Derrick goes quiet. “Aye.” I know he wants to say more, but instead he clears his throat and quickly adds, “After all, you’re my companion. I can always sense you, even when you don’t feel the same, and even when you smell of death and misery.”
My feet are silent on the ground as I slip through the trees, my movements light, my pace quick. I may not know where he’s leading me, and I may be reluctant to remember the difficult parts of my past, but something in my memories is demanding that I hurry. I need to get my memories back before . . .
Before what?
That trembling, ancient voice is whispering in my ear again, but I can’t make out the words.
At my second frustrated breath, Derrick puts his chin in his hands and says, “So are you going to share what’s going on in that silly mind of yours or shall we play a guessing game? Does it involve murdering something?”
“No.” My head hurts. “Don’t you wonder what brought me back? Why I’m here?”
“Of course I do,” he says in a tone that sounds like I’m not a bloody idiot. “Your memory is shite. You smell weird, your eyes are weird, your scars are gone, which is weird, your skin is—”
“Weird?” I guess.
“Feverishly hot.” He makes an exasperated sound. “That’s not normal. Don’t humans die if they get too hot?” When I open my mouth to reply, he shushes me. “Never mind. And stop asking the other questions, because once they’re answered, it’s going to ruin everything. I just know it.”
“Fine. Then tell me why you looked for me when you knew I was dead.”
Derrick flinches and looks away. It wasn’t my intent to bring up something so painful. And it must be—his wings have drooped and he has finally stopped plaiting my blasted hair.
After a few minutes, he finally says, “I wished for you. I spent two and a half months wishing for you. To see you one last time.”
“Before what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I almost tell him I’m not the Aileana he deserved, the one he wanted. He hoped for his friend, and instead he got me—a not-quite-human creature whose mind is empty. Maybe when the dead come back, they’re always wrong. Different. Maybe it’s not something Aithinne can fix.
“I don’t know if I believe in wishes,” I murmur, almost to myself. It’s like believing in hope. They make you want things you can’t have. Wishes are dangerous things.
“Maybe you should.” He sounds almost defensive. “Wishes hold power. We believe that if you love someone and wish for them hard enough, they’ll return to you. Here you are. I loved you enough; we all did. I’m guessing he did, too.”
He. Him. As if by Derrick not saying his name, the Unseelie King ceases to be who he was, someone I loved. I know the power names hold better than anyone. Yesterday, I was a girl without an identity, someone risen from the ashes of a dead forest.
A girl whose only memories were the movements her body made during a slaughter.
Now I have a name. And with that comes the expectation that I’m unchanged, still the same Aileana killed by a sword to the chest while she tried to save the world. Derrick believes I can be fixed—and I don’t have the heart to suggest that maybe you can’t fix what’s already dead.
Just like maybe I can’t save the Unseelie King. Perhaps Derrick is right and the parts of the man I loved died with me and he can’t be fixed, either.
Another memory is tugging at the dark corners of my mind; insistent, demanding. I can’t help but follow it. In my mind I’m standing next to a shadowed figure in a forest like this. That ruinous voice echoes in my thoughts again, sharp this time. Angry. Desperate. There’s nothing you can do. One of them has to die.
Something about that memory is important. Vital. When I try to chase it again, it slips through my fingers. “Damn it,” I breathe. “Derrick—”
A flicker of something in the woods slows my pace. Like before, when the other fae found me: a taste of power.
Damnation. It’s just as Derrick said: They’ve come looking. Only I didn’t think they would find us this far out or this quickly. They must have followed our trail; we never strayed from the forest. Have they found the other bodies yet? I can only hope not.
They might be silent, but I can feel them moving through the woods. The pressure of their feet in the dirt. The cadence of their breath. They’re close.
I murmur a curse and say Derrick’s name again.
“What?” He flicks his wings hard against my cheek. “Look, don’t finish that sentence if it’s about what brought you back. I just know it’s going to make me unhappy.”
I ignore him and slip behind a tree. The cloth of my tattered dress scrapes against the bark and it sounds like fingernails scratching wood. I cringe.
“What are you doing?” Derrick asks.
I put a finger to my lips and motion with my hands to indicate we’re not alone. He goes still, his expression intent. He’s listening.
Derrick’s eyes widen a fraction. He senses them, too.
“Soldiers. A dozen of them,” he breathes against my ear.
CHAPTER 5
IF THEY’RE here because they found the bodies, we have to hurry and warn Aithinne they’re coming,” Derrick says.
“Can we reach her before nightfall?”
“If we’re quick. Shh.” Derrick presses a restraining hand to my neck, an indication to be still.
The other fae are almost upon us. They move through the trees, fanning out in a quick, efficient formation. They are dressed in black, their skin shining opalescent in the low light. They pause every so often, as if they sense something isn’t right. Their power snakes through the trees, searching—not just for me, but for their fellow soldiers. The ones I killed.
“Are we still in the King’s territory?” I ask in a low whisper. I see Derrick nod out of the corner of my eye. “They haven’t found them yet. I can feel them searching.”
A few feet from us, the fae go still. I press a hand over my mouth to muffle my breathing.
Derrick whispers in my ear, his voice so low I strain to hear it. “We’ll hide. No killing. The King will know if this many don’t come back soon.” He peeks around my shoulder. “Edge to the other side of the trunk. Now. Go, go.”
I don’t argue. I ease around the trunk, pressing my body against it. Then my foot crunches a twig. Derrick presses his hand to my skin again. Wait. Stop.
The fae haven’t moved. When I peek around the tree, I notice they’re in attack formation, listening and waiting for any enemy. They’re so still, as if they’re not even breathing.
I reach out with my abilities—nothing more than a searching stroke through the air—and I sense that they’re connected. A web of power links each soldier into a cohesive unit. It keeps the darkness of their hunger for human energy at bay, a burden shared by the group.
Unseelie. Just like the other fae.
I could try to send them somewhere else. I brush their minds with my power, a slight suggestion, a nudge: Maybe you should go back the other way.