I’m going to have to let you go. Just like I let Derrick go.
“What will you do?” I ask Aithinne. “Now that you’re Queen?”
Aithinne smiles sadly. “Create new fae. Build a kingdom with Lena’s help.” She glances at the other faery, who nods calmly. “I have a lot of work to do. If you should receive an invitation to a coronation one day, don’t you dare refuse it. Or I’ll show up on your doorstep and demand cake and dancing.” She takes Lena’s hand and leans forward, as if to touch me. “Are you ready now?”
I shut my eyes and nod.
Aithinne presses her fingers to my temple and murmurs words in her language that sound like the first notes of a lullaby. Lena’s voice joins with hers, quiet and confident and lovely. I never feel the world shift around me. I don’t notice time reverse.
I just hear Aithinne’s last words to me over the dull pounding of my heart: Live a full life, Aileana. The life he gave for yours.
When I open my eyes, I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom in Edinburgh—but not the teak-paneled bedroom I left behind. There is no map on the far wall that counts Sorcha’s kills. No worktable of faery-killing weapons. No hunting clothes on the floor splattered in mud.
My bedroom is decorated as it was when my mother still lived, the buttercup-cream wallpaper, the gold curtains that shone in the sunlight. Back when my life was uncomplicated and . . .
And normal. Aithinne has reversed time to when I was seventeen.
I study my blue muslin day dress, then my hands—not covered in calluses. Not speckled with blood. A lady’s hands. They never belonged to a warrior.
“Aileana?”
I go still at the voice calling for me. Tears blur my vision. “Mum?” I stand and start for the doorway, not certain if I heard right.
But there she is, coming down the hall outside my room. “Aileana,” she says, “Don’t forget we’re having luncheon with—” She stops when she sees my tears. “Is something the matter?”
“Mum.” I reach her in two steps. I throw my arms around her and pull her into a crushing embrace. I hold her so tightly that I’m surprised she can still breathe.
She strokes a comforting hand across my back as I sob into her shoulder. “Shh. What’s happened?”
“What date is it?” My voice is trembling. “What year?”
“Aileana.” Now she sounds alarmed. “Do you need me to send for a doctor? Are you—”
“Date. Year. Please.”
“November sixth, eighteen forty-three.” She strokes my hair. “Now tell me. Are you all right?”
Aithinne sent me back to a month before my mother died. Maybe she could still die. Will that change, too? “I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “I don’t know yet.”
CHAPTER 47
A WEEK LATER, my mother asks, “Are you certain everything is all right?”
We’re in the garden working on the ornithopter. The body of the craft is complete with a wing partially attached, but the flying machine is still far from airworthy. It would be another four months of tireless work before I finished it.
Mother tries catching my gaze, but I pretend to be distracted. I pull my coat closer around me. “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You seem . . . different.” She frowns. “Quieter than usual.”
Lately when I wake up, I have to remind myself where I am. I stare at the ceiling in my great bedroom wondering if I’m caught in a dream. If I’ll open my eyes and the illusion will finally shatter, revealed to be a faery trick.
I duck my head under the ornithopter’s wing, fiddling with one of the attachments. “Do I?” I ask, keeping my voice light. “I’m just distracted with all the assemblies planned.”
“That’s not it. Sometimes you look at me and . . .” Her voice trails off, as if uncertain.
“And what?”
She’s quiet. Then: “You’re somewhere else. You haven’t been eating. You speak differently. Sometimes you look like you’ve lost someone important.”
My eyes squeeze shut. Pulling in air is suddenly so difficult. “That’s silly. Who would I have lost?” My voice is surprisingly even. “I haven’t been eating because I’m not hungry. And blame my peers for my manner of speaking.”
I need to go and see Catherine, Gavin, and Daniel. The four of us are the only ones with any memory of the fae purge that destroyed Edinburgh. Something Aithinne ensured so I wouldn’t have to face this all this by myself. I would go mad if I did.
I drop my spanner in the toolbox before Mum can answer. “I’m going to call on the Stewarts. I’ll return for afternoon tea.”
I feel her eyes on me, but I leave without a backward glance.
My closet is empty.
Some nights I turn on the light, shut the door, and pull all of my dresses off their hangers. I lie in the tangle of silk and muslin and imagine a small body curled against my shoulder. I imagine wings brushing my cheek. I remember a bawdy song and a laughing voice calling my name. If I close my eyes hard enough, I can hear his voice. Look at these terrible dresses. They don’t have nearly enough ribbons.
I smile. And then I open my eyes, and I remember he’s gone.
One month after my return, I still run through the streets at night. I still look for monsters lurking in dark alleyways. I look for Aithinne. I look for Kiaran. I climb to the top of Arthur’s Seat under the light of the moon and press my ear to the ground, wondering if this time I’ll hear the underground drumbeat of a faery dance.
I walk through the city and listen to the sounds of everyone living out their lives; to them, nothing happened. The streets were never destroyed, and lives were never ended. Aithinne brought back every city that had been in ruins, every home, every town, every life. Scotland—and the world—is whole once more.
There are no monsters. There are no faeries. There is no music. I have nothing to fight.
Maybe the price of saving the world is forgetting how to live in it.
Catherine, Gavin, and Daniel are here for one of their biweekly visits.
“Christ, Catherine,” Gavin is saying. “Why don’t you just take all the tea cakes? Go on, just shovel them into your reticule like a thief.”
I’ve come to cherish these moments of levity. I don’t have to pretend with these three. None of us do. My mother still looks at me sometimes like she doesn’t know who I am. I’m a battle-weary soldier in the body of her little girl.
The only people who remember the fae are sitting in this room. And we’re trying to learn how to live with our memories of war. The truth is: The world might have been healed, but none of us have.
“Aileana,” Gavin says, interrupting my thoughts. “Do you know Catherine has been stealing food from every party we’ve attended for the last month? She’s hoarding desserts in her bedroom.”
“Why are you so concerned about my eating habits?” She glances at Daniel. “If I gain several stone, so what? I haven’t had proper tea cakes for three years. And Daniel encourages me, don’t you, darling? You like tea cakes, too.”