“This is the price of immortality. We’re doomed to watch the humans we love die, and each time, it kills some of the empathy in us.” Aithinne’s hand squeezes mine. “Don’t you understand now?” she whispers sadly. “You were his butterfly.”
His butterfly. His breakable human girl. One sword to the heart and I died like a butterfly that lost its wings. So easily. “Aithinne, where is he?”
Aithinne looks away. She’s quiet for so long that I wonder if she’ll even answer. Then, in a voice barely above a breath, she says, “Come with me.”
CHAPTER 10
AITHINNE OPENS a faery portal, an easy way of traveling long distances in an instant. The one she creates is a bright path that emerges through the trees as if she had willed it into existence. One minute it wasn’t there, the next . . . there it is.
When we step through, we’re standing at the top of a cliff over the raging sea. The landscape is familiar; I recognize the line of trees just off the rocks and the shape of the hills in the distance. We’re on the bay that bordered the pixie kingdom—across from where Sorcha killed me.
“There,” Aithinne whispers, gesturing toward the water. “He’s in there.”
I turn, expecting to see the old crystal in the ruins of Derrick’s city, the crystal Lonnrach wanted so badly that he’d destroyed the pixie city to find it. What’s there instead makes me suck in a shocked breath.
Where the bloody hell did that come from?
Right off the coast is an island supporting a dark, pointed palace. It looks as though it was carved into the rock, a single, massive shard of crystal that has twisted around itself to form a tall, serrated building that towers over the water. It’s sharp, bladelike. I sense its power: a terrible, unsettling dark energy as cold as the bite of winter wind.
There is almost no nature on that island. The earth is scorched black and cracked, completely devoid of moisture despite being surrounded by the sea. The few trees scattered across the land are composed of sharp, bare branches that arch toward the palace’s twisting crystal shard. They are needle-like, thorny and beckoning, every bit as ominous as something I’d see in the fae realm. Every bit as frightening.
The palace looks like it was erected as a threat, a warning.
“Kadamach raised the island out of the sea,” Aithinne says in a low voice. “He built it around the crystal, a perfect replica of his palace in the Unseelie Kingdom.” She hesitates before adding, “No doubt as a deliberate message to me that I was unwelcome. He even made new soldiers to replenish his ranks when I killed them.”
Made new soldiers? “He can do that?”
“Using the crystal.” Aithinne’s smile is bitter. “Why do you think he wanted it so badly that he slaughtered your pixie’s kingdom to find it? It would have guaranteed him an easy victory against me when our kingdoms were at war. He would have been unstoppable.”
The crystal that Sorcha used to restore Kiaran’s powers. I remember it being the height of an Edinburgh tenement, towering and forbidding. This castle is made of the same gleaming material—dark rock that is lit from within, fire inside black obsidian.
As if the structure weren’t intimidating enough, dozens of soldiers stand guard just outside the massive gates. They’re in perfect formation. Prepared for an attack. It’s a blasted fortress.
“Have you gone to see him?”
“Of course I have.” Aithinne’s voice is bitter. “I’ve tried at least a dozen times to get that stubborn arse to speak with me, and he refuses to let me in.”
I look at her in surprise. “He won’t? Why?”
“He’s preparing to go to battle with me,” she says softly. “The first thing he does is close himself off.” Her expression is impassive, but her tense shoulders betray her emotions. “I’ve seen it before.”
My heart aches for her. “When?”
“It’s what our mother did after we grew into our powers.” I notice her hand trembles when she pushes her hair back. “Among the daoine sìth, there’s no difference between Unseelie and Seelie at a young age,” she explains. “We’re born with the same rudimentary abilities. We all even have fangs, though Seelie have no need to use them.”
Daoine sìth are the most powerful fae in the Courts. They’re also the most human-looking, though their level of beauty is beyond compare.
I never realized they all had teeth like Sorcha and Lonnrach, a second level of sharp fangs that descended from their gums to make it easier to feed on human blood and energy. I had always assumed it was their lineage, but perhaps the legend of the vampiric faery called a baobhan sìth simply grew from the centuries when Sorcha slaughtered humans while the rest of the daoine sìth were trapped beneath Edinburgh—in a prison of Aithinne’s making.
“Since my mother couldn’t have known which Court we’d eventually lead,” Aithinne continues, “Kadamach and I were raised together for centuries. When we finally came into our mature powers and he couldn’t stop himself from killing his first human, I knew what he was. What it meant.”
“That you’d be separated,” I say.
Aithinne nods. “It happens. Siblings belonging to the same Court are more common, but separations aren’t unheard of. Kadamach and I tried to hide our respective abilities at first; we didn’t want to be apart. He’d kill human after human, and each time he would be his usual self for just long enough that I’d forget what he was . . . then he’d turn into someone I barely recognized before he hunted again.” She shrugs. “Eventually he couldn’t hide it from our mother. So she took us to our respective Courts and refused to allow any contact. She said it would be easier for us to go to war one day if we stopped thinking of each other as brother and sister.”
I look again at the dark palace Kiaran built. “So he’s using her tactics,” I murmur.
I edge closer to the cliff and peer over the crag. The fall is straight to the bottom. I’ve leaped off this bluff before and would have died if Kiaran hadn’t been with me. I can’t get to that island by myself. Even with the Cailleach’s abilities, I’m still human. The rocks below would break me.
“Open another portal,” I say to Aithinne. “He’ll speak to me.” He’d better speak to me.
Aithinne studies the palace and the soldiers guarding it, assessing how I’d go about getting in. She gives a small shake of her head. “I believed that once,” she tells me. “I just hope he doesn’t do to you what he did to me.”
“What did he do?”
“It was years after we were first separated. My mother had taught me to despise him and I never could. So I went to him.” She gestures down to the island, her expression almost cold. “It was exactly like that—right down to the same number of soldiers. Kadamach is a creature of habit.”
“Did he speak with you?” You don’t want to know, and yet you ask anyway. The price you pay for truth is knowledge.
“No,” she says flatly. “He timed how long I stood outside the gates. For each minute I waited for him to see me, he had his sluagh capture my most vulnerable subjects. And then every day, for five hundred days, he sent me their bodies.” Aithinne’s hands are fisted at her side. “They were his first gifts.”