Page 99 of The Savage Queen

Six or so wooden stakes shimmied between his armor and slid into his back. Scarlet leaking from his wounds and dripping onto Aisling beneath him.

“Lir,” she breathed, violet eyes searching his own with horror. Feeling with her palms the warmth of his blood as he sheltered her.

“Lir,” she said again, this time more desperate. The Sidhe king struggled to answer as he uncurled, kneeling before her as every sliver of traitorous tree slid between his muscles and took root. Centimeters, perhaps inches from his heart.

Aisling reached her arms around him as if to embrace him, instead, unsheathing the stakes from his back. The pain euphoric when dealt by her hands. The smell of her so near, unbridling his power and renewing what was lost when apart.

His knights drew their swords, allowing Aisling the gruesome duty of drawing each stake from his back as they slipped through the mayhem like blood-bent shadows. A line of defense until the job was done.

“Lir,” she said again, after the last stake was removed. Already his body healing, made new when so near to her own. But time was fleeting.

They stood, swiftly dodging another tree as it pummeled into the earth, racing after the others. The world titling beneath the pressure of the onslaught.

“Aisling!” Dagfin screamed, still waiting—always waiting for her.

Lir cursed beneath his breath again, drawing his axe and severing a branch that whipped at them, splitting and writhing in the dirt as it fell. His movement slower than he was accustomed to, a sharp pain slithering through the flesh around his spine.

“Hurry!” Gilrel shouted, leaping from flailing branch to flailing branch, splitting its spindly claws till the dryads hissed, lurching in pain. Filverel, Galad, and Peitho soaking the earth in its sap. Their blades glinting despite the density of the canopies above, the showering of stones, roots, and soil. A choir of ripping, of groaning, of crunching as the discord ensued.

Aisling cast flame after flame, tearing through the trees and sizzling them to ash. Her violet eyes glimmering more brightly, dark hair fanning as she spun from one target to the next, the edge of her lips bent with determination.

Lir gritted his teeth through the pain, slicing through Danu’s legion. As though needles of undiluted iron buried beneath his flesh where the dryad’s stakes had penetrated his flesh. The torment, all-consuming as their party battled through the dryad’s ambush, until the world seemingly ended with a rock face.

A river poured over its edge but was frozen by winter’s will. A sparkling veil draped over and between the body of a colossal, obsidian ash. As though the giant once showered beneath the waterfall’s sheets, now bejeweled by its ice.

The ash twisted and the ice cracked. The body of a woman taking shape, blinking arachnids, thorns, and vermin. Peeling from its bark and shuddering with life.

Danu.

“Go on,Damh Bán,” Danu said, her voice thrumming through the earth and echoing through her corridors of black. “Bend the knee to the true sovereign of the greenwood.”

Danu twisted one rotting hand wrapped in a gauntlet of thorns.

And at the gesture, blinding pain consumed Lir.

The agony of the dryad’s stakes, heightened, iron in his blood, his bones, hisdraiocht, eager to slowly devour him morsel by morsel from the inside out.

Lir collapsed onto his knees, grinding his fangs against his teeth, if only to brace against the pain.

“You’ve poisoned him,” Filverel realized, longsword dripping with sap at his side. Expression lit with desperate outrage.

“A combination of mortal hemlock and burning nettle, also known asNeantóg,” Danu chuckled to herself. “A brew that mimics the effects of iron when exposed to Seelie. TheDamh Bánshould feel as if iron tangles through his muscles and between every nerve. And at my command, it will spread, seeping beneath his bones, having taken root the moment it plunged beneath his armor.”

Neantóg.

One of the poisons Fionn had used in his second test.

Her rage abounding, Aisling reacted and summoned flames of amethyst.

They grew from the earth, hot and wild, barreling toward Danu.

The empress shifted her attention, lifting several behemoth roots and slamming them against Aisling’sdraiocht. The flames flattened, suffocated beneath the dirt.

“You’ll have your turn as well, little beast.”

Aisling seethed. Both Galad and Dagfin moving more closely behind her should she try again.

Danu slid her attention back to the Sidhe king.

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