The Falconer (Elizabeth May) (25 page)

I meet Kiaran’s eyes. His head is tilted, amethyst gaze studying me intensely. My God, has he poisoned me?

All at once, the pain ebbs. It slides off my skin in waves and leaves behind a strange, soothing current that drifts from my head all the way down to my toes.

Still, I glare at Kiaran and say, ‘What did you do to me?’

‘I gave you a mild sedative.’ He studies me. ‘It’s supposed to calm you.’

‘I’m sure it would work better if I weren’t so annoyed with you,’ I say. ‘You could have told me it would hurt like the very devil.’

‘What difference would that have made? You’d still have had to drink it and you’d still be miserable.’ He shifts closer and motions for me to turn over onto my stomach. ‘I have to remove your . . . whatever this is.’

‘Nightdress,’ I say, my cheek against the pillow. ‘It’s from Paris. You’ve been alive how long and still can’t identify a woman’s clothing?’

Kiaran plucks at my nightdress, as if trying to figure out a way to get it off me. ‘Too many words over my lifetime for the same items. I really don’t care to learn them all.’

‘MacKay, stop fiddling around and just cut the blasted thing.’ When he simply stares at me, I say, ‘I have some dignity, however little you appreciate it. I refuse to let you remove my clothing.’

‘If you insist.’ Kiaran’s blade appears from somewhere and he slices through the back of my nightdress. ‘There. Your expensive French item is now ruined for the sake of some incomprehensible notion of propriety. I hope you’re pleased.’

A heavy lock of that shining black hair falls onto his face. As he pushes it back, I let my gaze linger on him for longer than usual. I study those strong, high cheekbones and his square jaw, how his hair curls up at the ends. He dabs a bluish-grey paste onto his fingers from one of the bottles. Spreading apart the torn edges of my nightdress, he smoothes the paste along my wounds. Unlike the concoction I drank, this comforts straight away.

I close my eyes and – just this once, in my ill state – I allow myself to briefly take comfort in his touch, the way his fingertips linger along my spine. I begin to understand why people seek intimacy, why they long for it. Why it compels them to forget every awful, destructive memory they’ve ever had.

‘What did you dream about?’ Kiaran asks.

I’m so surprised by the question, I don’t know how to respond. ‘What?’

Kiaran plucks a pair of forceps from his bag. ‘Your dream. The one you were having when I came in.’

Kiaran doesn’t realise there is only
one
dream – one nightmare. A perpetual reminder of my failure. My weakness. ‘I thought we weren’t going to make this personal,’ I say. ‘Dreams are personal.’

‘Kam, I’m picking barbs out of your naked back. It’s already personal.’

I remain silent. Numbness is beginning to spread through my body, and I’m losing the reassurance of Kiaran’s touch. If I close my eyes, I’ll fall asleep. I’ll have to relive the nightmare either way.

Before I change my mind, I whisper, ‘My mother. I dreamed of her murder.’

Despite being unable to feel his hands, I sense Kiaran stiffen next to me. ‘You saw it happen.’

‘Aye,’ I whisper. Now he knows my darkest secret, the memory that tears down every wall of carefully maintained control until all that’s left is the dark part of me that kills.

I can’t help but be drawn into the nightmare again. I spin in a white dress, in an assembly room filled with bright candelabras and lamps, surrounded by people in black coats and pastel skirts and puffed dresses. The fiddles play an upbeat schottische that I dance to until my feet ache.

Then I’m outside, breathing in the cool night air. I hear the sounds of a struggle, a muffled scream. I peer through the garden bushes that overlook the street. There’s a figure lying in the rain, her white dress spread around her on the cobblestones, now soaked crimson.

Another woman is crouched next to the still body, her eyes bright and glittering an unnatural green in the glow of the street lamps. I watch blood slide down the long, pale column of her throat. Her lips peel back in a fierce smile of pointed teeth that I’ll remember for as long as I live. Because I know immediately what this woman is, and that all the stories from my childhood are true: faeries are real, and they are monsters.

The faery uses her blade-sharp nails to cut into the dead woman’s chest and she rips out her heart.

