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CHAPTER XXVI

Incorporeal, Aisling watched her father limp through clouds of ash. He dragged his iron prosthetic through the charred flesh of the forest, followed by a procession of black knights glimmering in the pale judgment of the moon. Their eyes red with wystria.

Torchlight floated amidst the darkness like the hideous, luminous eyes of a succubus, spotting Aisling amidst the stars and pinning her to the ink of Fiacha’s sky—the Lady’s signature written in the sadistic turn of the blade that pierced her and held her in place.

“This way!” her father yelled: Nemed, high king and fire hand of the North. The violet of his eyes as violet as Aisling’s own: a cruel reminder of the blood they shared.

Aisling grimaced, the gravel of his voice conjuring spirits of her past. His soldiers heeded his orders, emerging from the woodland alongside their sovereign. Behind them, a stain of death was left in their wake—Sidhe and forge-born corpses piled between the mounds of broken oaks.

For the most part, the knights were faceless ghouls. A mystery of opalescent blood wetting their garments, their weapons, their boots. All save for Starn, her eldest brother and the crown prince of Tilren, standing behind their father with the crow-sharp scowl of their mother.

“Are you certain it’s this way?” Starn asked. His crooked nose was smeared with blood and ash, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot from too much smoke. Aisling’s chest seized, despite herself, with memory. She’d rushed Starn into the kitchens when Fergus had accidentally broken their eldest brother’s nose in a fist fight over the litter of kittens Aisling had found near Castle Neimedh’s cisterns. They were so much smaller then—wisps of the men they’d become. Now, Starn’s eyes shone with the brutality of war, of death, of violence, and of loss. There was something tortuous in the harrowed glances he cast to the shadows, startling when a branch snapped too loudly in the distance.

“I’m certain,” their father replied.

Nemed and his fleet approached the edge of a craig. Vast and storming, a sea sprawled before them, hammering against the forge-made rocks beneath their iron boots. The wind whipped their torchlight till each flame danced, casting shadows across soot-soiled helms. And upon the bone-white crests, bobbed mortal fleets with their cannons and flame and iron. They’d come to meet Nemed, Starn, and his small fleet at the edge of the continent.

Aisling’s eyes pricked with heat. This was not the North. They were somewhere else. Somewhere far away, where colossal trees grew from the sands of the sea and stretched their limbs so their canopies might whisper breaths of fresh salt air between the bellies of ships that narrowly avoided their spindly, wooden claws.

“You believe it’s run somewhere out there?” Starn asked, eyes studying the steely gray of the horizon.

“I’ve no doubt,” Nemed said.

“Is it possible?” Starn continued, his voice brittle after weeks of inhaling smoke. “Can Leshy truly run so far? Especially with such an injury?”

Nemed laughed. A horrible cackle that sent shivers down Aisling’s spine.

“You’ve seen it yourself,” the fire hand said. “You watched it rise from the earth. You held your breath as it reached for you, stumbling on its giant limbs after centuries asleep and rooted to its throne.”

Starn’s lips pressed into a thin line. His eyes glazed over, focused on the memory his father described.

“Can we trust her?” Starn asked. He referenced the Lady.

“No,” Nemed confessed. “And neither can she trust us. But to bury the Aos Sí once and for all, I’ll accept the blade my enemy hands me.”

“Even if it’s laced with their venom?” Starn crossed his arms over his chest.

Nemed turned to his son, meeting his eyes. “You already have.”

And as if its ears burned, the sword at Starn’s back shuddered, twitching in its scabbard to be unleashed. Indeed, the Lady had lent Starn a pearl of magic—one he’d used to rob Dagfin of his life at Lofgren’s Rise.

Aisling’s draiocht growled, the hair on its haunches standing at attention as Racat dug its claws into the caverns of her soul and kneaded like a cat.

“Rest easy,” Nemed continued. “We’ll hunt Leshy down within the fortnight and all will be over. Once and for all.”

“And Aisling?” Starn asked.

Nemed’s eyes flickered with hesitation. His nose twitched strangely, but it was the reddening of the scar across his face that alluded to any emotion at all.

“There will be no victory without the fae witch bent before an iron blade—without the mortals’ birthright cut from her chest.”

Had Aisling been more the spirit in the wind, her body would’ve drained of all blood. She would’ve bitten fury and fear between her fangs and lunged at the fire hand with ravenous claws. She would’ve summoned her magic like a body from the grave, bones snapping into place as she crawled for him. As she dragged him under and killed him slowly. Slowly.

Slowly.

* * *

AISLING

Flame was no stranger to rebirth. A story as old as time, a fire collapsed only to be born from the same bed of ash in which it perished. And so, when Aisling woke to the familiar dance of violet flames surrounding her, she knew something was wrong.

Aisling lurched awake.

She straightened like a ghoul in a crypt, heaving air into its lungs after centuries of sleep. Around her, white fungus and rot shriveled to dust, squirming and screaming for mercy. Aisling gave none, devouring every mushroom and insect with her draiocht . Anduril burned angrily at her hips, ringing and shaking the last bits of disease from her body.

But once the flames shed their original fury, Aisling focused, blinking till the world regained clarity.

The fae king sat before her, leaning back and propped up by his arms. He looked as if he’d been flung off her, his leathers scorched and his armor blackened by her influence. But it was his face that captured Aisling’s attention: eyes ringed with horror and his complexion pale as the bone that lay beneath.

