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CHAPTER LXI

Prophecies, self-fulfilled or otherwise, were cunning. Visions and ill omens were only as powerful as those who believed in their shadowed magic. But to those who had faith in their blades and their unique ability to carve destiny from the battle of wills, fate cowered. The dauntless pointed their swords in the direction of their conquests and not away.

Ina foresaw an impossible magic. Whilst some claimed such sorcery was the product of the gods and their cruel mischief, others deemed it a miracle. All the same, it was a magic more powerful than a blade, more unbreakable than a spell, and greater than any prophecy.

Combined, Aisling and Lir’s draiocht was the only magic powerful enough to destroy the gate and protect the Forge and all its kin, this much Ina knew. The Seelie queen of Iod toyed with different outcomes, stirring the waters of time and rearranging the endings. In some tales, the mortals passed through the gateway and destroyed the spirit world. In others, Aisling and Lir burned both realms to nothing more than ash. But perhaps, Aisling and Lir were always meant to destroy the gateway to protect the Forge. Perhaps, there was never another ending.

Aisling stuck her hand into the Goblet, elbow deep. She rummaged through the brew, stealing every forge-born creature remaining in the mortal plane and delivering them to the Other—magic sucked from the veins of the mortal plane until Aisling had her fill.

The mortals and the fae could never coexist. Mankind destroyed, bled, and blazed through the earth the Sidhe lived off. And so, the forge-born were best protected in a realm of their own. Still, their magic thrummed through the earth, between the trees, beneath the mountains, within the wind. Just beyond mortal touch.

Without mercy, Aisling spared only those who’d supported Lir and Annwyn. Others, such as Danu’s Unseelie, met brutal ends. Danu herself was given to Lir who rebuilt Annwyn in the depths of the Other’s most ancient woods. His castle, forged by the forest itself for their sovereign.

Over the span of eternity, Lir cut Danu’s branches one by one. He kept the empress alive, a ghost that would haunt Annwyn’s corridors till the realm’s end.

The Sidhe king of the greenwood reigned as high king of the Other—a period of unadulterated magic filling the Other to the bone with enchantments. Still, once a year, the Sidhe king journeyed to the ash tree at the center of the field where Niamh’s gateway once stood.

On the eve of Samhain , when the veil was thinnest, Lir would sleep below the tree and wait for her.

She tiptoed through the mists of time, pulling apart the tapestry of the universe, and slipping into Lir’s arms just before he woke. She, having given her life to destroy the gate and save Lir, became the gateway herself. A spirit of beginnings and endings. A creature of the in-between. A savage beast and magic incarnate, she was limitless. Aisling was free, anchored to the tangible only by her love for her nightmare, enemy king.