Page 84 of The Mortal Queen

“No, I’ve never given my heart to another,” Aisling bit quickly, wrinkling her nose.

“But the princeling gave you his?” Lir watched her closely.

“No, never. We grew up together. We were friends?—”

“To you perhaps.” The fae king smirked, unable to mask his amusement. But there was something dark behind his thick lashes. Violent. Something sharp he was hiding.

Aisling opened her mouth to speak but knew not what to say. Dagfin was her friend. Her companion when she was loneliest. The only one who had ever paid her mind or valued her thoughts. Encouraged her to pursue the adventures she craved. Was complicit in her mischief as a child. Just a friend. Nothing more.

“I’ve missed you.”

“Galad told me what he wrote in his letter to you,” Lir continued. “Are you truly so blind to his affections?” Lir shook his head. “That must drive him mad.”

Aisling flushed, clenching her hand into a fist and wrapping it in fire.

“It doesn’t concern you,” she snarled even though she knew of its inherent hypocrisy. Lir had no obligation to have told her anything of what he’d already confessed. Yet he’d done so regardless. Done so at her request.

“You’re mycaera. Of course, it’s my business,” he said, his voice ragged with recent sleep.

Aisling stiffened, aware that the fae king had never mentioned that word to her before. Had never explained it to her. Had never called her so. The only reason she knew it at all was because of Gilrel. Aisling didn’t believe in its meaning the way the fair folk did and she didn’t think the fae king took it seriously either. They were enemies. Their hatred for one another swam in their blood.

“Do you know what that means?” he asked,his eyes flicking towards the mortal queen’s mouth. A gaze that burned her lips.

“Gilrel explained it to me in passing.”

“Did she tell you of its origins? The Lore’s telling?”

Aisling shook her head. There was very little she knew of the Forbidden Lore. The history and conception of the world according to the fair folk. She’d never minded not knowing. Before her union, Nemed had ensured it was nothing more than deceit. Now, Aisling could no longer ignore how much her father had gotten wrong. Possibly lied about. But Aisling couldn’t dwell on that possibility for long. Still, what else did the Forbidden Lore contain that would ring true for Aisling?

“Once the gods were satisfied with the barren realms they’d created, this plane and the plane of the Other, they returned to the Great Forge of Creation to cast its inhabitants: the Sidhe came first and the Unseelie second.”

“Man was born of nothing, but nevertheless born first.”

Aisling bit her tongue. There was no point in contesting Lir’s version against her father’s own. Their disagreements were clear and her mind ached when she thought of their contradictions.

“From the primordial elements, they cast the first Sidhe, the original twelve Sidhe sovereigns: water, earth, wind, and thedraiochtbuilt the Sidhe bones, our blood, our flesh, our breath. But not fire. Fire was the essence of the Forge. Bubbling magma from which the Sidhe were built and could equally be destroyed.” Lir gazed at the lilac fires in Aisling’s hand, his expression hardening as if bewitched by their light.

“The gods continued by forging the twelve Sidhe kingdoms and all of their subjects, granting those belonging to a certain environment more of one element than another.” Lir held out his hand once more until moss flowered from his palm, spreading like a contagion across his arm. “But there were other elements, elements even the Sidhe do not recognize. Minerals. Precious substances that only reside inthe pits of the Forge.”

“And you don’t know their names?” Aisling asked.

“There are legends that claim such arcane elements are stardust or lightning or the tears of the gods. Others say it’s a nameless substance we would understand as fate. A substance that takes such an abstraction and makes it a physical entity, a string that binds two souls.”

“Is that what you believe?” Aisling asked.

Lir’s brow knotted, considering.

“I don’t know,” the fae king confessed, watching as the moss around his arm faded away with the first breath of sunlight, peaking over the mountains.

“The gods bound two of their original sovereigns with this invisible, elemental string, curious to know what would occur should they do so.”

“Bres and Ina,” Aisling realized. For, Cathan’s song had described the original Sidhe king and queen as having been forbidden lovers. Besotted but unable to commit to their love lest they forsake their individual kingdoms. A crime the queen of the mountains eventually committed and was cursed eternally for. Alongside every subject in her kingdom. The kingdom of Iod.

Lir’s eyes flickered with grief. A grief so potent, Aisling could feel its shadow darkening the world around him.

“Aye, Bres and Ina were the firstcaera. Both born of the Forge with a string that bound their heart to the other. Two souls destined to be pulled towards the other no matter how the string tangled, stretched, knotted, no matter the cost.” And Ina had paid such a cost. A cost Aisling wondered about often for none had ever deigned to speak of the queen’s curse. What had become of her people as a result of her love?

“But then, according to the Lore, only the twelve original Sidhe sovereigns and their subjects were cast directly from the Forge. Only they’d be capable of having this elemental string. What of all those who come after?” Aisling asked,searching the fae king’s expression, a shadowed gaze that cut into her chest.

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