Page 98 of The Savage Queen

“It’s because I care for you that I’m here at all.”

“I’m not your destiny, Fin. Our lives have forked. You will be honored, and I will be feared.”

“You aregreat, Aisling. Capable of both great good and great evil. I’m not naive to the forces that wage war within you. But a battle is a battle because it’s meant to be fought. So, fight for it, Aisling. Fight to be good. Fight for what’s right in place of those who have no strength to do so themselves,” Dagfin reached out and held her hand, as they’d done as children when the tales of fair folk became too frightening. “For every mortal village pillaged, every forest burned, every death committed in vain. Because above all, Aisling, I believe in you. In the heart that sacrificed everything for her race. A heart I’d die for again and again, if it meant fighting by your side.”

Aisling squeezed his hand, memorizing its pulse.

Dagfin loved a woman who’d died before she ever set foot in fae land. Her body burned and her ashes buried in a circle of fire. Offered by those she’d loved.

“You will accompany me to Lofgren’s Rise. You will discover what it is I seek alongside me: this much I owe you,” Aisling said, biting down tears. “And then you will go home.”

LIR

“Turn around,” the trees hissed.

Lir measured them, peering further into their depths. Weighing the density of thedraiochtas it built, spell by spell till even Lir’s ears popped beneath its pressure. A consequence ofSamhainor something else entirely, the Sidhe king had yet to decide.

“Turn around,” the trees repeated, “the forest here is not your own.”

The mount beneath Lir agreed, nodding its head forward in warning. Its heart beating swiftly.

Lir cursed, raising his hand to stop the others following shortly behind.

“What is it?” Filverel asked in Rún, suddenly more attune to the shift in the air. Peitho’s hand drifted to the haft of her weapon, quickly interrupted by the subtle shake of Galad’s head. A gesture the princeling noticed as well. So long as Danu believed them ignorant of her ploys, they bore the advantage.

The stench of forge-old rot rose like the fog.

“By the Forge,” Gilrel whispered a silent prayer as black sap bled from the birches like tears of ink. And the forest shifted to black.

“Danu,” Lir said.

Once identified for what it was, Lir could taste the poison of her influence as it spread through Fjallnorr’s northernmost woods. The envy, the resentment, the anger mushrooming till every pine, every stone, every river, and every beast of the feywild was touched by its mold.

The only path to Lofgren’s Rise was through Danu’s legions of traitors. Made obvious by the eyes of her dryads peering from behind their obsidian bark, the beetles that skittered betweentheir branches, and the ice that made moist their wooden flesh. Like spiders on a web, salivating, believing Lir to be entering their trap, ignorant of their ready pincers.

Lir encouraged his mount, his knights shortly behind, choosing to ignore the warnings of those still loyal trees in favor of continuing onwards. Into Danu’s waiting embrace.

“Bring Aisling’s mare beside my own,” Lir ordered Filverel.

His advisor obeyed without complaint.

Aisling found Lir’s eyes but said nothing. So, Lir was left to hope Aisling sensed it too. Knew that the blood black of the surrounding woodland was no longer under Lir’s control, but Danu’s herself. And knowing the empress, whatever Lir coveted most would be what she sought to destroy.

And had Lir not heard the rapid beat of the dryads around him, the anxiety of the robins still bold enough to peer from their canopies, or the energy drumming through the mud, the ambush would’ve come without warning.

The trees bent backwards, reeling before crashing into the earth. The world shook, knocking the mares off balance in a violent, screeching explosion.

Lir dove for Aisling, shoving her off the beast before it crushed her. They flew to the earth, torn apart and a few paces from the other.

The Sidhe leapt lithely from their mounts, rolling and finding their footing. Even the princeling, turning to find the dryads in their tree forms growing thorns, stretching larger, tangling between one another only to hurl themselves into the earth in a thunderous burst of dirt, splintered branches, and blade-sharp ice. Stakes that jutted at Aisling, flame swathed fists digging their nails into the dirt in anticipation of the pain.

Lir turned ashen. Dread prickling the hair at his nape.

He cursed, sprinting for Aisling where she lay and crushing her beneath him.

Aisling wrenched her eyes shut as Lir hid her, covering her body with his own. Her breath against his ear scalding and quick, the fluttering of her heart pulsing against his own and stressing the intangible cord between them. The intensity of it alone near capable of blinding him to the pain of the ice and wood flying from the mayhem and staking Lir’s back instead of Aisling.

Lir roared, the sensation somehow worse than an iron blade.

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