Page 85 of The Savage Queen

Aisling slipped out the door and rushed across the thoroughfare, glancing over her shoulder to ensure the woman wasn’t following her trail, turning in time to collide with another.

Aisling staggered back, quickly regaining her balance. Cursing her luck when she met eyes with the Sidhe king.

Lir tilted his head back, watching her. An amused smile played across his lips, quickly fading the moment he acknowledged the Roktan blue cloak she wore. Shadows taking root.

“Were you following me?” Aisling asked, face twisting in anger. She knew Lir wouldn’t let her escape so easily but if he believed her compliance was anything more than self-serving, he was wrong. Aisling could flee any time she liked; she rather found her chances of reaching Lofgren’s Rise more quickly higher if accompanied by a group of legendary Aos Sí. Ignoring the ache-like pain in her heart each time she was reminded Lir was real and no dream, no vision, no fireside tale alive in the periphery of one’s imagination.

“You collided with me,ellwyn. I have more reason to believe you were following me.”

Aisling snorted, “I’m in no mood for your games.” She shoved past him, continuing down the thoroughfare.

“Wait,” he called after her. “I have something to show you.”

“At this hour?” Bludhaven’s doors were slamming shut, locking, and bolting on the other side. The torrent of villagers passing by, eager to settle before the hearth for the night.

“Is there a better one?” he asked.

Aisling shook her head, searching for an excuse but finding none. The thought of returning toAbhaileand being alone with her thoughts sickening. While the prospect of following Lir was far more seductive than aimlessly wandering Bludhaven’s alleys.

Aisling dipped her chin, a silent agreement she forced herself to make, immediately regretting it the moment Lir brightened triumphantly, already gesturing for her to follow behind him.

Lir slipped through Bludhaven like a leaf in the wind, winding through cottage, apothecary, and smithy, Aisling shortly behind.

At last, they broke through the smoking city-town and wandered into a garden still protected by the village walls.

It was dismal. Naked, sickly trees drooping over carpets of dead flowers and pale fungi. The leaves that remained had all turned gray or brown, brittle and ashen. Lost to the kiss of wintertide.

Lir wandered through regardless till he reached the center where they grew cloaked by the twisted, rotting branches. Surrounded by statues of life-size stags and wolves chasing one another through the ruin.

“What is this place?” Aisling asked. For although it felt like a graveyard of everything green, it still chuckled with magic. The stars fell from their kingdom of black, tangling through Aisling’s hair, and scraped her cheeks with their jagged edges. Real or not, Aisling wasn’t certain until Lir brushed a star from his shoulder.

“Is this a dream?” Aisling asked.

“If it were, would you kiss me again?” Lir asked, circling her like a wolf padding around its prey.

“No,” Aisling said, swallowing.

“Why not?”

“A kiss is prayer, dark lord. Faith-filled, spoken on one’s knees and in the dead of night. Not a weapon to be wielded nor a currency for your ambition.”

Fionn’s kiss tore through her memory, making a hypocrite of Aisling. Yet the kiss she’d traded for an advantage in Oighir didn’t feel as sacred as whatever she shared with Lir. Didn’t feel as consequential, as cosmically important.

Lir tilted his head to the side, eyes glowing with the reflective sheen of beasts in the wood.

“Another reason we should share one tonight.”

Aisling frowned, turning when he caught her wrist and gently pulled her back. He bent down and kissed her cheek, tasting her blood where the stars scratched her skin. Aisling froze, their proximity, his touch, burning a fire in her abdomen.

Lir’s eyes flashed a headier shade of evergreen and the garden transformed. His magic given new breath with their kiss; for each time their lips met, both Aisling and Lir grew more powerful whether it be the kiss they shared when Aisling fled from Dagfin and Peitho’s union yielding the forest Lir summoned, their kiss in Fionn’s arena aiding Lir’s victory, or his kiss now, giving new life to the garden in which they stood. Every touch, every intimate glance, inspiring theirdraiocht. A kiss paid to thedraiochtin exchange for Lir’s power.

The trees straightened, exhaling and blooming leaves like chips of emerald. Lush and radiant, they grew enormous, rising toward the night sky and bubbling over with red bulbs. Garlands of scarlet ripe apples, plump and polished. Crowding around the statues of stags and wolves until everything was lost to the sheer growth of the garden. The canopies eclipsing the moon and cloaking their underbelly in darkness. A graveyard brought back from the dead.

“Are you trying to impress me?” Aisling’s eyes, wide and sparkling, drank in the sight of Lir’s magic, half-worried it might vanish before she could memorize it. Pop like a soap bubble, never to be experienced again.

“Did it work?” he asked, stepping toward the nearest tree.

Aisling said not a word, but she didn’t have to. Her expression spoke for itself and so she damned it. Lir beamed, dimples tracing the edges of his brilliant grin.

---