Page 32 of The Mortal Queen

“Were your knights glamoured as well?” Aisling asked.

“No. Fortunately, that day the Sidhe far outnumbered whatever dryads lurked in that part of the woods. They wouldn’t have dared approach our party especially when accompanied by me. But with a human…” Lir hesitated, his eyes meeting Aisling’s. “Unseelie crave mortal flesh. Had they known you were there, they would’ve been unable to resist.”

Aisling paled.

“The Aos Sí will not hesitate to devour you with their spells. They will toy with your mind, steal your agency, manipulate your reality. All magic is evil and dark and unnatural,” Nemed had told her, his voice alive only in memory. Achingly distant.

“The glamour, however, served its purpose. They could smell you but not see you—a good enough disguise to help us pass.”

“How do I know you speak the truth? That this is not all some elaborate deception? You’ve now admitted to using magic to manipulate my reality. How do I know these Unseelie, creatures the mortal world has never so much as mentioned, are real?” But even as the words left her lips Aisling knew the answer. The reality of the trow she’d beheaded hours before. Its memory flooding back to her, nearly bringing her to her knees. A sense of guilt, of pleasure she blamed on the fae king.

“You don’t have much of a choice.”

He was right and that made Aisling all the more furious.

“Your kind are considered monsters in mortal eyes, ruthless. Cruel. Savages who hunt humans for sport.”

“I would’ve imagined a princess to be educated in the Lore enough to?—”

“TheForbiddenLore is outlawed,” Aisling growled. “A library of pure deceit.”

Amusement bent his lips. “I should’ve realized your father’s lies cut deep. What other deceptions did the fire hand of the North steep his mortal kin’s mind with? He who wears the blood of the forest on his hands?”

“You know not what you speak of,” Aisling growled. Nemed had indeed burned the wilds to make room for their overpopulating kingdom. To expand Tilren’s walls so the mortals could live comfortably without fear of the Aos Sí. So it was the Aos Sí who preyed upon mankind, forcing them behind walls to eventually spill from the seams of their iron kingdoms. Not Nemed.

Lir laughed but it held no humor.

“It is not I who has been fed on lies and coaxed to sleep in an iron keep.” Lir prowled nearer still. “And it is not I who has manipulated reality as you claim. That guilt lies with your father.”

“What do you know of my father?” Aisling continued, her heart thrashing against her chest, ears ringing with anger, palms growing hot.

But before Lir could answer, some branch snapped further inside the forest. In an instant, the fae king’s posture changed, his shoulders tightening, eyes gleaming like a wolf’s, hands flexing until no longer did the white stag stand before her but rather a demon of violence. Could he smell something? Sense it? See it even amidst the evening’s veil?

“Step away from the forest,” he commanded, his voice thicker, lower than it had been moments before.

Aisling glanced over her shoulder. Her vision blurred, her temples throbbed, suddenly consumed by a crashing wave of white noise thick like fuzz. The mortal queen shook her head, but it did little to assuage the popping of herears or the pressure falling as thickly as the fog. Aisling had felt this sensation before. Had been crippled by a similar energy. Force. Bubble. She could see no further than a few paces before her, the rest a mess of shadow and distant noise. But she could sense it. Whateveritwas. Angry, hopeful, eager, impatient.

“Take my hand,” Lir reached towards her, his palm facing the star-speckled sky. Aisling appraised it, desperately attempting to orient herself within his magic. Somehow, taking his hand was a betrayal of her own kind. The fact shewasafraid, that she perhaps needed to accept his help in order to survive for the second time in one day, worsened that sensation.

“Aisling.”

A growl erupted from behind her.

“Take my hand,” Lir ordered, a brief glimpse of panic seizing his expression. But now he wasn’t looking at Aisling. He was looking over the crown of her head and into the forest. At whatever sighed down her neck and pawed closer. Deep, guttural, laced with hunger. Aisling could feel its hot breath on her ankles.

CHAPTER XI

Aisling swiveled, coming face to face with a beast, a spectral hound, washed in shadows of deepest black. As large as one of Nemed’s destriers, larger, it wrinkled its muzzle, peeling back its lips to boast an impressive collection of fangs. A snarl so ugly it occurred to Aisling it might be grinning. And as the tentacles of darkness formed and reformed, Aisling peered into the skeletal interior of the hound. Lightest white against darkest black.

The queen couldn’t scream. No, her throat was sealed shut. Her muscles were petrified. Even her hearing had resorted to a distant, muffled ring.

Aisling stepped back, snapping a branch beneath her bare heel. The sound, swaddled by white noise, still pulsed through the forest, catching the beast’s attention, its ears flicking side to side. Aisling stifled the urge to gasp, realizing the beast wasn’t glaring at her but rather past her. At Lir. As though she were invisible.

A glamour.

“Don’t run,” Lir said, his voice resolute, the only sound that wasn’t smothered by the enchantment.

The hound took a step forward, inching towards Aisling. It raised its muzzle, nose to nose with the queen, and inhaled,savoring the warm, fleshy perfume of mortality.

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