I can sense Kiaran’s surprise. His face remains impassive as ever, but there’s something growing in his gaze, something angry. Something ruthless. “Do you wish you could kill him?”
In the corner of the tent, the Strategist makes a low choking sound.
Sorcha’s smile is small, a dagger’s edge. “Every day.”
Kiaran’s eyes flicker to the Strategist. “Release her from her vow.”
The Strategist’s voice shakes when he speaks. “But, my King—”
“That wasn’t a suggestion,” Kiaran says coldly. “Don’t make me say it again.”
The other faery looks up at Sorcha and shuts his eyes in defeat. His words are barely spoken above a breath. “I release you from your vow.”
Sorcha doubles over with a sharp cry as the mark around her neck glows red-hot as molten metal. The mark disintegrates to dust on her clothes. She straightens, her fingers feeling above her collarbone with an astonished look on her face. When she looks at Kiaran, it’s with relief and gratitude. “Thank you, my King. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I don’t do anything out of kindness.” Kiaran reaches for the blade at his hip, pulls out the dagger, and hands it to her, hilt first. “You said you wished for his death. Take your revenge.”
Sorcha’s smile widens. “I plan to.”
The Strategist is on his feet and making for the front of the tent, but Sorcha is there first. He never stands a chance. She falls on him, power barreling out of her with surprising strength to keep him still. Then she takes the blade and slices open his throat. She doesn’t stop there. She stabs him over and over and over again, a scream erupting from her mouth each time. It goes on for so long that I shut my eyes to block out the sight.
By the time she’s finished, she’s breathing hard, her limbs shaking. She’s covered in blood. Her eyes are wet with tears.
She doesn’t even notice when Kiaran approaches her. “Tell me your name.”
“Sorcha,” she whispers.
“Sorcha.” She closes her eyes, as if the sound of her name on his lips is a song only she can hear. “It appears I’m in need of a new Strategist. Are you interested?”
“Yes.” Her smile is a flash of teeth, the one I’m familiar with. “Oh yes.”
When Sorcha pulls me out of her memories, we’re both trembling. Her eyes are wide, slightly wet. “Let me ask you something: If you could have killed me the night I murdered your mother, how would you have done it?” she asks. “Would it have been quick and merciful? Or would you have slit my throat and stabbed me a hundred times the way I did my master?”
I don’t meet her gaze. I know which I would have chosen. She knows, too.
“You see?” she breathes. “You should be thankful he’ll lose you before his precious Falconer grows into the ruthlessness I see in your heart. You’d become just like me if given the chance. Revenge makes us all monsters in the end. Remember that.”
“Sorcha—”
“Enough.” She stands and backs away. “That’s enough. I’m going back to sleep.”
I watch as she curls up at the back of the cave, alone.
CHAPTER 35
A FRANTIC SHOUT wakes me. “Kam!”
I sit up fast, my heart pounding. “Kiaran?”
Sorcha and Aithinne are still asleep by the dying embers of the fire. Neither of them has moved or stirred at the call. Did I imagine it? It was so loud, as if he were just outside.
“Kam!”
I lurch to my feet. Definitely not my imagination.
It might be a trick.
Kiaran’s call comes again, so close, and it’s laced with so much pain that my chest tightens just hearing it. I grab my sword belt off the ground and buckle it around my hips as I head to the mouth of the cave. He calls again, frantic now. It sends so much fear through me that I can’t think straight. My instinct is to run out there and find him.
Just take one step out and if you can’t see him, come back inside.
“Kiaran?” I call, stepping outside the cave. One step.
A portal opens, and I’m pulled right into it.
Suddenly, I’m in a ballroom. Men and women dance a close waltz all around me, just like in one of the fine assemblies in Edinburgh—
My breath catches in my throat. I am in the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms.
I recognize the grand chandelier that casts the room in a glittering glow. The stained-glass lanterns that float by the ceiling, scattering red, green, yellow, and blue light across the gold-textured wallpaper. Skirts rustle around me as gentlemen whirl their partners around the room, every one of them perfectly in sync with the orchestra’s violins as they play a jaunty country dance. The one I remember from my nightmares.
The one that played the moment my mother was murdered.
Numb with horror, I look down at my dress. My dress. The dress. My fingers pluck at it to make sure—
Real. It’s real. But it can’t be real.
The last time I wore this dress, it was for my debut. Even the beaded rose slippers peeking out from beneath my skirts are the same. My breath catches in my throat.
“May I have the pleasure?” A gentleman’s gloved hand extends into my view.
This isn’t real. It’s not real. It’s not—
“My lady?”
The gentleman has a quizzical smile on his nondescript face. He seems harmless, but something isn’t right about him. There’s something unnatural about his features. His smile is a little too friendly. His skin a little too pale. A flash of color pulses in his eyes, gone so quickly I might have imagined it.
Then a flicker across his skin like a shadow passing across the surface of water. I wonder, for a moment, if I’m imagining him, but when I touch his hand, it’s warm. Solid.
I hitch a breath. “I need to leave.”
As I turn, he grasps my arm roughly. His fingers put a bruising pressure on my skin. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Unhand me, or I’ll break your fingers.”
Without waiting for an answer, I jerk out of his grasp and dart to the exit. Another gentleman blocks my path, tall and blond, but with an equally forgettable face. The same face? “My lady, I believe I have this dance.”
I have to get out of here.
“No,” I say. “Let me pass—”
He seizes my hand. His grip is so tight that I cry out.
“Stop!”
I struggle, but the gentleman yanks me into the middle of the dance floor. I lash out with my slippered foot, catching him in the knee, but it doesn’t even faze him. He wraps his long fingers around my wrist and pulls so hard that I stumble.
“It’s easier if you don’t struggle.” I almost pause at what sounds like a woman’s voice beneath his masculine baritone.
Move!
I grasp his hand—I’ll break every last one of his fingers if I have to—but he sweeps me into a waltz.
Just before I shove his fingers back, a painful jolt goes through me. Power, thick and oppressive and numbing. I have no control over my body. No matter how I try, my feet don’t listen. They don’t run. They don’t kick, or thrash, or do any of the things my mind is screaming at them to do.
I dance like a compliant puppet. A pawn.