“Oh, stop it. I’m not imagining things,” I insist. “I need you to let me into your mind again.”
Aithinne is frowning. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking those stories never said a damn thing about what happened to the Morrigan’s consort. That girl who helped me . . . I think she’s the consort. And she knows where the Book is.” I step closer to Sorcha. “If you let me in, I might be able to see something that can help us. Something the Morrigan missed.”
Sorcha presses her lips together, somewhat impatiently. “So you’re asking this time.” At my nod, she sighs. “I hope this is the last time you go around digging in my head. Just hurry the hell up.”
I place my hands on her temples and shut my eyes. My mind connects with hers easily. Now that I’ve been in her thoughts and seen her memories before, the colors and thorniness of them is less of a shock. Easier for me to navigate through.
Sorcha leads me through the stream of her memories as if she were guiding me by the hand. I go back to the events of her imprisonment. Sorcha’s skin grows cold when the images of her torture go by. She trembles slightly. I gently nudge her forward, urging us to where I first saw the girl.
There. The image is so fleeting that I almost miss it. I go back and study it. The memory is only a fragment. The rest of it is blackened around the edges, like a painting that’s been almost completely burned. Only a small impression of the picture remains.
The girl with her fingers beneath Sorcha’s chin. Sorcha’s head is tipped back, willingly. She had this memory removed willingly. The girl’s long hair hangs between them, almost covering her eyes.
Her eyes are completely black; there isn’t a bit of white in them at all. The tattoos on her skin glow, the light shining through the thin material of her dress. Her lips are mouthing something. A message. I only just catch some of it.
“—forget how you found me. Forget what I am.”
How you found me.
What I am.
Not who. What.
I stumble back. My mind disconnects from Sorcha’s. Aithinne catches me by the shoulders. “What did you—”
“The Morrigan’s consort is the Book,” I interrupt. “She’s the damn Book. Those markings all over her must be the spells.” That’s why Lonnrach wanted her. He must have figured out who she was. But without Sorcha’s memory, he wouldn’t have known what he almost had.
The Book is the girl.
Aithinne stares at me. “Well, that’s one way to hide it.”
“No wonder she erased my memory,” Sorcha says, rubbing her temples. “The Morrigan must assume she’s still looking for an object.”
And the girl is still trapped in there with the Morrigan. Find her. We can find her and end this. Finish it.
A part of me feels unhinged. Derrick isn’t on my shoulder to advise me. I don’t have a proper plan. My thoughts are a chaotic mess made worse by my urgency. Each second that ticks by is precious time lost. Each minute. Each hour. We have to do this now.
“What’s your plan?” Aithinne asks.
“Go back, find the girl, and kill the Morrigan.”
“Simple. Effective. Small chance of success.” She smiles. “I like it.”
“Well, I think it’s suicidal,” Sorcha says with a smirk.
“Do you have a better idea?” I ask her.
“I said it was suicidal, not that I had anything better. Once this place starts to go, whatever is left through that portal will go with it. Frankly, suicidal is our only option right now.”
Aithinne glances at the edge of the forest, where the land is breaking off into the dark, endless pit. “We have to go soon. It’s not going to hold. We’ll have to take the humans with us.”
Sorcha’s laugh is sharp. “Humans fighting the Morrigan? That’s not a death risk, that’s a death guarantee.”
“If you’re not going to say anything of use, shut the bloody hell up,” I say. I look at Aithinne. “Find Kiaran, gather the others, and whatever weapons you can find. We’re leaving.”
This time, it takes Sorcha many precious minutes to find the breach between worlds. The one I blew open had moved by the time we began the search.
Unlike when we were in Kiaran’s endless palace, we only have our wee island on which to find a portal into the Morrigan’s prison. Less than a few square miles. As far as I know, this is all that’s left of our world. As it shrinks and falls apart, the portal itself becomes smaller and smaller.
Sorcha brushes her fingers against the trunks as she passes. “It’s tiny,” she says when she finally finds it. “Paper thin.” Her hand presses to the tree harder and she shakes her head. “This had better work. Because the easiest solution is still for Kadamach to put a blade into his sister’s ribs and spare us the trip.”
“She doesn’t help, does she?” Catherine asks.
“She’s here to scheme,” Gavin says. “Not help.”
Kiaran crosses his arms. “And a much better solution would be to cut out your tongue so you can’t speak.”
“So hostile.” Sorcha holds out her hand. “Give me your blade, handsome.”
Sorcha slices the edge of Kiaran’s dagger down her palm and presses her hand to the tree.
Through the portal is the Morrigan’s version of Edinburgh. We’re on Princes Street, the main shopping area in the New Town. The lamps along the thoroughfare are all lit up, but the city is a ghost town. Entirely silent, yet blazing with light. Every window in each building glows by either lamp or candlelight, from the white-columned shops of the New Town to the towering soot-blackened tenements of the Old Town. Even the gardens between the two parts of the city—usually closed up and dark at night—shine with an eerie, twilight glow.
Then I notice there are no stars. There is no moon. No clouds. Just an endless pitch-black sky. A great void of nothing above the shining city.
“My word,” Catherine murmurs.
Gavin steps onto the pavement in disbelief. “I should feel at home, and yet I’m bloody terrified.” He crouches to touch his hand to the cobblestones. “It’s real.”
“The Morrigan has a certain flair for the dramatic, doesn’t she?” Kiaran says dryly.
I walk into the street and turn in a circle.
“She took this from my mind before.” I gesture to the buildings around us, each one of them lit. “She’s still using it to unnerve me.” She’s using it to remind me of what I’m giving up if I don’t tell her yes.
“It would take ages to search through this for the girl,” Catherine murmurs. “I hear those tenements off the High Street go underground.”
Kiaran looks uncertain, too. “She’s right, Kam. Maybe we should split up.”
“I changed my mind. This isn’t suicidal, it’s just stupid,” Sorcha says.
Aithinne rolls her eyes. “So negative.”
“We’re not splitting up,” I say. “Catherine, Gavin, and Daniel can’t endure the Morrigan’s powers.”
Sorcha flickers a glance at them. “I don’t blame her if she kills them quickly. Humans are irritating.”
“It must be difficult,” Gavin says. “Seven of us left on this earth, and six of us hate you.”
Sorcha curls her lip at him.