Page 98 of The Mortal Queen

And as if summoned, the canvas curtains parted. Nemed entered the tent, his expression distorted by the dancing shadows spinning throughout the room. The evening gale, slipping in behind him and rustling the parchments, maps, and scrolls piled throughout the tent. Instinctively, Aisling snapped her mouth shut. Her back went rigid the moment the violet eyes only they shared fixed upon her.

“I think Aisling needs another glass of wine,” Nemed said, limping towards Aisling. Starn snapped his fingers and Annind stood from his seat, fetching the scarlet bottle and pouring Aisling’s glass near to the brim.

“Where’s Mother?” Aisling asked, Clodagh’s absence more potent bythe minute.

“Your mother isn’t feeling well,” Nemed lied, Aisling knew. “She’ll join us for dinner.”

Aisling stilled. Paralyzed as the fire hand kissed the back of her hand before folding it between his own.

“I cannot express how wonderful it is to have you returned to your family.” Nemed guided Aisling towards one of the chairs surrounding the center table. Starn pulled the seat back, its wooden legs sliding against the southern Centari rugs carpeting the grass beneath.

“Please, sit,” Nemed said, but Aisling knew it wasn’t a request. It was an order.

Aisling hesitated before, at last, swallowing her defiance. Galad followed closely behind, shadowing where she sat. But his unmatched loathing for Starn swiftly refocused on the calculated fury he felt towards her father.

“Your hands,” Nemed began, “they feel different.”

Aisling’s heart sprung to her throat. But her father couldn’t know, she reassured herself.

“They’re more calloused. Scarred.” He turned her fingers over.

Aisling released a breath of relief, studying her hands now returned safely to her lap. There were countless reasons to keep her newfounddraiochtfrom her father. If she didn’t already fear their rejection of her, their dismissal of her, the realization she was capable of practicing magic would sever any remaining ties she bore with her clann. To her kind. She’d be excommunicated from whatever life, bonds, relationships she’d cherished before her marriage to Lir. And although rage rattled her every bone, she couldn’t lose them all. Couldn’t bear the thought of her own family shunning her for an ability she hadn’t asked for yet nevertheless treasured. Couldn’t forsake this magic if she wanted to. And never, Aisling knew, would she want to. Even if magic was as perverse as her father believed, she found she didn’t care.

Filverel feared Nemed would weaponize Aislingifhe knewshe could char the forest. But Filverel’s fear was irrational. Nemed would sooner banish Aisling than make use of her. After all, the only entity he loathed more than the Aos Sí was magic.

So, Aisling bottled thedraiochtsinging in her ears. So long as she told it no, it wouldn’t lift its head from its primordial abyss. Only Aisling could release it if she so desired. And the mortal queen took comfort in that knowledge.

“Is this the topic that demanded such privacy? My hands?” Aisling bit, winning her the same lightning-fast flicker of both shock and anger from her father’s eyes. Quickly concealed with soft laughter.

“I don’t recall such a sharp tongue from you.” Nemed sat in a chair of his own, reclining lazily as Annind poured Nemed’s goblet. He didn’t take her seriously. Considered her a rebellious child. So, Aisling scowled in return, resisting the urge to argue in response, a response that would only weaken her claims to strength, to power, to confidence.

“What do you recall of me, Father?” Aisling challenged, raising her chin as she locked eyes with the fire hand. She wouldn’t shrink. She wouldn’t cower before him as she’d done all her life. No, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow him to intimidate her.

The creases in Nemed’s face deepened as his expression split into an amused grin.

“I recall a princess of great potential: wild enough to be brave, clever enough to be wise, willful enough to be obedient, yet lured instead by temptation,” he said, tilting his glass from side to side.

“Tell us, have you grown close with the Aos Sí?” Fergus interjected, picking through a platter of breads and cheeses Aisling hadn’t noticed until now.

Aisling rolled her shoulders back, doing her best to ignore the rising tension around her neck. The sweat beading her brow. For every pair of eyes, brown, sapphire, orviolet, was fixed upon her now, eagerly awaiting her response.

A few months ago, she would’ve wept on their shoulders, divulged everything and anything that had occurred yet now…now she felt as if her lips were sewn shut. As if chronicling a single day amongst the fair folk was like pulling teeth from her jaw. Yet perhaps these questions were to aid in their pursuit of solidifying the marital alliance they’d already achieved with another of its kind. Nevertheless, a creature dark and heavy, weighed on Aisling’s shoulders the longer her father awaited an answer.

Aisling’s throat tightened, resisting the urge to meet Galad’s eyes.

“For every time they put my life in danger, they also saved it,” Aisling said. “Such experiences aren’t easily forgotten.”

It was an honest answer. Perhaps more honest than Aisling had ever intended to be with her family in regard to her relationship with the fair folk. But she’d found herself incapable of uttering a mistruth. Of lying, or at the very least being convincing enough to deceive her father.

“How heartwarming,” Nemed purred as every member of the tent save for Aisling and Galad exchanged quick glances. Glances Aisling wouldn’t have noticed had she blinked.

“And the fae king? Have you spent time with him?” Starn asked, crossing his arms over his chest. Dagfin’s eyes shot towards Aisling, his hands tightening around the hilt of the dinner knife.

Nemed nodded his head at Annind, a silent command to pour Aisling more wine.

Aisling did her best to resist the assault of memories flooding her mind: Lir humming her to sleep when nightmares prevailed in the feywilds, translating his fae runes when Aisling grew bored on stagback, skinning a beast for her on a whim when he’d felt her shivering farther north. The foreign blood on his fangs, the sound of his axes unsheathing, the fear he perpetually instilled.

“Of course she has,” Fergus said. “You heard what he called her: ‘our queen.’”

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