The Vanishing Throne (10 page)

I sense Aithinne behind me without hearing her approach. I choke back the sudden taste of her faery power. She's so silent, the way Kiaran is. I don't even hear her breathe.

I'm ready to ask. I have to. “How long was I in the
Sìth-bhrùth
?” I try to keep my voice steady and barely succeed.

The
daysweeksmonthsyears
stretched on so long that, like Lonnrach, I had no concept of time. There was nothing to measure it, no clocks to give me a sense of its length. Even if I spent a short while with Lonnrach—no matter how long it felt—the days would have gone by more rapidly here.

Aithinne sighs. “It would have only been weeks for you there. Seven or eight at the most.”

“Don't do that,” I say sharply. “Don't pretend to misunderstand me. How much time passed out
here
, Aithinne?”

“You know I can't say.”

“Then find a way to tell me. The plant growth out there couldn't have happened in a short amount of time, I know that much.”

“
Daoine sìth
are more connected to the earth than most
sìthichean
,” she says. “When the others escaped the mounds, they would have influenced nature without meaning to—”

“Aithinne.” My hands curl into fists. Violent Aileana is in my mind, smiling, encouraging my anger. I try to tamp it down, to put her back where she belongs. “I said find a way to tell me.”

“Months,” she whispers. Even with that, her voice trembles around the vow.

The trees here couldn't have grown in mere months even with the fae affecting growth. The vines couldn't have overtaken whole buildings. They could only have done that in the span of years—and years consist of
months
. The fae are experts at deceptive language.

“No tricks.” I don't bother to keep the sharpness out of my tone. I'm finished with faery vows and riddles and secrets. “No half-lies.
How long
?”

I turn to her then. I let my rage show, the Violent Aileana Lonnrach saw inside me.
We're the same, you and I
. I'm past reason, past all sense. I am the inhuman thing he saw who mirrors his own. Now I know that grief has carved parts of me hollow. It let in the darkness, and now it's marked my bones. A sleeping beast.

I issue a single command: “Count. Count how many years.”

Aithinne's silence seems to last forever, her expression uncertain. Finally, she begins. “One.” Her voice trembles, her breath catching. “Two.” The word seizes in her throat and I almost tell her to stop. “Three.” The last word. A simple word that leaves her doubled over, coughing until blood splatters across her trousers.

“Three years,” I whisper. I should have helped her, checked to see if she was all right. I can't. Violent Aileana recedes and I'm left in shock.
Three years. Three. Years
.

“Falconer,” she gasps. “Wait.”

I barely hear her. My vision is tunneled as I climb the creaky stairs. The hook that once held our family portrait is still there at the top of the stairs, stark against the dusty, torn wallpaper.

I step over the destroyed portraits of my ancestors and reach the door of my bedroom. It looks as though it's been ransacked. Glass fragments from the overhead lamps litter the ground amid the dirt and dust. The roof itself has caved in partially just above the frame of my bed. It's left the space open to the elements, and everything smells musty. Not even pigeons would deign to live in such a horrid place.

In the corner, the helm from an old schooner that once hung on the far wall is lying on the floor in pieces. The furniture is broken and discarded, the color blackened with mold.

“Lonnrach will be looking for you,” Aithinne says, her voice hoarse. She comes up beside me and wipes the blood from her lips. “We have to leave. It isn't safe here.”

I hear her but the words barely register through my shock. As if she's speaking to me across a vast valley.

I approach my closet, where the tattered remains of my silk dresses are thrown about, the fabric brittle and torn. It smells putrid from the layers upon layers of dust and old fabric. Beneath it all, I spot the corner of my locked trunk.

I shove all that old, disgusting fabric aside—it almost disintegrates in my hands—and unlatch the trunk.
Please still be in here. Please still be in here
.

Tears burn my eyes when I pull open the lid and see my mother's tartan sash. It's still there, unchanged and protected by the airtight casing. I draw it out and the scent of coarse wool remains the same, unpolluted by dust.

A hint of my father's lingering pipe smoke fills my senses and I come undone. I sink to my knees and fight against the tears.
Don't cry
, I tell myself like always.
Don't cry
.

I wrap my hands around the tartan and press it to my face. I try to remember. I try so hard, but the images of my former life don't come. It isn't until I scrape my fingernails across Lonnrach's marks on my arms that the images of my mother return. This mark is her smile. This mark is her laugh. This mark is a thousand little moments and words and deeds that said
I love you
and
You are precious
and
You matter
.

And I can't recall a single one of them on my own.

“I can't remember,” I say to Aithinne, knowing she's still lingering there. “Not on my own anymore.”

Wordlessly, Aithinne kneels beside me and peeks in the trunk. “Oh, good. Sensible clothes.” She reaches to draw out the trousers, shirt, coat, and boots I kept inside. My old faery hunting garments. “Put these on. We have to go. Kadamach will be wondering why we never came out of the portal where we should have.”

This house is all I have of my mother and my former life. If my memories are fading, there will be nothing to remind
me. I've already lost everyone I love, and the mementos in this house are the only physical remnants left. Once I leave . . .

“Not yet,” I say. “Just a few more minutes.”

Aithinne glances at me impatiently, looking very much like her brother. “We don't have time for this.”

She reaches for me then, but I jerk away. “Don't,” I say sharply. “Don't touch me.”

Lonnrach used to reach for me like that, grasp my shoulder hard if I didn't move fast enough.

I don't miss the hurt that flashes in her gaze, as if she can read my mind. “I need to heal you,” she says carefully, her hands up as if she were approaching a feral animal. “Your feet are bleeding, I can smell the venom on you again, and we have to run.”

