Page 13 of The Savage Queen

AISLING

When sung together, the screams of man and beast are the same. Steeped in terror, pain, and cold desperation. Scratching at Aisling’s mind long after they’d bled into something else entirely. Silence.

“HOW COULD YOU?!” Starn yelled, his voice crooked with pure rage. He started toward her, quickly held back by Dagfin.

Aisling forced herself to meet his eyes. To study their glassy, bloodshot orbs, glaring at her with such hate. For at this moment, he didn’t behold his sister. The child he’d watched learn to walk, the girl who’d embroidered his coats, or danced with him at midwinter, tossing their heads back in laughter. No. Today that woman was dead. She, nothing more than a demon, dressed in his sister’s skin.

“How could you?!” he repeated, face stained in scarlet, sweat, and salt. Aisling stood still, hands hanging limply at her sides. The patter of her blood dripping against the deck at the cost of herdraiochtwas too loud. Ringing inside her head as every crew member still alive watched her with equal loathing. Iarbonel, Fergus, and Annind incapable of glancing in her direction much less meeting her eyes.

“I saved all your lives,” Aisling said, at last, her temples pulsing with pain. “If it weren’t for me?—”

“Saved us?!” A crew member interrupted, every letter sour with his poison. His weathered face contorted in both anger and disbelief. “You brought this upon us! Summoned devils with your magic! You all saw it. The way she raced onto the deck the moment the crags appeared,” he spat, waving his arms as if to frighten a wild beast away. “She’s nothing more than a faerie!”

At the word, Aisling’s posture sharpened. She narrowed her focus on the crewman, the sole subject of her attention. Unrivaled loathing blackening her gut, for the bend of his brows, the knotting of his broken nose, the balling of his fists, and the horror all the crew harbored, mirrored a potent memory. Mimicked the day she’d returned from months amongst the Aos Sí, after sacrificingeverythingfor mankind. Everything despite their lifelong lies. Her kind, her clann, her túath, her family had rewarded her loyalty with suspicion, disgust, and fear.

“You would all be dead.” She spoke evenly, her voice melding with the sky still groaning with the impending tempest. And at the sound of her voice, smooth and lithe, the wholeStarlingshared a collective shudder.

“Every one of you would be rotting at the bottom of the sea or hardened to stone had I not intervened. You should be grateful.”

Starn took a single step toward her before Dagfin held him back once more.

“You disobeyed me. Disregarded my orders.”

“They were foolish ones.”

“That isn’t for you to decide.” His tone grew deathly low, rage eclipsing his fear. “You are to stifle every ounce of your magic. To suffocate whatever compels you to this madness.”

The backs of Aisling’s eyes burned, a solitary tear scalding her cheek as it fell.

“You fear what you cannot understand,” she said. “You exercise your blood-given power to day’s end but when it is a power that surpasses your own, one you cannot understand, you fear it.”

Starn’s lips pressed into a thin, white line. Iarbonel, Fergus, and Annind held their breath as their eldest brother released a humorless laugh. One that echoed across the Ashild. The electricity both webbing across the sky and knitting between the siblings.

“Power, little Sister, is meant for those born to wield it. Those of steadfast courage.” He gestured at Dagfin. “Wisdom.” Iarbonel. “Heart.” Fergus. “Intelligence.” Annind. “And unrivaled strength.” Starn. Her eldest brother straightened as he spoke. “You were a spoilt princess who refused discipline, indulged temptation, and surrendered to wistful fancies. That is why you were not made to be king, Aisling. Why whatever power you bear is a forge-forsaken mistake. For all you were made for was to be traded.”

A hush fell over the sea. The crest of every wave craning their frothy heads to behold Aisling. The same way the trees refused to turn their backs on the wolf who disemboweled its prey. The gore that attracted the reluctant eye rather than deter it.

“You will obey me,” her brother continued. The beat of every crewman’s heart thrashed inside Aisling’s ears like frightened hares. The smell of their mortal sweat, their rotten breath, sickened her. Doing her best to focus on the burns on her palms, sewing threads of agony beneath her flesh.

“I will not,” she said, biting her tongue till it bled.

“You will,” Starn said. “Because I am your king.”

“You’re close,” Lir whispered over the thunder of the waterfall and the downpour, rising from the natural pool to meet her in knee-deep waters. Raining as it always did in these dreams. “I can feel you.” He circled her, stopping to whisper in her ear from behind.

Heat slithered up Aisling’s spine.

“What is it you hide from me?” Aisling asked, turning her head to catch the nuances of his expression.

“It wouldn’t be hidden if I told you.” A truth, for the Sidhe couldn’t lie.

“Prevent me from discovering what I need and I’ll?—”

“Kill me?” he asked.

Aisling hesitated, cursing herself for it internally.

“You’re free to try but it isn’t as simple to kill acaeraas one might believe. You can take my word for it.” Indeed, Lir was bound by his need to kill Aisling as well as his need to protect her. To choose to ensure the crimes of his mother weren’t repeated, or to choose not to fail his secondcaerathe way he believed he had his first. Narisea, the mother of his late son. Both passed centuries before Aisling was born. And Ina, his mother—one of the original twelve Sidhe sovereigns gifted with sight, who forsook the mountain kingdom of Iod in her attempts to prevent Lir’s father, Bres, from meeting his end. The gods punished all her kingdom for it, making them the first mortals known to the realm.

---