Page 111 of The Mortal Queen

He didn’t answer her. Rather returned her query with a memory.

“You still owe me a dance.” That lethal glint graced his eyes as he pulled her towards his ring of trees. Where magic churned like the boiling soup of a cauldron.

Aisling didn’t answer but rather allowed the fae king to gather her close, one hand possessively holding her waist and the other in his own. So, Aisling grasped his shoulder, completing the pairing.

He swept them into clouds of fog. There was no music, only silence. But such stillness was brief.

Lir’s eyes glistened, the corners of his lips curling as he spoke a wordless spell into the breath between their lips. Aisling’s body shivered, thedraiochtwrithing gleefully around her at Lir’s command, popping her ears. Initially, only the brush of white noise surrounded them. Then a strange ringing. But at last, Lir’s spell consumed her, filled her. They now danced to the rhythm and pace of a melody Aisling hadn’t heard before this very breath. Couldn’t discern before Lir allowed. That no mortal man nor woman nor child was permitted to glean. But should mankind catch a glimpse of its rapturous tune, by some scheming of fae or gods, they would spend their whole life searching if only to hear a single refrain once more. Indeed, Lir opened her ears to the voices of the woodland. Where every blackthorn, bramble, and alder hummed a haunting melody. A lullaby of pure sorcery. A voice given to the wind between leaves, the groaning of trunks, the cackles of birds, and the purling of creek beds. Where instruments lit no flame to the majesty that was the voice of the greenwood. Its song an opiate.

Aisling laughed, stunned by the beauty of Lir’s enchantments. To enjoy what he must experience all his life: these songs, a ghostly reminder of the forest’s screams that, Aisling imagined, one could never quite forget.

“Why do you wish to control thedraiocht?” he asked at last, eyes darting towards her mouth.

“You once told me thedraiochtseeks to master lest it be mastered.”

“Aye, I did,” he purred, his every word vibrating through his chest.

“To master, I must then control,” the mortal queen conjectured, focusing now on the veins and fae markings coiling around his forearms, his long and elegant ringed fingers.

“You sound like a mortal.”

“I am mortal.”

“Are you?” he challenged, guiding her through the dance. The music, the uproar, the laughter of the beasts watching from their tree knots, hollows, and dens. Reflective eyes lighting the forest like a cave of jewels.

Aisling hesitated, opening her mouth to speak before snapping it shut.

“Galad told me how the princeling’s iron affected you.” At the mention of such iron, Lir’s eyes considered her wrists, permanently scarred by such chains. Fury stormed his feral eyes as he held her closer. “The princeling is fortunate he still breathes.”

“It must be the magic rippling through you, torching every mortal bone of yours.”

“Because at that moment, thedraiochtconsumed me and the iron repelled it.”

“Magic doesn’t ‘consume’ mortals.” Lir’s eyes shimmered the way they did before he unsheathed his axes.

Aisling’s face hardened, her heart beating wildly within her chest. He was wrong and so was Filverel. The mortal queen was born mortal and would die mortal, for although she’d grown to adore this fae world and its savagery, she wouldn’t, couldn’t, betray her tuath. And to forgo one race to become another…Annind had said it himself: it wasn’t feasible. There was no enchantment nor spell nor charm to change one’s blood or flesh or spirit. Yes, Aisling had adopted something strange and curious. An ancient creature the Sidhe dubbed thedraiochtnow lived within her. But she was still mortal. At the very least, something in between.

“You’re part Seelie now whether you realize it or not.”

“Tell me, princess,” Lir spoke again, pulling her nearer to him as the song began to dissolve, “do you think I rule the Sidhe, the Unseelie, the kingdom of the greenwood through control?”

Aisling’s brow pinched. “You rule through power.”

Lir grinned, flashing the fangs that could disembowel herif he liked.

“To control is to restrain, to limit, to bridle.” He spoke slowly now, every word perfectly accentuated. “Claws, fangs, horns are all to be exercised. Strength is to be exercised. A wolf is not made strong nor quick nor powerful shackled its whole life. It becomes weak, frail, sickly in captivity. But when allowed to roam free, it sharpens its claws and fangs, strengthens its muscles, makes nimbler its paws, and whets its appetite.

“What the mortals call savagery, inhumanity, barbarism, all make mighty the Sidhe. Are the bones with which our Sidhe world is made both feral and irresistible, are what allows the Sidhe to become one with the world that rejects man. A world that forces humans into civilized shelters, into smoking cities, lest he die of starvation, of the cold, of the heat, of infection, of the appetite of one who is stronger, wilder, hungrier. Because mankind is weak. Because mortals insist on control. On the quelling of such base traits. And that is why they cannot survive in our world, Aisling. Not the way we do. You and I are predators. We rise up the hierarchy of natural beasts and man alike.

“So, you must allow your wolf to wander freely, to strengthen itself in the wild so that when you must call upon it, it is most powerful in your name. Strop your blade rather than dull it. Sharpen your claws and fangs and horns rather than let them waste away. And be prepared when you at last call upon your wolf. Make sure you yourself are wilder, more feral. More powerful until it is you who eats, you who wields, you who calls upon the weapon you challenged, instead of it you.”

CHAPTER XXXV

Before the sun rose, thunder cracked across the sky, showering the world in sheets of silver. Aisling woke alone, startled awake by Gilrel’s magpies tugging her hair. She’d woken slowly that morning, weary after little sleep. Of late-night letters delivered to her childhood friend by the mouth of a serpent.

The magpies dressed her quickly, helping Gilrel slip another black gown over the mortal queen’s head and structure its bodice, shoulders, and forearms with plates of fae armor. Glittering chainmail that hugged her form, cinched at the waist before draping over her ivy skirts. Immaculately forged, cut, cast in fae style, void of the iron worn on mortal sentinels and soldiers alike.

Aisling caught her reflection before she exited the tent. Eyes rimmed with charcoal, lips dyed with crushed cherries. The sharp angles of the armor were a striking complement to her pale complexion. Her violet eyes captured the light glinting off its surface. And although it appeared heavy, thick, impenetrable, Aisling barely noticed a difference between this armor’s weight and the mortal corsets she once donned.

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