Page 42 of The Savage Queen

“I used to look up to you,” Aisling said. “I believed you painted the sun with flame and pinned it to the sky with an iron arrow.”

Starn’s eyes were dark as coal, harboring all the severity of their mother Clodagh and all the authority of the fire hand.

“If only I’d realized then you were and always will be a boy too eager to sit on an iron chair far too large for himself. Too obsessed with proving himself to an elusive father to ever develop an identity outside his thirst for validation.”

Starn worked his jaw, his crow-dark hair falling across his eyes, simmering and balling his hands into fists. A gesture that didn’t escape the Sidhe or the bestial guards’ notice.

“When were you planning on informing me that the only reason you chose to accompany me was to steal the curse breaker for yourself? To deliver both I and whatever lies at Lofgren’s Rise back to Castle Neimedh as the triumphant high prince worthy of his father’s crown?”

Starn reeled, eyes wide and glazed with hateful tears.

“I never?—”

“You still believe me so stupid, so naive as to think your aid was anything other than self-serving?” Aisling scoffed. “As soon as I negotiate your freedom with the fae lord, return home before you truly suffer the consequences of something far too large for you. You’re not equipped for this, and you’ll kill yourself as well as our brothers in your attempts to prove yourself.”

Starn leaned forward, teeth grinding in his fury.

“I warned you of ordering me?—”

Aisling stepped toward him. “And I warn you now, brother,” she hissed, relishing the way Starn flinched. “If any of you stand in my way, I shall not hesitate to do what I must.”

Starn froze, glaring at Aisling as the ballroom continued to spin and the guards shifted, weapons in hand. But he said nothing.

“Is everything alright?” Killian said, approaching from behind and positioning himself between Starn and Aisling. A shoulder between them to protect the high prince.

Dagfin joined shortly after, quickly keen to the tension circuiting between them.

“I was just telling Starn that I’ve chosen to continue on my own. As soon as we’re freed from here, you’re all free to return home.”

“What? You’re not planning on agreeing to Fionn’s terms, are you?” Dagfin focused his attention solely on Aisling. The sheen of disappointment that washed over his features heart-wrenching.

Mercifully, Aisling didn’t have time to respond. She wouldn’t and couldn’t agree to Fionn’s terms, but she’d find a way to free them and once she did, the choice to return to either Tilren or Roktling was a choice of life or death for the mortal princes.

The lights of the ballroom dimmed, the music increased in tempo, and the wind burst through the floor-to-ceiling windows, gripping the ballroom with ice that bit beneath the flesh.

The Sidhe laughed, watching as hundreds of translucent, wispy creatures tore into the ballroom like comets made of storm clouds. They ran between the skirts of the Sidhe, brushed against the chandeliers, singing, and tossing midnight stars between one another until the night sky was brought inside, hovering above all their heads.

Spirits from the Otherworld heralding the beginning ofSamhain.

The room grew plump with enchantment.

Aisling could feel the thinning of the veil between their mortal realm and that of the Other. For the world began to glow with the soft luster of a dream, the wicked whimsy of the spirits bending reality and shaping it to their will. Indeed, they moved and danced like sylphs, bore the wildness of the dryads,and the eternal, primeval aura of the celestial; the endings of the past made real in the present. Long-since passed Sidhe soldiers sparring with their ghostly swords mid-air, racing on stags, and dancing with their lovers.

If this was the beginning ofSamhain, Aisling looked forward to its middle and end. Wondered what the forest would look like disrobed and unmasked as the realm of witchery that it truly was.

Fionn approached Aisling amidst the chaos and offered his arm once more. Greum and Frigg shortly behind.

“Join me?” he asked her after nodding in greeting to Starn and Killian. Eyes lingering a moment too long on Dagfin.

Aisling nodded her head in silent agreement. So, Frigg snapped his chomps at Dagfin before his lordship turned, Aisling on his arm.

Against her own volition, Aisling glanced at the Roktan prince over her shoulder.

“Ash, wait?—”

Aisling hesitated, holding theFaerak’s eyes before forcing herself to look away.

It’s better this way, she assured herself. Dagfin was safer in Roktling, and Aisling couldn’t live with herself if anything happened to him during her pursuit. She’d seen how quickly the chieftain of Fjallnorr had been felled by a single, passing Unseelie. The mightiest among men not fit for the pursuits of the fae. So, despite the tearing of her heart, she willed every step apart from him. Her heart aching at the intensity of his stare as she walked away.

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