The Vanishing Throne (17 page)

Derrick rides between Ossaig's ears, his wee hands clinging to the thin metal fur to keep himself steady. She runs so fast that I don't know how he manages not to slip off at all.

“Just there,” Aithinne says, gesturing.

Up ahead is the curving bay where the mainland ends. Skye lies just across the shimmering waters. The mountains there are shrouded in mist, rolling and white from the snowfall. I had always heard excessive deforestation had cleared away much of the woodlands on Skye, but the island across from us is covered in thick snowcapped trees with dark trunks.

It wouldn't be possible for a forest to rise up that quickly, not without the fae affecting growth there, too. Like the jagged rocks that emerged in the Queen's Park in Edinburgh, the fae must have altered the landscape and brought back the ancient forests. Before their imprisonment, the entire Isle of Skye would have been covered in dense woodland.

“Can the horses make it to the island?” I ask.

The stories used to say that the fae on the mainland couldn't cross water. It was one of the ways Scots were advised to escape them if they ever encountered a hunt. Fae couldn't follow or their powers became weakened. Ossaig has already crossed rivers and streams, but perhaps deeper bodies of water are different.

Aithinne smiles at me. “Of course they can. But we have other means.”

Of course they can
. “Those stories humans made up about the fae really are absolute nonsense,” I mutter.

Derrick is snickering. “I'd love to know who spread those silly rumors. Humans are so gullible.” His eyes widen. “D'you think if I told them that honey repelled faeries they'd put some out for me?”

“You're horrid,” I tell him.

“No, no, no,” he says with a serene smile. “I'm
brilliant
. I like my plan. It's a good plan.”

I give him a pointed glare. “So what are these other means?”

Aithinne pulls the horse to a halt and dismounts. I do the same, waiting as Derrick lifts himself from between Ossaig's
ears to my shoulder. Absently, I reach up to touch his wings, a gesture that's now become a habit.

“There's a portal from here to Skye that can't be sensed by other
sìthichean
,” Derrick says. “
Sluagh
have been watching the island from above, and Lonnrach's soldiers have been scouting the forests, so the horses can't cross without them detecting.”

I go cold. “Have they?” Lonnrach learned that from me; he heard Derrick mention Skye in my memories, and stole that information to try to find my friends.

You spent a year training under my enemy and that rogue pixie. I assume they often spoke things you didn't understand
.

My hand shaking, I reach beneath my coat to press my thumb to a mark on my forearm. The memory is shortly after I met Derrick, when he decided to live in my closet. A seemingly unimportant memory I would never have thought to consider vital.

“
Nice closet
,” he'd said. “
This is a good size. Not as big as what I had at home in Skye, but it'll do.
”

“
It'll do?
”

“
As my new home. It's perfect. I like it. It's mine.
”

Once Lonnrach saw that memory, he knew where Derrick would likely take the others. Where I'd most likely run to after escaping from the mirrored room. I had given away their location without even meaning to.

“Aileana?” Derrick tears me from my thoughts. When he sees my expression, he misinterprets it. “Don't you worry,” he says, patting my hand. “They haven't managed to find us yet, daft bastards. We built it to stay hidden.”

“Derrick—”

“And you'll like it. We have good food.”

Tamping down my guilt, I watch as Aithinne steps up to the edge of the crag. “Then why did you abandon your kingdom?” I ask him distractedly. “You told me the pixies fled to Cornwall.”

His wings go still. “It was discovered once, a long time ago.” I don't like his tone, the hurt there. “But I rebuilt the wards two years back. They're holding.”

The way he says it prevents any further questions. A very clear
I don't want to talk about who found it, under what circumstances, or why we fled
. Well, it seems nothing has changed in my absence. The fae remain as secretive as ever.

Aithinne places a palm flat against the grass at the edge of the crag, her eyes wide and unblinking. Her power is suddenly thick in my mouth, the strong taste of flower petals and dirt on my tongue.

