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CHAPTER VIII

AISLING

Aisling remembered her lungs on fire, skidding to a halt at the end of Annwyn’s bridge. Her mind was filled with dense clouds, muddying her thoughts and feelings. She remembered wandering through the castle confused and delirious. And then, she remembered there was a new voice inside her mind.

Aisling , it had spoken to her. Strong and steady, it had filled her chest with warmth. It was an anchor in a tossing sea, a light amidst the mist, and a beacon in the storm. So, Aisling had listened.

Aisling remembered the bear’s armor scraping her cheek when he moved to draw his blade. The boar on his right side had followed shortly after, prepared to end whosoever pursued Aisling down Annwyn’s bridge. Aisling remembered shouting for her guards to kill the intruder, her hair flying into her eyes as she spoke and moved. Instead, they’d lowered their weapons the moment the intruder came into view. Both the bear and the boar had fallen into bows, lowering their heads to the cobbled floor of the bridge.

“What are you doing?!” Aisling remembered screaming, Sarwen spearing toward the intruder and keeping him at large. “End him!”

Lastly, she remembered his eyes. Her intruder shed the darkness and padded into the light. Aisling had sucked in a sharp breath despite herself, gasping in either horror or awe, she was uncertain. He was beautiful and horrible all at once—hideous in his perfection. Heartbreak incarnate, he moved lithe as a shadow but not without some unspoken, elegant violence. His eyes green and bright as blades.

“ Mo Damh Bán ,” the guards said in unison, falling into bows before her intruder.

Mo Damh Bán .

Aisling clawed at her mind, swatting through thoughts shifting in both shadow and light. She remembered and then she did not. So whilst her memories piled high, toppling over with their growth on one side of her mind, the other was empty and dark. A void she couldn’t enter if she dared.

“Seize him!” Aisling had yelled, but her guards kept their eyes lowered to the floor and their knees bent. Statues before the intruder who’d stood slick and tall, armor licked by shadows.

“Bow before your king,” the intruder had said, his voice deep and wet with a fae accent. The corners of his mouth curled, but it didn’t meet his eyes. Instead, his gaze was annoyed, cold, and sharp. His disdain for her clear enough if his words weren’t already.

Your king.

Aisling had stepped backward. Her mind spun and her heart raced. Anduril squeezed her tightly, ringing with heat.

“But I’d prefer you take my hand,” the intruder had said, watching Aisling intently. He offered a hand, palm to the sky above. “Bri?—

Anduril had flashed with light before the world fell dark.

And then, Aisling remembered collapsing against the cold stone of Annwyn’s bridge. The final part of the memory.

Aisling snapped back into her body, the vision fading.

The sorceress swallowed, focusing on all those standing before her, here and now.

Tonight, Aisling was clad in a gown sewn by mourning banshees and collected during twilight’s fog. Her only accessories were watercress and Annwyn’s antlered crown to match the Sidhe king’s own; a dark rogue himself, dressed in leather and an artfully tailored jacket without a tunic beneath. And yet, Aisling scarcely remembered his name. For all that she remembered of her time in Annwyn and her ascension to queen, she did not recall Lir. But she recognized his eyes as those of her intruder’s and shuddered.

His place in her memory was empty despite what the sparrows insisted as they braided her hair around her antlered crown. And the more she heard his name, the more she disliked it—Anduril burning through her gown and into her flesh at the mere mention of the Sidhe king.

“The time to enter the Other is nigh,” Aisling said, ignoring their gawking.

Filverel cleared his throat. “Aye,” he agreed, stepping toward the fountain.

Filverel, Galad, Peitho, and Gilrel were resplendent in their attire: embroidered tunics, leather jackets and boots, and polished pauldrons. But Peitho glimmered more brightly even in the dank atmosphere of the forbidden wing, clad in a ball gown made from autumn leaves dappled in pond water.

“Shall we get on with this then?” The southern Sidhe princess approached Ina’s fountain with no hesitation, the others shortly behind—too eager to wait on greeting one another.

Aisling wondered to herself what they thought of visiting the Other. Returning to the plane of their making, where their blood and bones were forged yet rejected from all the same, unable to return lest invited this one time of year.

Filverel pulled out Niamh’s invitation. He glanced at the Sidhe king, a silent conversation passing between them. The dark lord of the greenwood was as stiff and stoic as a lone pine, arms crossed before his chest and his jaw clenched. A silent sort of fury he donned. He despised her, Aisling felt. His eyes studied her with palpable disdain, flicking away the moment their eyes accidentally met as if repulsed by her attention.