My eyes shut hard as I repress that memory again, shoving it deep inside me where it belongs. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

I’m not certain what I’m apologising for. I haven’t told him anything, really. Not even how that night when he ripped out the redcap’s heart brought me back to the part of my nightmare where the faery looks down at my mother’s corpse and says something to her that I’ll never forget.

Crimson suits you best.

Kiaran leans down and presses his forehead against mine. I don’t pull away.
Make the thoughts stop
, I will him.
Tell me you’re just as broken as I am
.

‘
Tha mi duilich air do shon
,’ he breathes, his lips so close to mine. ‘Do you think we could exist without moments of vulnerability? Of regret?’ He brushes a hand over my bare shoulder blade. ‘Without them, you wouldn’t be Kam.’

I never thought he would understand. The people who had been there after my mother’s death – the ones who still spoke to me after it happened – reassured me that things would get better, that I’d get better. And with enough time, everything would be
all right
. But nothing is all right, and I am
not
better.

Time won’t fix me. Time allows me to become more skilful at hiding how much I hurt inside. Time makes me a great liar. Because when it comes to grief, we all like to pretend.

Kiaran picks up the needle and dips it in the third vial. He must have touched my wounds again because he asks, ‘Can you feel that?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

He leans over me and begins the delicate process of sewing up my injuries. As the minutes tick by, I watch him from under my eyelashes. He frowns in concentration while he sews. Eventually, my eyes grow heavy, but I fight sleep.

‘MacKay,’ I say. ‘What’s the point in stitching me up to save my life when we’re likely to die on Tuesday? Why are you on my side?’

Kiaran smirks. ‘Ah, the pervasive idea of absolutes. When did I ever say my side was yours?’

‘We hunt together,’ I say. ‘We save people. We’re about to go into a war with unfavourable odds. It certainly looks like we’re on the same side.’

We save people
. I’m not even certain why I added that. It’s my delusion that our nightly slaughter spares human lives, and that makes it acceptable, somehow. In reality, I’m selfish. I’m more consumed by a need to kill than to save another person. I wish I weren’t.

Kiaran’s laugh is sharp, abrupt. ‘Tell yourself whatever you’d like, but don’t speak for me. I’m not benevolent. If I’ve done anything good, it’s because of my damned vow.’

I blink hard, trying to clear my clouding vision. ‘Your
what
?’

His focused, patient demeanour is gone in an instant, and now his eyes burn, so exquisitely fierce that I can’t look away. I have never seen such raw violence in a mere expression before.

Then, just as quickly, the wrath is gone, replaced with apathy. ‘I killed humans every day,’ he says coldly. ‘Until I spoke a vow.’

I stare at him in surprise. A faery’s vow is immutable and everlasting. To break one results in the worst pain imaginable, long and agonising, before the faery finally dies. It is not something to be taken lightly.

‘Why would you do that?’

‘You don’t want to ask me about my past,’ he says, voice low. ‘Some things are best left buried.’

This vow, whatever it was, meant something to Kiaran. Something important. I have to know. ‘If you won’t tell me about your vow or your past,’ I say softly, ‘then tell me the real reason you hunt.’

His anger sparks again and I see something underneath it that I could identify anywhere: loss, hidden by centuries upon centuries of rage.

I know from experience what grief does. How it can transform us. That the only way to control it is by pressing it deep down inside ourselves where we hope no one will ever discover it. But it will always be there. Inevitably, something or someone will come along and dig up everything we’ve tried so hard to conceal. Kiaran did that to me. I just did that to Kiaran.

Now I’m almost certain I know the answer. Who Kiaran made his vow to and why he hunts the fae.

My eyelids finally flutter closed. I try to open them, but I can’t. My mind has already started clouding. I fight against sleep one last time. I need to ask him. ‘Did you love your human very much?’ I ask.

He sucks in a surprised breath. His whispered response is so low, I strain to hear him before sleep takes me completely. ‘I didn’t love her nearly enough.’

Chapter 25

I
wake at the sound of a chair scratching against the hardwood floor. I stir and open my eyes to see Kiaran about to leave my bedroom.

‘Skulking out with no goodbye?’ I ask.

Kiaran freezes and turns his head. ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

‘Liar.’ I shift experimentally and am relieved to find the numbness gone. I feel . . . wonderful, actually. Not at all sore. ‘How does my back look? Awful?’

