The Vanishing Throne (22 page)

I sigh. This must be a trick. Is there a right answer to this question? “Well, no, but—”

“Good! Anyway, I made these for you, too.” Derrick tosses clothes at me, and I'm still too damn slow from the wisp bites to catch them. They drop to my feet in a heap. “Hunting clothes. Now kindly remove those hideous, ill-fitting ones, clean the foul-smelling wisp slobber off you, and put these on.”

“Brilliant,” I say dryly. “I'll do that.” I look down at the clothes Catherine dressed me in. They don't seem to be her own—they're about two sizes too big and I'm drowning in the shirt. I probably look ridiculous.

“It's all right if you smell bad,” Derrick says serenely. “You're still my favorite.”

He goes right back to singing the bawdy jig he was in the middle of when I came in, a hint for me to close the door and leave him in peace. I respect his wishes and bend to pick up the bundle at my feet.

I lay the clothes out on my bed. The wool is flawlessly woven; I didn't think it was possible for raploch to be this
soft. The stitching is, of course, perfect. The pixie could never do anything less than impeccable work.

Slowly I remove my borrowed clothes, wincing at how my muscles ache. As I do, I notice the new injuries along my arms and legs. The wee bites from the wisps are now scarred over.

The oval mirror in the corner of the room shows me the angles of my body. Even before I became a hunter, I never fit the ideal of beauty expected for a woman in society; my skin was considered so freckled that my governess once advised me to slather myself with cream to achieve smooth ivory skin. Now my peers would have considered me too muscled, the pockmarks and grooves from my healed injuries unfeminine and, in their minds, undesirable.

But after everything I've been through, I'm proud to have a body that's strong, that bears the marks of how much it has endured. No matter how painful those memories might be.

I quickly clean myself up in the basin and pull on my new clothes over my new scars. Just as I'm tucking the shirt into the trousers, the bedroom door opens.

“
Oh
!” Catherine says, stopping short. She has a tray in her hands. “I'm terribly sorry, I expected you to still be in bed.” She frowns, shutting the door behind her. “You
should
be in bed.”

“I've been awake five minutes and you're already mothering me?” I say, raising my eyebrow. I take a closer look at the steaming dish she carries. “Is that food?”

She rolls her eyes and passes me the tray and I set it down. A steak of some kind with a white sauce that looks
utterly unfamiliar. Not at all what I'm used to eating in the morning.

“What is this?” I'm so hungry, I hardly care. I dig in, stuffing the lean meat in my mouth. It could be as bland as scones and it would still taste like the best meal I've ever had.

“Venison. The fae here hunt and bring back the meat for us.”

I almost drop my fork. “The
fae
?”

Catherine regards me patiently. “I like it even less than you do, but we have a truce, and we honor it—as long as they don't kill a human.”

So this truce extends beyond letting the fae torture people in a cave as a test to prove they haven't been faestruck. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. This is a pixie city, after all. It was made by fae, never meant to be a human space. It only makes sense that we would be forced to share it with them.

Derrick belts out a note from inside the closet that sounds like a
very
inappropriate word for a certain part of the male anatomy. Catherine stares at the door. “My god, what's he doing?”

“Sewing,” I say, shoveling another forkful of meat into my mouth in a decidedly unladylike manner. Then I realize what just happened and I gape at her. “Wait—you could
hear
him?”

Catherine lifts the sleeve of her shirt. There, wrapped around her wrist, is a thin strand of
seilgflùr
, the rare thistle that allows humans to see the fae. “Everyone in the city has to wear it.”

“Where did you find it?” I've never known where Kiaran grew the thistle. He always provided my stock, part of which I used for my weapons. Without it, I would never be able to fight the fae. I wouldn't even be able to see them.

“It was a gesture of goodwill. Aithinne told me how to cultivate it before she went to find you,” Catherine says. “So those of us without the Sight would stand some chance of surviving.”

