Page 31 of The Mortal Queen

“My brother advised to wield only in the name of self-defense,” Aisling said, as breathlessly as she felt. Internally, she cursed herself for it.

“Your brother is wrong,” Lir said, releasing the queen from both his grip and regard, instead, studying the dagger. “I’m surprised you were allowed such a trinket. My advisors tell me you lacked proficiency with all weaponry.”

“It was a gift,” Aisling said, regaining the sharpness in her tone.

“From the princeling besotted with you?” Lir’s eyes flitted back to Aisling.

The mortal queen blinked, the backs of her lids burning with the memory of Dagfin’s face, his voice thesong of her childhood: stealing destriers to spend a day at Hannelore’s Linn, inventing songs to torment poor Fergus, tickling the sleeping guards with pigeon feathers.

“No,” Aisling replied distantly. A word that caught Lir’s attention and held it for the briefest of moments.

“An expensive gift, nevertheless,” the fae king resigned, his thumb stroking the ruby enclosed in the pommel’s ebony fist. A ruby that dulled in the presence of its dagger’s most loathsome enemy.

He tested the dagger’s weight, flipping it effortlessly between his fingers. It looked odd in his hands, long fae fingers toying with a mortal blade. So much smaller than it’d appeared in Aisling’s own grip.

His fingertips traced the haft, the cross-guard, until they found the iron blade. But once his skin touched the iron, he recoiled, hissing like a wounded animal.

“Don’t look so surprised. I’m sure your father made certain the effects of iron on our kind were common creed.”

“What does it feel like?” Aisling asked, eyeing the red and purple blister forming on his injured flesh. Skin that didn’t, couldn’t, recover the way the rest of their body did when exposed to non-iron harm: quickly. Miraculously.

“Like it looks, flame to flesh.” So, even fae lords were slaves to iron. Aisling had often wondered if these foreign monarchs were susceptible to the same weaknesses as their subjects. Vulnerabilities Nemed and all the mortal kings before him used to their advantage in the name of the Isles of Rinn Dúin. Of mankind.

“We should return to Annwyn, you shouldn’t be this near to the feywilds for so long,” he said, tossing Aisling the dagger. “I should’ve returned you to Annwyn once you woke.”

The mortal queen caught the knife. And as she sheathed her dagger in her corset once more, she glanced longingly at the forest.

“But isn’t this your kingdom?”

“You’d be a fool to believe sovereigns capable of controlling every subject.”

“You refer to the Unseelie?” Aisling pushed, her feet planted in place even as he gestured for her to follow.

A muscle flashed across Lir’s jaw. “How much do you?—”

“Gilrel informed me there were other races, monsters, creatures who roam these forests, the mountains, the waters. I know no details. Only that your kind refers to them as Unseelie. As you yourself have intimated before.”

Lir exhaled, the muscles in his shoulders slackening in the slightest. “You shouldn’t pry into what will only endanger you—a risk to both the Aos Sí and mortals should you die and the treaty be for naught.”

“You believe me afraid?” Aisling challenged, moving nearer to the woods.

“No, and that’s what concerns me,” he replied.

Aisling peered into the forest, a shadowed realm of tree and branch and endless ferality studying the mortal queen in return. It was lovely the way a whetted blade was lovely. The way a storm ravaged the land it danced across.

Lir exhaled. And based off his expression, Aisling realized the same outcome the moment the fae king did: Lir would have to relinquish information if he wished to purchase her compliance. Lest he carry her away himself. And Aisling believed he wanted to touch her as much as she did him. Which was not at all.

“When we passed through the forest, on our way to Annwyn, I veiled you with a glamour. A shield against the dryads,” he said, his voice as cool as the mist building around her ankles.

“A glamour?” She turned to face him.

“A protective spell, a cloak that can shroud an entity entirely or change its image briefly.”

“You wielded magic then?” Aisling’s stomach dropped, realizing she’d been both enchanted and totally unaware. This was unlike theSnaidhm: magic that had been accidental, too potent for a nearby human. No, this…this wasdifferent, a crossing of some line she hadn’t realized she’d drawn until now. He’d bewitched her. She was both powerless and at the mercy of his tricks.

“I do not wield magic—I breathe it.”

Aisling recalled the muffled silence, the pressure popping her ears, the voices slamming against those invisible walls as they trailed through the forest and towards Annwyn.

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