Page 69 of The Savage Queen

Fionn made a mocking sound, but Aisling saw the bobbing of his throat and the flash of doubt. For if Fionn had misjudged Lir, he’d lose Aisling too. Aisling, his answer to correcting the history he believed illegitimate. His answer to correcting everything he believed Lir had taken from him. Not to mention, usurping his brother and Danu alike to rule the realm with Aisling at his side.

LIR

Galad handed Lir his lance. A lengthy, translucent spear, settled into a grapper hooked to his right pauldron with a belt. The stag beneath him stirred, inhaling the smell of the hunter-green needles wrapping around the lance, summoned by Lir’s temper.

“I’m guessing any attempts to discourage you from going forward with this would be in vain,” Galad said, tightening the saddle buckles. His blade,Bréachta, winking from where it hung against his back.

Lir adjusted his grip on the lance. “Your guess would be right.”

“You’ll kill her, Lir.” The emotion in Galad’s voice surprised the Sidhe king.

“And what would you have me do?” Lir bore two choices: to either trust himself enough to win this final test against all odds or forsake Aisling to Fionn’s whims for the rest of eternity. Both paths risked Aisling’s life but at the very least, the first option was within his control. He could end this and win everything: Fionn’s test and Aisling’s freedom. Or he could lose everything. The latter, unfathomable.

Galad hesitated, opening his mouth to speak but unable to find the words.

“Be quick with it,” was all he said, nodding his head before turning to join the others.

Lir swallowed, clearing his throat as Peitho tossed him his antlered helmet.

Lir had jousted on plenty of occasions before but never like this. Never with the stakes being everything or nothing. His body setting flame the moment his eyes connected with Aisling’s from across the bridge. Two glittering amethysts amidst a landscape of ivory watching him prepare to stake her through the heart should he make a mistake. Should he commit even the slightest of misjudgments.

She inhaled deeply, finding in herself the resolve Lir had become well acquainted with. The courage she stirred awake when it was time to come face to face with a nightmare. And like most days, that nightmare was Lir himself.

Lir tore his eyes away, unable to look at Aisling for too long. He assessed the weight of the lance in his grip, shifting the shaft till he found the perfect grip.

“On the count of three, you’ll ride,” Frigg snapped at the stag’s hooves. Lir tipped his chin in acknowledgement, ignoringthe mad beating of his pulse, the throbbing of his temples, the aching of his chest. Lir couldn’t remember the last time he felt this way: immeasurably nervous. Battles, wars, duels, hunts, chases, were commonplace for Lir and hardly made him dizzy, much less twisted his heart. Yet now, Lir struggled to focus, blinking away the image of Aisling as he prepared to race for her.

“One,” Frigg barked in Rún.

Oighir held its breath.

“Two.”

Lir tightened his grip.

“Three.”

Lir shot forward, a blur of color as he cut across the bridge. Fionn’s ice heart, a radiant light hovering before Aisling.

Fionn stood to the side, beaming from ear to ear even as Lir drove forward, his lance aimed at both the ice heart, and just behind it, Aisling’s own.

Lir forced himself not to glance at Aisling. To instead, focus on the tip of his spear, the gait of his mount, the distance between himself and the ice heart. Everything, all of it, unraveling as though Lir were plunging toward the earth, destined to meet his ruin.

The tip of Lir’s lance was three or so heartbeats from the ice heart. His stomach catapulting into his throat the quicker the seconds slipped through his fingers.

I summon the forest, Lir said to hisdraiochtand in response his wolf came snapping from its abyss, conjuring emerald vines, wrapping around Aisling and grappling her to the ground the precise moment the tip of his lance pierced the ice heart. It shattered, driving through and into the space Aisling once stood.Skimming her arm and spraying both Lir and the stag in her blood.

Shards of ice exploded from the impact as Lir leapt off his stag and reached for Aisling, already drowning in his overzealous vines. He tore them off her, ripping every leaf and thorn-ridden vine, unburying her even as they grew alongside the height of his desperation. His hands shaking with adrenaline. The same adrenaline propelling him onward as he ripped his own flora apart till emerald carnage surrounded them, unearthing Aisling at long last. He brought her against him as though she might vanish like the fog. Her blood and tears seeping into his leathers as she gasped for air and still, she wasn’t close enough.

Perhaps it was her own adrenaline, but Aisling buried her face in the curve of his neck, startling him. The pounding of her heart against his chest, everything he’d never realized he craved. Hisdraiochtbrightening feverishly to the hum of her magic.

“Don’t think this means I trust you now,” she said, her voice ragged. Despite himself, Lir smiled, knowing that despite the humor in her voice, the sentiment was both true and reciprocated.

Lir shut his eyes.

“Never,” he said into her ear, “nevermake me do that again.”

But the moment, that blessed fragment of relief, evaporated the moment Fionn’s clapping erupted behind them. The mass whispers of the surrounding crowd grew into a roar as they beheld Aisling and Lir, both alive. Victors of the third and final test for Aisling’s freedom.

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