Chapter VII
CHAPTER VII
DAGFIN
If the Sidhe never existed, Dagfin would’ve ruled Roktling alongside Aisling. A thought that haunted the Roktan prince throughout day and night alike.
Aisling was fearless, unafraid of pursuing whatever it was she wanted. Dagfin needed her resolve, her courage, and maybe then, had everything worked out differently, he could’ve accepted the crown with Aisling by his side.
And now, after the murúch, Dagfin would be forever possessed by regret. Regret that he hadn’t harbored the courage to kiss Aisling of his own accord, and regret that the murúch had forced the act. Nevertheless, he was enraptured by the taste of her. The feeling of her in his arms.
Dagfin pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” Dagfin said.
Killian stepped into his quarters. Dagfin’s room was flush with dark blue velvet, bronze embroidered stars, hanging lanterns, and Centari rugs from the mortal kingdoms in the south. A half-finished chess match was strewn across his bed while maps, quills, and three compasses were tossed about the desk at which he sat.
“How many?” Dagfin asked, reaching for a quill and parchment.
“Fifteen dead and twenty-five alive.”
Dagfin’s chest constricted, a weight pressing down on his shoulders. He forced himself to record the numbers, every pen stroke carving their deaths into the fabric of reality. Before they’d been written, Dagfin could shove away the truth. But when it glared at him from the parchment, the ink wet and winking, he could no longer deny what’d occurred.
“Feradach will understand,” Killian assured. He moved toward Dagfin’s desk, throwing himself into a wingback chair. “In times like these, death on the high seas is inevitable.”
“My father’s reaction is the last thing that concerns me.”
“Then it’s the faerie.”
Dagfin’s mood darkened at the name.
“Don’t call her that.”
“It’s what she is,” Killian continued, opening the pouch strapped to his bandolier and pouring the powder into a flask. The smell of it, of volcanic rock and charred edges, flared Dagfin’s nostrils and quickened the pace of his heart. Ocras. “As I understand it, your memories of her are only just that now: memories.”
“Nemed paid you for your services in protecting his sons. That’s where your experience lies. As for the rest, you know nothing save for beast and mortal, but nothing in between.”
“Because there’s no such thing. We all saw what she did out there.”
“Are you suggesting mortals are not capable of mass violence?”
“Not with magic,” Killian said, leaning forward in his chair. “Magic makes the violence too easy. Disconnects its wielder to the crime for they don’t feel the sensation of a blade against flesh.”
The sound of the Roktan crew burning alive screeched inside Dagfin’s mind, scratching at the flesh of his conscience. Dagfin shook the memory away. Now, the whole Starling treated her like a disease, scorning her when she was within earshot and avoiding standing too close. Their memories of the murúch and Aisling hanging heavily overhead, rotting and vegetating in the salt-ridden air. Weeping for their lost brethren when anger temporarily dissolved into sorrow.
Still, although they hadn’t truly known what they’d signed up for, there was no turning back. Not when they were this near to Fjallnorr.
“She had no choice. The Starling was careening toward the rocks and the murúch were multiplying. Those of us that still live wouldn’t have made it out alive had she not intervened.”
“We could’ve found another way. One with less ruthless measures.”
“I agree, yet I can’t judge Aisling for, at the very least, making a choice. What action did any of the rest of us make other than succumbing to the murúch?”
“There was still time,” Killian said.
“She did what she believed she had to. Whether or not it’s what I would’ve chosen is irrelevant.”
Killian exhaled, shaking his head.
“And that’s the difference they’ll chronicle in the legends when tales of you and her are spoken around fires. You and I are heroes, Dagfin. Don’t justify the crimes of your villain because you’re capable of love and she is not. You’ll never change her, Fin. No matter how much you might want to.”
AISLING
“Tell me, has the draiocht always burned you this way?” Killian asked, stepping into her cabin. Aisling knew it was Killian without turning. She could smell the iron strapped to his narrow waist, his sweat, and the mortal blood crusting the backs of his hands.
“You’ve got a sharp eye.” Aisling glanced at him over her shoulder, willing herself not to wince while she bandaged her hands with linen. “Is that why you became a Faerak ?”
Killian paused, turning her words over in his mind.
“It appears I’m not the only one with a sharp eye.”
“It takes less than vigilance to determine the iron at your hips is made to carve fae bones and the fangs around your neck were wrenched from their screaming mouths.”
Killian lifted his hands in mock surrender.
“I mean you no harm, faerie.”
“I couldn’t say the same.” Aisling turned to face him, clenching her fists at her sides. Her blood was hot, near scalding, as it bled through the linen and dripped onto the floors. Killian’s attention drifted from Aisling’s scowl to her hands, then the crimson puddling around her boots.
“Your wounds will become infected if not treated.”
“I’m not concerned,” Aisling bit. “I heal more quickly now.”
“Like the Aos Sí themselves,” Killian conjectured.
Aisling was reluctant to respond, wishing for the Faerak to leave her chambers so that the hate pooling in her gut would abate and the stench of his iron would seize the prickling in her nostrils.
“I can treat your hands if you let me.”
“Did Dagfin send you?”
Killian nodded his head in response.
“Then tell Dagfin he can come to help me himself if he so wishes.”
“The Roktan prince has had his hands full dealing with your… massacre . So, he sent me in his stead. You can trust me,” Killian said. But by the cruel edge of his smile, Aisling knew trusting this Faerak was a death sentence.
Aisling scoffed. “Trust a Faerak ?”
“You trust Dagfin,” Killian argued, stepping toward her like a child afraid to frighten a doe.
“Dagfin,” Aisling said between clenched teeth, “is no Faerak .”