Kiaran’s heavy buckled boots are silent as he approaches the bed. He sits next to me. ‘Feel for yourself.’

When I twist my arm to tentatively poke the wounds, I expect to find taut stitches lining the claw marks and flesh slick with blood. Instead, I find dry skin with smooth, upraised scars where my injuries had been but a few hours ago. New badges to accompany the many old ones that already line my back, and it feels as though they have been there for years.

I gape at Kiaran. ‘What—’ I shift to touch them again. God, but even my counterpane is clean of blood. ‘How did you—’ I stare at him. ‘Some fae remedy?’

Kiaran shrugs. I ignore him and shove the pristine counterpane down my legs. All of the cuts I received from crawling on the beach rocks are healed. The raw skin and broken blisters on my hand are smoothed over. Even the injuries on my forearm, where the
cù sìth
’s teeth scraped me, are scarred. My bruises, aches and pains have vanished.

‘Do you mean to tell me,’ I say through clenched teeth, ‘that you’ve had that concoction this
entire time
?’

‘Of course.’ His response is nonchalant.

I remember those nights I wandered home from our hunts covered in blood, most of it mine. When I barely made it there alive, and Derrick had to wake me every few hours to make sure I hadn’t died. I endured my injuries in secret, dealt with the pain made worse by layers of clothing and corsets.

Kiaran could have alleviated that. Instead, he made me bear it. Just like that, my sympathy over his former human lover recedes and I’m left with the glaring reminder that he really can be a cold bastard.

‘You never once felt the need to use it,’ I say, voice shaking, ‘during any of those nights I earned dozens of injuries?’

‘This was a special case,’ he says, ‘since the poison would have killed you.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t let it,’ I snap.

There’s Kiaran’s anger again. It mirrors my own, except where mine is hot, his is the most frigid kind of cold. The temperature in the room drops and when I breathe in, I feel my lungs constrict.

‘What would you have proposed for every other time?’ he says. ‘That I carry you away from every monster you face?’ He moves closer, until he is practically nose to nose with me. ‘Shall I smother you with my protection until you can’t breathe or lift a damn finger to defend yourself?’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ I snarl.

‘I trained you for battle,’ he tells me. ‘When we fight the
sìthichean
, do you think I’ll have those vials with me? My needle and thread handy? Healing isn’t one of my powers, so I taught you to endure pain.’

I’m beyond caring about his excuses. I have to know what else he’s hidden from me. ‘Tell me something. How long have you known the seal was going to break?’ When he doesn’t respond, I ask again. ‘
How long?
’

He clenches his jaw. ‘Since before I met you.’

‘Ugh!’ I shove at his chest, scramble off the bed and sit at my work table. If I don’t do something with my hands, I might be inclined to shoot him with my lightning pistol.

I snatch up the half-finished shoulder mount for my sonic cannon and shove a screw into one of the holes.

Kiaran doesn’t even spare a glance at my project. ‘Do you think it would have been better if I had told you? You were clearly grieving. You were untrained. When I met you, you couldn’t even use a blade.’

‘My, you are absolutely full of compliments today.’

His contemptuous gaze rakes me from head to toe. ‘The
daoine sìth
will be at their weakest when they first escape the mounds. It’s the best time to strike, and you’re still not strong enough to fight them.’

I go still and the screw slips through my fingers onto the table. ‘Not strong enough?’ I ask quietly. ‘I thought I proved myself perfectly capable earlier.’

‘You bested me once, Kam. Do you honestly think you can defeat hundreds of trained
daoine sìth
?’

I barely understand anything he says beyond the sting of
not strong enough
. ‘Not strong enough?’

Just when I think I have myself under control, he strips it all away and I’m left struggling with the creature inside me that wants nothing more than to fight him until we’re both exhausted and bruised.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Not yet.’

I snap. I grab the lightning pistol off the table. The core rods fan open as I aim for an extremity I know he can heal and pull the trigger.

Kiaran is much faster. He blocks the shot with his hand, grasping the capsule tightly in his fist. He stares at me calmly – for about a second. With a hiss of pain, he opens his fist and the metal capsule drops to the hardwood floor. A Lichtenberg figure forms on his palm, snaking up his wrist from a burn at the centre.