I'm about to ask what she's doing when she slams her fist into the ground. The soil around me cracks and shakes. I step back, praying like hell that she didn't just break off this part of the crag. The fall to the water is a long one.

Then I look on in amazement as roots begin to rise from the cracks in the earth. I've seen this before when Kiaran opened up a portal to the
Sìth-bhrùth
, the way it manipulated the flora to become a doorway. The roots grow and wind and twist, lifting and surrounding us, thickening like an untended briar patch. They bend and weave around each other, becoming a tree that rises up toward the sky with thick pointed
branches made of dark material that glistens like glass. It looks too much like those in the
Sìth-bhrùth
forest for my comfort.

“Aithinne,” I say uncertainly as the branches start to curl around my feet.

She doesn't look at me. Her eyes are still wide, irises swirling and turning like molten silver. “Let it take you,” she says.

Take me
? The roots are closing around me, thicker and darker. The air becomes oppressive. As if sensing the tension in my body, Derrick tugs on my ear and tries saying something to me, but I can't hear him over the roots that close in.

Suddenly my throat closes up. I grasp the glassy tree root and push hard against it, but it doesn't even budge. I twist to find another way to escape, diving for a hole between the overgrown root, but it closes before me.

It's enclosed. It's too enclosed and I'm trapped. The smooth material is semireflective—just like the mirrors.

Now you know precisely how it feels to be that helpless
.

Any rational thought fails me. My shoulder smacks into the hard material, a bruising impact. I'm heaving, but I can't get enough air. The roots close in overhead and my heart leaps painfully fast in my chest. Panic rises until I can hear my pulse slam through my ears.
I can't breathe
.

“Aileana!” Derrick is calling me, his wee fingernails digging into the skin at my neck. I can't hear him over my panic. I can't think anything else except
I can't breathe
. I claw at the roots until my fingernails bleed.

But they keep closing, tightening, until it's dark around me. Black as pitch.

I close my eyes. Just when I'm certain the tree will crush me, the crackling of growing roots stops. I gasp, falling to my knees. When I open my eyes, it's bright, so bright. Amid my dizzying vision, all I manage to see are looming rocks towering over me, the dark entrance to a cave, and—and . . .

“
Gavin.
”

I don't even think. One moment I'm kneeling on the snow-covered ground, and the next, I'm on my feet, wrapping my arms tightly around him. I take in the scent of him: whisky and smoke and strong soap. It calms my racing pulse, the ragged, quick pace of my breath. Suddenly I feel safe, warm.

He's alive
. He's really alive.

“Aileana,” Gavin murmurs, his body uncharacteristically stiff in my embrace. The way he says my name is cautious, as if he's testing the weight of it on his tongue. “Aileana,” he says again, as if uncertain.

I don't think to analyze his response. I bury my face in his warm neck. He smells like safety. He smells like home. He smells like a thousand wishes in the mirrored room, that I'd see him again and hug him just like this.

“Well, hell,” I hear Derrick mutter, squirming out from between us. His wings flutter against my skin as he flies off. “This is embarrassing. Oy! Aithinne! Stop staring like a shameless freak and go find your brother.” A pause. Then: “All right, well. I'll just be in this tree. Over here. Call me when you're done.”

Derrick's wings flutter and Aithinne's footsteps disappear into the cavern. I hold tightly to Gavin for a moment longer,
noting that even though he's relaxed a bit, his shoulders are still tense.

How different this is from the last time I saw him. Before the battle, he had hugged me like he knew he had to let me go and he wasn't ready. Like he would never see me again.

Like he thought I was going to die.

I pull away to ask him what's wrong . . . and I flinch. “Christ,” I whisper.

There are scars around his right eye, what look like claw-marks across his skin. Another long, jagged mark runs from his lips over his cheekbone, stopping right beneath his eyelashes.

The scars don't detract from his features. It's Gavin's eyes that give me pause. His vivid blue eyes—always so bright and familiar—are battle-weary. He's looking at me as if we've never met before. As if we hadn't grown up together or fought fae together or were nearly forced to marry after a misunderstanding.

