The sky is a single, unending slab of slate gray. There is no texture to the clouds, not a single ray of sunshine or a heaviness to indicate rain. In contrast, the trees are etched in deep black hues, as if they’ve been scorched by flames. Only the smallest traces of pigment show beneath the drab, ashen landscape. Even the hills, which should be at the very least a deep brown at this time of year, are the somber shade of dust.
Derrick darts around some boulders against a particularly rocky part of the ravine and I follow him, scrambling up the rough granite. “Where are we?” I finally ask, tired of the silence.
Derrick hasn’t spoken since the forest. When he thinks I’m not looking, I catch him staring, studying me. As if he’s thinking about what he saw when my mind invaded his. Maybe he’s wondering if I can ever be fixed.
I don’t miss the way he looks away sharply, guilt flashing in his features, as if he suddenly realizes how quiet he’s been. He might have forgiven me for what I did to him back in the woods, but I can sense how tense he is, like he’s waiting for me to lose control again.
“Skye,” he says mechanically. “We’re still on Skye. We never left.”
“Still?” I ask lightly, so as not to upset him.
In the hours we’ve been walking, I have taken care not to move like I did back in the forest. I keep my powers reined in so tightly that it’s painful. I don’t want Derrick to see that monster again. That thing.
I want him to see me like I’m a human—the way I used to be. His Aileana. His friend.
“You died on the island,” he says. “We could have gone somewhere else, but there’s not much point when it’s all falling apart.” He gives me a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Any plans before that happens? You could always get blackout drunk with me. We could sing inappropriate songs, dress like pirates, and dance over the entrails of our enemies.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Is that something I enjoy?”
“Not yet. But only because you’ve never tried it. I assure you, it comes highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“By me.” He huffs. “Honestly, Aileana, everyone ought to dress up like an inebriated pirate at least once. It’s much more fun killing things in costume.”
I can’t help but smile when he calls me by my name. It’s the first time he’s said it since the forest, and the sound of it wraps around me like a warm blanket. In the past few hours I’ve begun to remember feelings associated with that name. Stirrings of memories that include Derrick’s wee body curled against the crook of my neck, hands tangled in my hair because he’d fallen asleep plaiting it.
“Then I’ll try it,” I say, approaching the edge of the fissure. “We’ll dress like pirates, and we’ll dance, and you’ll sing me a song before the end. And maybe we’ll stab a few things with cutlasses.”
He flies over to my shoulder as I inch closer to the ledge, careful lest the rocks fall. “Are you all right?”
I shake my head. My memory stirs again, with images from that nightmarish place that are so overshadowed by fear that I can’t see beyond it. I try to trigger other thoughts by kicking a large rock over the lip of the crag. It tumbles down the escarpment and into the sea below.
There it is. A man’s voice somewhere in the shadows of my past. The land was whole and now it’s cracked right down the middle. It’s all falling apart.
I was on an island floating in the air within a vast chasm, like a leaf on a river stream. It drifted endlessly through an alien landscape even more colorless than this one. It had been full of buildings set atop platforms made of jagged rocks hanging in empty space.
That memory comes with teeth. With a sense of helplessness that makes me sick to my stomach. A name floats to the top of my memory. “This looks like the Sìthbhrùth,” I say to myself.
Derrick turns sharply. “What makes you say that?”
I don’t know.
When I search my memories for something about the Sìthbhrùth, the only thing that comes up is an overwhelming sense of despair and grief and desperation. Whatever my reason for being there, it was not of my own free will. I was trapped there.
“I think it was like this.” I stare out at the colorless landscape. “It didn’t always look this way here, did it?”
“No. It started shortly after—” Derrick bites his lip and I know what he was about to say. After I died. He continues as if he never stopped. “First it was just the color. Then one day the land started breaking apart all across the island and the mainland. I expect it’s only a matter of time before this whole bloody place crumbles into the sea.”
I glance at the escarpment, at the sea below. “What then?”
Derrick’s laugh is short, strangely bitter. “What then? The end of the world, unless Aithinne kills Ki—the King. If she doesn’t, I hope my end is swift and painless. By then, we’ll have collapsed on the ground in our pirate costumes, I hope.”
The end of the world. The message I have to recall tugs at me in that dark trembling voice again. Remember, I tell myself. Remember. You have to remember.
Accept the offer, child.
And if I don’t?
Skeletal arms wrapping hard around me. Agonizing pain as if every bone in my body were being pieced back together again, muscles and sinew being formed anew.
A woman’s voice amid the torment. Our realms will be destroyed.
“She died,” I whisper, finally realizing what that memory meant. “The woman in my memories. When she died, it caused all of this.” I don’t know how to explain who she was, except that she was someone important. Someone who held power over these realms.
“You’re not making any sense,” Derrick says. “You’re not fuddled, are you? Is this something to do with your broken mind?” Then he puts up a hand hastily. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. I keep forgetting you’ve—”
“Derrick.” My voice is breathless. At his questioning look, I say, “I think she told me how to save the realms.”
CHAPTER 7
AITHINNE’S CAMP is in the middle of the woods, where the trees are so colorless, they’re almost black.
Lit torches form a massive circle through the trees, the flames flickering high. Beyond the light are three stone cottages. The structures have been hastily and haphazardly built, the walls composed of larger stones interspersed with smaller rocks and uneven, thrown-together thatched roofs. The dwellings form an arc around a massive fire-pit burning high enough to bathe the camp in a dim, golden glow. Though the sun hasn’t set yet, the rest of the forest is so dark that it might as well be night.
There are three people sitting on logs by the fire, speaking in hushed tones. One of them is a girl with blond hair, her delicate features illuminated in the light. She’s sitting close to a muscular young man wearing an eye-patch, who leans closer and whispers in her ear. She laughs, nudging the other man with her elbow.
He looks so much like her. My fae powered senses can make out the details of his features even from here: the same hair color, the same blue eyes. I can see the scars that frame one side of his face around his eye. When he laughs, it’s quieter, more restrained.