I should have realized it would be Aithinne. Kiaran would never reveal such a thing to a human. “So she taught you all how to grow it?”

“No,” Catherine says distractedly, still listening to Derrick's singing. “Only a single human. I just happened to be the one she chose.” Her eyes linger on the closet door for a moment. “So you just . . . lived with one of them like this?”

I try not to be offended by her tone. Derrick brings out the protectiveness in me, I suppose. He was the first faery I came to care for, the one who taught me that not all the fae had to die.

“He's my friend,” I say shortly.

Catherine lowers her lashes, a flush creeping up her cheeks. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to sound like that. He saved us all by letting us stay here.” She sighs. “I just—I have difficulty trusting them.”

She lets her voice trail off as she looks around the room. She takes in the teak panels along the walls and the worktable beside her—I notice now that it's empty of the metal pieces
I used to make my inventions. Another reminder of how false this place is.

“I'm glad to see your room again,” she says softly. “It makes me feel . . .”

“As if we're back there,” I finish for her. “Just finishing up elevenhours?”

“I do miss tea and shortbread.” A small smile lights her face. “Discussing silly dances and our suitors.”

“Speaking of suitors . . . you married.” I say it lightly, taking another tiny bite of the steak.

She nods. “Daniel. He saved my life, do you know? Mother and I were just outside of Glasgow when the fae took the city.”

I go still. “That must have been terrifying.” I can't even imagine. Not being able to see them, watching people die around them. I should have prepared her better. Damnation, I just sent her away—

“We could hear the screams.” She traces her fingertips along the edge of my worktable. “We weren't close, but even from the road we could . . .”

I set the fork down with a sharp clang. Lonnrach's words from that night are still so clear in my mind.

Destroy everything
.

And the fae did just as he had bid them. They reduced Scotland to nothing more than rubble and ash and Catherine was right in the middle of it. I wasn't there to protect her.

“The fae surrounded the coach,” Catherine continues. “We couldn't see them, but their claws scraped right through the doors. Daniel fought his way inside and made us run.” She flashes a ghost of a smile, small and sad. “He made sure they couldn't find us.”

“Lady Cassilis,” I say. “Is she—”

“She passed last year,” Catherine interrupts, somewhat stiffly. “Couldn't resist the fae when they called.”

I almost tell her that I'm sorry. Despite what Aithinne told me, I can't help but blame myself. In my mind I replay those last moments with the seal, and each second becomes a
should have
. I
should have
figured out the device sooner. I
should have
been stronger when Sorcha invaded my mind. I
should have
pressed that last symbol into place instead of looking to Kiaran for one last goodbye because I wanted so badly to save him.

In the end, I didn't save anyone.

“I miss it here,” Catherine says, moving closer to the window. “No matter how much time has passed, sometimes I still think this is a dream. That it's not real.”

“I used to think that after what happened to my mother,” I say, finishing my food. I settle next to her. “That I would wake up one day and she'd be alive and my life would be tea parties and assemblies again. But then I wonder if I was ever really meant for that world at all.”

“How silly of me.” Her cheeks darken, as if she's embarrassed. “You knew what was out there while I spoke of suitors and dances. I must have looked like such a fool.”

“Never,” I tell her. “Not to me.”

Somewhere a door slams shut and I hear a shout in heavily accented Scots.

Catherine looks annoyed. “That would be my husband winning at whist,” she mutters. “It would seem I need to have another talk with him about his abhorrent behavior. I can't apologize enough for what happened.”

“It's not your fault,” I say tightly. And it might be terribly inappropriate to box my dearest friend's husband in the face for what he did, to say nothing of what he almost called me.

“Bollocks.” I gape at Catherine; I've never heard her use that word before. “They played with your life. You could have died, and I said as much to my fool brother. He should have known a Falconer wouldn't need to be tested. You would be able to resist fae influence just like a Seer.”

