Page 133 of The Savage Queen

Aisling was the curse breaker. The means to either end Ina’s curse and revive mankind to their previous glory or to ensure the curse was never broken. Ina’s punishment forever sealed even if at the cost of mortal ambition.

It wasn’t possible. Aisling didn’t understand and yet she did. Felt justified never having fit inside an iron keep, in a mortal den, in a magicless, purposeless life. She was wild. Forged not to sit at banquets nor wade silently through life as pawn. She was rather forged to race through forests barefoot, to dance in the night, to roar alongside the beasts of yore.

“Give us the curse breaker!” Starn repeated, jutting his blade forward.

“She stands before you,” Aisling said, at last.

Thedragúnshook its mane, casting itself in a layer of violet fire that mirrored the flames enveloping Aisling.

Lir’s feline gaze focused fully on Aisling, dark hair windswept by her magic. The others shielded their eyes from the blinding, violet light.

“To claim the curse breaker, you must defeat Ina’s greatest weapon and seize its heart.” Racat lowered himself, so his great head hovered at Aisling’s side. “Ina’s sorceress.”

“Godsforsaken Forge,” Lir hissed, searching Aisling’s expression licked by fire. His axes hanging at his sides. Staring at Aisling as though she were a dream. A vision. A memory cast into eternity and far from him. His opportunity to spite the fire hand and all of humankind, to prevent Danu’s prophecy from ever being fulfilled, standing before him. A single death away.

The cost: the heart of his owncaera.

“Go on,” Aisling said, her flames burning brighter. Heart hammering inside her chest, fulfilled by magic’s decadent satisfaction. “See if you can take what it is you want.”

Lir shook his head, eyes glazed and wet. Ringed in red and harrowed. Yet slowly, so slowly, he lifted his axes. Aisling’s heartsplintering. A part of her, a part she’d shoved into its cobwebbed corner again and again, that hoped he’d choose her above his need for power, for vengeance, for blood, died the moment he raised his axe.

But it was Starn who attacked first, shouting as he unleashed his floating blade.

The iron sword darted through the air, spearing for Aisling’s head.

Without another thought, Aisling lifted her hand and wrapped it in flame, holding it mid-air with wrath, with loathing, with impatience.

“Did you really think you could borrow some spell? Some flimsy means of magic and best me?” Aisling bared her teeth, spinning Starn’s blade and pointing it back at her brother.

Starn swallowed, staggering back alongside Killian and her brothers.

“Iletyou make it this far.Allowedyou to stand before me now so you might face the full fury of my strength. A strength you caged, shackled, and starved.” Aisling seethed.

Killian released six quarrels. So, Aisling flung Starn’s blade to the side and burned every last bolt till they shriveled to ash atop Iod.

“Mortals were not made for magic.” She approached them. “Humans lack vision, a cognizance for the world. You breed a desire to control that which was never yours to command.”

Aisling summoned a ring of fire, trapping the tip of Lofgren’s Rise in amethyst walls. Lir watched her, as though transfixed by some unspoken spell.

“You stand here before me by my design. I could bring you to your knees atop the stone that made your kind.”

“Your kind?!” Fergus shouted. “You’re mortal, Aisling. Don’t let the fae king convince you otherwise.”

Aisling laughed, a sound serrated with a cruelty she understood.

“No, our brother is right. I died a first death the night you traded me to the fae,” Aisling’s eyes flickered to Dagfin’s body. Limp and unmoving. The sight of him burning her fires brighter. “And a second death when you killed Dagfin, blighting whatever shred of humanity I still bore.”

Aisling lifted her hands, veins pulsing with fire, as she glared at her eldest brother.

“No, no!” Iarbonel shouted, “Dagfin never would’ve wanted this for you!”

“You are great, 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.” Dagfin may have been dead, but his words were alive and beating in her mind.

Aisling wrenched her eyes shut.

“Fight to be good.”

Aisling lowered her hand, flames dimming. Her heart beating a pace slower. Aisling was prepared to kill her brothers, yet it was Dagfin’s words that held her back. His way of protecting her soul, even in death, should she make a decision she could never return from.

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