The Vanishing Throne (2 page)

“Will you?” he asks.

I bite my tongue to stop myself from asking about Kiaran, about everyone I love. I can't let him know my worry that they're all dead; I have to pretend that I don't feel a thing.

Instead, I brush my fingers against my
seilgflùr
necklace, plaited together in a single strand. The soft thistle is deadly to Lonnrach's kind, effective enough to burn through his flesh. “I could wrap this around your throat if I wanted. It's not a quick way to die. I've seen it.”

Lonnrach stuffs his hands in his trouser pockets, and I'm certain if his platform had something to lean on, he would be standing against it. Cold, casual, obviously not the least bit concerned.

Perhaps he has a talent for lying, too. Just like me.

“You're not in any position to make threats,” he says lightly, glancing down into the crevasse at its deepest and darkest point.

I try to resist looking, too. I fail. Even if I managed to kill Lonnrach, I'd be trapped. Pushing him over the edge isn't exactly an option—he'd likely survive the fall, damn his indestructible fae body.

I let my expression settle and appear cold, detached. It takes every skill in deception I've learned since I first discovered the fae were real and one of them had murdered my mother. With the fae, everything is a game. Even grief. If
given the chance, Lonnrach would use it against me, torment me with it. I have to play the game, too.

One breath, two, to steady myself. “How do I know it's not a trick?” My voice is almost playful, chastising; it is as calm as a mountain stream. I am a masterful liar. I learned from the best, after all. “This place?”

Lonnrach's expression doesn't change. “It's not.”

I think of his fleeting smile and the possibility that everyone and everything I care about is gone. Then I really do have nothing to lose by being reckless.

But Lonnrach does. There's still one thing he needs: Me. If he didn't, I'd be dead.

Time to test that. I approach the edge of my small platform on the side closest to him. “So if I do
this
”—I balance on one foot, on the tips of my toes—“and fall, it'll kill—”

Before I can even blink, Lonnrach is off his platform. His body slams into my own, knocking me off my feet so hard I fear we'll go over the other side and he'll kill me anyway.

We don't. In the end, he hauls me up, his hand painfully gripping my upper arm. His silver eyes glow bright with anger. I'm surprised by the display of emotion; the fae always seem so in control, every feeling perfectly reined in.

“You are a
foolish
girl,” he says.

Now I know. Lonnrach forgot the foremost rule of our little game: Never let your enemy know how desperately you require something. He
needs
me alive, not just as a prisoner of war. That's why he cared about my head injury causing lasting damage.

But I can't focus on that. I can't. I find that the question I truly desire to ask—if he's killed everyone I love—sticks in my throat. So I try another. “Where is Kiaran?”

I don't miss how Lonnrach's eyes avert briefly from mine, as if he's trying to smooth his expression first. “His sister killed my men to rescue him.” His smirk is brutal; it cuts right through my heart. “They obviously didn't think you were worth saving.”

Another memory of Kiaran flashes in my mind from the battlefield. Of his motionless body and his scorched face.
Wake up. Wake up!
I couldn't get him to move. Not even his lashes fluttered.

Lonnrach said Kiaran was alive, but if that were true, Kiaran would never have left me behind. He couldn't have.

“You feel for him.” Lonnrach's fingers grasp my chin, forcing me to look at him. “He made you think he cared about you.” He looks almost sorry for me, but I know it must be a trick. “Kadamach doesn't give a damn about anyone, least of all you.”

Pretend his words don't affect you
. I try, but then Kiaran's words from that night whisper in my mind.
Have I ever told you the vow a
sìthiche
makes when he pledges himself to another?
A featherlight kiss, then two words against my lips that I felt down to my very soul.
Aoram dhuit
.

I will worship thee
.

Lonnrach's next cruel words cut short my memory: “You're not the first human pet he's discarded.”

Before I can stop myself, I wrench out of Lonnrach's grip and smash my fist into his face. He staggers back. I bury my knee in his gut and punch him again. And again. I wind back to keep at him, but he grabs my wrist and twists my arm behind me at a painful angle. He's at my back, breath tickling my neck.

“You need me alive.” I swallow hard to keep the pain out of my voice. I wiggle to extricate myself from his grip, but he holds firm; any movement on my part is excruciating. “Why?” When he doesn't answer, I press further. “
Why
?”

“You can unlock an object I seek. That is your sole purpose.” I understand the subtext:
And when I get what I want, I'll kill you
.

I snap my head back and slam it into his nose. The satisfying crack of cartilage and his startled fae curse only make me smile. I round on him, but he's too fast. He locks me into a hold, fingers digging into the wrist of my blade hand. Any sudden movement from me and he'll break it. I may heal faster than the average human, but I'd rather not learn how long it takes for my bones to mend.

As if in subtle warning, his grip tightens. I grit my teeth against the pain. “If I knew what you were looking for, I'd destroy it before I let you have it.”

I feel his body shudder, as if in anger. “You really don't understand, do you? You think this is just about war. Your kind against mine.”

I'm surprised by that. “Isn't it?”

“Look around you, Falconer.” He motions with his free hand, sweeps it across the landscape. “Do you think it's always
been like this? The
Sìth-bhrùth
was once full of a thousand different colors your human eyes have never beheld. The land was whole and now it's cracked right down the middle. It's all falling apart.”

He draws me in closer, releasing some of the pressure at my wrist. “I brought you here to show you this chasm. It's a reminder that one day soon everything will crumble to dust. The kingdoms are dying and the throne is vanishing. It's already begun.”

I can't help but look to the cliffs on either side of us, studying how the landscape only exists in shades of gray and deep black. How the buildings floating in the middle are the final remnants of the place Lonnrach describes. “I don't see what that has to do with me.”

