Page 88 of The Savage Queen

AISLING

The moon cowered, shuddering behind streaks of clouds like rips in a painting. The demon skulking beneath its half-light.

An aberration built with the bones of a mare, yet more gaunt and gangly. Its slender legs creeping into Bludhaven. Pupilless eyes gilded and a foil to the pale shimmer of its mane or tail, dragging behind it like the hair of a hag. And most horrifying of all, was its grin. A crooked smile peeling unnaturally far, pausing just before where the ears should sprout but were noticeably absent.

Lir stood between the branches, high in the apple-crowded canopies. The fall from where they stood life-ending for a mortal.

“A phuka,” Lir whispered, studying it as it ambled through the empty corridors of Bludhaven just visible from where they stood.

The Sidhe exchanged this name often, chronicling tales of their encounters between goblets of fae wine and song.

“So, this is the Unseelie the druids worship?” Aisling asked, joining him at his side.

“Aye,” Lir said.

The phuka moved like a ghost. Head hung low, it traveled aimlessly, stopping to ogle town doors before continuing. Quiet, weightless, and gentle, it left clouds of dread in its wake. A blistering fog, scratching at Bludhaven, climbing the temple walls, and shriveling Lir’s garden till it sunk into Aisling’s skin.

“We should return,” Lir said, seemingly unbothered by the phuka’s influence.

“And what of the Unseelie?” Aisling asked, paralyzed by its image.

“What of it?” Lir held out his hand for Aisling, preparing to begin their descent.

“The mortals are sacrificing their own to it, aren’t they?” Aisling asked. Indeed, she’d smelled the iron of their blood smeared across the town. The sound of human bones clicking from the thatched and shingled roofs, singing with the memory of those perished. Witnessed the townsfolk bolt their doors and drain the streets come dusk. Felt the empty clang of the temple’s bell to announce a feeding when all but the moon would bear witness.

“It appears that way,” Lir said, voice emotionless.

Aisling considered him, lingering atop the branches even as he waited for her.

“You bear no inclination to help them, do you?”

Lir did a double take, tempering his emotion, but Aisling caught the flash of confusion then outrage, flickering across his verdant gaze.

“Help a village of mortals?” He shook his head. “Set aside my loathing and still there’s little if any reason to intervene.”

“Yet it’s your woodland. Your Unseelie and they’re dying?—”

“Ask it and it’s my command. But if you’re appealing to my compassion for mortal kind—if you want a hero, a knight in polished armor, return to your princeling. For a hero I’ll never be.”

Aisling stilled, Lir’s words echoing long after they’d sounded. Spoken as though they’d lived inside his mind for far longer than he’d want her to know.

“They’re surviving. This village is prospering, the hunters, the gatherers, all able to leave their mortal walls in exchange for a blood sacrifice. A deal they struck of their own free will, considering fae deals can be sealed no other way. Humans are never the victims they’d have you believe they are.”

Aisling stood silent, watching the phuka glide from door to door, searching for its offering.

“Yet you can end it. Do away with more unnecessary bloodshed.”

“Bloodshed is always necessary,ellwyn.”

“That’s heartless.”

“It’s survival,” Lir said, the wind winding through his dark hair. “That Unseelie has no less right to live than any mortal. Both beast and man are nightmares incarnate: humans are simply more efficient at feigning innocence.”

The night died screaming.

Aisling covered her ears till the sun rose and morning was born. The ghosts of Roktan sailors burned alive, imbuing present horrors. Of sacrifices made in the dead of night to those who forgot to paint their doors. Of those blood sacrifices whose families shoved them into the streets and left them for dead.

So, as soon as Aisling descended the tavern stairs and met Dagfin’s eyes, he realized her restless night.

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