MY STOMACH drops. I bite back a scream as I plunge through the floor and into the darkness. Broken bricks crash into the walls below me. I feel the rough grasp of Kiaran’s fingers on my clothes, pulling me closer. He says my name and it echoes around us.
I manage to open my eyes to see below and . . . there is nothing—nothing. Just a pit, endlessly black, with no visible bottom. I had taken a risk, made a wager that I was going to find the Book, and now my only thoughts are that I’m going to die and fail the people I care about. Only this time, I’ll be gone for good.
This time, there’s no coming back for me.
“Kam.” Kiaran’s sharp voice draws me out of my thoughts. He has a bruising hold on my arm, and jerks me to him in a rough embrace as the air rushes around us. How far have we fallen? How far do we have left?
“Keep your body straight.”
How the bloody hell can he sound so calm at a time like this? He’s mortal now, for god’s sake.
“What?”
Kiaran’s hands slip around my waist, fingers digging into my coat to keep me from struggling. How can I not struggle? We’re falling fast, weightless, down down down—
“Can’t you smell it?”
Focus. Calm.
I inhale. And through the musty odor of stone all around us, I breathe in the crisp, clean scent of water. As if we were falling to the bottom of a well or a cave. It’s a chance of survival. A blessing in the form of an underground lake. Do this right, and we might live. Do this wrong, and we die.
“Do you remember the cliffs on Skye?” Kiaran’s breath is soft on my throat. I can barely hear him over the air rushing around us as we fall, fall, fall. “Push with your power to lessen the impact.” I shiver when his fingers brush just beneath my ribs. “From there. Do you feel it?”
I feel it. A pulse across my skin. A cadence: Trust your body. Trust your mind. Trust your power.
But how can I? We’re still falling. This cave is endless. As if we’re plunging through the stars, through space, into the ocean. I try not to be distracted by my trembling body, my panicked thoughts. I concentrate on the feel of my powers, coiled and ready as if just waiting for my command. I let them calm me.
I am fearless. I am powerful. Trust.
“Now let it out, Kam.”
I let all that power out. Before, it was like trying to breathe through a fire, with smoke in my lungs and everything tight and constricted. It’s becoming easier each time, less painful. Now it’s like trying to inhale on a cold winter’s day. Just a press of my lungs and then . . . in and out. In and out.
“That’s it.” As if Kiaran can’t help himself, he presses a kiss to the underside of my jaw. “Now build an updraft to slow us down.”
I do exactly as he says. I never realized how much of a faery’s power was simply manipulating the existing elements, like air or water or earth. Bending them to your will and using them to your advantage.
My power commands the air around us to thicken and create an upward gale so harsh that it slows us down, exactly as Kiaran did for us when we fell from the cliffs on Skye. Only when he did this, it had been graceful. He made it seem effortless.
In the space of a few seconds, my control begins to wither. Trust your power. Trust your body. Trust—
My chest tightens. I draw a gasping breath but I can’t get in air. My mental chant isn’t enough when my lungs are burning with the effort to control all that power. My vision begins to blur.
Kiaran must sense there’s something wrong. “Kam?”
Focus on the water. Your safety net.
Your only chance of survival.
One last breath. One final push. A weak pulse of power before the end. My concentration shatters the moment before we hit the water.
I can’t move. My limbs are suddenly too heavy, dead weights dragging me farther into the cold water. There’s no current to wash me away, nothing but a still pool without a bottom.
I must have lost consciousness, because the next thing I know, I’m hearing Kiaran saying my name. Repeating it over and over like a prayer. His fingers clumsily press a few times to my neck to seek my pulse. And I hear his small gasp for breath, a betrayal of his normally calm fa?ade.
“Kam.” Fear in his voice.
Kiaran doesn’t have to tell me. I can hear the slow, heavy pulse in my ears. An uneven drum that reminds me: You’re dying. You’re dying. You’re dying.
I open my eyes. With my fae senses, I can see Kiaran’s shadowed features in the pitch blackness of the cavern, the way his pale skin is glistening with water.
“What the hell was that?” His voice is rough as stone.
Lie. “Nothing,” I say, my voice hoarse. Lie better. “The Cailleach’s power just takes some getting used to, that’s all.”
Kiaran stares at me hard, his thumb softly brushing my upper lip. “Your nose is bleeding.” His words are uneven. He suddenly jerks away, swimming fast to put distance between us. That few feet of separation feels vast.
I don’t know what else to do but dab at my nose. With my fae-powered eyes, I can see the light mix of blood and water. It would barely have been noticeable to a human, but with Kiaran’s Unseelie nature . . .
Kiaran flinches and looks away. His features are strained, his jaw set. My movements are slow as I dip my head into the water and blot the blood. The same way I would when encountering a predator in the wild: No sudden movements. Back away an inch at a time.
Don’t look like prey.
“Being mortal now doesn’t make a difference?”
He shakes his head once. “My powers are bound, not nonexistent. Being temporarily mortal doesn’t make me human any more than having powers makes you sìthiche.”
Kiaran’s words are even, emotionless, and almost a touch harsh. As if he were blaming me for bleeding—but that’s not it. We’ve hunted together for so long that I can read his thoughts as clearly as if they were my own: Kiaran blames himself for being tempted.
Here. I would bite you right here. And that’s why I don’t trust myself with you.
After a long stretch of silence between us, I speak. “Are you all right now?” My voice is faint, hesitant. Careful. He knows what I’m asking. Are you Kiaran or are you Kadamach?
“Not yet. Talk. Distract me.”
I try to focus on our surroundings, staring up at the hole we fell through. It’s so high up it looks like a small, bright star amid the black. “Do you think they’re still up there?”
I hear Kiaran’s soft inhale as he looks up, too. “If they were, my sister is foolish enough to have dived down with us.”
“Do you think they’re all right?”
“I hope so.” When I don’t respond, he rasps, “Tell me what you see.”