The Falconer (Elizabeth May) (27 page)

Kiaran glances at me, detached as ever. ‘I’ve seen my share of battle, and I’ve faced worse than what we are about to. Do you know the most vital thing I’ve learned?’

‘What?’ I ask, exasperated.

He inclines his head towards the beautiful scene before us. ‘To take in all of this, every calm moment you can. Breathe in the sight so deeply that the memory becomes a fundamental part of you. Sometimes, it will be all that’s left to ground you. I brought you here to give you that.’

I wonder what memories ground Kiaran, that he’d want such a thing for me. He’s always been ruthless in our training, never once leading me to believe he held any reverence for serenity.

I almost enquire again about his past, about the woman he once loved. But as I watch him, I decide against it. He gazes pensively out over the loch, and there’s a sadness that in him speaks to my own grief. Sometimes the memories we cling hardest to are the ones that hurt us the most.

‘Why haven’t you gone back to your realm?’

Kiaran stiffens. ‘This beach is as close as I can go.’

‘The beach?’ I look at the inviting water, now glowing such a warm, vivid teal that it reminds me of descriptions of the Mediterranean. ‘What happens if you go further?’

Sorrow flickers across his face. If I hadn’t been staring at him, I would have missed it. ‘I’ll die.’

I’m surprised by his answer. ‘What? Why?’

His mask slips back into place, stern and unyielding. ‘It’s a sacrifice I made, Kam. I can never go back there.’

I step away from him, before I ask anything else. I’m tempted to say something reassuring, but it feels patronising to console someone who has seen so much, who knows first-hand just how harsh the world can be. Sometimes words simply fail.

I lower myself to the sand and yearn to touch the water, but I don’t want to be insensitive. It wouldn’t be fair to Kiaran.

‘Go on,’ he says. ‘I don’t mind.’

I smile slightly and softly brush the surface of the water. It undulates under my fingertips, sending delicate ripples across the entire loch, lit up like lightning ferns. How strange and lovely. ‘You never told me how you avoided being trapped under the city with the others,’ I say.

Kiaran settles next to me on the sand and crosses his long legs. ‘No, I didn’t. It’s an unremarkable story.’

The water is cool when I sink my hand in and wiggle my fingers into the smooth, lustrous sand beneath. I love the way it slips across my palm, how it glitters like starlight. There is a long silence between Kiaran and me as we watch the ripples cross the water. I do as Kiaran said to, and let myself remember the time before all of this, before we met.

I think of home, of my past. Naming constellations on clear nights. Spring when heather colours the garden. Travelling to my father’s country estate outside St Andrews. Lying with Mother in the grass on lazy afternoons, watching clouds rush overhead so rapidly it was dizzying.

Mother used to see the shapes of flowers in the clouds. She’d spot snowdrops and primroses and irises – I think because those were her favourites. While she saw a garden in the sky, I only ever saw . . . well, clouds. Ever the realist of the two of us.

‘MacKay,’ I say, ‘do you think . . . if I had never worn the
seilgflùr
that I’d be normal?’ I trace my fingers along the surface of the water again. ‘Like my mother?’

‘Her abilities hadn’t been triggered, so she never felt compelled to hunt the
sìthichean
.’ Kiaran shakes his head. ‘Unfortunately for you, the seal breaking would have interrupted any normal life you might have led,’ he says. ‘You would still have to fight. You never had a choice.’

Hunting the fae has always been the one thing I thought I had control over. I choose when, where and how they die. I choose my weapons and how long I allow myself to delight in us fighting before I finally end their lives. But now I know the truth, the real reason I hunt.
You never had a choice
.

I wipe my wet palm against my trousers and say bitterly, ‘No choice at all, aye? Haven’t any active Falconers ever stopped hunting?’

Kiaran leans back on his hands. ‘A few tried. In the end, they couldn’t avoid their true nature any more than you’d be able to.’ He looks over at me, eyes swirling amethyst and molten silver, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. ‘Unless I’m wrong. When you imagine yourself years from now, is it the Seer you’re with? Or is it you and me, planning our next slaughter?’

I avert my gaze. I won’t answer that. He already knows the truth. ‘What’s in the nature of a
sìthiche
, then?’

He stares at the water intently. ‘The
sìthichean
have become consumed by their obsession with obtaining power. They’ve lost everything else they ever cared for.’

