Page 102 of The Savage Queen

“And what then? We let him suffer?!” Filverel yelled, voice breaking mid-sentence—unable to separate his grief from anger.

Lir wasn’t certain how long the silence lasted. The stillness after death and, now, before it. The few birches, pearl pines, and silver spruces still loyal to him and untouched by Aisling’s rage, wept. Arching their wooden spines in the swelling, in the absence of the nuthatch melodies, the gale’s blow, winter’s sun veiled by clouds in mourning.

“You’re panicking,” Galad said, eyes drifting from Peitho to Filverel.

“What other options do we have?” the advisor said, his voice stripped as though he’d been shouting for the last several days.

“An elixir, an herb, a potion, a draught, a spell, a curse,” Gilrel offered, listing them without taking a breath.

“We don’t have that sort of time!” Filverel shouted.

“We’ll make the time,” Gilrel bit back.

Galad shook his head. “His only salvation, the fire the fae rebuke.” Words Danu had spoken, silencing them each.

All shifted, finally drawing their attention to Aisling.

AISLING

“She’ll kill him!” Peitho screamed. “We can’t possibly trust her with this.”

“She’s hiscaera, Peitho,” Gilrel said, the word “caera” slapping Peitho in the face. “And the only one capable of wielding the fire necessary to destroy the poison.”

“She is by every definition his bane. His undoing. The ill-omen of the fae!” Peitho continued, as though Aisling weren’t kneeled beside Lir as she spoke.

“You saw the form herdraiochttook,” Filverel said. “Somehow, impossibly, she summoned her flames and in so doing, summoned Racat in the image of her flames. That must mean something.”

“But what?” Galad asked, the only calm one among them.

“She’s been chosen, selected, or forged by either Ina or Racat.”

Aisling’s face twisted, her mind whipping violently from thought to thought. Her soul expanding and swelling with the extreme form of so many emotions.

“Perhaps she isn’t the enemy, the mortal weapon we once believed,” Galad said. He turned to Aisling, a soft gesture inherent in his gaze. As though, in this moment, he wanted to believe she wasn’t the traitor they’d witnessed at Dagfin and Peitho’s wedding. Wanted to believe she could still be an ally.

“If herdraiochtmanifested itself in the shape of Racat, it implies her destiny is with the fae. With the greenwood.” Galad exchanged glances with the rest of Lir’s knights. And at the words, Dagfin turned away. “So, give her an opportunity to prove it.”

They glared at Aisling, hatefully, intensely. A look that dissolved into hope when the silence became unbearable. Lir still clutched by otherworldly pain.

Aisling inhaled.

“You perish in a world of your own making. An axe in your heart.”

The Lady’s words crept into Aisling’s mind, spoken on a loop until Aisling knew their cadence by heart.

This was not Lir’s death day. He would live to kill Aisling: this much was prophesized.

And if it was possible to change prophecy, Aisling’s choice here and now would speak of it. It wasn’t revealed when or why Lir would be Aisling’s end. Only that he would be. A mere fragment of the portrait drawn by the Lady.

One day, Aisling and Lir’s positions would be reversed.

Aisling turned to his knights.

They each beheld her in silence.

Dagfin, however, avoided Aisling’s eyes entirely. Head bent and eyes red.

In that moment, Aisling wished she bore the strength, the will, the courage to kill the fae king. Desperately tried to convince herself she could. That with so much blood on her hands already, another meant nothing at all. Thathemeant nothing at all. Especially he, the enemy of mortals, her own deceiver. He, who not only threatened her goals in the curse breaker’s name, but was also the reaper of her end.

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