Page 126 of The Savage Queen

“I remember you,” Lir heard a creature say through the mayhem, focusing on Gilrel, blade already decorated with Unseelie blood.

“No, no, this one’s slightly different.”

“How can you tell?”

“I ate the last, bone by bone. I know every meal by heart.”

Lir cut down five more, axes warm and guzzling death.

“And so shall you know the edge of my sword by heart,” Gilrel screamed, leaping atop the largest of them and running her blade through the top of its head. The others shot their webs, torn apart by Gilrel’s swift swing. But there were too many. The final web wrapped around Gilrel’s blade, cleaving it from her paw. The neccakaid smiled as it threw the blade down, clattering onto the marble floors distantly below.

Gilrel’s expression furrowed, balling her hands into fists as six more neccakaid approached. They reeled, standing on their hind legs and filling their fangs with venom.

Lir cut through three more Unseelie charging toward him. And the first free second he bore, he drew a dagger from his beltand flicked it at the neccakaid on the precipice of striking. The beast felled, its corpse offering Gilrel the blade as though served on a silver platter.

Gilrel nodded at Lir, gathering the blade and cutting through each neccakaid. She, a flurry of wicked vengeance as she made ribbons of those who wove threads.

“Ash!”

Lir spun, stomach plummeting the moment he heard theFaerak’s voice. The sound of her name pronounced with such desperation, stilling his heart.

AISLING

Aisling reached for thedraiochtendlessly, screaming at Racat, her magic, whoever it may be skulking in the abyss, to rise. To breathe through her. To light the entire chamber on fire. Yet all she found was silence. Fionn and the Lady’s magic having snuffed whatever power she harbored. Leaving Aisling as she was before she’d ever met the fae king, stepped foot into Annwyn, or defended herself against the fomorians. Without magic. Mortal.

The rest of their party blazed through the Unseelie by blade or strength, decorating the chamber with grisly remains and ear-splitting screeches. Peitho cleaved a neccakaid in two, Filverel plucked their legs from their bodies with the tip of his sword, and Galad danced through their hordes, piles of carrion left in his wake. Dagfin, on the other hand, stood beside Aisling, tearing down any and all Unseelie that approached her.

It’d all occurred so fast. Their swarms descended with wild abandon. Lir was surrounded by the majority of their nest, rising from the piles to spare Gilrel in her moment of need.

And Aisling was useless. Racing up the staircase with Dagfin by her side. Unable to aid their efforts even as the fiftieth? The hundredth? Aisling wasn’t certain, only that this neccakaid finally broke through Dagfin’s strike and pinned him to the stone.

They were so close. The dusky light of Lofgren’s peak blinding and an arm’s reach away, blasting into the chamber from a large, steepled threshold.

Aisling panicked, smoking without her flames. So, she ran for Dagfin, unsure what to do only that she’d do something. Anything. Sprinting when her body suddenly fell onto its knees, white-hot pain spreading from her shoulder and into her chest.

The threshold a pace away. Everything and all she’d pursued, so close.

“Ash!” Dagfin screamed, appraising her shoulder with horror-filled eyes. But the sound was distant and muffled, eclipsed by the ringing in her ears.

Aisling followed his line of sight, finding the tip of a neccakaid’s leg speared through her shoulder and slippery with her blood.

It wasn’t as painful as Aisling would’ve assumed, but she knew, even now, the lack of pain was most likely shock or adrenaline. Perhaps both, thrumming through her veins.

“Aisling!” Dagfin screamed.

DAGFIN

Dagfin nearly lost Fionn’s sword, digging it through the throat of the neccakaid atop him. He shoved the beast off, racing to where Aisling kneeled.

But Lir was already there, slicing the creature behind her in half and falling to his knees before her.

Dagfin despised himself for the jealousy he felt even now. Seeing for himself how the fae king’s expression was possessed. Riddled in panic, in despair, in anger, and fury, each emotion burning a fire in his eyes as he cupped her face with one of his blood-soaked hands, then her waist, bringing her against him.

“Hold still,” he whispered in her ear, just loud enough for Dagfin to glean, reaching around her with his free hand and tearing out the neccakaid’s leg.

Dagfin despised the sight of him touching her. Always protective and possessive as though she were the fae king’s. As though Lir had known her soul for an eternity and breathed every last breath in anticipation of touching her again. And it was so vastly unfair. As though the true life Dagfin had lived with Aisling was stolen from him. Everything he’d ever hoped for, given to another. No, not given, ripped from his hands by the fae before him.

Aisling screamed into Lir’s shoulder. Tears spilling and staining his already red-steeped leathers. Lir held her more tightly, running a hand through her hair and bringing her head into the curve of his neck.

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