Page 110 of The Forever Queen

Lir pressed his lips to the bairn’s forehead, blessing it fully.

“I hereby knight thee and invite thee into the hallowed afterlife of the Other: Caoimhe, child of the mortal plane. Sail onward,” Lir recited, his voice thick. “Sail onward and never look back.”

Lir laid the child back onto the lily pad, wincing as if he were laying down a piece of himself, freshly gouged from his body.

Caoimhe cried, suddenly cold without Lir’s warmth. Lir cherished its cries for it was alive and beating with magic now.

Lir shut his eyes.

“Arise knight of the Sidhe and be recognized.”

The bells of Simril rang thrice over and the lily pad carried the bairn back through the falls, and into the Other. The spell was complete; another mortal child christened by the high king of the Sidhe and accepted into the sweet planes of the Other by honor of his blessing. A small mercy Lir believed every bairn, Sidhe or not, was owed.

Still, Lir bled tears from wounds he knew would never heal. The loss of his own child, a fresh memory despite the passing of time. Grief, the enemy he preferred to keep alive.

CHAPTER XLVI

LIR

The sun, passion-filled, broke the heart of night each dawn. And so, too, did the night run weeping this morning as Lir collapsed into a bed of pelts in one of Simril tower’s wings.

He’d knocked off his boots, tossed his ritter onto a nearby chair, and unbuckled his belt, sparing not a moment longer to throw himself into sleep. But the moment Lir closed his eyes, he saw her.

Lir turned, immediately locking eyes with Aisling.

She was a star: shining and commanding the green earth below. The berry-black of her curls a mouthwatering variance from the ivory of her robes, the hem floating around her ankles like a halo.

Both mind and heart stuttered, blinking to ensure she was real and not an unholy specter. He hadn’t anticipated she’d follow him to Simril’s falls, but with retrospect, he should have.

The violet of her eyes studied him from where she stood. And despite the distance, the intensity of her gaze struck him like a reed, his hand drifting to his heart without thinking.

The memory of Simril falls clung to Lir and Lir to the memory, thinking of it again and again—cursed to wonder endlessly what Aisling saw when she looked at him. Even now—after he tossed in his bed after he’d woken in the middle of the night—he struggled to sort out his thoughts.

The door to his chamber creaked open. The Sidhe king stilled.

He’d heard her footsteps in his half sleep and smelled the lavender of her soaps before she even flipped the door’s latch.

Aisling knocked on the door before fully opening it.

Lir said not a word, rather curious to know if she would enter regardless of his silence. When they’d first arrived in the Simril Glade, the changelings had arranged a chamber at the crown of the tower for both Aisling and Lir. And the Sidhe king hadn’t the interest nor the desire to explain that the sorceress no longer loved him. That he’d sworn an oath to the high queen of the Otherworld to never act on his love for Aisling again. That he couldn’t disappear because he’d rather live on with a sword in his heart than be without her. But only if the blade was forged by her hands.

And so, he’d said nothing at all. Rather, arranging a bed for himself in this west wing tower where he could avoid Aisling in the evenings. Lir wasn’t certain what Aisling felt or remembered of their relationship, and he wasn’t armored with the courage to ask. And so, he wondered if she bore the nerve to enter his chambers uninvited.

Aisling slipped into the room like a dream. Slowly, she padded across the mosaicked tiles. Her head turned, searching for the Sidhe king between the shadows of a still reigning night. The fog of evening rendered her more fantasy than reality.

“Lir,” she said, almost a spell.

The Sidhe king caught the moment she laid eyes on him, standing from his bed of pelts.

The darkness ran its fingers over Lir as he stepped into sight, the light undressing the shadows that surrounded him. He met Aisling at the center of his rooms where the moon showered them in a pillar of silver.

Aisling looked up at him and her eyes darkened, her chin turning even as her eyes stayed, tracing the ink of his markings from his chest to his hips where he slept with only trousers. His wounds were tightly bandaged, gauze wrapping around the muscles of his arms and abdomen. The violet of Aisling’s eyes grew wet with need.

The moment Anduril had settled on Aisling’s hips, her eyes had dulled. Vacantly, she often stared for several beats, blinking as if trying and failing to rekindle the fire that once burned beneath her eyelashes.

Lir had mourned the way she looked at him now, and yet here she was, waking from the graveyard of his heart like an immortal foe.

“I wanted to inquire about your wounds,” she said, collecting herself swiftly.

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