Page 6 of The Savage Queen

“Perhaps this time is different,” Aisling said.

“I’ve learned never to underestimate Father,” Fergus chimed. “Rest assured, he’s searching for the curse breaker as we speak.”

“Or searching for Aisling herself.” Iarbonel rested his elbows along the vessel’s edge. “I can’t imagine the…changesAisling has undergone wouldn’t weigh heavily on his mind and motivations. You all heard him celebrate Aisling and that she’ddone what no mortal has been capable of before: she stole back thedraiocht.”

“No.” Annind shook his head. “That very well may be. But he won’t search for her like every other forge-forsaken creature on this plane. He’ll wait till she goes to him.”

“Go to him?” Aisling scoffed, batting away the memory of his glistening eyes the first time he’d witnessed Aisling wield thedraiocht.

“You’re his daughter, Aisling,” Annind said. “Nothing will ever change that.” His coal-black eyes met her glare. “You’ll never be alone so long as your túath breathes an iron breath. For blood of iron may rust but will never break like a spell. I promise you that.”

Aisling held her brother’s stare even as he reached for her gloved hand and held it. Hesitating before he touched her.

Aisling had witnessed the horror, the grief, the confusion flashing across her brothers’ expressions each time she summoned violet flame. The disgust they hid from her. The contempt all humankind had shown her since she’d sacrificed everything for their sake kindled unique rage within her.

CHAPTER IV

AISLING

Aisling rose from the black pond the same way she’d emerged from Annwyn’s aqueducts. Clawing toward the surface and the glimmer of light from above.

Water transcended time and space. Became a passage for those who belonged elsewhere, even in dreams and visions.

“Aisling.” Lir called her name from the shadows in the surrounding forest, nothing more than a calm wind threading through her ears. Aisling turned to find him, meeting his eyes where he lay in the grass.

She approached him this time, ascending from the pond until she reached the blades of green, stretching herself out to lay beside him. As though Aisling and the fae king had returned to the feywilds, sleeping during the day and prowling at starlight. The rain descended toward the earth like stars made of honey, dripping from the sky.

His gaze was feline—more glorious than the rain that dappled his face in the storm’s most precious jewels.

“You shouldn’t trust a promise, Aisling.” He spoke to her, his voice thrumming through her core and pricking her skin.

“Yet I should trust yours?”

“You and I are different.”

“Aye, as you’ve told me countless times before, I am no longer as mortal as I once was. No longer belong to their world but rather with the Sidhe.”

“You misunderstand me: you belong nowhere other than with me.”

Aisling felt her heart splinter, forcing herself to tear her eyes from his. But the pain of it, his proximity, their cord, their fated string, knotting between them, fraying, pulling, tugging at her heart, snapped the dream into oblivion.

Aisling woke to the ghosts in the walls. The “adjusting” of cottages, inns, taverns, or ships built by man’s hands. Fae things didn’t creak. Their bones didn’t click nor groan. Theybreathed. Grew alongside the life breath of the wild.

“It can’t happen again,” Starn hissed, his voice traveling beneath Aisling’s door and into her quarters. “There cannot be any more fires. Every mortal man, fae, and fiend is hunting her.”

“Feradach is just as intent on obtaining the curse breaker as any other sovereign. Like every man aboard theStarling, he personally recruited trusted seafarers of Roktling. To enlist any man with a loose tongue would be to set our competitors upon us.”

“Aye, your father has done his part, but if you think they’re immune to the fear of her, then we’ve already lost this race to the fae king.”

“You’ve never shied away from a battle with the fae, Starn; why start now?”

Galad. Aisling’s mind spun at the memory of her eldest brother’s crimes. Her chest hollowed for her Sidhe friend. Rage bleeding across her tongue.

Starn scoffed. “As much as I’d enjoy nothing more than to bathe in the blood of my fae conquests, you know good and well, that isn’t what this is about.”

“What’s it all about then, Starn?” Dagfin’s tone dropped deathly low. “Why help Aisling?”

“She’s my sister.”

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