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CHAPTER XXXVI

AISLING

Rain tapped Aisling’s forehead. Once more clad in her ivory night slip, Aisling balanced on a spider’s web. Every string sparkled like starlight, darting from one edge of the cylindrical cave to the other. The tunnel glittered with the intricate handiwork of a beast, one Aisling preferred to never set eyes on. Something much larger than even the neccakaid.

One hasty breath and every string trembled.

“Aisling,” the Lady called from further inside the cave. “Aisling.”

Aisling would recognize her voice after a millennium. Even if time had erased all else, the Lady’s voice would dye the fabric of every age to come and thereafter.

Aisling held her breath, holding onto the web’s strings with all her strength. They cut into her flesh, drawing blood. Aisling hissed in pain. Still, she couldn’t escape. Below the web was an abyss and above, an oblivion grew dark and vast. She was trapped inside the Lady’s nest, forced to listen to her laughter.

“Aisling. I found you, Aisling,” she said. “Now let me in.”

Aisling cursed, peering into the dark above and below for the Lady.

“You cannot outrun fate, Aisling. Let me in.”

Aisling climbed through the mess of strings, doing her best not to fall through and into the endless pit below.

“The day I let you in, is the day I devour you whole, Lady.”

The Lady cackled. “She bites.”

“She savors—relishes the potency of your death on her tongue.” Aisling spoke of herself, sucking in a breath as eight reflective eyes materialized above her. The dark shrouded the beast—the Lady, Aisling realized—cloaking all but her bygone eyes.

“Savor me, then,” the Lady said, a smile in her voice. “Chew my bones and rip my flesh, and still, your world will burn.”

She sprang for Aisling, the cave collapsing into nothingness.

* * *

Aisling screamed awake.

Her body jolted upright, snatching at the chains still bound to her wrists and nailed against the wooden walls. And had it not been for her clann’s iron, Aisling would’ve been swathed in flames, burning through the bottom of the ship that’d stolen her away. Anduril dulled at her hips, unable to withstand the iron that surrounded them both.

“Are you alright?” a boy asked from across the chamber.

Aisling flicked her eyes up, meeting the gaze of not a boy but a man. And yet, he bore the same eyes as he who’d run through Castle Neimedh’s corridors alongside her when she was a child.

Iarbonel stood with a tray of food in his hands. He trembled, the dishes clinking against one another.

Aisling didn’t care to answer. To him, she was nothing more than a leashed savage, hissing and snapping like a caged animal.

But where Aisling anticipated he’d throw the tray at her and return above deck, he stayed.

“Was it a nightmare?” he asked.

Still, Aisling bit her tongue.

Iarbonel shifted, his throat bobbing. His eyes were ringed both black and red, dark hair overgrown by mortal standards and tangling near the tops of his rounded ears. Perhaps that was why he resembled the boy he’d been. The kindest of all Nemed’s kin with a penchant for bad luck. Aisling had spent various evenings plucking leaves from his tangle of curls, mending the holes in his boots, and wiping tears from the sharp edge of his cheeks. Afterward, he’d smile at her and pat her on the head—a gesture she’d pretended to despise at the time.

Iarbonel set the tray on the floor. For the first time, he met Aisling’s eyes, appraising her carefully. Slowly, he pushed the tray toward her, and once it tapped against her knees, he snatched back his hand.

Aisling glared at the plate and mug he’d offered. Both her tastes and appetite had long since been elevated by her fae blood, and so, this meal was no better than the dirt beneath her fingernails.

Iarbonel kneeled before her, just out of reach if Aisling straightened the chains.

“You used to wake like that when you were a child,” he said.

Aisling looked up.

“It would scare me half to death,” he continued.

Aisling’s brow furrowed. “I always did frighten,” she explained for him.

Iarbonel stiffened, considering Aisling more closely. She’d given him four words.

Her brother collected himself, shaking his head. “What? No, I was scared for you, Ash.”

Ash .

Aisling sat on her heels where she kneeled, the chains chinking as she moved.

“Half because, if father knew you’d woken us, he’d lash you. And half because I feared the evil the fae might reap upon my túath. My clann. That the nightmares I’d sworn my life to defeat, would invade our home and harm those I loved most.”

Iarbonel stared vacantly at the floorboards groaning beneath them. He ran a hand through his hair, exposing burns, blisters, and cuts along the pale edges of each finger.

He breathed slowly—far slower than the fae. Aisling felt his exhaustion. His shoulders hung as if burdened by an invisible behemoth. Something loud and growing, pressing down on his mortal will.

He breathed a laugh, but it was humorless.

“I wish I could have corrupted my senseless naivety then and there,” he said. “Because the fae indeed reaped my sister.” His breath shook. “Reaped my sister at the will of my blood.”

Aisling clenched her jaw. Her chest ached, the pain of which glossed her eyes with unwelcome tears.

“ Our blood,” Aisling corrected. “We were one, then. Or so I believed.”

Both brother and sister were silent for several breaths. The churning of the Ashild a chorus of hushed voices as it frothed outside their ship.

“Do not believe us. Do not forgive us, sister,” Iarbonel said, unfurling from his position. “Fight us to the death.”