Page 140 of The Savage Queen

Aisling paled at the sound of her titles, stomach plummeting. So Galad nudged her, encouraging her forward.

Lir met her eyes. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t need to. His posture encouraged her forward, brows drawing together.

Aisling forced herself to swallow, inhaling deeply before taking the plunge and stepping into the light of the balcony.

There was silence. The inevitable pause before Aisling was to face the wrath, the fury, the hatred of any who beheldher whether it be mortal, fae, or Unseelie. A thick quiet that unnerved Aisling.

And so, such silence happened today, dense and persistent. A quiet that vegetated in the northern air until it broke. Until the hordes of fae before her erupted into applause. Screaming from their lungs, chanting her name, singing her praise. Leaping, smiling, tossing their fists into the air. Fae taking flight with admiration. A sea of veneration. Of worship.

Aisling’s expression evolved into a grin. One that ached as it grew larger, unable to be stifled the louder the audience grew. The more restless their cries. This was all she’d ever craved. Purpose, power. A world that gave her what her own blood never did: appreciation. Thanks for the sacrifice she’d made in their name. Acknowledgement for everything she’d done. Respect and welcoming. And here it was, among her enemy. Now her home.

Gilrel approached at her side, her magpies fluttering around Aisling’s head at the pine marten’s command. One by one, the magpies collected an antlered crown and held it above Aisling’s head. The counterpart to Lir’s own. A brilliant headdress fit for the sovereigns of the greenwood.

The magpies set the crown atop her head, and Annwyn erupted.

“Slayer of man!” they chanted, again and again and again.

Lir watched her, a grin reflected in his expression. More breathtaking than anything Aisling had ever seen before. And that’s why Aisling believed the Lady took it away, replaced by the image of a fleeting vision:

Aisling and Lir stood in the rain, steeped in both water and blood. Aisling swayed, brushed by a large wind and nearly knocked over. An axe in her chest, eyes swiftly dimming as the light fled from her violet orbs. Lir was crying, screaming something so terrible the Forge trembled. Yet Aisling couldn’t make it out. Couldn’t see past the dagger in his heart still litwith violet flame as he fell to his knees, clawing for Aisling, already lying on her back. Till his screams dissolved, washed away by the tempest as their heartbeats slowed to a halt in unison.

AFTER

LIR

Aisling and Lir raced on stagback through the feywilds surrounding Annwyn.

They were supposed to be in the throne room, meeting with Filverel, Galad, and the rest of Lir’s knights. Instead, they’d foregone their responsibilities in favor of racing through a woodland storm. The trees bubbling over with plums, peaches, and lemons. Roses wrapping around their trunks and Connemara poppies blooming wherever their stag’s hooves met the ground. Indeed, Aisling and Lir’sdraiochtwas insurmountable when together once they’d truly bonded. Wherever Lir went, whenever their eyes met, violets would blossom, and the world grew a few degrees hotter.

At last, Lir’s stag caught up with Aisling’s own.

He dove for her, knocking her off the stag and into a glen of brownie moss and cherry-red toadstools. Their stags continued to run into the surrounding woodland with their momentum.

“You cheated,” Aisling said as he pinned her arms above her head.

“So did you.”

He paused, gazing at a bundle of flowers on Aisling’s righthand side.

“Ellwyn,” he said. Aisling considered the flowers more closely: violet yet almost translucent, blooming from the earth from glass-like stems and peppered through the thickest patches of grass. “A legendary flower that has no native ground, it once bloomed in Annwyn every spring for several decades until it disappeared. The Sidhe searched for it, longed for it, wondered if it would ever return.”

Lir kissed her palms, tracing over the scars she’d suffered saving him from Danu’s poison. Whisper-light kisses deepening as he pressed his thigh between her legs and released her wrists so she could tangle her fingers through his hair. Lir slid his hands beneath her gown and gripped her hips. The veins in his forearms flexing the harder he held her atop the bed ofellwyn.

“We should return. The others are waiting for us—” Aisling broke off, inhaling sharply as he pressed his thigh more firmly between her legs.

“They can continue to wait,” he growled against her jaw. The forest thickened around them till walls were made of Lir’s thorns, ivy, and blood-red roses. Eyes no longer green but black with wanting.

Lightning splintered across the skies, interrupting them.

Lir straightened, wicking the hair from his eyes when he spotted it: a pool that wasn’t there moments before.

Both he and Aisling stood from the earth, bracing against the cloudburst, nearing the pool with caution. It glittered knowingly, bloomingellwynand deepening till the center was a black eye glaring back. Lir’s expression narrowed, drawing both halves of Hiraeth from his back. They’d both seen this pool before in Aisling’s dreams.

“The forest is changing,” the trees whispered, every word spoken as though they were peering over their shoulders. “Danu spreads her rot through your land, the Lady sits before her loom in wait, and the mortals are recovering for vengeance. But moreso than anyone or anything, the Otherworld is shifting. The veil between here and there hasn’t thickened despite the end ofSamhain. Someone is opening gateways. The forest feels it. The forest knows it. The forest screams each time a door is opened to the Other.”

“What is it?” Aisling asked.

Lir tilted his head back. “A gateway.” And at the word, the pool rippled, hundreds of voices whispering incoherently. As though the entire Other peered back from its depths, feeding their thoughts through the water.

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