Aisling chose to ignore her intruder— the strange king until he spoke suddenly.

“Wait,” he said. The room froze, the tension between them inexplicably high. Aisling studied their expressions, their postures, the way their hands fidgeted when her eyes lingered too long. “Aisling and I will go forward alone,” the Sidhe king said.

Aisling whipped her head at her intruder.

“We will do no such thing,” she bit. Her draiocht rose up her throat with an energy Aisling hadn’t anticipated. She hushed Racat, digging her nails into her palms. The Sidhe king unsettled her, and because she couldn’t remember him, Aisling questioned why. Nevertheless, if Aisling chewed on such questions for long, they were swiftly beaten out of her mind. It was as if another occupied her thoughts, guiding her again and again to Sarwen strapped to her back and nothing more.

“My mind will not be changed,” the Sidhe king said, his face expressionless. He was as inhuman as the myths claimed and more nightmarish in his beauty than Aisling allowed herself to admit.

“It is my will that ought to be convinced,” Aisling said, the violet of her eyes glowing more brightly with her temper.

“Perhaps it’s wise to enter the Other with us all,” Gilrel said, cautious as she pleaded to the Sidhe king and not Aisling. At this, Aisling fumed. She was queen of Annwyn and soon, she’d earn the gods’ favor as well. This strange wolf who crowned himself in antlers and struck fear in Aisling’s allies was an imposter. This much, she knew in her gut.

Anduril vibrated with magic, confirming Aisling’s beliefs immediately.

“My word is done,” the fae king said and, as if a bell had been rung, the room descended into obedient silence from either fear, respect, or both, Aisling couldn’t tell beyond her own frustration.

Filverel, Galad, Gilrel, and lastly Peitho, met Aisling’s eyes with a silent apology. They’d chosen to stay and obey the strange king.

Aisling rolled her tongue to one side, chewing on her anger lest it seeped through fangs like the flames from a dragún ’s mouth.

Filverel cleared his throat and repeated the invitation in Rún.

When the days lengthen and the wildlings crawl from their slumber,

Woke by warm breezes, by berries, by nuts—your hunger,

They’ll come with the rain.

When the ice melts and the forest thaws, crying out in pain,

The clouds will gather and break,

And the seedlings will be slaked.

So I pray,

That you’ll come with the rain.

-Niamh-

In response, the stone owl’s ruby eyes glowed more brightly, casting a cloak of red across the chamber. The fountain rippled and every woodland statue with a spigot in its mouth spat Annwyn’s gorge water, babbling with excitement. Its draiocht groaning awake after decades, perhaps longer, asleep. The sensation of a bear turning over after months of deep-winter dreams. The smell of mildew and moss thickening the air, ancient, primeval and born of a bygone era.

Aisling shuddered.

The doorway to the Other was open.

The fae king moved toward the waters as if to enter. Aisling jolted forward, reaching the lip of the fountain.

“I’ll enter first,” she said. It wasn’t a question, yet the fae king considered her words for longer than Aisling anticipated. His eyes—darkest of greens—growled like a nightmare forest, hoarding monstrosities spoken of only in fairytales. But there was something more. A strange glint, like the nick of a blade, sparkling before vanishing once more. Something harrowed, something desperate, something afraid.

Aisling pulled back, aware she’d stared at the strange king too long and shuddered.

“Very well,” he said mercifully, stepping aside for Aisling to pass. He brought his arms closer to himself as if disgusted by the prospect of touching her. Perhaps repelled by the stench of what mortal blood ran through her veins still.

Aisling turned away, unable to stomach his expression or the tugging of her thoughts.

She sucked in a breath, already leaning forward to plunge into the Other when Gilrel jumped atop the edge of the fountain. The pine marten’s blade, tucked at her hip, was made bloody by the light of the owl’s eyes.

“Wait for my return,” Aisling said to her chambermaid, clasping her paw between her hands. “Don’t wander nor attempt anything half as wicked as dueling a den of neccakaid without me.”

The pine marten’s eyes shone with unwept tears, her whiskers quivering as she recalled the memory. The den of neccakaid had been the final trial before reaching Lofgren’s Rise—one they’d scarcely survived.

Gilrel nodded, swallowing hard as Aisling released her paw.

Aisling turned her attention back to the fountain, her draiocht popping like a gleeful flame at the edge of a wick. A cauldron, the waters churned and the owl’s ruby eyes sparkled.

Anduril tugged her closer, gleaming and eager. It burned, humming an unsettling song that echoed into the caverns of oblivion.

And so, Aisling plunged into the gateway.