The Vanishing Throne (15 page)

The moment I release Kiaran and step away, he grasps me by the arms—then he has me pressed against the wall in his place.

He doesn't speak, not even as his fingers trace the marks on my inner forearms, then back up again along my neck. His touch is featherlight, slow. As if he's committing each scar to memory, one by one.

When his gaze meets mine, it's intense. Like he's staring into my soul and pulling up every secret and emotion I've worked so hard to bury.

“You're wrong,” he finally says.

“Am I?” I think of his grimace, how much it hurt.

“You think I can't bear to look at them, that I believe these mean you're weak.” Kiaran's fingers are at my pulse now, thumb sliding down to my collarbone. “That couldn't be farther from the truth.”

Kiaran leans in and his lips brush the scar at the top of my shoulder. He doesn't know that's the memory of our second kiss. Right. There. “When I see these I'm tempted to break my promise and kill him for what he did. I want it to be me, not you.”

“Why didn't you just tell me?”

He continues his exploration to my other shoulder. Where we met, when we were first bound together. I close my eyes when he pauses.
Don't stop
, I almost tell him.
It's been too long. Don't stop
.

“Because I'm still learning,” he says quietly.

“Learning what?”

“How to feel.” Kiaran glides his fingers down my arm and I shiver. “How to empathize.” He looks up at me. “How not to behave when you're upset. None of it comes easily to me.”

I can't resist anymore. I touch him, tracing the veins at the back of his hand and wishing I could say the right thing. I used to assume the fae were simple creatures, unfeeling and dangerous. I'm learning, too. Just like him.

“Why is Aithinne so different from you?” I ask. His sister might not understand tears, but Aithinne's more open about her emotions than he is. She doesn't bury them.

“My sister and I were raised separately, in different kingdoms.”

I draw my hand up his wrist. The skin there is smooth, so smooth. “Which kingdom were you raised in?”

He's quiet. As if he's preparing himself for my response. “Unseelie,” he says.

Unseelie
. The shadow fae who slaughtered indiscriminately. Who used humans like playthings.

You're not the first pet Kadamach has discarded
.

I flinch and almost draw my hand away, but something about Kiaran's touch stops me.
Not Kadamach
, I tell myself, pressing my palm to his.
He's not Kadamach anymore
.

“In the Seelie Kingdom,” he continues, “Aithinne wasn't taught to suppress all emotion. She wasn't taught that emotions are a weakness.”

“What about me?” I ask. I can't help it. “Do you think me weak because I feel?”

Because I stopped fighting?

“No. Never.” Kiaran cups my cheek. “That's what makes you Kam.”

My breath catches. His lips are so close. “MacKay,” I whisper. “I—”

Kiaran steps back abruptly, putting cold distance between us. Mere seconds later, Aithinne's footsteps echo as she returns. “
Mortair
,” she whispers urgently. “Just over the hills.”

As if on cue, thunder rolls in the distance, startling me. Fat raindrops suddenly beat against the roof in a constant rhythm, almost as loud as the thunder. I hear a screech from the outside, high-pitched and wailing. I remember that call from the battle in Queen's Park.
Sluagh
.

“Damnation,” Kiaran says. He reaches for the fire. The flames snuff out in an instant and the smoke is pulled into his palm. The scent of burning strengthens for a moment before it dissipates completely.

Aithinne crouches to press a palm to the stone floor. Her power is suddenly stark on my tongue. “
Mortair
can sense heat, too, Kadamach.”

“Shh,” he says.

I try to quiet myself, not daring to move at all. What I had thought was thunder is another
mortair
, its steps growing louder, ever closer. The walls shake. Dirt falls from the rafters and the entire structure groans and trembles. Rain drums hard and fast on the floor. At the far side of the room, the horses are still; they don't even blink.

Another
sluagh
screeches, closer this time. They're looking for us in the ruins. My hand automatically goes for the hilt of the blade, prepared to pull it out and fight.