I'm always running. It never stops. Lonnrach has imprinted himself on my life the same way his sister has. She might have taken my mother, but he's the monster in the darkness. He's stealing my soul piece by piece, scraping the parts of my life away until there's nothing left.

Now you know precisely how it feels to be that helpless
.

“Why can't I remember?” I ask Aithinne, not moving when she presses her hands to my temples. Her touch is gentle, deliberate, the way one might treat an injured bird.

“You can,” she tells me. Her eyes are steady, calm. “But he's left his imprint on your mind. Each memory has faded with his influence. If you want, I can help.”

“Help?”

The prickling pain of her healing starts. At first I flinch, but then I let it wash over me, a calming influence.
Still here. Still alive. This is mine. I still have this
. I can form new memories over the old ones.

Once my injuries are healed and the sting of venom has receded, Aithinne pulls away. She is breathing hard, a thin line of blood trailing down her chin from her earlier coughing spell.

“Aileana.”

She says my name. Just my name. It's been so long since I heard it, I had almost forgotten I had a name at all. Lonnrach always called me
Falconer
. Until that word was the only thing I had left that belonged to me.
Falconer
, an insult.
Falconer
, a thing.
Falconer
, a duty. And I'm a girl. I'm just a girl. Aileana Kameron. Kam.

Aithinne tells me, “I can help you forget.” At my unasked question, she says, “What Lonnrach did to you. The place he kept you.” She glances down at my marks. “I can make it so you believe you got these in the battle.”

God help me, I'm tempted. I don't shake my head or say no. Not even when she places her hands on either side of my face again—her fingers twisting in my hair—and shuts her eyes.

Her power warms beneath my skin, soothing, comforting. My memories of that place begin to fade around the edges, blurring like fog-covered glass. She's taking them into herself, stealing them from me—just like Lonnrach.

I want to know everything. I'll take every memory you have, if that's what it takes
.

“
Stop
.” I tear out of her grasp and suddenly I'm back here in the ruins of my home. “They're my memories to bear,” I tell her. “Not yours.”

Aithinne wipes the blood from her lips again, pressing her sleeve there. Disbelief is evident in her features. “You think you deserve what happened, don't you?”

I grip the tartan in my mud-caked hands, remembering why I left it in the trunk before the battle. I felt my mother wouldn't like the person I had become. A part of me hoped I would save the city and finally—
finally
—be worthy to wear it.

I felt guilt for the longest time after failing that night of the Wild Hunt. A part of me still does.

Before I can respond, Aithinne says, “There is nothing you went through that I haven't already endured. Lonnrach had two thousand years to break me and he never could.”

She tries reaching for me again. Even when I shrink away, she keeps her hand out, palm up. An offering. An absolution. “You were captured while performing a task that was never meant for you alone. You aren't responsible for what Kadamach and I started. That's why I'm offering to carry them for you.”

I almost ask her what she means, but the words don't come out. I stare at her outstretched palm and nearly take it.

Now you know precisely how it feels to be that helpless
.

That's why I should never allow myself to forget. I'll never be that helpless again. “No.” I swallow back the lump in my throat. “I won't do that to you.”

Did he do this? Like mine?

Worse. He did worse
.

“You,” she tells me, her gaze never leaving mine, “are extraordinary.”

I smile wryly, forced. “For a human?”

She returns my smile. “It's just that now I see why Kadamach wanted me to move heaven and earth to find you.” She passes me the clothes and boots. “Get dressed. We need to hurry.”

She leaves the closet, shutting the broken remains of the door and offering me some semblance of privacy.

Now I see why Kadamach wanted me to move heaven and earth to find you
.

No, I can't think about what that means right now. My relationship with Kiaran is another complication I can't even begin to fathom.

Quickly, I remove my torn shift, its light material like a whisper across my bare skin. Despite all it's been through, the fae material is still soft as ever, perfect for bandages if I need them. I fold it up and stuff it in my coat pocket.

The cotton shirt I pull over my head is so rough in comparison, and the raploch trousers and coat are even worse. But I would still rather wear my own clothes—as rough and worn as they are—than the delicate material that reminds me so much of Sorcha. After a moment's hesitation, I tuck my mother's tartan into my coat pocket, too. I can't leave it here.

I sit on the damp floorboards to pull on the boots. I lace them, then grab the only weapon in the trunk—my self-loading blunderbuss, still snug in the holster that fits across
my back. It was one of the first weapons I made to kill the fae, perfect for an untrained lady. As long as I was close enough to my target, the ammunition sprayed wide and I never missed, even when my hands shook.

I empty the remains of
seilgflùr
from the blunderbuss's hold. The thistle inside would never be effective after three years.

Three years three years
three years
—

Focus
. I pull the fabric-wrapped
seilgflùr
Aithinne brought me from the pouch at my wrist and deftly tear up the petals to deposit into a compartment in the altered blunderbuss. Then I click the hold shut and stuff the weapon in its holster, adjusting it so the strap is firm across my chest.

Boom
. I'm startled by a noise in the distance, like a cannon going off. I press my fingers to the floor, surprised to find a slight tremor there. The puddle of water near the door is unsettled into ripples.

“Aithinne?”

Just as I call for her, the distant, heavy rumbles start to grow louder and closer with each second. The room begins to shake, the structure groaning.
Boom. Boom. Boom boom boom
. The old dresses shudder on their hooks. From the other side of the door, something falls to the ground and shatters.

Aithinne bursts in, nearly ripping the door from its hinges. Her eyes glow bright as she ushers me through. “They're here. We have to go
now
.”

BOOM. BOOM
. The entire house is quaking now. Dust falls all around us from the weakened rafters. At the back of
the room, a piece of the wall falls to the floor and breaks apart.