‘Don’t they have power already?’

‘Ah, Kam. Power is immeasurable.’ He breathes out the words as if he knows from experience just how intoxicating it is. ‘It’s thrilling, seductive, a craving that becomes an ache inside. A need that is never sated or forgotten.’

Every faery I’ve killed brings me physical relief, respite against guilt. In the rapture of their deaths, my memories cease to exist and all that’s left is the lightweight joy of power.

I’m no better than the fae. We both kill for a single moment of relief. How can I ever admit that to Kiaran? I live for the hunt now. It’s not just about survival or vengeance any more – it’s become an addiction, too.

When I close my eyes, I can so easily imagine power surging through me, as startling and blissful as the rush of it in those first few seconds following a faery’s death. There it is – the same hard pump of blood through my veins, the electric current that raises the fine hairs all over my body. The feather-light feeling, as if I’m floating off the ground.

Except this time, I swear I can hear my mother humming under her breath, in the same light way she used to. I’m gripped by the memory, by the soft lull of her voice, by the power coursing through me that’s so strong my chest aches with it.

With a smile, I murmur, ‘I wish you could hear her.’

A ridiculous thing to say, but the words slip from my tongue with little resistance. The singing is so soothing, I could fall asleep to it, right here on the beach.

‘Hear who?’

I nestle my cheek against my knees and ignore him. It’s vital that I hold on to the memory – I’m afraid that if I lose it, I’ll forget the sound of her voice.

‘Kam,’ Kiaran snaps, grabbing my shoulders.

A light, airy laugh shatters my calm. My mouth fills with the grotesque tang of iron and blood and it feels as if it’s being forced down my throat. I cough and gag into Kiaran’s shoulder, then shove him away so I can retch onto the sand. All that comes up is saliva.

‘Kadamach,’ a familiar silvery voice says. ‘I knew I’d find you here.’ She laughs once more. ‘And you brought your Falconer with you.’

I freeze. The blood in my veins turns to ice and I can’t breathe. I am the girl I used to be again, weak and helpless. My mother’s corpse is lying on the cobblestones. My hands are coated with blood and I can’t get it off and I scrub and scrub and scrub but it won’t come off and my dress is ruined and I’m tainted and
crimson suits you best crimson suits you best crimson suits you best crimson suits
—

‘
No
,’ I growl.

Not that. I won’t be taken back there. I won’t become that girl again. I try to push out of the memory, but its grip is strong, so real and relentless that it plays over and over and I’m helpless against it. Then, all at once, it fades so quickly that I’m left gasping.

‘So that’s who you are,’ the
baobhan sìth
says, so softly that I barely hear her. ‘You belong to that Falconer I killed last year.’

Kiaran stands. ‘What do you want, Sorcha?’

He knows her, just like he knew that redcap. I told him I was looking for the
baobhan sìth
the night we met. He knew it was her the whole blasted time. It’s another sharp reminder that I should never let myself soften towards him. He’s not trustworthy.

‘What do I want?’ she asks lightly. ‘Why don’t we start with a proper greeting? It’s been a long time,
a ghaoil
.’

‘Don’t call me that again,’ he says. ‘Ever.’

I’ve never heard Kiaran so quietly enraged, no matter what I’ve said to provoke him or how much I’ve tried his patience.

Sorcha clicks her tongue. ‘You might be content to forget our past, but I’m not.’

‘I won’t ever be content,’ he says. ‘Not until you’re dead.’

‘Don’t bandy idle threats, Kadamach,’ Sorcha says. ‘You’re still bound by your vow to me.
Feadh gach re
. Always and for ever, remember?’

Vow? He made her a vow? She speaks again, says something in their language. Her sickeningly saccharine voice draws me back to that night, to the moment I first heard her.
Crimson suits you best
.

Kiaran growls something in the same tongue and Sorcha laughs. I feel her eyes on me then, heavy and judging. ‘Poor thing,’ Sorcha murmurs. ‘Is your Falconer afraid? Little girl,’ she calls. ‘Open your eyes.’

No, I can’t bear to look at her. I can’t.

‘Didn’t you hear me? I said
open your eyes
.’

Her commanding tone forces me to obey. I stare at the faery who murdered my mother.

