Page 134 of The Savage Queen

“AISLING!” Lir shouted and before she could blink, Starn’s sword was running through her gut.

Aisling was numb, casting a bolt of fire that wrapped around Starn and inspired blood-curdling screams. Racat roared, diving for her brothers, lost without their magic sword, now staked through Aisling. A wound to accompany her others.

Lir was by her side in an instant, wrapped in smoke from her dying fire. The sound of her brothers’ boots fleeing, echoing in the northern wind as Lir held her against him. The Lady’s magic potent in the air as she sheltered Starn’s escape.

The fae king roared. A sound so terrible, the forest recoiled, bled black, and quivered. Screaming so loud, Aisling thought the veil might, at long last, shatter.

“Breathe, Aisling,” Lir said, voice strained and rough. “Breathe through thedraiocht. The blood will stop. Just breathe.”

Gilrel, Galad, and Peitho arrived from below, gasping for breath. They gaped at Racat, at Aisling and Lir, eyes as wide as the northern moon atSamhain’s peak. Beholding the remnants of everything that’d occurred, including Dagfin’s body.

“Their armies are approaching,” Gilrel said, kneeling down to hold Aisling’s hand. Galad looked away, unable to bear the sight of Aisling impaled by an iron blade.

“We can’t stay any longer,” Galad mumbled. “The mortal fleets are approaching.”

“Did you obtain the curse breaker?” Filverel asked.

“Breathe, Aisling,” was all Lir said again and again. “Breathe, Aisling. Breathe.”

But Aisling didn’t feel short of breath. Didn’t feel pain.

She felt madness.

Inhaling.

And exhaling.

A ripple of fire blasted from where she lay atop Lofgren’s peak and ravaged the whole of the north. A ripple of unbridled wildfire, scorching the earth and felling every last mortal till nothing remained but their iron armor, scorned by the fires once spread by their torches.

CHAPTER XLIII

AISLING

Galad pulled the blade from Aisling’s body.

Aisling gasped for breath, clutching her already healing wounds kissed by Racat.

Lir held her tightly enough to crush her, Aisling felt at times. Holding her against him where they lay atop Lofgren’s peak.

“Ina was a favored child. Blessed not once but twice by the gods. First with her sight and then with a weapon. One that was hidden away for a millennium, asleep and waiting: a soul,” Racat said to them, his voice imbuing the cloudburst that showered them all. That pelted over the spirits of Ina and Bres, knee-deep in the silver lake whispering in one another’s ears. A promise of ruinous, devastating love. One that persisted despite its potential for ruin. One that hadn’t managed to change the stars Ina had foreseen.

“Ina was patient, biding her time, dipping her hand into the future and burying her weapon inside a mortal keep. For what better place to hide a treasure than the den of a thief? Knowing that when the time came to wield it, it would be awoken by the blood of her son. Fate did not choose these two ascaera. The bond between weapon and son made them so. The first act of snipping fate’s noose.”

Here, at this silver linn, Ina made the deal with Racat. And so, it would be at this linn that Racat revealed himself once more. Rose from the shadows and unveiled Aisling’s prophecy on the peak that vibrated with the Forge’s witchery. She would confront her destiny in the place it began.

Lir held Aisling’s jaw, brushing her cheek with his thumb as he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers.

Galad, Peitho, Gilrel, and Filverel silent. Soaked in carnage and rainwater alike.

“During the Wild Hunt, Ina found me in the Linn of Wanting but did not attempt to shackle me as had the rest. Instead, she made a deal. She, nor any of her heirs, would ever own me. Instead, we’d be bound together. Equals. I blessed Iod and Annwyn with power, and in exchange, she bound me with her weapon. Emboldening my might as well as her weapon’s. Linked for an eternity, I am thedraiochtyou summon inside. I am the magic that breathes inside your lungs. And I am your power, curse breaker. You, the remedy Ina knew could rectify her sins, gifted by the gods in trickery: to force Ina’s son to kill hiscaerain order to achieve his ends and undo his mother’s curse. And yet, you and I together, we will live so long as the moon ascends come dusk. Forged and intended by Ina to commit the second act of snipping fate’s noose: destroying the mortals before they destroy us and uniting both realms: the Otherworld and this mortal plane.

“Aisling you will be the guardian of realms. The faerie to protect the spirit world from the iron of mortals. Together, the next step is to win the gods’ favor.”

Peitho and Galad lifted Dagfin’s body and placed him at the lake’s shore.

Aisling mustered what strength she still bore, kneeled before him, and placed his head in her lap.

She kissed him. One last kiss. A promise to follow Odhran’s constellation, praying he’d found a home in the Other. That one day she’d meet him there.

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