Page 36 of The Savage Queen

Greum circled them, a low rumble vibrating through his core.

“How quickly and often you forget our deal: Lir’s whereabouts, for your kin’s freedom.”

“I told you, I know not where he is, and even if I did, you’d have to pry it from my lips.”

“As much as I’d love to explore your lips,mo Lúra, let’s make another deal.”

Aisling hesitated, glancing at Dagfin, Killian, and her brothers. Annind was weak and conditions such as this would only kill him more quickly. Imprisonment was death for her youngest brother. The snapping of her heartstrings worsening the resentment she already felt for her clann. She should leave them. Give them time to recognize how they’d wronged her. Continued to wrong her. Make them rue every last disgusted glance. But try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to forsake them. To abandon the last vestiges of who she was before Annwyn. Before Lir.

“What are your terms?” She forced out the words.

Fionn’s mouth split into a devious smile as he leaned forward to whisper in her ear.

“Your escorts’ freedom in exchange for our true binding.”

Atrue binding? Aisling assumed he meant a union. A marriage.

A marriage to the fae was a sacred event where souls were bound and knotted in a tapestry woven with fate’s threads.

Aisling staggered back a step, tearing herself from his touch.

“You have until the end ofSamhainto agree.”

CHAPTER XIV

AISLING

Samhainwas a festival of death.

That’s what Aisling’s chambermaids told her when she still lived in Tilren. Nothing more than legends, myths, and tales to scare off children. Greum, however, described it differently.

“His lordship enjoys celebrating this blessed period, when the gods feel closer to waking than any other time of the year. Tonight marks the beginning ofSamhainand it concludes with the lunar month.”

“A month?” Aisling asked, at once frustrated. “My youngest brother doesn’t have that sort of time. He’ll die before then. And Dagfin?—”

“Let me ease your concerns; his lordship has given them each proper accommodations and even a healer in the case of the wounded one. That is, until the end ofSamhain. Then it is up to you to decide whether you wish to strike a deal with his lordship or not.”

Aisling exhaled, relieved they were no longer being kept in the dungeons.

Aisling followed closely behind the bear. Watching as it carried its great body through the misty corridors of glittering opal. Every alcove, balcony, and arcade glaring out at a frost-ridden forest. A family of snow-capped mountains huffing in the distance. This was the world from Fionn’s palace:Oighir, Greum had called it. A land like a jewelry box, tipped over and spilling a trove of crystals, diamonds, and stars. Punctuated only by the tips of evergreens and spindly birches.

“DuringSamhain, the veil between here and the Otherworld thins,” Aisling conjectured. To the mortals, the Otherworld was death and the land beyond the living. To the Aos Sí, however, the Otherworld was the beginning of all things as well as the end. A supernatural, primordial realm of unencumbered magic.

“Aye, the spirits will fancy themselves more mischievous, and once they catch wind of your scent, they’ll not hesitate to explore their interest in you. It isn’t often a mortal steals from their plane and lives to tell the tale.”

Aisling shuddered so Greum laughed in response, the icicles spearing toward them from above quivering.

“I too fearedSamhainas a cub, but with time I grew to cherish it. Praying the same spirits that spilled the Forge’s tonic in each Sidhe kingdom and blessed me with speech would also damn the mortals that burned our forests.”

“And damned they are,” Aisling said. Cursed by Ina.

Greum glanced at Aisling over his shoulder.

Against her own volition, Aisling smiled. She found she quite liked Greum. A beast that reminded her of one far smaller yet equally, if not more, deadly.

The bear, at last, paused before a great threshold. An obsidian door etched with fae markings and laced with garlands bubbling over with cranberries sugared by the frost.

“I leave you here,Skalla.”

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