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CHAPTER LIX

AISLING

Aisling’s blood turned cold. Niamh sent bolts of lightning across the sky, begging the other Sidhe sovereigns to come and aid them. They received silence in response—the three of them alone at the foot of the gateway.

The sorceress shook her head, eyes vacant. The gateway was a colossal tree, split at the center to reveal a doorway. And despite Lir’s efforts—desperately trying to keep it shut—it was opening regardless.

Aisling approached the gateway, the Goblet in hand.

“Aisling!” Lir screamed, he pulled her back, catching her in his arms. They both fell to the floor with her momentum, finding their footing swiftly thereafter. Through the shimmering surface of the gateway, Aisling saw them: her clann’s faces flashing beyond the gateway when their iron punctured deeply enough to cause significant damage. Leshy’s blood and sap spraying Aisling’s horror-stricken expression.

Her clann, the mortals, mankind, stood on the other side, their fire and iron weapons in hand. Nemed smiled at his daughter, the sight of which rendered Aisling ill. Her brothers stood closely beside him, staring into the Other like a bairn devours a new world. And yet, it was not meant for them. The sorceress was overcome with pure, undiluted rage.

They were close. Just on the other side of the world. Their eyes met and Aisling felt their shared blood heat.

“Aisling,” Nemed said, his voice corrupted by the mayhem and the writhing of the gateway as it struggled to stay alive. His eyes burned red and fire spread behind them like a column of flame, hungry to devour the Other as soon as it was allowed. Leshy’s cries ringing into oblivion. A group of men stood in rows behind them, their eyes glazed over and dead. Chills wracked Aisling’s body. This was how they’d done it—survived despite her scorching of their mortal fleets. The Lady had brought them here with dark spells and forced wills.

Wystria .

“Father,” she said although she hadn’t meant to.

“I love you dearly,” her father shouted back, rewarded by the glistening, jealous eyes of her brothers. Especially Starn. Smoke spilling from their lips. “But you forget your duty to humankind.”

“And you forget your duty to your kin,” Aisling replied, her body numb, hair wicking wildly in the wind of their mutual destruction.

“The fate of mankind is larger than myself or you, Aisling. That is what you must fight for,” her father said. “Sacrifice yourself for the greater good. Be as kingly as either I or your brothers for once. Do the right thing and honor your blood…for this once.”

Aisling clenched her teeth, the world falling silent except for the timbre she’d once feared in her father’s voice. She still felt the sting of his hand on her cheek when she was five, the chatter of her teeth when he’d beaten her below the stairs, or the silence when he’d ignored her for the latter part of her life.

Always Aisling would remember their expressions on this day—so alike the evening they’d left her to the Sidhe: Nemed and Starn stood proud and determined, Fergus and Annind were silent but obedient, and Iarbonel choked back tears. But this time, they bore no intention of letting Aisling leave alive. This time, they’d take everything, and then they’d take Aisling too. Nemed couldn’t control her, and so, he’d end her. He’d not rest until all and everything fell obedient at his boots. Until he’d proven Aisling was weak and useless. Even if that meant death was the only outcome.

And so it was.

“As queen of the Sidhe and keeper of the Goblet,” Aisling proclaimed, her voice spectral and frightening, imbued by the magic spinning all around them, “I honor my blood.”

I summon the draiocht , Aisling commanded Racat.

Racat chuckled, leaping from his resting place with a growling belly.

Aisling lit with violet flame. She took hold of the gateway and pulsed with magic, expending every last ounce of power she possessed. Her family watched in disgust, raising their iron blades, prepared to cut the curse breaker from her chest. But it was Starn who took a flaming Sarwen from Aisling’s back and plunged into Lir with the magic the Lady had lent him.

The Sidhe king of greenwood appraised the damage. He’d been too distracted, too enveloped in protecting Aisling to anticipate Starn’s mischief. A carelessness that led to a blade lodged just beside his heart.

Lir fell to his knees, staring at the blood on his fingertips.

At last, the other Sidhe sovereigns arrived. They came on thunder clouds, on bolts of lightning, on freshly whipped winds, on wolves, by wings, and on foot. They crowded around the gateway, acclimating themselves to the mayhem unspooling at the edge of prophecy.

Lir groaned in pain, finding Aisling’s eyes from where he kneeled.

Aisling screamed, burning more brightly. The gateway ignited like a torch. Every Sidhe sovereign staggered back, avoiding Aisling’s fires. Lir lit with flame as well and just like the last time, he was unharmed by her fires.

