Page 61 of The Mortal Queen

“The quicker they smell you, the quicker we can leave,” Lir explained.

“So, what happens now?” Aisling asked, holding her finger as she warily searched the expanse beyond, a land of grey and ash and rock.

“Now we introduce you.”

“We?” Aisling asked.

Lir winked, sage eyes dancing. But the longer Aisling looked, the dimmer they grew, nearly translucent. Aisling blinked and rubbed her eyes and by the time she lifted her head once more the fae king had vanished. Like the fog on a windy sea, Lir dissolved into nothing. Suddenly gone.

Aisling’s heart hammered, swiveling on her heel.

“I’m right here,” he said, his voice an incorporeal purr amidst the darkness. Lir reached out and grabbed her hand, knotting his fingers between hers. Aisling gasped, stifling the urge to scream at the contact.

He’d glamoured himself.

From nothing, Lir exhaled a laugh, his breath white clouds in the cool evening air, the only evidence that he still stood beside her. That and the sensation of his calloused hand knotted in her own.

“Follow me,” he said, pulling Aisling from theforest’s edge and into the ashen clearing. And as they neared, Aisling realized to her own horror that the black, swampy mounds littering the center of the clearing were not rocks or foliage or some other natural substance. No. They were bodies. Rotting corpses whose bones stuck out at odd angles as the mice scuttled across them, painting their paws red and brown. The stench was unbearable, summoning bile to her throat.

They walked until they reached where the three summits stood. The gravel’s dust plastered their boots, clouding around them till it took the form of fog.

The three summits stood facing the center of the clearing like a council, prepared to both judge and measure the mortal queen. A mortal queen who appeared to stand alone, unaccompanied. A glittering speck of raven black in the shadows of the mountain, her plaits reflecting the light of the moon.

And where Aisling believed she’d find fear, Aisling was far more excited, thrilled, exhilarated than afraid. A sensation she couldn’t explain or rationalize even if she wanted to. A sensation that had plagued her since the loss of her innocence when she’d beheaded the trow.

And standing there, before the scrutiny of the peaks, Aisling weighed the silence. The hum of the gale winding through their bodies. Studied the smell of rot and bilge vegetating in the air. The taste of the citrusy forest combined with rot surrounding them. The touch of the moonlight on her pale complexion. The drip of her fingertip onto the stones beneath. Until the steady thump sounded from within the center cave. The step of a foot followed by the limp hauling of both one metal object and another fleshier belonging.

Step, drag.

Step, drag.

Step, drag.

Step, drag.

The sound grew louder, crunching some brittle substance beneath.

Lir squeezed Aisling’s hand. “Don’t move until I say.”

They were coming.

CHAPTER XX

Aisling froze.

From the pits of black, they emerged: formidably large, waxen figures cautiously lumbering into the light. Her eyes were nailed to their moonlit faces, the wrinkled, scaly, balding heads of great bipedal beasts, who hunched their shoulders and walked like men, giant men. Their expressions were twisted with fury, blistered mouths stained with crusting blood. And on their bodies, they wore rusted armor, steel that appeared a millennium old, hanging from their brutish forms.

From the center cave emerged the largest ogre of them all, limping and dragging a mighty battle-ax across the expanse. His fangs bruised his bottom lip. And sliced diagonally across his face was an iron wound.

Aisling’s expression twisted at the sight of him. Her excitement quickly bled into horror.

The creature growled in Aisling’s direction, lifting his flared nostrils to smell her more clearly. To inspect what the midnight wind delivered from across the clearing.

Had Aisling believed in the gods, she would’ve prayed to them now. For this was how she’d always imagined the fair folk before she’d laid eyes on them for herself. Not even the trow held a flame to the bestial monstrosity that approachedher now. These primordial, grim titans. The antithesis to the beauty of the Aos Sí. For while the Aos Sí inhaled from the life-breath of the forest, the fomorians exhaled its death.

“What is it?” a thin one asked, prudently cocking its head as it approached. Its voice was mangled and rough, pricking Aisling’s flesh till her shoulders shuddered.

“A mortal,” another replied. The creature hissed, boasting an inky tongue and a collection of razor-sharp canines.

---