Page 21 of The Mortal Queen

Aisling shivered. The owl’s opalescent orbs gleamed as if studying her, the sensation of meeting another for the first time and forming a first impression. An eeriness capable enough to spin Aisling on her heels and shuffle her out of the room. But as she turned, she collided face to face with another.

Two emerald eyes looked down at her. Aisling staggered back in surprise, nearly losing her footing. The magpies knocked into one another in their attempts to flee.

“A princess and a thief,” the fae king said, already closing the distance between them. “Who taught you to bypass our locks?”

Aisling shook her head. If he was referencing the arched threshold from the corridor, it bore no lock she was aware of.

“The entrance was left open,” Aisling managed, forcing herself to meet his eyes, as potent as touch itself and as intimate as a stroke of the finger on bare skin. That was what his gaze felt like. Deeply personal. Like the heat of the sun warming and dying the canopies of the forest gold.

Unconvinced, he pushed on. “What is it you wish to take,little thief?” His clouds of breath mingled with her own as a result of the cool, damp room.

Aisling swallowed, her mind clawing for an explanation. For this was the first time the fae king’s voice was not the soft ripple of milk, cream, or silk it usually embodied. It was sharper now. A sonorous growl that chilled Aisling’s core.

“I took to exploring the castle and grew lost,” she lied. Aisling wasn’t certain why she’d refused to divulge her experience with the small serpent. The way it guided her to this very room and vanished into the mouth of the owl frozen mid-flight behind them.

Lir considered her. His otherworldly features reminded Aisling who stood before her now: he, the muse of the nightmarish legends that haunted her kind.

“You should already be at theSnaidhm.” At last, he released her from the sage grip his eyes held and ambled past her.

He’d stripped himself of his armor, instead donning finely tailored leathers, gilded chains around his neck, and the twin axes across his back, the very blade she’d pulled from the earth at their union. His hair was damp, and the blood she’d witnessed from her terrace cleaned up as though it had never been.

“Very well, M’ Lord,” she said, bowing her head. She took this moment as an excuse to leave as swiftly as she was capable and lengthen the distance between herself and this wicked lord.

But the fae king stopped her in her tracks, “I’d prefer you call me by my name.”

Aisling turned to find him standing beside the fountain, dipping his fingers in its murky depths. Seemingly satisfied with her excuse for finding her there at all.

The mortal queen nodded silently in response, held captive by his attention.

“Tell me, do names bear power in mortaltradition?”

Aisling watched the fountain waters slip between his fingers, hurrying back into the pool from which they came.

“Symbolically, yes. But, from what little I know of your religion, they do not enslave the one who gives it as they do in your culture.”

Lir’s eyes flashed with mischief.

“You believe yourself enslaved to me?”

“Would you prefer I call it imprisonment? Most marriages wouldn’t seclude their brides to their rooms lest accompanied by another, never free to explore her new home unguarded or unwatched.”

The corners of Lir’s lips curled, the edge of his fangs glinting in the reflection of the owl’s jeweled eyes. Aisling’s stomach knotted, tightening the intangible cord that lay between them, a reminder of the bloodthirsty monster his beauty would have her believe he wasn’t.

“Tonight, at theSnaidhm, do not be frightened,” he continued, his voice a purr, rubbing against the shadows that clung to him, “for there will be moments where you question your safety amongst the Sidhe. But I implore you to never surrender to such fear. When danger abounds, understand it is powerless while in my presence. There is little in this realm or the next that isn’t within my control.”

Aisling, disoriented by the change in topic, struggled to regroup her thoughts. The magpies buzzing around her head, a mirror to what warred within her. After all, there wasn’t a moment Aisling hadn’t questioned her safety amongst the Aos Sí.

“A name given freely and another received in return is not to enslave but to bind. The Sidhe call thisensorcellment. I am as much linked to you as you are to me.”

Aisling bundled her trembling hands into fists, hoping the terror, the uncertainty she felt now didn’t betray her efforts to steel herself. If the fae king was implying that she should trust him…the thought was inconceivable.

“Come,” the fae king said at last, shattering the momentary silence, “theSnaidhmawaits.”

Aisling and Lir rode their stags as two sentries walked alongside them. Bear sentries whose names Aisling learned were Duibhin and Alastair, titles gifted to them by the fair folk after the creation of all things by the Forge. Guards tasked to protect the mortal queen, she surmised, from the rest of Annwyn. From those who wished her harm. From those too angry to care of treason or peace between the races. Aisling could feel their hatred. Feel it as if it were a tangible flock of hands, clawing at her skin.

Afternoon was quickly dissolving into evening, blanketing Annwyn in a feverish firelit glow. Aisling was beginning to realize that the fair folk were most alive at night, running barefoot atop the flagstones, swimming in the waters of the gorge nearly nude, and going about their strange chores.

Most, if not all, stopped what they were doing to watch the mortal queen pass. Their faces twisted with palpable disdain. Aisling fought the urge to shift on the saddle, to squirm beneath the heat of their regard. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

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