The Vanishing Throne (34 page)

Kiaran's hand tightens around mine and his sudden rush of power warms me up again. His heat is an unbelievable thing, a radiating glow that presses into my palm.

“I'm surprised you agreed to this,” I say. I glance back to shore. Aithinne waits there with Gavin, Derrick on his shoulder. Snow gathers around them.

“If there were another way, we wouldn't be here.” We're far enough out and Kiaran stops me. His hands are on my arms, gliding up and down as if to warm me. “I made you a promise,” he tells me. “I still intend to keep it.”

“MacKay, I—”

What? I feel like I should tell him something important, in case I don't come back. Something meaningful. Something that tells him
I want us just like this. I want us just like this, and more
.

As if he reads my mind, Kiaran kisses me softly. Then he pulls back and I wish he didn't. “I'll have to release you at the last second,” he says. “Or I'll break my vow.”

“Right.” I can't die while he's holding me down or the faery vow will kill him, too. Only, his death will be longer and more agonizing.

“Kam.” His eyes are intense, as if he needs me to understand. “There's no shame in changing your mind.”

“I know.”
But what if Aithinne can't bring me back?
“Do you think it'll hurt?”

He grasps me closer and the warmth of his body breaks through the cold. Snow falls from his hair onto his eyelashes, where it melts against his skin. His eyes are so beautiful, reflecting the slate-gray sky, his irises the color of lavender.

“I don't know,” he says.

I lick the ice off my lips, tasting the salt there. It's so quiet out here, only ocean waves crashing around us. It's these moments when I realize that my time with Kiaran is such a fragile thing. At any moment, my human life could end and he'd still be as unchanging as the sea.

“Not even a half-lie?” I say. “That's not like you.”

He brushes his fingertips along my cheek and I shut my eyes. “No half-lies,” he tells me. “No reassurances, either. Just come back.”

I dart a glance to the others on the beach. Waiting, watching. “You and Aithinne will take care of everyone if I don't, won't you?” I ask him. “Promise me. Just one more promise.”

He lowers his hand. The air around us is suddenly so cold that I nearly choke. It snows harder. My every breath is painful. Kiaran's expression has gone from gentle to harsh so quickly. There's the Kadamach in him; it's still there despite everything.

“No,” he says, his eyes burning. “I won't give you a reason not to fight like hell on the other side.”

“MacKay—”

“Know this.” His terrifying fae voice is back, lulling. The words roll off his tongue and make me shiver. “If you don't come back, I'll leave them all to Lonnrach's mercy.”

I jerk away, my fingers curling into fists. Damn it, he's ruining my goodbye on purpose. “You wouldn't.”

Kiaran watches me with that same distant expression, so cold and deliberate. His faery mask. The part of him that I forget about when he strokes my face or whispers to me in his language or makes me promises. The part of him that lurks just beneath the surface, always. And it isn't kind. It isn't gentle. The Kadamach in him is hidden under a guise that is gossamer thin.

“They mean nothing to me.” His voice is soft, melodic.

“Then why fight by my side to save them? You could have let the Seers die yesterday and it wouldn't have mattered.”

“Because it would have mattered to
you
.”

Just like that, my anger is gone. I find myself moving closer to him until our cold, wet clothes mesh together and his lips are close to my own. “What am I to you, MacKay?” I whisper.

He draws me to him, whispering things that send shivers down my skin. “
Tha mi duilich
,” he breathes against my temple, so low I only just hear it. “When you come back, I'll show you.”

“Is that a promise, at least?”

“Aye.” I feel his smile, then his lips are on my forehead, so light. So achingly soft. “Don't forget why you're there,” he tells me. “What's on the other side won't want you to return.
Turas mhath leat
. Ready?”

I take a breath and nod. Kiaran pushes me under the cold water.

At first, everything is fine. Then my lungs begin to burn. Though I know what I have to do, I can't help but struggle. I buck against Kiaran so I can break to the surface to draw in breath, but he holds me tightly, his body weighing me down. The cold is an impenetrable thing, so heavy on my skin. I open my mouth to breathe, but can't. Soon, my body goes limp.

Kiaran releases me. I realize this is the last moment I have to change my mind—I have just enough strength to go back to the surface. It
hurts
. The pain is spreading through my chest—

No
. I have to do this. I stay under the water, feeling my body sink
down down down
until my back is against the pebbles at the bottom of the sea. My last memory is Kiaran pressing his lips against mine.

I
'M IN
a dark forest. The trees are tall, towering, with spiked branches like blades. I can't see where they end, only the stars above so bright—glowing greens and blues and teals. The sky is a beautiful, vivid dark blue, the color like nothing I've ever seen in nature. I lower my gaze to study a narrow path that extends through the woodland. An arch of trees frames the path at both ends, and either way looks like it leads out of the thick forest.

After a moment's indecision, I choose a direction and run, sprinting across soft and spongy dirt. There is no sound in the forest, not even my footsteps. No animals, no rustling of any kind. I keep running for the arch of trees. I run until the sweat beads my brow, until I'm panting hard from the effort.

The trees around me seem to grow higher and thicker and darker, but I focus on the path, on the arch. Surely it can't be far. It looks like the end of the path is
right there
, tantalizingly close. I run until I think my lungs will burst, until my chest aches. The trees around me stretch thin, toward the stars.

I have to slow to a jog. My breath heaves. I swallow, but my throat is paper dry. A voice whispers across my mind. Kiaran's.
Just come back
.

When I can't even jog, I walk. I focus on Kiaran's name, on what I have to do. I recall his words in the water, before I was so cold that I felt my body die.
What's on the other side won't want you to return
.

Then this path really doesn't lead anywhere. How many foolish souls have taken it, running either way only to get nowhere at all? I have no time to waste.

