisling,” he said, his voice the thunder of a woodland storm.
His mother was cursed alongside her people. She gave one last prophecy to her only son.
Cathan’s song. His tale the night after their union.
“ Ina was punished by the gods; both she and the entirety of her mountain kingdom cursed for all eternity. A kingdom doomed to a damned legacy. But before that, it’s said she had one last vision. A prophecy she shared with her only son .”
Aisling’s tongue caught in her throat.
“Your mother was Ina, the queen of the mountains. Of Iod. One of the twelve original sovereigns.” Aisling’s chest rose and fell, reaching for breath, but the air was thin. “Your father was Bres. The king of the greenwood. You’re the heir of two original sovereigns.” Aisling lifted her eyes to Lir’s. He watched her. Still as the pine on a windless day. Eyes harrowed. Rimmed with a silent sort of torture. A vein corded through his neck where his chest rose and fell to the rhythm of Aisling’s own.
“Aye, he is,” Danu answered for the fae lord. “The most powerful Sidhe sovereign known to this realm.”
Lir’s wings. He was a child of both the mountains and the forest. It was why Castle Annwyn was carved into the mountain.
“What was the curse?” Aisling demanded, turning her gaze towards the empress. Heat built in Aisling’s palms as the draiocht began to feed off the mortal queen’s anger. Aisling hushed it down, grinding her teeth to control it as best she could. “What happened to Ina and Iod? ”
Danu leaned back, delighted.
“The gods stripped her of her powers, of her wings, of her ability to summon the draiocht . They made her weak. Cursed her and all those belonging to Iod this way. And from that day onward, Ina and her people were destined to live less than a measly century, their long Sidhe lifespans stolen from their lungs.”
“They were—” Aisling choked on the words.
“They were made mortal. Iod were the first humans and the ancestors of your kind.”
Aisling shook her head, violet eyes as wide as violet moons.
“But you aren’t quite like your kind, are you?” Danu continued, her silver eyes glistening with amusement. “You’re something else now.”
“What do you know?” Lir snarled, his voice laced with something that stripped Aisling’s heart bare.
“Like your mother, she’s the first of a new kind.”
“What kind?” Lir demanded, snapping like a wolf.
Danu closed her mouth, smiling mischievously, leaning forward to dip her lichen-covered finger into the nearest pool.
“See for yourself,” Danu purred, the still pond rippling from her touch. A finger that bloomed with toadstools and primrose.
Aisling faced the waters, stepping just near enough to see properly. Lir, Galad, and Rian followed, one eye on the pools and another on the empress herself. Lir gripping the thread of starlight till Aisling believed it might turn to dust in his hand.
At first, the mortal queen only saw her reflection. The fair-faced mortal she’d known her whole life. Two amethyst eyes glaring back behind lashes as obsidian as the thick curls braided over her shoulder. But no longer was she the northern mortal princess she’d met through the vanity in her Tilrish bed chambers. She was someone else now. Unrecognizable. Thinner. Rougher. A stranger the mortal queen feared. More than she’d feared anything. For behind those purple eyes was something hungry.
Danu stirred the pool and Aisling’s reflection vanished. The pond darkened until a single, violet flame burned within. Aisling craned her neck and squinted her eyes, doing her best to get a better look. But the image grew clearer and clearer until Aisling recognized that same stranger that stared back at her moments before, a woman dressed in a gown of glittering lilac pooling around her ankles. Her delicate features were lit by the fire brewing in her hands. The fire grew brighter and brighter. Larger and larger until it burst forth from her palms and spread down a mountain valley. Into a fleet of thousands of soldiers below.
The flames devoured every armored warrior like a bestial serpent. Pillaging the army until the sky was black and ash rained from the heavens.
Aisling’s heart ceased. The draiocht within her flared in response to the power it beheld.
“They will call you mage. Witch. Sorceress,” Danu said. “Some will follow you. Many will hunt you. All will fear you.”
Aisling shook her head, eyes burning until they leaked down her cheeks.
