Page 92 of The Savage Queen

Galad’s expression tightened.

“Very well,Ash.” Her name like venom on his tongue. “It means nothing what you intended. It only matters what you did.” His voice rose, slapping against the pews, the stone statues, the pillars. “You fled from my king, from Gilrel, fromourfriendship, without a glance back. Ran with he whose most forgiving crimes were my own branding. A crime I never blamed you for until that day.”

Starn.

Aisling’s eyes pricked with heat, but she willed not a single tear to fall. It wasn’t her place to cry. The stone lodged in her throat, making impossible the task.

“I only ever meant to pursue what it isIam. Could you truly say, without a morsel of doubt, you’d have done any differently, Galad?”

The knight studied her, as though he wished to understand but simply couldn’t. Wished to redeem her, to justify what she’d done, but found her unforgivable all the same. The pain such a realization evoked flashing across his expression. And the sight of it, enough to crush Aisling’s heart and fill her chest with blood.

“We will reach Lofgren’s Rise,” he said. “Yet you’ll find that whatever it is you were searching for––who you are, what you are, why you are––was never anything an Unseelie, a god or even the Forge could give you. It was something unraveling all around you. Something you ran from.”

DAGFIN

Dagfin had always cherished winter. It heralded the death of all the rot that’d grown throughout the sun’s last cycle. The death of everything unwanted.

The summer was hot and gave light to everything better left in shadow. Was endless. Was the anniversary of his eldest brother’s final words. The rightful heir to the Roktan throne.

Yet now, winter was tainted by Fionn.

Dagfin wove lithely between the trees, the Ocras more potent than it’d ever felt before. Near the brink of collapse, his body was suddenly renewed.

The Roktan prince spun his daggers between his fingers, half eyeing his surroundings for the phuka and half expecting the fae king to appear out of nowhere, swinging his axes.

It was Dagfin who’d been tasked to hunt the phuka and the fae king who’d bore a change of heart; for Aisling or himself, theFaerakwas uncertain. Only that he’d cursed it, wishing to face the phuka alone rather than align himself with Lir. And mercifully, they’d wordlessly agreed to venture their separate ways the moment their boots stepped foot outside Bludhaven’s threshold.

Dagfin had never caught or slayed a phuka before. Yet, by the looks of the clumsy trail it left in its wake, theFaerakknew it’d be a straightforward hunt. Hoofprints in the frozen dirt, broken branches from a heavier gait, lazy lines in the snow—its tail dragging behind it. And most disturbing of all, children’s clothing torn and left billowing on tree branches, tiny shoes discarded atop piles of leaves, and blood, both fresh and old, splattered across a landscape of ivory.

So, it came as no surprise when Dagfin set eyes on the creature curled beside the edge of a steep drop.

It looked no different than a pale stallion. Magnificent in the light of a fair winter’s star, innocently sleeping. And had the phuka’s trail not led theFaerakdirectly to the cliff’s edge, Dagfin would’ve second-guessed himself.

The phuka startled awake, searching its surroundings.

Dagfin crouched between the trees, more silent than the chittering birches or the splintering ice. Steadying his breath and drawing Fionn’s longsword.

One flick of the wrist and the task would be done with.

The phuka stood, tossing its glittering, moon-white mane.

Dagfin hesitated.

It made no sound, yet theFaerakheard its lullaby. The soft humming of a woman emanating from its magical luster.

Unlike the murúch, the sound itself didn’t spell him. Only the question of how a creature so resplendent could commit such sins.

Dagfin shook his head. The distraction, he knew, was intentional. The sign of a beast designed to convey innocence so children might follow it into the feywilds of their own accord.

Quick as lightning, Dagfin defeated the distance between himself and the phuka, raising Fionn’s blade to sink into the beast’s side. The blade plunged the same moment an axe flew across the expanse, both striking the Unseelie with a fleshy thud. The phuka reared, eyes glazing back, its lullaby dissolving into an otherworldly scream as blood as black as tar stained its coat and pooled by its hooves. Collapsing against the edge of the cliff.

Lir appeared from the trees, swinging the other axe in his free hand.

“You’re free to return now, princeling,” the fae king said, eyes focused on the Unseelie’s corpse, transformed into something else entirely. A gaunt, spindly-looking creature whose hair was thin and gray, its mouth pulled to the knobs where its ears should be. A haggard, grotesque beast that gave name to the evil it committed.

“I’m not leaving without the creature’s head.”

The fae king fixed his eyes on theFaerak.

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