Aisling collapsed beside him, holding his face between her hands. Still, the mortals clawed through the gateway, striking it with their cannons and weapons. The war, slipping between Aisling’s fingers in a matter of seconds.

Aisling buried her face in Lir’s blood-soaked shirt. He held her closely, pressing his lips to the crown of her head.

His heart beat against her cheek. The smell of him, of cypress needles and the rain-soaked earth. He, and the axes twinkling at his back, were the forest incarnate. The savagery, the wildness, the magic of the Sidhe drinking from the wellspring that was their king.

Aisling gritted her teeth.

“No!” Niamh shouted, but it was a strangled cry—a panicked response before the inevitable. Before fate worked at the loom itself.

Both Aisling and Lir exploded with the strength of their draiocht combined. The world turned violet, burning at the center of a wick. The Forge churning as the gods opened one eye, startled from their slumber. Aisling felt the Forge’s magic roll onto its side after millennia asleep—charms of yore sewing through the fabric of the universe in a different direction. The stars turned and the words unwrote themselves.

Racat wrapped his sinuous body around the ash, squeezing tightly and suffocating the gateway. The mortals pounded against the gate, their expressions contorting with rage and a hunger Aisling recognized. A craving for something just out of reach.

Niamh appeared between the licks of flame, her storm crashing atop the gateway in a desperate attempt to put out Aisling and Lir’s magic.

“No more, Aisling!” she shouted, lightning striking her heels as she neared the gateway. “You will destroy everything if you do not relent.”

The other Sidhe sovereigns raised their draiocht and attacked. Calling upon their winds, their waves, their summer suns, their stars and the weapons they were gifted by the gods themselves.

Aisling met Galad’s eyes, then Gilrel’s, a silent moment passing between them amidst the chaos. They shared their pain with Aisling, their memories, their rage.

Lir pulled Aisling against himself, his blood wetting her gown. His heartbeat was flickering like a dying fire even as their magic raged. He was dying, struck by her own enchanted blade.

Aisling bit through her tears; she and Lir, a pillar of violet fire below the tree. The Goblet channeling her magic as precisely as a sword cuts flesh, her bidding its whim.

Alone, Aisling and Lir were insufficient. But Ina had known all along the devastation Aisling and Lir would wreak as a product of their need for the other. She knew of their ill omens, their curses, and their ruinous love. She knew of their power, of their coupling, and of their potential to destroy that which nothing else could. She knew of the Goblet and she knew of the gateway.

Nemed reached his hand through the gate, feeling the Other’s storms for the first time. The legions behind him, Aisling’s clann, snickering with blood lust and wystria .

They pushed at the gate with their iron shields and weapons, releasing flaming arrows that ricocheted off the gateway’s rippling surface. Their power formidable and cruel, laced with the Lady’s perfume.

Aisling closed her eyes. As if her túath had brought their hands to her lips, she tasted blood: the Sidhe’s, the Forge, Dagfin’s, Galad’s, Gilrel’s, Lir’s, and now her own.

Nemed stepped a boot through the gateway. He stank of iron and soulless magic. Of shadows and vengeance and blood ties cut and burned.

The Other shuddered, a mortal unwelcome in this spirit realm. And so, the grin spread throughout the plane with wicked speed, closing in on the gateway with its disease as Aisling worked. Their mortal influence corrupting from the inside out.

Starn reached his head through. Aisling held back when her brother entered, waiting instead for the tip of Galad’s blade to sever her brother’s head from body. And sever Galad did. In a slushy thud, Starn’s head hit the ground and rolled down the roots of the ash. Her father gaped, expression blank as he clawed through the gate to reach his son’s head.

I summon the draiocht , Aisling whispered. I summon it all .

Racat grinned, ear to ear. At long last . The Goblet focused on hers and Lir’s combined power.

Aisling’s magic flared, blood dripping from her nostrils as she focused on her clann, her father, and let go.

Aisling! The Lady shrieked between the folds of oblivion, reaching for Aisling through the veil. But it was too late.

The gateway ripped apart and warped with her flames. The dream tree shrieked with pain, its limbs crumpling and curling in like a dead spider’s legs.

Aisling felt the lives of her clann end, staring vacantly long after their flesh had melted from their bones. There was an instinctual pang of grief followed by absolute fulfillment. In this one fleeting moment, Aisling, at last, had everything: power, love, and release. Vengeance, sweet on her tongue as she collapsed across from the Sidhe king. Both swathed in flames, the storm washing away their blood.