Page 59 of The Forever Queen

Lir lowered himself beside Aisling, leaving a space between them. Still, he watched her, eyes fluttering shut with exhaustion.

The Sidhe king slept hard, waking just before dawn bled across the horizon.

Lir blinked, adjusting himself to morning. The sun was already breaking and spilling across the sky. He’d overslept and he was still groggy. The Sidhe king propped himself up on his elbows, immediately searching for Aisling.

She lay next to him still, sound asleep, but to Lir’s horror, no longer was the sorceress uncovered.

Grin mushrooms grew from her skin, from the moss, from the fertile soil of Kaster. Pale as bones, the plant bled from sharp, tooth-like edges, pointed enough to cut. But it was the aroma of its scarlet sap that dealt the greatest damage. A syrup of bottled rot, some called it—if you were brave enough to collect it and stopper the bottle before the first whiff entered the nostrils and began its death-bidden work.

A rot—a disease that didn’t belong in the Other.

Lir’s chest tightened with dread.

Almost buried, Aisling’s chest rose and fell with the fungus bleeding atop her armor. Consuming her. Geld was similarly cloaked by the disease, lulled asleep by its poison. Only Lir had been spared, the grin tracing his body but never touching him—as if afraid of his might should they bite into his life breath. Rot and disease was a mortal machination. The Other suffered no death, only life eternal, and so did the Sidhe. Lir himself was the antithesis of such poison. He, the bloom and not the wilt. Only he, spared.

Lir cursed.

The Sidhe king sprang from the moss and lunged for Aisling. He ripped the bleeding tooth from her skin, but for every mushroom torn, three more grew in its place.

No, no, no, no. Lir’s fear transformed to anger and then panic, clawing at the disease like a rabid dweller. He gritted his teeth, ignoring the heat pressing the backs of his eyes.

“Not our will, mo Damh Bán,” the walnut groaned above him. Lir glanced up, staring at the tree for the first time. It, too, was overcome with bleeding tooth. The fungus had overcome everything and all, taking the life of the Other and rendering it to rot.

“This is not of the Other,” the walnut choked beneath grisly, haggard breaths. “This is a mortal contagion seeping through the cracks.”

Lir blanched.

Mortal contagion.

“What do you speak of?” Lir asked, his voice stripped bare by his fury and fear alike.

“They’re coming,mo Damh Bán,” the walnut said, blackening before his eyes. Darkening like old blood on the belly of a blade. The walnut tree was dying. Its life sucked from its bones by the vampirism of death’s grin. “They’re coming.”

Lir dove into the mushrooms around Aisling and ripped her from the earth. The pace of her heart was slowing and her breath was thinning. Soon, the rot would take her too.

Lir screamed, uncertain what else to do. He bore limitlessdraiocht, unmatched strength, twin blades gifted by the gods themselves, and still he couldn’t spare her. Couldn’t stop the grin that grew even as he tore their buds from her freckled flesh.

“Aisling!” He screamed again and again with none to bear witness but the meadow of Kaster. Even Anduril’s glimmer was extinguished, consumed by the maggots, the spiders, and the infection as was Aisling.

Lir looked over his shoulder, searching Kaster for an answer. There was nothing and no one. The meadow was populated by only chattering flowers, and beyond, only dense forest as far as the eye could see.

Lir leaped to his feet and raced toward Geld. The stag, covered in grin as well, breathed slowly. The great barrel of his belly swelling as the fungus devoured him. Lir tore through the rot, digging for the satchels Cara had prepared for them. Mushrooms exploded where Lir searched, growing between his fingers, crawling up his arms, his shoulders, desperately trying to latch onto his throat, his face, his hair but failing and falling once they tasted a morsel of his life-giving magic. Still, Lir ripped at the rot, diving into the disease until he could curl his fingers around the nearest satchel.

Lir pulled and flew away from the stag with a single bag in hand. He opened it, ignoring the rot that still fell from his body, and squirmed on the ground around him. He dug through Cara’s supplies.

Blackberry swords, mint salves, belle figs, wild milk thorns, broad leaf, briar balms. Nothing, nothing, nothing, until Lir’s fingers wrapped around a glass box. The Sidhe king almost crushed the delicate thing between his hands in his frenzy, fingertips trembling as he snapped the box open.

A single dose of morning breath: an elixir to cleanse the body of contaminants, infections, and disease.

Lir’s heart took flight inside his chest. His cheeks flushed, blood rushing through his veins like frothing rapids.

The Sidhe king scrambled to Aisling, all his elegance and ease gone and replaced with utter desperation.

Lir clawed at the grin once more and once more the grin grew more thickly. No longer could Lir see Aisling. She was a mound of white, bleeding grin. Its toothy smile mocked him, swallowing Aisling whole as he bore witness.

The Sidhe king drew his axes. He swiped at the grin, hacking at the rot with his teeth bared. At last, between the fungus, her face shone. Delicate, sleeping, and serene, she lay in her hungry grave.

Lir moved quicker than he believed possible, adrenaline pulsing through his body as he neared her, reaching for her, until, at last, he could bring the morning breath to her lips. Three droplets fell and slid down her tongue.

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