Page 42 of The Forever Queen

Just so that she might not be so lonely.

If only, if only.

Niamh abruptly shut the book. The Seelie queen snatched it from Aisling and held the book close to her chest––the melody, silencing itself. Nevertheless, the echo of the song tormented them long after the last note had been sung.

Niamh’s eyes glared at Aisling.

“In the Other, curiosity might come at the cost of your life, sorceress,” Niamh chided, eyes narrowed into slits even as she started to turn on her heel.

“What was that?” Aisling asked. “That song.”

“I’ve already told you. A nursery rhyme,” Niamh bit back.

“The faerie,” Aisling continued, nevertheless. “The faerie?—”

Niamh spun on her heel and looked Aisling in the eye with a ferocity like gathering of storm clouds.

“Enough,” she said, and lightning webbed across the sky above Castle Yillen.

Aisling clenched her jaw, but she uttered not another word. The faerie was Niamh and what’s more, Niamh didn’t want Aisling to know.

Aisling bowed her head in feigned obedience, keeping the knowledge to herself.

Niamh smothered the book till it could no longer sing. The Seelie queen tossed the book to one of the blue rabbits escorting from behind. The rabbit held the tome gingerly before reshelving the book tightly between two other red tomes. The book seemed to protest the rabbit’s efforts, humming to be opened once more. But it mattered not if the rabbit reshelved the tome, burned it, ripped it apart, or tossed it into a lake. Aisling had already heard its song.

Niamh, indeed, staked claim to a kingdom in the west nestled in the mortal plane but never had she actually reigned from such towers. The book could’ve sung of any western faerie…but even as Aisling’s thoughts trailed off, she didn’t believe their reasoning.

Niamh built Castle Yillen with the Goblet of Lore. A gift from the gods to cease her sorrows that endlessly stormed over the Other. Alone, she wished for her friend to join her and join her she did. Yet, one cannot enter the Other even with an invitation lest it beSamhainorL? Brear, Aisling knew. Even with the Goblet of Lore.

Aisling bit her bottom lip as they left the library in silence.

In order to complete Niamh’s wish, the Goblet killed Niamh’s requested friend: the only way to deliver her friend to the Other, Aisling realized.

At the last blood moon, you’ll howl once more before you drift into the Other and join your brothers and sisters beyond the fog. Aisling repeated a tale the beasts in Annwyn recited often. A way to look forward to death and its quest.

A sinking feeling formed in the pit of Aisling’s stomach. The Other was vast, limitless: a world of spirits and magic. The cradle of creation itself. But there was a half of the Other that was sanctioned for the dead. The home of the afterlife where souls whose bodies no longer served them drifted into eternity. Beyond the fog on a ghostly galleon.

Aisling shuddered but not from the cold.

So, who was this “friend” the song spoke of? Aisling asked herself as Niamh quickened her pace. Eager to leave the library as swiftly as she was able.

The answers to Aisling’s questions eluded her. And yet, she knew the Goblet of Lore was more powerful than she realized. Aisling could create anything she dreamed of by the bidding of the Goblet.

Anduril lit gleefully, as though basking in warm showers of sunlight.

Perhaps the solution to ending the war with the mortals, and now Danu and the Lady, lies elsewhere, Aisling thought. Perhaps she was still spooked by the haunting melody or perhaps her intuition was telling her something. The tale felt wrong and so did her search for the Goblet.

“Arawn,” Niamh said, startling Aisling from her thoughts, “the second brother god.”

Aisling looked up, greeted by the giant face of Arawn. He was monstrous, weeping thick streams of dark syrup from his eyes. His branches grew richly with sharp pointed leaves and his expression was warped with madness. The first god was silent, was still, was ordered. But the second god was chaos and discord, prickling with thorns as sharp as teeth.

Aisling swallowed, relieving the pressure in her ears where the weight of the god’s likeness anddraiochtpushed down on her head.

Magic enjoyed giving and it enjoyed taking. Only by the law of thedraiochtdid it ever give in return for something and only to those capable of dominating it. This was what all Sidhe children were taught when they first learned to fly, to breathe beneath the waves, to sing with the wind, or wield a weapon. And each was reminded of such laws on more than one occasion when casting spells or charms or jinxes felt too “easy”. It was a lesson they did well to remember even as they aged into oblivion. Even as Aisling glared up at one of the fathers of magic himself. Or so, Lir—Anduril tightened—the fae king had taught her. Hadn’t he? Aisling struggled to remember, doubt budding in her mind like weeds. More and more she felt like she couldn’t trust herself. Uncertainty, her constant companion.

Their attention wandered back toward the tome on the shelf, still humming between the crimson bindings of its silent neighbors.

But it was the blowing of horns on the other side of the doors that broke the spell of their silence. A muffled concert boomed from the chamber beyond the door.

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