“No?”
“No,” Aisling maintained, gripping her hands tighter. “He’s a prince who despises his crown and will stop at nothing to flee from it. Even if he must flee into the chomps of a beast.”
“We all have our reasons, faerie,” Killian said. “But we’re all Faerak nevertheless.”
Aisling batted away the memory of Dagfin’s iron bolo wrapped around her at his union several weeks ago. Suffocating her. The pain he’d inflicted knowingly. How even he, the one she’d trusted above all others, had kept so much hidden from her.
“And,” Killian continued, “it was Dagfin who asked me to treat your hands. Of course, he warned me you might bite if I tried, but I’m no stranger to the occasional temperamental beast.” Killian chuckled, clearly amused with himself.
Aisling wondered if Dagfin knew the source of her injuries. He either assumed her burnt palms were a result of tying ropes or he knew the truth: that each time she summoned her violet flame, the draiocht burned her in return. A cost that tore flesh from her very bones. Healing only to render such agony all over again the next time she called its name. Power at the cost of pain.
“Very well,” Aisling conceded. “I’ll allow you to treat me in exchange for a vulnerability of your own.”
Killian’s brows pinched, studying her expression. At last, he nodded his head.
“What are the symbols you painted onto your own hands, Starn, and Dagfin’s chest? The powder you dipped your dagger into? I saw how it broke the murúchs’ enchantments.”
Hesitation flashed across Killian’s amber eyes. Hesitation and thick suspicion. But he kept his promise, exhaling a long breath before speaking.
“Tell me, faerie, do you believe a mere mortal could face a forge-blessed beast and live to tell the tale?” He didn’t wait for Aisling’s reply. “No, the gods made certain that mankind’s curse purged our lungs of the draiocht and made us weaker, our life spans shorter than both Seelie and Unseelie. So that if ever we were to stand and fight against them, we’d fail. Our only salvation, flame and iron.
“But it was a Faerak centuries ago that discovered all curses have their weak points. Loopholes if you will. So, we made use of them.”
Aisling laughed. “You wish to fool the gods?”
“We don’t ‘wish’, faerie. We have and will continue to damn the gods by taking back what is rightfully ours. As you yourself have done.”
Aisling bit her tongue, the blood in her palms bubbling with heat.
“The Faerak discovered that the minerals present where the kingdom of Iod, Ina’s mountain kingdom, existed before she’d cursed them all, bore power unique to mortals. Our ancestors’ magic. And when reintroduced to our blood, we’re capable of miraculous feats. Capable of slaughtering the very Unseelie who’d slaughter us instead. It’s called Ocras.”
Aisling’s mind spun and throbbed at the temples.
“You wield the draiocht as well then?” she asked, her voice higher in pitch than she’d anticipated.
“No,” he said, and Aisling’s heart dropped. A part of her hoped she wasn’t the only mortal in the world capable of harnessing the draiocht . “We imbue ourselves with trace amounts of magic that strengthen our bones, make keener our eyes, shrewder our minds. Powerful mortals. But we cannot wield magic as the Aos Sí do. Nor as you do.”
“And the symbols?” Aisling asked, gesturing to the backs of Killian’s hands.
“They’re runes, similar to those on your fae friends,” he said, appraising his own. Immediately, the image of Lir, bare-chested, in the feywild’s hot springs sprung to her mind, remembering the interlace and the illustrations painted onto his skin. “A way to channel Iod’s minerals in a certain direction. For example, these are protection runes. Symbols that ward off enchantments and charms.”
“To break the murúch’s power.”
“Aye,” Killian said. “To destroy the murúch’s hold.”
Aisling sat down at her vanity, her mind continuing to swirl. There was no need to further question the Faerak ’s honesty. She’d seen it herself. The way Starn’s and Dagfin’s eyes had regained their lucidity the moment Killian had carved their flesh and reunited Iod’s minerals with their blood.
“How much of this are the mortals aware of?”
Killian considered her, seemingly taken aback by her questions.
“I sometimes forget how sheltered you were, faerie. I’ve heard the tales: the daughter of iron and fire locked behind her father’s walls, eager for release until it came in the form of sacrifice.”
A sadistic smile broke across his face, the first signs of a beard lining a mouth of pearly white teeth. Killian spoke of Aisling as though she were another woman, from another time, dead and gone.
“The mortals know almost everything. They bear a vague if not simple understanding of Seelie, Unseelie, and even Faerak : They believe Seelie and Unseelie are one and the same, sometimes nothing more than myth or tales from the mouths of fools. The royal clanns control how much and what they know, selecting what they consider necessary information from the Forbidden Lore. Most of the history of Ina and her curse is sealed behind túath doors.”
Aisling gritted her teeth. The memory of her own túath’s lies revealed throughout her time in Annwyn reignited embers of fury. How painstakingly slow she’d discovered the truth. How all had deceived her. Her clann, her family, the Sidhe. How all made certain she was weak and easily controlled. A lesson she’d learned at the expense of what little remained of her innocence.
“You have your answers now, faerie,” Killian said, waking Aisling from her bitter reverie. “Now it’s time to hold up your end of the bargain.”
Aisling picked up the brush on her vanity and began unraveling her tangled tresses. Blood slickening her grip.
“My wounds will heal on their own by morning.”
Killian’s expression narrowed.
“We made a deal, faerie. And a promise.”
Aisling smiled.
“You, a human, aren’t weak because the gods made you so. You’re weak because you refuse to do what you must.”
Aisling turned from him, preferring her reflection to the stench of his iron.
“Betrayal. Broken promises. All food for the powerful, Faerak ,” she said, as he stormed out the door.