I freeze. I had confided in Catherine about slaying faeries, but I had never revealed anything about being a Falconer. “You
know
?”

“Of course I know,” she says with a wave of her hand. “If you thought that was a secret Gavin could keep for three years . . . the man can't even hide where he keeps his best whisky from me. He gives a decent bluff to anyone else, but I find him to be an
awful
liar.”

More laughter erupts from down the hall and I stare at the door that leads to the pixie city. When I imagine Derrick's kingdom, I assume it would accommodate his small size, with buildings that wouldn't fit humans at all. “What does it look like?”

Catherine follows my gaze. “Oh, the city?”

I put a hand up to interrupt her. “Before you say anything else,
please
don't tell me we're in some pocket pixie realm on Skye. All of us shrunk down to the size of bugs, or something.” At Catherine's baffled look, I say, “This is my absurd way of bracing myself.”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” she assures me. “We're still in the human realm. The pixies built the city underwater between the mainland and Skye. They erected tunnels that lead all around the island—” She halts, flashing a devious smile, the same one she's had since we were children. “It seems I'll just have to show you, won't I?”

W
HEN GAVIN
and the others referred to the pixie kingdom as a city, I thought perhaps that was what they simply called it when they came here to live, a familiar word for an unfamiliar place. In fact, it
is
a city. A real city. One so massive I can scarcely believe it has been hidden underwater all this time.

My room is on the fourth deck of a towering beehive-shaped structure beneath the sea. Tall, arching columns form the supporting framework, which is set within the bedrock of the undersea cave system. Those columns appear made of quartz. Upon closer inspection, I notice a glimmer to the rock, a fernlike pattern of inclusions along the surface. It juts out to form rows and rows of balconies with their own arched entrances, each one leading to individual doors—hundreds of them. They make up a structure that curves toward the surface of the water between the Isle of Skye and the mainland.

Above us, some lights twinkle like stars, while others zip back and forth between the uppermost balconies. It takes me a moment to realize they aren't stars; they're fae. More will-o'-the-wisps. My hand immediately touches the deepest bites on my neck, now healed over in a thick scar.

The startling sound of chatter draws my attention back to the ground. It looks so much like the streets of a Scottish city: The cobbled roads are lined with lamps that make them shine. The buildings are tall, towering, and thin as tenements. Between them are houses of flawless white marble. Others are built from the cave stone that resembles sparkling black obsidian.

And there are people—hundreds of people—walking about and smiling and laughing and chatting. They wander the streets through something like a market, with so much produce and food.

From here I can see signs for things I've never seen or tasted before: Egyptian oranges, coconuts from the West Indies. . . . The fae can grow or retrieve anything a human desires. They could create food from nothing, if they wanted. Is this part of their truce with humans?

Catherine steps up beside me. “Extraordinary, isn't it?”

I glance back at the wisps again, watching them weave around each other like hundreds of fireflies. I remember the pressure of their bites, the blinding pain. My hand itches for a weapon for protection, even though the wisps don't seem to notice I'm here. “Aye. Extraordinary.”

Catherine must have heard the catch in my voice, because she immediately looks over in concern. “Are you all right?” She notices the focus of my attention, still on the wisps. “They won't hurt you here without breaking the truce, but if you need to go inside, I understand.”

I can't help my unease. I killed the fae for a year before Lonnrach put me in that prison. My relationship with the fae is marked by violence; I don't trust them, even with the truce.

Lonnrach's voice is unrelenting in my memories. A cruel taunt to the powerless girl in his prison.
Now you know precisely how it feels to be that helpless
.

“No,” I say, more sharply than I intended. “I'm fine.”

“Aileana—”

“You were going to tell me about the city. Please continue.”

Catherine sighs and leans against the balustrade. “We rebuilt most of it. When we arrived, the buildings had been almost completely destroyed.” She half smiles. “And, of course, the remaining ones couldn't fit a human. We kept the structure itself, but the rest is ours.”