I break for the trees off the path, walking slowly around the twisted trunks of the forest. Even with careful, deliberate steps, I trip over roots and fallen branches. Soon, I can't see anything. I am enveloped in darkness so thick that no light penetrates.

That's when I hear the screams. People cry out my name, voices I know from my life in Edinburgh. Those who died during the fae attack. They wail, blame me, and curse my name. They are a thousand voices I can't drown out, coming from all directions.

You failed. You let us all die. You failed
.

The guilt is a physical weight that presses down on my shoulders, my chest, until my body is heavy with it. I replay those final moments next to the seal when I hesitated to click
the last symbol in place—and that was all it took. One moment—a single second—of hesitation and it was all over.

Death is her burden. Wherever she goes it follows
.

Just when I think I can't take any more, I remember Gavin's words.
She would have killed you and all this still would have happened. This was always meant to happen
.

I would never have succeeded. No matter what, I would have always ended up right here. In this forest.

Don't forget why you're there
.

I hold on to Kiaran's reminder and scramble through branches. I try to get away from the voices, but they only grow louder.
Your fault
. Their accusations are unrelenting.
Your fault your fault your fault my fault
—

I hold back my tears.
Focus
. I force myself to run. I breathe in air that's suddenly cold—painfully so—as I make my way through the trees. I concentrate my thoughts on the people who are alive and need me to come back. I won't fail them again.

As if sensing my resistance, the voices grow louder, an endless cacophony. Tree branches catch and try to hold me. And I realize that they aren't branches after all—they're hands.

Cold fingers close around my arms, hard enough to bruise. Their touch is so frigid that it burns. I bite back a scream as I struggle to pull myself out of their grip, but they hold tightly, so tightly. My breath is quick as I shove and push my way through the blackness. I have to keep going.

They scream my name. They beg me to help them. They scratch me and make me bleed. More hands seize me, unrelenting, but I shove through.

Suddenly, they're gone. The voices, the frozen hands, the darkness. I am standing in front of a fire in the middle of the woods. I collapse in front of its warmth, my breath coming fast.

Just as quickly, I realize:
This shouldn't be here. This shouldn't—

“Found you,” a voice whispers from behind me.

I whirl. A figure stands in the trees, a heavy cloak obscuring any features—but I am sure from her frail, tiny body that she's a woman. Her hair is long, white as bone, and fine as spiderwebs. Its strands catch in the starlight and glitter like quartz. Despite the darkness, her eyes glisten and she watches me the way one might observe an insect in a jar.

Finally, she steps into the firelight, and cold dread fills me. Her features are so difficult to distinguish; one moment she is a young woman, almost childlike, with a fullness to her cheeks and a flush to her skin. The next, she is old, skeletal, and frail. The cloak around her isn't fabric at all, but shadows, thick and dark and curling at the edges.

Every moment the woman's face changes—old, then young, then even younger. She doesn't speak, just studies me with a recondite gaze.

It's her face that makes me back away. I recognize her.

She's the one from my nightmare.

My back presses to the trunk of a tree, and I can't help but look around us, half-expecting to find laughing crows with blood-dripping beaks. “You were in my dream,” I say. “Who are you?” I speak with care, with the knowledge that, at any moment, she might attack and I have two options: fight or run.

“You've read the old stories, Aileana Moira Rossalyn Kameron,” she says, stepping farther out of the shadows. “You know my names, just as I know all of yours.”

Any surprise I would have had at hearing my forenames—ones I haven't heard in the longest time, that she
shouldn't
know—is eclipsed by the sudden fear at the sight of her staff. My pulse speeds up and I can't take my eyes off it, how the grass beneath the ancient wood withers and frosts over as she draws closer.

No one has seen the Cailleach for thousands of years
.

This is her. I know it from the stories. I feel it in my bones.

“You're the Cailleach,” I whisper.

The thin lips of her bony face curl into a smile, one both warm and frightening. “Aye,
mo nighean
.”

I stay still, unsure. The Cailleach is the oldest faery, the most powerful of them all. Some consider her a goddess, but I know that's merely how ancient humans approached the immortal fae: as deities to be appeased.

She was once the sole queen of the Seelie and Unseelie courts. They say she left the human and faery worlds she created to reside in this realm—the place between life and death.

The Cailleach has so many identities; she could strike joy in people just as easily as she could inspire fear. I read stories as a child that claimed she shaped the mountains and rivers with her hammer and brought winter with her staff. In a warm mood, she would give humans fertile land, a water source, and all the things necessary to live. In a fit of rage, she'd destroy everything and kill everyone in her path.

I shut my eyes briefly. The Cailleach must want me dead. She wouldn't have given me that message in my dream if she didn't. I must have been on the brink of death from the faery venom for her to invade my dreams like that.

“What do you want with me?” I ask. My voice doesn't waver. I refuse to appear weak, even to the Cailleach.

I'm certain she hears the unasked question at the end:
Are you here to destroy me?
The Cailleach has only two purposes: help or destruction, never anything in between.

The temperature around me drops, the way it does when Kiaran becomes angry. Only the Cailleach's power makes it more intense, a choking cold that makes me hunch over and hug myself for warmth. My fingers grow numb and my skin burns. My vision dances with stars and I hear the deafening boom of thunder in the distance.

The Cailleach leans down and grasps my chin, her fingernails biting into my skin. With my hazy vision, I meet her eyes, cold and endlessly black. There is no humanity in that gaze, no compassion.

“I'm here to make sure that this time you don't make it back,” she tells me, in a voice that ices my spine.

After this, you're on borrowed time, Falconer. I'll see you again soon
.

She pretended to be my mother. She invaded my mind. The thought of it turns my skin hot with rage. I narrow my gaze and fight against her control. Deliberately, I straighten. I let the cold wash over me.
I won't let you control me
.