I reach up to touch the scars. He flinches, but doesn't pull back. I draw my fingers over the grooves they've left in his skin. “How did it happen?” My voice catches without my meaning it to.

I slide my finger down the longest one and Gavin captures my hand in his. “The night you left, they tried to take my eyes.” His voice is hollow. “Your pixie saved me.”

I swallow hard.
I was supposed to save him. Not Derrick
. “I'm so sorry.”

Gavin steps back and regards me for the longest time. “I thought you were dead. We all did. After three years I assumed Aithinne was gone, too.”

“They took me to the
Sìth-bhrùth
,” I say. “Didn't Kiaran tell you?”

Gavin has always been easy for me to understand. I've known him so long that every part of him is so familiar: his face, his expressions, his feelings. I know his likes and dislikes. I know that when he lost his father, he buried his emotions deep, just like I did when I lost my mother.

This Gavin . . . three years later he's almost unrecognizable. The way he holds himself is different, his body taut, as if he's prepared for an attack at any moment. I don't miss the way his eyes flicker in a careful assessment of our surroundings.

“Aye, he told me.”

The trees around us rustle and Gavin's gaze slides to my left, my right. The forest towers high above the cavern, leaving shadows on the snowy ground. The woodland is thick and dark, nothing visible except for the entrance to the cavern. I can sense the power around it, the press of it against my tongue, just like the portal Kiaran took me to once. This place must be hidden from Lonnrach's soldiers.

The trees shudder again and a breeze rustles my hair. Gavin's body tenses—as if he's listening for something. After a moment, he speaks. “You were gone a long time, even in the fae realm. You don't look any different.” Now his gaze shifts
to behind me. To see whether I was followed? “You don't even have a mark on you.”

I step back. “What's that meant to mean?”

Lonnrach's marks are hidden beneath my clothes, but he never touched my face, never left an imprint there. And unlike Gavin, I haven't aged. I was eighteen when Lonnrach took me to the
Sìth-bhrùth
 . . . and I'm still eighteen.

Gavin is twenty-four by now. He's grown into his shoulders. His body is leaner, more muscular. I notice the small, puckered scars along his neck, just above the collar of his coat.

“I've seen people taken by
them
to the
Sìth-bhrùth
,” he says tightly. “They don't come back the same. They pretend to be who they were, but their allegiance is to the fae. They've betrayed us before.”

I almost tell him that I'm not the same. That a part of me came back broken, too. That there's a Lonnrach-shaped hole inside of me that I don't know if I'll ever be able to fill with the parts of me I lost.

My fingers itch to pull up my sleeve. To show him my scars.
I'm not unmarked. I'm not whole. I'm still trying to put the pieces of myself together again
.

But I don't. I place my trembling palm against his cheek to force him to look at me. “You think I'm like that?” When he doesn't answer, I say, “I would never betray you.”

He sets his jaw. “I don't know that.”

I have to convince him. Gavin is a product of this world I left behind when I was captured. Lonnrach showed me a
mere glimpse of the ruined Edinburgh just after it happened, and it's burned into my memory. Gavin was there. He saw everything.

“Aye, you do,” I tell him. “You wanted me to make you a promise before the battle. Do you remember?” He shakes his head. “You wanted me to promise you that I wouldn't die.”

Gavin jerks from my touch. “And you never said the words. I remember.”

I couldn't say the words. I don't make promises that I can't keep, and a part of me believed I wouldn't live to see the following morning. If I did, it would be because I had saved them all. If I died, it would be because I had failed. There was no in-between, no other possibility.

I know better now.

Before I can respond, Gavin says, “Prove it to me. That you're still Aileana.” The way he says it gives me pause. He speaks softly, calculating.

“
Prove
it?” I step toward him but he backs away. “Gavin, I'm standing right here. I'm alive. What more proof do you need?”