I shake my head once. “None of us knows where we’re going,” I counter. “Do you?” I glance at Sorcha, who is eyeing me warily—no doubt because I look half-crazed. “Does she?”
Find Kiaran. Find the Book. Kill the Morrigan. Focus on those three things with the iron will of someone who has everything to lose. Someone who may only have hours left.
If I worry too much about what’s happening to Kiaran, I’ll do something reckless. But I need him. To quiet my doubts. To tell me that I can do this, my final battle. It’s my last attempt to make things right.
“Falconer.” Aithinne’s voice is patient. “We should plan our next—”
“I don’t have time for that and you know it.”
Aithinne grasps my arm to stop me. “Do you realize how you sound right now?” she says sharply. “Mar theine beumach. Like you’re on a path of destruction. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“She’s human,” Sorcha counters. “Do they ever think clearly?”
I whirl on Sorcha, unsheathing my blade. The metal whistles in an arc, the tip pressing against her throat. “You know how to find the Book, don’t you?”
“Aileana.”
I ignore Aithinne, my gaze utterly focused on Sorcha. “Answer me.”
Sorcha’s green eyes gleam. “I don’t like talking with a blade to my throat.”
Her skin breaks beneath my sword and a small trickle of blood slides down her chest. It seeps into the red brocade of her dress, a perfect match. “And I don’t like being manipulated. Did you find the Book?”
Nothing. Not a hint of an answer. Aithinne’s gaze catches mine and I know she sees the question there.
She nods once. Do it.
I slice Sorcha across the arm. She cries out and backs away, but I’m too fast. My fingers close around her throat, pressing into the skin. “You seem to be under the mistaken impression that between Kiaran and me, I’m the weak one. Let me assure you, that isn’t true.” I squeeze harder for emphasis and she gasps for breath.
“Aileana . . .” Aithinne says uncertainly.
“Talk or I’ll tear through your memories like gauze.” Sorcha murmurs something, but it’s too low to hear. “Louder. Before my hand slips and I crush your windpipe.”
“Aye,” she wheezes. “I found the damn Book.”
“How? Where is it?”
Sorcha bares her fangs. “I don’t remember.”
A straight statement, no room for a lie—
No. She must be half-lying somehow. Sorcha is manipulative enough to figure out how to get around the truth. “I don’t believe you,” I snarl. “Last chance to tell me the truth.”
She presses her lips together, her eyes narrowed into slits. “I. Don’t. Remember.”
I don’t hesitate. I slam through her mind. Not like before—this time I’m careening through her thoughts in a loud, demanding crash. A struggle to find the right thoughts, the right images, the right memories.
Show me.
Sorcha isn’t prepared for how frantic I am. For the urgent, desperate clawing and shoving through her mind. I am frenzied and determined as I sift past the images, of her and Lonnrach by the tree, of her running, of some girl with long hair and pale skin marked with something, but it’s too dark to see.
I keep going until I come to a memory that makes me stop. An image so terrible I choke back tears.
Sorcha is in a bloody heap on the ground of a forest just like the one we’re in. I don’t know what I’m seeing; I didn’t know that limbs could be turned all those different ways, bent, mutilated. Some no longer attached. Blood in a thick dark pool around her. Her breath coming out in a rough wheeze as if her lungs were partially collapsed.
She’s singing in the fae language, the words catching in her throat. The warbled song of a broken girl.
How was Sorcha even alive? How? With her healing ability bound—
I have my answer a moment later when a woman with black hair and pale skin approaches.
Aithinne?
I almost drop Sorcha in surprise, but then Aithinne turns and I see her eyes. Blue eyes that shine as bright as cut sapphire—not the swirling, molten silver of Aithinne’s eyes. This is the Morrigan in Aithinne’s form. Oh, god. The Morrigan kept Sorcha alive.
She strokes a finger down Sorcha’s bloody, tear-tracked cheek. “I like this song. You have such a beautiful voice, little bird.” Then she seizes Sorcha by the hair and says, “Come along now. Let’s put you back together and try something else.”
The Morrigan drags Sorcha’s broken body through the dark trees. Sorcha never stops singing.
CHAPTER 31
I SHOVE AWAY from Sorcha and retch. After her memory, I doubt I could have held anything in. My mind keeps turning that image over and over again; Sorcha’s broken limbs. Sorcha’s disjointed song.
I was her entertainment.
“Didn’t like what you saw?” she says mockingly behind me. Beneath it, I hear a tremble to her voice, a hint of vulnerability. “First lesson, Falconer: Don’t break into someone else’s thoughts unless you can handle them.”
Aithinne grips my arm to help me up. “What did you see?”
Everything. I shut my eyes briefly. Everything. “I’m sorry.”
I look up at Sorcha to find her clutching the trunk of a tree as if she were steadying herself. As if she were gathering the broken remains of what armor she has left and putting it into place. Armor I tore away like it meant nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat.
Sorcha’s eyes flare with rage. “I don’t want your pity.” Her lip curls. “Do you want to know why I hate you so much, Falconer? It isn’t your pathetic little romance with Kadamach. You’re a girl with a passably pretty face and a bit of skill in battle, and he’s a man and men are fools. No, I hate you because you believe yourself so far above my kind, when the truth is you’re just as ruthless as the rest of us.”
I have no retort for her, no clever response. Because it’s true. I’m a war-hardened girl whose desperation is chipping away at my soul. I broke into her mind twice.
“Let me repeat what I said earlier now that I don’t have a blade at my throat: I. Don’t. Remember.” She says the last word in a snarl. “When I came here the first time and the Morrigan captured me, she sent me to search for the Book since she needed my blood to open it. I found it. But I don’t recall how or what it looks like. I just know that somehow I lost it, and the Morrigan found a great deal of delight in punishing me for my failure.”
She sent me to search for the Book. “Do you mean to tell me,” I say carefully, “that the Morrigan doesn’t have the Book?”
Sorcha regards me impatiently. “Someone give this human a bauble for her detective skills. You’re truly a wonder, Falconer.” At my glare, she explains, “The Book was hidden here, and when the Morrigan came looking for it, the Cailleach trapped her. The Morrigan has been searching for the Book and an escape ever since.”
The story that said the Morrigan found the Book was wrong, then. That means we still have the chance to claim it.