Page 91 of The Savage Queen

“This is but one of hundreds of mortal children they’ve given to the phuka,Damh Bán,” the forest whispered. “He rode the phuka far between our trees until at last, the creature stopped for its meal, and the child—clever child—escaped, screaming for its mother. But where is she now?”

Lir glanced over his shoulder at the crush of townsfolk gathering to witness the spectacle. Aisling and Dagfin stood nearest the flock of mortals. And beyond them, he could smellthe mother from where he crouched. The same blood as the child intermingling with potent terror and regret.

Lir scooped the boy into his arms.

“Tell me, what do you see,Damh Bán?” the forest continued, groaning. “Is it possible you see what you’ve lost in something left living? Even if that something is a mortal child? Ahh, I see now, yes, yes, there is a child-shaped hole in your heart,Damh Bán. A wound that will never heal.”

Lir stood before Bludhaven, sheltering the child from their judgement. A moment of confusion unspooling before Lir dropped the glamour and allowed his audience to glean his true self. The barbarian lord of Annwyn towering before them, their sacrifice in his arms.

They gasped, staggering back in shock. Veneration muddled with potent horror. The chief druid, paling, his old bones supported by the followers around him. All of Bludhaven holding its breath with no sign of release.

“I’ll kill the phuka,” Lir said. “And in exchange you’ll not only care for and take in this child, but you’ll also offer yourselves before you ever sacrifice another child again. Lest I allow the feywilds to swallow this village whole, consume you from the inside out, and spare only the young.”

CHAPTER XXX

AISLING

Racat was obsidian.

Its sinuous shape tangled between two others of similar size, cut and glazed into stained glass portraits. One red and winged. The other green and three-headed, coloring the interior of the cathedral as morning light crept inside.

Aisling had never seen Racat in all its glory. Only in dreams, in darkness, beneath the boat that’d sailed her into Annwyn.

“Racat, Muirdris, and Aengus,” a familiar voice sounded from behind.

Galad stood a few paces from the entrance to the temple, appraising the stained glass for himself.

From Aisling’s vantage point before the altar, she could see Gilrel just outside the doors, Peitho and Filverel guarding the entrance from the now-frenzied mortals eager to set eyes on either the Sidhe or Aisling herself, Galad personally tasked to guard Aisling while Lir and Dagfin hunted the phuka. A partnership that might find the Unseelie unscathed and themselves both hunter and hunted.

“Thedragúnof power, prosperity, and immortality,” Aisling conjectured.

“Respectively.”

An awkward silence smoked the temple. The only respite, the druids just outside the doors, collapsed on their knees, bowing and chanting as though entranced. A worship Peitho seemed to enjoy, even if it were mortals who kissed the streets before her feet.

“You’re more than welcome to guard me from outside the temple,” Aisling said––for her own sake or the knight’s, she wasn’t certain.

“I was ordered not to let you out of my sight.”

“You’ve disobeyed orders before,” Aisling said, recalling how Galad allowed Aisling to leave her chambers in Annwyn to deliver a letter to the fire hand. A letter, that with hindsight, she wished she’d burned long before it ever flew across the Isles of Rinn Dúin.

“It isn’t the same,” Galad said.

“Itisn’t the same? Orwearen’t the same?”

Galad met her eyes. Sapphires that cut into her soul and forced Aisling to feel what she’d desperately attempted to stifle: uncorrupted guilt.

“‘We?’” Galad scoffed. “It has never been a ‘we,’mo Lúra. Your lips have only ever known ‘I.’”

Aisling winced.

“My decision to leave wasn’t meant to either forsake or condemn our friendship.”

Galad shifted at the final word.

“It hardly matters,mo Lúra?—”

“Enough. Don’t call me that after my name has been spoken from your mouth before.”

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