They stared at one another, a silent conversation passing between them. The taste of dawn and him on her lips and tongue.

“Geld,” Lir said at last. The name falling from his mouth half-broken.

Immediately, Aisling’s gaze darted to the stag. He was still buried and drowning in the fungus.

Aisling summoned her draiocht and allowed her flames to crawl up the edges of the stag’s body, careful not to singe a single hair on its pelt. Only the rot, she reminded her draiocht as it made quick work of every maggot, beetle, and mushroom. Conscious now, she could destroy that which asleep she could not.

Silence followed the chaos while Aisling and Lir fell to their knees beside Geld. Without discussion, the sorceress and the fae king mended the wounds the fungus had wrought on the stag—wounds Aisling and Lir could heal on their own bodies in a few forge-blessed breaths, but the stag could not. They wrapped gauze around his legs, wiped the rust-colored blood from beneath his nostrils, and brushed the withered bodies of insects from his rump.

Perhaps it was a distraction. A means of biding their time as they worked at a glacial pace, accompanied only by the quiet. For the walnut that’d shaded their rest was dead, black, and consumed by the rot that would’ve otherwise devoured Aisling and Geld whole.

“My father is coming,” Aisling said, unable to avoid the inevitable any longer. The nearer they drew to Aisling and the Other—the nearer they approached to achieving their ends, the more the veil between the mortal plane and the Other thinned. Fate eager for a conclusion.

The fae king exhaled, but his expression didn’t light with surprise. He knew it too.

While Aisling had allowed exhaustion to gently lower her head beneath the surface of consciousness, the Lady had seized the opportunity, grabbing her legs and yanking her into the depths of somewhere in between . A dream she chronicled to Lir, piece by piece.

Aisling stood shakily, swaying on wobbling knees. The grin had sucked the energy from her body and the Lady’s intrusion had left her mind swimming in shadows and fog. Even Anduril hung limply from the sorceress, glowing dimly.

“Ash,” Lir said, standing and catching her before she fell. He held her gently, an arm beneath her arms and one behind her knees.

“I can walk,” Aisling said. “They’re coming. We must continue. We don’t have much time.” It was true. Aisling’s dreams hadn’t been mere fantasy or nightmare—the Lady was teasing her, haunting her, proving to the sorceress that she was still in control even if Aisling couldn’t see her.

Lir, who’d listened to every detail of her dream, hid his anxiety well. He nodded as she spoke, listening intently but never interrupting. Aisling watched for a long while as the fae king turned her words over in his mind.

“You must rest,” Lir said, holding her with both the strength and grace of an oak. “The grin sapped from the marrow of your soul and left you drained, scarcely alive. If it hadn’t been for Cara’s elixirs?—”

“Or you,” Aisling added, interrupting the fae king. She wasn’t certain why she said it or why her heart jolted when he fixed his eyes on hers. Anduril protested weakly, as feeble and defeated as the sorceress felt.

Aisling felt the quick beating of Lir’s heart against her cheek as he held her. His eyes swam with torment, with the green of greatest affliction. It was the look of a man who feared that looked back. It was terror and horror and fascination all at once.

He despises you, you and your mortal-muddied blood , Anduril said, but the voice sounded like Aisling’s in her mind. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it wasn’t. This time, Aisling truly couldn’t tell the difference. He hates you . Anduril laughed, but it came out broken and clipped by exhaustion. Did you really think the nightmare king of the forest would like you when your own túath did not? He fears you.

Aisling swallowed before the rock in her throat formed. He was a stranger. A weed that’d blossomed in the gardens of her memories and disguised itself as a flower that’d been there all along. He wasn’t real and neither was the burning of her lips as his eyes flicked toward them.

“They’re coming,” Aisling repeated like a mad woman. Weakly, she shuffled out of the fae king’s arms, but he didn’t protest, allowing her to slip from his embrace. “We must find Eogi.”

Lir opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it, closing his lips.

The fae king clenched his teeth, a muscle flashing across his jaw. He then readied Geld for the journey ahead. Geld was weak, awkwardly bending his thin, blood-rusted legs till he stood as straight as he was capable. The grin had taken greatly from the beast, and it was possible Geld wouldn’t survive another moon or two.

“The grin,” Aisling said as Lir unlatched several satchels. He dropped them to the ground, abandoning the supplies on the fields of Kaster for another traveler to stumble upon. “It’s an ill omen of my father’s approach.”

Lir nodded his head grimly, tightening the saddle as he spoke.

“I felt it too,” he agreed. “It’s the rot of mankind. Their destruction, their vampirism, their poison seeping into the veil of the Other as they approach nearer to their victory. Grin is a rot that grows only in the mortal plane where death is inevitable. Here in the Other, such a species cannot survive.”

“But how?” Aisling asked. “How could my father affect this realm so greatly? What is it he nears?”

Lir scowled, his brow lowering and casting a shadow across his eyes in the dim light.

“Whatever he’s hunting, they’ve already injured it badly,” Lir said. “It runs, but for how long? Our time is borrowed. Whatever he pursues—whatever he bleeds—its wounds are shared with the veil. All that the Forge births from its molten cauldron is bound through magic. Spells, jinxes, and enchantments tugging at the threads of these connections, these strings, these breaths. Your father has found a thread—the gateway—most likely with the help of the Lady, and he will bleed this realm with rot to get to you and his victory.

Aisling bit her bottom lip, stroking Geld’s neck.

“We must find the Goblet,” Aisling said at last. “Before it’s too late.”