Chapter VI
CHAPTER VI
AISLING
When sung together, the screams of man and beast are the same. Steeped in terror, pain, and cold desperation. Scratching at Aisling’s mind long after they’d bled into something else entirely. Silence.
“HOW COULD YOU?!” Starn yelled, his voice crooked with pure rage. He started toward her, quickly held back by Dagfin.
Aisling forced herself to meet his eyes. To study their glassy, bloodshot orbs, glaring at her with such hate. For at this moment, he didn’t behold his sister. The child he’d watched learn to walk, the girl who’d embroidered his coats, or danced with him at midwinter, tossing their heads back in laughter. No. Today that woman was dead. She, nothing more than a demon, dressed in his sister’s skin.
“How could you?!” he repeated, face stained in scarlet, sweat, and salt. Aisling stood still, hands hanging limply at her sides. The patter of her blood dripping against the deck at the cost of her draiocht was too loud. Ringing inside her head as every crew member still alive watched her with equal loathing. Iarbonel, Fergus, and Annind incapable of glancing in her direction much less meeting her eyes.
“I saved all your lives,” Aisling said, at last, her temples pulsing with pain. “If it weren’t for me?—”
“Saved us?!” A crew member interrupted, every letter sour with his poison. His weathered face contorted in both anger and disbelief. “You brought this upon us! Summoned devils with your magic! You all saw it. The way she raced onto the deck the moment the crags appeared,” he spat, waving his arms as if to frighten a wild beast away. “She’s nothing more than a faerie!”
At the word, Aisling’s posture sharpened. She narrowed her focus on the crewman, the sole subject of her attention. Unrivaled loathing blackening her gut, for the bend of his brows, the knotting of his broken nose, the balling of his fists, and the horror all the crew harbored, mirrored a potent memory. Mimicked the day she’d returned from months amongst the Aos Sí, after sacrificing everything for mankind. Everything despite their lifelong lies. Her kind, her clann, her túath, her family had rewarded her loyalty with suspicion, disgust, and fear.
“You would all be dead.” She spoke evenly, her voice melding with the sky still groaning with the impending tempest. And at the sound of her voice, smooth and lithe, the whole Starling shared a collective shudder.
“Every one of you would be rotting at the bottom of the sea or hardened to stone had I not intervened. You should be grateful.”
Starn took a single step toward her before Dagfin held him back once more.
“You disobeyed me. Disregarded my orders.”
“They were foolish ones.”
“That isn’t for you to decide.” His tone grew deathly low, rage eclipsing his fear. “You are to stifle every ounce of your magic. To suffocate whatever compels you to this madness.”
The backs of Aisling’s eyes burned, a solitary tear scalding her cheek as it fell.
“You fear what you cannot understand,” she said. “You exercise your blood-given power to day’s end but when it is a power that surpasses your own, one you cannot understand, you fear it.”
Starn’s lips pressed into a thin, white line. Iarbonel, Fergus, and Annind held their breath as their eldest brother released a humorless laugh. One that echoed across the Ashild. The electricity both webbing across the sky and knitting between the siblings.
“Power, little Sister, is meant for those born to wield it. Those of steadfast courage.” He gestured at Dagfin. “Wisdom.” Iarbonel. “Heart.” Fergus. “Intelligence.” Annind. “And unrivaled strength.” Starn. Her eldest brother straightened as he spoke. “You were a spoilt princess who refused discipline, indulged temptation, and surrendered to wistful fancies. That is why you were not made to be king, Aisling. Why whatever power you bear is a forge-forsaken mistake. For all you were made for was to be traded.”
A hush fell over the sea. The crest of every wave craning their frothy heads to behold Aisling. The same way the trees refused to turn their backs on the wolf who disemboweled its prey. The gore that attracted the reluctant eye rather than deter it.
“You will obey me,” her brother continued. The beat of every crewman’s heart thrashed inside Aisling’s ears like frightened hares. The smell of their mortal sweat, their rotten breath, sickened her. Doing her best to focus on the burns on her palms, sewing threads of agony beneath her flesh.
“I will not,” she said, biting her tongue till it bled.
“You will,” Starn said. “Because I am your king.”
“You’re close,” Lir whispered over the thunder of the waterfall and the downpour, rising from the natural pool to meet her in knee-deep waters. Raining as it always did in these dreams. “I can feel you.” He circled her, stopping to whisper in her ear from behind.
Heat slithered up Aisling’s spine.
“What is it you hide from me?” Aisling asked, turning her head to catch the nuances of his expression.
“It wouldn’t be hidden if I told you.” A truth, for the Sidhe couldn’t lie.
“Prevent me from discovering what I need and I’ll?—”
“Kill me?” he asked.
Aisling hesitated, cursing herself for it internally.
“You’re free to try but it isn’t as simple to kill a caera as one might believe. You can take my word for it.” Indeed, Lir was bound by his need to kill Aisling as well as his need to protect her. To choose to ensure the crimes of his mother weren’t repeated, or to choose not to fail his second caera the way he believed he had his first. Narisea, the mother of his late son. Both passed centuries before Aisling was born. And Ina, his mother—one of the original twelve Sidhe sovereigns gifted with sight, who forsook the mountain kingdom of Iod in her attempts to prevent Lir’s father, Bres, from meeting his end. The gods punished all her kingdom for it, making them the first mortals known to the realm.
“Why do you still hunt me?”
Lir’s expression softened. “Because I have no choice.”
“Because you made a promise?”
By the blood of the Forge, I vow to you the first taste of my blood, the first cut of my heart, and the last words from my lips.
A heart for a heart.
“You and I are bound by the Forge, by fate, by need.” His eyes fixed on her own. “Describe it however you like. Your soul speaks to my own.”
The fae king moved to stand beside her, their arms mere breaths from touching. Yet his touch was exactly what would toss her back to reality and out of their dreams. She, forced to smell him, feel him, look at him, but never touch him lest their phantom world vanish like mist blown by the wind.
“Do you believe what we both covet rests at Lofgren’s Rise?”
Lir considered for a moment, eyeing the waterfall with renewed interest.
“Yes.”
“And should they conflict? Should whatever we find at Lofgren’s Rise destroy either of our ambitions at the cost of the other?”
Lir slipped his hands into his pockets.
“The mortals, your father, cannot find the curse breaker,” he said, moving to stand beside her. “The gods took it and do not take kindly to being taken from. What the mortals have lost shall stay lost, so I’ll stop at nothing to ensure the fire hand never obtains the curse breaker for himself. And if that means preventing you from finding the truth of what you are, then so be it.”
Aisling felt the rage before she saw it. Anger traveled through her bones and opened a door for the draiocht to burst through. Clambering from its abyss and lighting the fae king in flames of radiant amethyst.
Aisling staggered back, satisfaction and horror warring within her. Impressed with herself and at once heart-stricken at the sight of Lir wrapped in flame. The fair folk’s only weakness other than iron.
“Well done, little thief.” Lir appraised himself, assessing the licks of violet encasing him. Unharmed, hardly phased, seemingly immune to her fire in his world of dreams. “You never cease to impress me.”
“I lost control.”
“Control, Aisling, is a word meant to bridle your strength. To ensure you never fulfill your potential.” Lir stepped closer, the natural world crawling toward Aisling from the surrounding forest and clawing up her boots, her skirts, and her cloak, knotting themselves in her hair.
Lir tilted his head down, his breath sinking between her lips. “Don’t let them domesticate you, Aisling. Don’t let them starve your wolf. Bare your teeth and refuse to be leashed.”
And just before their lips came together, reality dipped its hand into their pool of dreams and yanked her out.