The
baobhan sìth
is more frightening than I remember – and more beautiful. Sorcha hovers above the centre of the lake’s icy surface, tall and pale and flawless as marble. Her white shift billows and flows around her in a breeze I don’t feel, the material so soft and fine that it looks like smoke. Her eyes are unnerving, cold and unblinking, vivid as emeralds.

Then Sorcha’s lips curve into a hellish smile – the one that haunts my nightmares.

My chest tightens and I can’t breathe. Desperately, I try to suck in air. I feel Sorcha in my mind then, a determined and merciless presence.

I try to fight against her, but she’s strong. She’s a weight pushing me down, down, until my memories assault me and I’m nothing but the traumatised girl inside me who witnessed her mother’s murder.

I am beside my mother’s body again, and I can smell blood. Cold rain penetrates my dress, tinting it red where the fabric clings to my legs, chilling me to the bone. The blood smells and feels so real, so thick on my hands, that I swear it’s stained my skin. I drop to my knees and heave, clawing at the sand to get it off, tears blurring my vision.

‘
Sorcha
,’ Kiaran snaps. He sounds so far away.

The memories stop. I’m in my own body again, out of the blood-soaked dress. I breathe hard and don’t try to stand. It’s taking all of my effort not to collapse entirely.

‘So this is your champion,’ Sorcha says contemptuously. ‘She can’t even withstand the most basic mental influence.’

‘She killed every
sìthiche
you sent,’ Kiaran says, raking her with his gaze. ‘Bested by a girl of eighteen with only a year of training. How pathetic she must make you feel.’

Sorcha’s eyes burn, the colour intense even from here. ‘If you’ll recall,
I
was the one who drove her kind to extinction. You’ve never been very good at keeping them alive, have you?’

Kiaran’s knuckles are white around the hilt of his blade. ‘Tell me why you’re here.’

She ignores him and looks at me again, studying me, reading me so intently that I wish I could disappear. ‘What a sad creature you are, nowhere near as strong as your distant ancestors. That’s Kadamach’s fault, you know,’ she says sweetly.

‘Don’t,’ Kiaran says. ‘Now is not the time.’

‘Oh, I think now is the perfect time. Shall I tell you why your mother couldn’t see me, little Falconer? Why she couldn’t fight back? He suppressed the abilities of the Falconers who survived the war, so their children’s abilities never manifested and I couldn’t track them. For centuries I looked, but in vain.’ She smiles. ‘Until I happened to see your mother. Weak. Helpless and untrained, because of
him
. She never stood a chance against me.’

Oh, God
. I want him to tell me that it isn’t true. That Sorcha is just lying because this is a game to her. But he doesn’t. He won’t even look at me.

‘That’s enough, Sorcha.’ Kiaran’s voice is a powerful thing. It resonates across the entire lake. ‘Just tell me why you’re here.’

‘If you insist,’ she says. ‘I have a message from my brother.’ At Kiaran’s startled expression, her smile turns a bit smug. ‘The underground isn’t entirely closed off, Kadamach. Some of the walls are thin enough to speak through. Lonnrach wants you to know that he asked me to call off my soldiers. Apparently, he thinks your champion worthy of battle with him.’ She pauses, and I can feel her gaze on me again, hot and probing. ‘We disagree.’

I rise to my feet and seek the vengeance inside me and feel . . . nothing. Not the destructive creature inside me that craves violence, or the need for release. Simply nothing. She’s stolen it from me.

‘She’s certainly different from your other pet Falconer,’ Sorcha says. ‘A shame how that turned out.’

Kiaran’s hand tightens around the hilt of his blade, but he doesn’t draw it from the sheath. ‘Is that all you came to say?’

‘No, but I’d rather discuss this.’ Sorcha smiles mockingly. ‘What was that girl’s name again? I never bothered to remember.’

‘Finish your message,’ he says with deadly calm, ‘or I’ll send my blade straight through your heart. Vow or no vow.’

‘I see your patience hasn’t improved.’ Sorcha tilts her head. ‘You hid this one well from me, Kadamach. I didn’t realise she existed until a fortnight ago.’

I remember Kiaran’s words to me then, that night on the bridge with the redcaps. The words that changed everything.
Now you’ve hunted alone and she knows there’s a Falconer in Edinburgh
.

If I’d been paying attention, I would have noticed he said
she
. Not
they
. Which means any of the fae I’ve fought in the last fortnight could have been sent by her. No wonder these recent nights have been filled to the brim with faeries hunting
me
, and not the other way around.