Kiaran is suddenly right next to me with his back pressed to the wall. “Don't.” I ignore the shiver that goes through me at how close he is. “If they find us, they'll alert the others. Don't move, Kam.”

Others
?

The
mortair
's footfalls shake the structure. I press my lips together to muffle my surprised gasp.

It's here. The
mortair
is here. Directly on the other side of the wall. The whirling mechanism of its clockwork interior hums as it powers up the weapon. The purr of the weapon grows faster, louder, louder.

I shut my eyes, my heart slamming painfully hard.

“Your heart,” Aithinne breathes.

With a soft curse, Kiaran immediately shifts closer. “May I?” he asks.

He's asking permission
? I'm so surprised, I nod.

His hand presses to my chest—
oh, that's why
—and I feel a gentle burst of his power, calming, soothing. My breath quiets. My heartbeat slows. He takes the energy—the rush of danger—from me until I'm left shaking. His power washes over me, a hint of flower petals at the back of my throat.

It's joined by the subtle taste of Aithinne's. I glance over at her, and I'm startled. Her bright silver irises cloud over to create a swirl of molten metal, deep and vast. The air thickens around us. So hot, it's hard to breathe through.

The
sluagh
screeches again and the
mortair
takes off running. The ground quakes under its heavy treads and my hand tightens around the hilt of the blade as I prepare for the worst—but it's moving away from us, footfalls growing quieter and quieter. Until all is still around us, silent. Even the rain has slowed.

Aithinne releases a long, slow exhale. “I sent a stream of power off in another direction,” she says, “but it won't take long for them to realize it's fake.”

Kiaran doesn't respond. His hand is still pressed over my heart, his lips to my ear. This time his breathing is ragged, as if he's trying to get himself under control.

Suddenly, before I can blink, he's halfway across the room. The warmth from his body is gone and his expression is carefully composed, even cold.
She wasn't taught that emotions are a weakness
.

“I'll get the horses ready,” he says, his voice hollow. “We should move quickly.”

O
NCE WE
ride out of Glasgow, I realize that I've never been this far west of Edinburgh. People always spoke of the Highlands reverently, as if they were a magical place, otherworldly. Now I know why. I have never seen mountains so majestic, so textured with steep, rugged rocks. Clouds settle at their peaks, capping the ranges in white mist. The snow dips lower, extending to touch the base of the mountains in a sprawl like spider webs across the rocks.

Below the mountains are meadows where grass and shrubs have turned brown and green and gold and red, a kaleidoscope of winter colors stretched vast. The scent of rain and wood invades my senses. We pass waterfalls that start between the sharp, jutting rocks of the crags and spill down and through the meadows.

The fog lingers around us, spraying my skin with the cold and damp. It is a magnificent thing, Highland fog. It feels electric.

I never thought of winter as beautiful, with everything so barren and cold and dark. But I've also never seen scenery so magnificent that it made me ache at the sight of it.

Now I understand why this place changes people. Why those I met from the Highlands said Edinburgh would never compare. Why they said magic isn't dead here. I can feel it in my lungs with every breath, through my veins and in my blood. I think magic was born here.

I'm so enraptured that I don't even notice Aithinne has stopped until Kiaran rounds his horse close enough to tap my arm. I slow. “What is it?”

Aithinne shakes her head once. “I sense something.”

“I don't,” Kiaran says.

His sister glances at him. “Of course you don't, you silly thing. You wouldn't if it were right up your arse.”

I snicker, and at Kiaran's glare, I say, “You're the one who taught her to swear, not me.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but turns sharply toward the fog. He senses something, too. Then a familiar sensation settles on my tongue: gingerbread and spices, all the things that remind me of home.

I break into a smile as Derrick flies through the fog. He shouts in delight, “You're alive!”

