Chapter Twenty-Eight
Do you remember?
This was the question Midir asked most, in that first year in Tír nAill.
Sometimes, she did. Aideen remembered riding a white horse across white sand.
She remembered swimming in the warm, shining rivers that ran through her father’s land.
Sometimes, she even remembered her husband as he used to be a millennium ago, in that blissful year they spent together.
Do you remember?
The first time he asked, they had just arrived on the shores of Tír nAill.
She’d been too disoriented to answer. They had flown all night in the form of cranes, and she was still adjusting to the weight of her human bones, the sudden loss of her wings.
She’d cried the entire journey—inasmuch as birds are capable of tears.
Shea was too young to understand why she’d chosen this, but she would forgive her someday.
Aideen drank in her new home, as desolate as it was beautiful, wreathed in fog and aglow beneath the pale dawn sky.
She had no answer for Midir. So she took his face in her hands and kissed him.
That, she thought, felt almost familiar.
Do you remember?
He asked again on their wedding day. She did not, and yet, it hardly mattered when Tír nAill seemed to her a paradise.
Her mother’s voice was so far away now. Here, no one yelled at her.
No one feared her. No one hated her for what she couldn’t help.
It was everything Midir promised when he wooed her.
After the ceremony, Midir held a feast that all the Irish fae attended.
They danced and sang and presented gifts.
She wore a crown of gold upon her head, and her cup of mead never went empty.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so carefree.
It wasn’t until her third drink that her perfect bubble of happiness popped.
She felt at home among the fae—and yet, still somehow apart.
It wasn’t her rounded ears or her ability to lie.
It was Midir’s arm around her. It was the way his gaze locked on each guest when they greeted her, heavy and dangerous.
Do you remember?
He asked next when they returned from their wedding tour and settled into Bri Leith.
This time, he sounded almost apprehensive.
As he led her through the halls of the castle, images resurfaced in flashes.
Sharp golden eyes. A crystal bower. A howling wind.
A plunge into dark waters. And then, there was no more.
Midir was good to her in those early days.
He comforted her through the nightmares that plagued her.
He took her riding in the heath, showing her which paths were safe.
He swam with her in the lake. He draped her in jewels and recited poetry and played the lyre.
He called her Aideen Echraide and Be Find.
He called her Wanderer Careworn. He gave her everything she’d ever wanted: beautiful things, meaning, answers, belonging.
But there was still some emptiness he could not reach.
It was easy to forget most of the time. She could content herself with her doting husband and the wild, beautiful world around her.
Eventually, the cold stone of the castle and its silence closed in around her.
Sometimes, she heard the servants whisper about her husband: Midir the Proud, Midir the Ungenerous.
She would come to understand with time that ungenerous was among the worst things a king could be.
But she did not know it then. All she knew was that no one came to visit Bri Leith.
“Where is everyone?” she asked him one day.
“It is only you and I here in Bri Leith now.”
“Why do we never have guests?”
“I will tell you, one day. But not today.”
This disappointed her. “When will there be guests?”
“When there must be,” he replied. Then, indulgently, he asked, “Can I not keep you to myself for a time?”
She asked him again on every holiday and every birthday.
His answer never changed. For two years, she was satisfied.
But with every passing day, her loneliness grew.
Bri Leith was not her home. Aideen didn’t remember much, but she knew this.
Home was the cold of the waves. Home was the cliffs jutting into the sea.
Home was a girl with green eyes and a chessboard.
“You are pensive,” Midir told her one day.
“I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“You have me.”
She did. She loved him. She knew him better than she’d ever known another soul.
She hardly knew him at all. Sometimes, he watched her with such a mixture of expectation and disappointment, as though waiting for another version of her to reappear.
He looked no older than thirty, but his eyes were so old.
Aideen was twenty and so bored—so isolated.
“It’s not enough, Midir.”
He looked shocked, and she couldn’t stand the thought of arguing with him about this again.
She stormed out of the castle and into the soft haze of the heath.
Somehow, even miles away from where Midir had taken her, her feet guided her true.
She knew where the treacherous paths were, in body if not in mind.
It thrilled her as much as it terrified her, the places her old self pushed through the cracks of her awareness.
She walked until it began to rain. No matter how far she went, there was nothing and no one.
She walked until exhaustion claimed her.
Midir appeared to her when she collapsed in the mud, frustrated and humiliated beyond words.
He did not scold her. He did not panic. He only extended his hand.
Aideen knew, somehow, that he had been there all along, out of sight and waiting for her will to crumble.
She’d traded one prison for another.
She couldn’t regret it. Midir had never lied to her.
She’d only deluded herself, thinking this would be the answer to her prayers.
As he lifted her onto his horse, her mind spun round and round in its cage.
If only he were gone. If only he listened.
If only he loved her better. If only he loved her less.
She was grateful. She resented him. She loved him.
She hated him. She’d wanted this. She’d chosen this.
Was it ever a choice at all?
She was just a child when he came to her. How could she have denied Midir when he was thousands of years old with power she could not imagine? How could she have denied him when she weighed gold and silver and magic against the cruel mundanity of her old life?
No, she couldn’t go back to her old life. Not even for Shea. She couldn’t give up the way magic hung in the air or the quiet in her mind. This place could be home. She could make it so, if only she were queen in more than just name.