Page 35 of The Forever Queen

“Enough!” Aisling screamed into the darkness, refusing to be haunted byher.

“Tsk tsk,”shesaid, “Isn’t it I who should be furious? Isn’t it I who should want your bones deep beneath the earth? For wasn’t ityouwho destroyed my loom?”

The Lady laughed, high and shrill and wholly inhuman. A sound that challenged neither good nor evil, taking on an alignment of its own. Something of yore that was better left forgotten.

“Go on.” Aisling bared her teeth, becoming a feral wolf cornered in a cage. “Bore me with another of your long-winded prophecies, your riddles, your warnings. For your loom will continue to break, your threads will fray, and your shears will grow blunt.”

“Perhaps.” The Lady’s voice filled the emptiness of her starry forest, vibrating through Aisling’s bones. “But at what cost? You’ve already lost so much, child.”

“I’ve become Sidhe queen of the fae and before long, I’ll rule over the Other. I have everything.”

“Poor Dagfin would beg to differ if he bore a life to protest your arrogance.” The Lady laughed louder as though overcome with joyful tears. “He’d despise what you’ve become. By the gods, I’m certain he wouldn’t even recognize you.”

Aisling stilled.

Her tongue turned to ash, a bloody wound in her heart slashed open once more by the mere mention of Dagfin’s name.

“Where are you, Aisling?” the Lady asked again, but Aisling could barely hear her. “Where are you, child?”

* * *

“What did she say to you?!”

Aisling was jerked out of water, gasping for air. She floundered at the edge of a pool but no longer was she in her chambers. She was somewhere else, somewhere thundering and flashing with lightning, yet still deep within Niamh’s castle. Aisling must’ve fallen asleep while bathing and the Lady hadn’t wasted an opportunity to violate her dreams.

Aisling choked up water, reaching for the edge of the pool. She pulled herself over the brim, hands lit with flame in her panic.

“What spells did she cast?!” Someone spoke again. And when Aisling bore the strength to focus and address who spoke to her, she spotted the cloud-like hem of Niamh’s gown.

Aisling coughed, struggling to her feet and entirely nude from her bath earlier.

“You are referring to the Lady.”

“Aye,” Niamh said impatiently, glaring at Aisling as though she herself was the primordial creature bound to the threads of her loom of fate. “Did you tell her where you were? Did you let her needle her way inside your mind?!”

Aisling wiped the hair sticking to her face, still processing her surroundings. This must’ve been Niamh’s bathing chambers for the ceiling was dense with dark clouds, lightning spidering down the slick, obsidian walls that opened at the center of the room into a pool as black as night, crowned by steam. And what’s more, petrified rain hung in the air like glass beads, bursting when touched.

“I told her nothing. She knows not where I am nor how to reach me,” Aisling said, her voice still rough where her lungs burned.

“Do not grow overly confident. If I hadn’t pulled you out of your careless dreams, she would’ve dug deeper, clawing inside your mind for where to find you.”

“She must know I’m in the Other,” Aisling said, looking down at her bare form and Anduril that Niamh wholly ignored.

“It’s likely,” Niamh said, the clouds of her dress gathering more thickly. “But we cannot assume she knows anything. Give her nothing, allow her nothing, gift her no advantage.” Niamh stepped closer to Aisling, her words spoken more quickly, more urgently, and sharper the longer she spoke.

Aisling took a step back. A gesture that didn’t go unnoticed.

“You speak as though we’re allies, yet I know nothing of your intentions,” Aisling said, her voice clear and unmuddied despite the whiplash.

Niamh searched Aisling’s expression, her mind undoubtedly determining what information to offer in exchange for Aisling’s. Her face flashed wildly with several emotions. Heartbeats ago, the Seelie queen of Rain had behaved as though she’d known Aisling for a millennium, yet they’d only just met. She’d been angry, concerned, fret with worry as Aisling stood dripping and nude before her, only Anduril returned to her hips after the Lady had stripped it from her body whilst inside her realm of dreams.

“You’re right,” Niamh said to Aisling’s surprise. Her earlier anxious rage clearing like the sky after a cloudburst. “Let’s remedy that. Will you dress with me forL? Brear?”Niamh’s lips softened, her uptilted eyes foregoing their serrated edge in exchange for something warmer. Something almost familiar.

Aisling hesitated, eyes darting around the room as though in search of an answer. She understood trust was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Both the mortal plane and the Other bore a stake on Aisling’s life—she, both the prophesied doom of the Sidhe and the curse breaker for the mortals. Wartime loyalties were fickle, and strangers were threats. Especially powerful ones. Even if Niamh welcomed her to the Other, Aisling knew better than to find comfort in the den of a creature more fabled than most. And yet, the legend before her was necessary to the Goblet of Lore, to gaining the gods’ favor, to preventing mortal victory. To everything.

So, Aisling steeled herself. Anduril singing softly in her ears.

“I’d love to,” Aisling said at last, offering Niamh her prettiest smile. Deception was more effective when its bitter intentions were masked with something sweet: a smile, a glance, a kiss. More effective as a weapon than most blades or jinxes. Indeed, this much Aisling had learned.

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