In an instant, I'm off my horse and sprinting through the tall meadow grass. Derrick barrels toward me in a streaming golden light. He flings himself into my shoulder, wings flicking hard. I hug him—as much as it's possible to hug such a wee creature—with my fingers curled tight around his tiny body.

Derrick's trapped wings pulse against my palm. “Aileana.” He coughs. “Those are my ribs. You're crushing my ribs.”

I release him, but I continue to stroke the silkiness of his wings. It feels like it's been so long since I'd last seen him in Charlotte Square, just before I went off for battle. I never thought I'd see him again. I never thought we'd survive.

Derrick clings to my shoulder, reaching into my hair to run his fingers through it. He inhales, wings twitching.

“You damn pixie,” I say softly. “How did you know to find me?”

“I was scouting and I sensed a Falconer,” Derrick babbles, his wings so fast that they're but a blur of light. “It had to be you and I raced to see if it was really you because we all thought that after this long you were probably
dead
—”

“I thought you were dead, too,” I say softly.

Derrick twists my hair. “You never thought you'd see me again. You
loooove
me and you
míííííssed
me. You—Holy hell,” he says in amazement, his wings fanning. “Are those tears? Are you
crying
?”

“I just have something in my eye,” I say, blinking hard.
Damnation
.

Derrick blinks at me, his eyes wet, too. “You're right,” he says, dabbing his cheeks. “No tears here, either. Definitely the rain. It's really wet out here. I—”

At the same time, we both remember we have an audience. Kiaran looks rather repelled by the whole exchange, and Aithinne has her head slightly tilted in unabashed interest.

Aithinne says to Kiaran, “That's lovely. Isn't that lovely? You didn't greet me like that when I saved you.”

“I was unconscious,” Kiaran reminds her.

“Oh. That's right.”

“
You
!” Derrick flies from me, hovering in the fog just over the grass. The other two faeries look up. “Not
you
,” he snaps at Kiaran. “I'll get to you later. The one who said
I'll be right back with the Falconer
and returns
three bloody years later
. What the hell happened?”

Aithinne seems to consider that for a moment. “No, no, I most certainly said
I shall return shortly
. I only spent about two months on the other side—”

“Or the equivalent of three years in human time, you ridiculous ninny. Don't pretend you didn't know.”

“
Derrick
,” I say sharply.

“What?” Derrick zips around me. “She let me believe you were dead. I haven't seen her for
years
and she couldn't even send word that you were alive—”

“It's not
idiotic
,” Kiaran says in a low voice, “to misjudge how long it takes to dismantle the wards Lonnrach set up in the
Sìth-bhrùth
without being detected. You couldn't have done it.” He steps forward. “Aithinne brought Kam back. Now stop complaining.”

“Make me,” Derrick snarls. “I'll slice your insides to ribbons before you grow it all back.”

“Kam,” Kiaran says, his eyes never leaving Derrick. “Control your pixie.”

“
Control me
?” A wee blade is suddenly in Derrick's hand. “I'm going to gut you, you sonofa—”

“I don't think so,” I say, grabbing Derrick's wings. He yelps in surprise when I manage to pinch them together. It took me the longest time to learn that trick and I only had to use it when he tried to hunt cats in the back garden.

He hangs there helplessly, his arms crossed, a murderous glare on his face. “I'm not apologizing,” he says sullenly.

“I won't ask you to apologize,” I tell him. “Just put the blade away.” When he looks like he isn't going to, I say firmly, “Derrick. The blade.”

Derrick thrusts the blade into its sheath at his waist with a hiss. “There. Are you
pleased
now?”

I place him on my shoulder and press my cheek to his wings. The physical contact always calms him down, even when he's at his angriest. “Thank you.”

“Don't do that,” he says sternly, leaning away, but I persist. “Stop it. You'll never soften me. You're not winning. You're not—damn it.” He crosses his arms again. “
Fine
. I'm sorry, Aithinne,” he mutters. Then he looks at Kiaran. “Sorry not sorry to you, bastard.”