“And there will be others?” Aisling asked, her voice more level than she felt.
“Yes,” Danu said. “There will be others like you. A rare few who will summon the draiocht as easily if not more powerfully than the Sidhe themselves.”
“How is this possible?” Aisling continued, staring at her hands held before her.
“You’ve awakened something, little beast,” Danu said, narrowing her eyes towards the pool each of them surrounded. “Your very existence is an ill omen for the age to come.”
Aisling bit her tongue, sorting through the thoughts that swarmed her mind like an angry hive.
“The war, Danu. Who are those soldiers?” Lir asked, gesturing towards the bone and soot remains of hundreds, thousands, of warriors lying dead in the valley .
“I cannot tell. My visions are glimpses. Not lists of details or facts. This is all I can see.”
“Then you don’t know who will win the war?” Lir demanded, his expression growing more feral by the moment.
“The end will change little, Lir.”
“With every given year, the Sidhe are thinning. The mortal sovereigns outnumbering our kind, exploiting our weaknesses with iron and fire, burning our land till the air echoes with the screams of the forest. A forest that the Unseelie, the dryads, call home. The end changes everything, gives us an opportunity to alter that which is not yet written,” Lir growled, the muscles in his shoulders tensing. The surrounding dryads shrinking back from where they stood.
“Few, if any, have ever been capable of changing the course of my visions,” Danu said, her voice deepening. “The Sidhe will continue to dwindle but they’ll not grow extinct.”
“And the mortals? What of them?”
“They will overtake this realm. With iron and fire, they’ll carve the earth and return both Seelie and Unseelie into the realm of the Other.”
Danu stirred the pool once more until another image took form. Fields and fields of forests had been chopped down, burned, flattened, and trampled over by stone homes, thatched roofs, billowing chimneys, and corridors spilling over with mortal townsfolk. Villages, cities, empires built on the ashes of the kingdom before it. The kingdom of greenwood, the kingdom of mountains, the southern, western, eastern Sidhe territories. Images of men with iron weapons that exploded with metal projectiles, men whose armies turned against one another and painted the deadened earth with their own blood.
“Mankind will dub us fairies, demons, spirits, gods, monsters. Mankind will stifle us until we’re nothing but a child’s tale shared around the hearth.”
“How long?” Lir bared his teeth, fangs flashing. “How long do we have?”
“I cannot tell. It could be another three millennia. A hundred years. A decade. It’s impossible to tell?—”
“How long?!” Lir yelled, his face twisting with fury.
“The Sidhe will lose this war, mo Damh Bán ,” Danu snarled in return, thorns growing from her flesh and serrating the curves of her once supple form. “If there is anything you can do to prevent it, the answers do not lie here.”
Lir unsheathed his great axes, the sound of steel scraping against the scabbard echoing throughout the hollow. The dryads hissed, the earth beneath sprouting with weeds.
Galad stepped forward, placing a hand on the fae king’s shoulder.
“Instead of looking towards the morrow, look at today. You’re powerless then but powerful now. Return to Annwyn. The fire hand is but a step in the right direction.”
Lir growled, his fangs cutting his bottom lip.
“What must I do? Kill him? Serve his head on a pike? Will that end the war? Prevent what you’ve seen?” Lir said, his fists glowing with pale green light. The forest swung from side to side as though preparing for an oncoming storm. The shadows deepened and the earth grumbled as though irate itself. Aisling inhaled sharply, overcome with the maddened shrieks of the northern feywilds building around them. The woodland responding to its fae lord.
The dryads cowered behind their trees, some sinking back into the branches of the willow.
“Return to Annwyn,” Danu insisted, shutting her eyes and sinking back into her tree form.
“I command you to help me!” Lir shouted, his knuckles growing white around the hilt of his blades. But it was too late. No longer did the woman stand before them. Only the quiet ash whose roots snaked beneath it, lashing out like vipers and shoving the fae king and his knights back. They were thrown into the pool. Aisling dragged along after them, pulled into the abyss by a tether of starlight.