“What I seek could save the
Sìth-bhrùth
. You're the key to finding it.”

At that I pause. Not that I care the slightest bit about the
Sìth-bhrùth
, but Kiaran might. He spoke very little about the fae realm, of course. He once told me it was beautiful and brutal, that he both hated and loved it. I wonder if he would consider saving this place.

But I have to know one thing first. I ask the question I've been avoiding all along: “Why save your home instead of mine?”

Lonnrach's silence is deafening; it stretches vast, eternal. He wouldn't be like this, unless . . . unless . . .

I have no home to save
.

I swallow back the lump in my throat. “Show me.” When he hesitates, I snap. “
Now
.”

Lonnrach releases my wrist. Before I can even move, his fingers are in my hair, pressing against the wound at my temple.

Then I blink . . . and I'm in hell.

It's too much to take in at once; I can hardly focus. Ash rains from the sky, fluttering to the ground like snow. All around me are destroyed buildings, as if something had rammed through them with tremendous force. The cobbles lie broken up, the streets naught but barely visible rubble through the thick layer of ash. I can't see beyond the buildings in front of me; the smoke is too thick. I inhale the scent of scorched wood, metal, and stone, and my lungs constrict.

The swirling dust and soot clears just enough for me to recognize where I am. Princes Street. What's left of it. Only a few of the shops that lined one side of the street are still standing. The Scott Monument—that beautiful, pointed ivory-colored monument that had just been finished in the months before the battle—lies toppled on its side. Scott's own statue is ground to dust.

I caused this.
I caused this it's my fault they're dead and it's all my fault
. “Stop.” The word is a strangled breath, barely audible. “I said
stop
!”

Suddenly I'm back in the faery realm. I'm on my knees in the sharp, obsidian-stone dirt. Hot tears blur my vision as I draw in ragged breaths.

How could all that have happened in such a short time? I press my fingers to the injury just above my ear. It's still wet. Desperately, I feel for the small cut Lonnrach left when he
pressed his blade to my throat back on the battlefield. Inflamed, still stinging. No healing has begun.

“This is a trick,” I say. It has to be. The fae couldn't have destroyed Edinburgh that quickly. “My injuries are still fresh.”

Lonnrach doesn't move, not even to kneel next to me. “You're in the
Sìth-bhrùth
,” he says simply.

I shut my eyes.
Oh god
. I forgot the simplest rule of all: Time passes more quickly in the human realm. I could have spent mere hours in the fae realm and weeks would have gone by there. Days here could amount to months.

“How long have I been here?” I whisper, hating the horror in my voice. Hating how I've shown Lonnrach that small bit of weakness. “On the outside. How long?”

“I don't understand your human time.” He sounds so nonchalant, uncaring. “Days. Weeks. Months. Years. They mean little to me. All I care about is finding the object hidden in your realm. And you're going to help me with it, willingly or no.”

I can't get the images of destruction out of my head. I created that. I helped. What would Derrick and Gavin have thought of me in the end? Catherine? They must have thought I'd died or abandoned them. That I stopped fighting.

Fresh tears sear my cheeks as I look up at Lonnrach. “So you destroyed everything in your search. You sacrificed my realm to save yours.”

Lonnrach's expression doesn't change. “You say that as if I had a choice. You would have slaughtered us all to save
them
. Your humans.” Now he kneels. His face so close to mine.
“You would kill to protect your own. We both would. We're the same, you and I.”

Kiaran's whisper resounds from deep in my mind.
I made you the same as me
.

A night creature. A devil. A monster who deals in death and destruction.
We're the same, you and I
.

Then so be it
. My gaze locks with Lonnrach and I see a flash of vulnerability there—fear. Good. He
should
be afraid of me. “I hope your kingdom rots. I'll burn it to the ground myself.”

Lonnrach's face goes hard, angry. “More threats. I could leave you right here, for as long as I wanted. Maybe I'll shove you in a watertight box and throw you into the sea below until I need you. A thousand years could pass on the outside and you'll still be as youthful as the day I took you. You're at
my
mercy.”

The sea below
. So that's what's down there at the bottom of the cliffs. That's why it sounds like it breathes; it's the waves hitting rock, scraping stone against the base of the escarpment.

Before I can reply, Lonnrach is already back on his own platform, a leap that's at least twenty feet—one I could never hope to attempt. He looks back at me. “You have no choice, Falconer. If this place burns, you'll die with us.”

I
THINK OF
a thousand potential ways of escaping. I try to use my own weight to push the platform closer to the cliffs. I leap up and my feet hit the onyx soil so hard that it sends a jolt through my body, but the platform never so much as budges. It floats steadily through the ravine as if it were a flowing river instead of empty space. The castle and the other buildings are the same distance they were before; never closer or farther.

Minutes or hours pass, but I can never tell which. Now I know why Lonnrach dismisses the concept of time; it doesn't exist here. The light always stays the same: a gray, foggy haze to the atmosphere much like what I'm used to back home. The heavy rain clouds never move, even as the platform flows down the empty space and the landscape changes.

I never see another faery; not even a shadow of a figure in one of the majestic buildings floating in the fissure. This place is barren, empty. If I screamed, no one would hear me.

This must be Lonnrach's strategy: Isolate me, make me defenseless, use me, and then kill me.

As my platform keeps moving, I search for some means of escape—anything. But the ravine is a ceaseless thing, constantly shifting and yet never-ending. I pass an ever-evolving scenery of mountains and forests, all in the same bleak monochrome. I float through fields of glass flowers and forests of black metal trees that are so dark and thick I can see no light beyond them.

It's as if the landscape were a charcoal drawing. The cliffs on either side of me are etched in dark, aggressive strokes, the rock jutting out roughly on either side.

The land was whole, and now it's cracked right down the middle
.