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CHAPTER XLVIII

AISLING

Aisling ran her fingers over the intricacies of her armor, watching her hands move in the mirror’s reflection. Niamh approached Aisling from behind, the Seelie queen’s strange eyes materializing over her reflection’s shoulder.

“The end is in sight, Aisling,” Niamh said, running her fingers through Aisling’s loose hair. “You’ve almost done it.” Her touch seemed genuine and tender in its authenticity. Her movements were slow, soft, and measured—fingers lingering a beat longer than necessary.

Aisling pressed her mouth shut, wiping her expression clean as she met the Seelie queen’s eyes.

“And then what?” Aisling asked.

“And then you possess everything you’ve ever wanted,” Niamh said, a smile peeling across her face. The blue of her flesh, almost translucent in the dim flower light of the corridor in which they stood. Everything you’ve ever wanted , Aisling repeated the words in her mind. She struggled to taste its indulgence.

“And you?” Aisling countered. “What will you have?”

Niamh turned her head, parting Aisling’s hair before braiding it. Her face was half-veiled in shadow and so Aisling almost missed the flicker of desperation. Almost.

Niamh slid her fangs over her bottom lip, brows drawing together.

“Freedom,” she said, her voice soft. “If I’m no longer the keeper of the gateway, I’ll be liberated from this godforsaken castle. Until then, I await the day. In solitude.”

Niamh dropped Aisling’s hair and stepped back, her robes of gray winter rains swishing as she moved.

“Why then do you flee from the object you once coveted above all else?” Aisling asked, the backs of her eyes beginning to burn. “Did your mind change?”

Niamh’s eyes darted left and right, her mind racing while her lips parted.

“Yes,” Niamh confessed, her Sidhe tongue shackled to the truth. “Wanting and receiving is never enough. Desire is a bottomless cauldron, quenchless and lined with teeth. With every bite, its hunger grows. Eventually, it devours itself.”

“Yet, here you stand,” Aisling said.

Niamh nodded her head, “Aye, here I stand with the object of all my desires—sovereignty, Yillen, and the Goblet of Lore—and yet I am without .”

Aisling held steady, studying the Seelie queen closely.

“Did you realize your regrets before or after you were forsaken here?” Aisling asked.

Niamh hesitated, eyes flickering.

“See for yourself,” Niamh said. “As it was written in the Lore of All Things.”

Dust like mist gathered in sparkling runic words: Victory was swiftly followed by regret, the Seelie queen of Rain filled to the brim .

Aisling read the verse once before Niamh snapped her fingers and the mist scattered.

“Are you and I the only two to have held the Goblet?” Aisling asked, turning to face the Seelie queen. “Have no others drank from it?”

Niamh’s expression fell before it recovered as a smile, cutting across her sharp features.

Aisling resisted the urge to shudder.

“Are you nervous, Aisling?” Niamh asked, arching her brows. “Is that why you’re asking all these questions?” The softness in her voice was unfamiliar, yet Aisling found she starved for it.

The blood in Aisling’s face vanished, her expression hardening to stone. The sorceress opened her mouth to speak, but she was stopped short. The door at the end of the corridor creaked open by a phantom wind and the land beyond crashed into their quiet moment like a stampede of drums, trumpets, fiddles, chanting voices, and idle chatter.

Aisling swallowed, her hands going numb.

“Whatever is meant to be, will be, Aisling,” Niamh said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “Perhaps you will die. Perhaps all of us will perish and sail into the Other. Or, perhaps you’ll be our salvation. Only time will tell the will of Fate and who its chosen to align with.”

Aisling glanced at her over her shoulder, watching as the Seelie queen disappeared into the shadows of the hallway. The door shut behind Aisling. A threshold she could no longer cross back.