“Don’t remind me,” Derrick says. “I’d like to skin that pointy-toothed hag alive after what she did to Aileana. And I’d settle for keeping her brother’s head.” He pauses. Then: “He’d make a good trophy for the garden.”
Gavin looks confused. “What garden?” He gestures around us with the bottle. “We’re in the middle of the damned woods on the brink of an apocalypse.”
Derrick’s halo flashes red. “The garden I intend to make from the corpses of our enemies,” he hisses. “I can’t help it if your human mind lacks vision.”
While they natter on, my fingers curl into my palm. So Sorcha and Lonnrach got away. Of course they did. Sorcha had planned the attack for months: to find the crystal from the Old Kingdom and use its power to break Aithinne’s binding over Kiaran’s power. To turn him into the Unseelie King again. Sorcha saved me more than once to ensure that happened. She betrayed her brother. And then she killed me.
I don’t know which of them I hate more. Her, for stealing my life and taking my mother from me. Or him, for breaking my spirit and making me wish for death.
I’d murder them both if I could. But Lonnrach is Aithinne’s kill, and I couldn’t slay Sorcha even if I had the opportunity. Thousands of years ago, when Kiaran ruled over the Unseelie throne, Sorcha was his consort. They spoke a vow that bound their lives together. If Sorcha dies, so will he.
“What about the other fae?” I interrupt. “The ones under Lonnrach’s command and the ones with the humans in Derrick’s city. Was there any word from them?”
Derrick goes quiet and Gavin stares into the fire. Shadows play along his face, across the scars he received from a fae attack while I was imprisoned by Lonnrach. I’ll never forget the haunted look in his eyes when I saw them for the first time. Gavin had been running and hiding from the fae for years by the time I escaped the faery realm. Almost all traces of the person I knew growing up had gone, replaced by a man hardened by grief and war.
“The humans are fine,” Gavin finally says. “A few of the fae on the ship come to us for supplies, and they’re holding out near the Western Isles for now. It’s not safe enough here. Not with—” He glances at me. “Some of the fae who were with Lonnrach deserted the others, but most chose sides. An overwhelming majority didn’t choose Aithinne’s.”
Derrick looks annoyed. “You’d think some of those who became Seelie again after Kiaran’s powers were restored would remain loyal to their Queen, but they turned on her. Never seen anyone turn their back on their own Court.” Then he grumbles, “Goddamn traitors.”
When Kiaran chose to give up the Unseelie throne, Aithinne took out the part of his power that required feeding on humans in order to survive. He once had the same hunger I sensed in the Unseelie I fought in the forest, only his role as King made it more insatiable. Aithinne didn’t have a vessel to pass his power to—another faery willing or able to accept it, the way I accepted the Cailleach’s. So that power went into every faery in the two Courts, until even Seelie became Unseelie.
With Kiaran’s Unseelie powers now returned, those fae would be Seelie once more. But changing back into what they were doesn’t mean they would forgive their Queen for making them just like the Court they once loathed—even if she did it by accident—or for trapping them for thousands of years in a prison beneath Edinburgh so they could no longer harm humans.
Gavin rolls his eyes at Derrick. “Let’s be honest, shall we? They turned on Aithinne to save their own skins.” He leans back and tips the whisky bottle to his lips. “We’re the losing side and you know it.”
The losing side. That means Kiaran is winning.
Derrick is shaking his head and clicking his tongue at Gavin.
You have to ask. You have to. But first . . . I steal the bottle and take a big swig. Bloody hell it burns.
“All right,” I say. “Tell me about Kiaran. Both of you. Either of you. I don’t want to wait for Aithinne.” When they remain silent, I bite out, “Stop trying to protect me, or pretending you know what’s best for me. It’s ridiculous and insulting after everything I’ve been through.”
Gavin and Derrick look at each other again. Derrick swears softly and is about to speak, but Aithinne’s voice cuts him off. “Wait.”
I look over to see her at the edge of the woods. Her eyes meet mine and something sad flashes in them. “There’s something you need to see first.”
CHAPTER 9
I’M POSITIVE I won’t like what she’s about to show me. “Is this to do with the Book?” I ask as she leads me through the trees. Please let this be about the damn Book.
We’ve been walking for a good ten minutes, farther and farther from the warmth of the camp and into the frigid air of the forest. There is no light up ahead, nothing to indicate where she’s taking me.
Aithinne shakes her head. “I’ve sent the word out with sìthichean still loyal to me to find out what they can about the Book. I can’t risk trusting what I know.” She gestures to a turn in the path. “This way.”
My breath exhales in white mist. It would be almost spring by now; at this time, snowdrops ought to be covering the forest floor—hints of flower buds breaking through the icy ground. A sign that the deep, dark Scottish winter is almost over.
There are no flowers. No leaves. Just cold, biting wind and black branches under a starless sky.
Aithinne stops so quickly I almost run into her. Surprised, I peek around her to see a cottage just up the path, nestled away in the darkest parts of the woods beyond a small, quiet meadow. It’s larger than the dwellings back at Aithinne’s camp and just as hastily erected. Only, this structure has no windows or other doors, nothing to bring the light in except the single entrance before me. The door itself is carved into a massive boulder with fae marks etched into the stone.
I’m tempted to step back. It isn’t welcoming. There is no blazing fire, no greeting. Nothing to indicate this is anything more than another abandoned place in a country now full of them.
We Scots would call a place like this haunted. Because one look at it sends a chill right through you.
“What do the markings mean?” I ask hesitantly.
“Fois do t’anam,” Aithinne murmurs. “It’s an offering of peace.” She nods toward the cottage. “Go. I’ll wait for you out here. And then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
No, I think as I take those first shaky steps toward the door. No, no, no. Turn back. Don’t go in. Don’t see what she has to show you.
It’ll change everything.
But I have to. My pulse fills my ears as I twist the knob and push open the heavy wooden door.
The first thing I see are beds. Dozens of them, taking up almost every inch of space, like a hospital when it’s filled to capacity. The only room left is in the aisles between each row, the gaps only just wide enough to walk through. Every bed has a table next to it with a single lit candle, casting a dim, shadowed glow across the cottage.
On each bed is a human in repose. Some lie so still that I wonder if this is where Aithinne keeps her dead, but when I look closer, I see that they’re alive.