The Vanishing Throne (26 page)

My chest aches at his words. I don't need to find where Lonnrach marked that memory on me. I don't need to see it to recall the satisfaction I once got from a kill, the hunger to kill again. It was what I lived for; it was my purpose. I basked in the hunt as if I needed it like air.

“You don't trust me,” I say, already knowing his answer.

The truth is I don't blame him.
I made you the same as me
, Kiaran once said.
The same
. Now I wonder if he meant himself as Kiaran, or if he meant Kadamach.

Gavin's features soften, as if he reads my thoughts. “That's not it. When the day comes that we need to fight, you're the one I want by my side.” He takes me by the shoulders. “I do trust you. I do. Just not with this.”

This time when he leaves, I let him go.

Gavin doesn't know about the mirrored room. He doesn't know that it carved the insatiable need to kill right out of me, the need that made me go out every night with a constant whispering voice that said
hunt kill maim
.

He doesn't know that I saw that part of me in a mirror, and it scared the hell out of me, too.

I sense Catherine come up behind me. “What did he say to you?” I hear the anger in her voice, the protectiveness, even now that she knows what I am.

“Nothing I didn't deserve.”

C
ATHERINE SUGGESTS
we wait in my room in case I need to grab my weapons and ride out quickly. She has Tavish sit on the settee while he watches Gavin and the others in his vision. He remains quiet, his marble eyes wide and glassy.

Catherine and I lean against the pillows on the window seat, watching the storm outside in the fake Edinburgh. Swirling rain and ice smack against the window with tremendous force. The street lamps are all lit along the pavement, though it's barely dusk.

I want to open the window, but I'm afraid the illusion might shatter. I'm afraid the Edinburgh of my imagination
might disappear to reveal the glittering rock that makes up the vast underground city.

And yet . . . I'm tempted to test that. Could I explore the Edinburgh built entirely from my imagination? Just me alone in the place I helped destroy.

“You could make the sun shine,” Catherine says, resting back against the wall and watching the rain with me. “Or make rainbows. Two or even three if you wanted.”

I know she's only asking me this so I can help take her mind off what might be happening to Daniel, Gavin, and Lorne. As if by shifting the weather's illusion into something serene, it would be a comfort, however small. I want to try—just for her. But I'm held back by the longing to keep Edinburgh exactly as I recall it, downpour and wind and all.

“What if I don't want rainbows?” I ask her, feeling the cold draft every time the wind pounds the rain against the window. It's so real I find it hard to believe that we aren't really there. “What if I want to remember Edinburgh storms the way they were? They used to last for days, remember? Weeks, sometimes.”

I look past her to Tavish, rigidly seated on the settee, his alabaster eyes unblinking. He's still in the vision, entirely focused on the place where he's trained his Sight. I could wave a hand in front of his face or shout at him and he would never even wake. It takes touch to draw him out again.

Tavish is framed by the open doorway that leads to the pixie city, the light of a thousand other doors rising to the very top of the hive structure. They each create a thousand
worlds, some pockets of our old lives. I wonder at which point the magic that formed those worlds cracks and bends and eventually reveals the truth: that none of it is real.

“Yes,” Catherine says dryly. “I never could go outside in the wind without breaking an umbrella.”

“What did you create behind your door?” I ask her, not wanting chatter about umbrellas or rainbows anymore. It only serves to draw our attention away from this world we live in now, where the people we love are always in danger. “Your bedroom, too?”

Gavin says I can't bring back the dead, that I can't live in an imagined world where my mother is still alive, but what if I opened my window and the fake Edinburgh didn't disappear back into the cave? Could I go in and decide never to come back out?

“Sometimes,” Catherine says softly. “Or it's the garden at our estate in Ayr during springtime, when bluebells cover the ground there.” She pauses. “Right now it's a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean, warm and calm, the waves lapping around me. It's always sunset there. I make the sky burn red.”

I smile at her description. “You've never been to the Mediterranean.”

“No.” Her own smile is sad. “I used to read Father's journals and imagine I was there. He wrote once about how it was always warm and it hardly ever rained. I wanted to travel there someday.” She traces the carvings on the windowsill that Derrick had scraped into the wood when he
thought I wouldn't notice—back in that other room, my real room. “Now I wonder if there's even a Cyprus left. If the fae killed everyone there, too.”

“Perhaps there is,” I say, suddenly guilty that I brought all this up for her.

Catherine asked me to summon rainbows, but I reminded her of all the things she lost. I sometimes wonder if Lonnrach stole me away to that mirrored room to steal the hope from me—however small it was to begin with—at the same time he stole my memories.

I try to hold on, just for Catherine. “Maybe the fae wouldn't care enough for such a small island.”

“Maybe.” She says it with a flash of a forced smile for my benefit. As if she understood exactly what I was trying to do. We both know Cyprus is likely gone, just like everywhere else.

“Do you ever wish you could stay on the boat without coming out?” I can't help but ask. “In your imagined Cyprus?”

“Humans can't survive in the worlds they build for long,” she says. “We're able to create landscapes with our minds, but only the fae have the power to make whatever they want behind their doors. They use it to supply us with food and materials.

“For us, water turns to ash in our mouths. Food turns to rock. Even things we bring inside must be eaten quickly before they rot. Some people go into the places they create just to die there. They find it easier than—” She turns sharply to Tavish, a flush creeping along her cheeks. But he is still deep in the vision, blind eyes wide.

“What is it?”

“Tavish's wife,” she says in a low voice, barely above a whisper. “They lost their son when the purge took Aberdeen. When she came here, she swore she could bring back the wee lad, and created a place beyond the door where they could all live. Tavish went in to pull her out, but he couldn't find her. She had created a countryside that spanned for miles.”

I swallow hard. “If he couldn't find his wife, how do you know she's dead?”

Catherine looks out the window again. Her eyes are wet, but the tears don't fall. Perhaps, like me, she's taught herself not to cry. “When we die, the places we imagine through our doors change back to the cave. And those inside are no longer hidden.”

Oh god
. Rain suddenly batters the window. I had forgotten what my emotions can do in this place. The storm intensifies, shaking the room until the glass crackles and the frame strains.

Catherine shifts closer and puts her hand on my shoulder, the way she did when we were children. She doesn't say anything; she doesn't need to. She knows me better than anyone.

Tavish's strained gasp startles us. “
Damnation
.” He almost bolts up, then sits back down so hard that the legs of the settee groan at the force.

Beside me, Catherine's body tenses. Her breathing hitches. “Tavish?” She stands, reaching for his arm. “What is it?”

He doesn't hear her; he's still too deep in the vision. “No, they're too close. You're just going to run into them there. Don't—”

Catherine grips his arm harder. “
Tavish
!” He blinks, and his eyes go back to normal, the same startling green they were when I first met him.

He stands so fast that he stumbles. He grips the arm of the settee, looking nauseated and weak. “They're riding into a trap there. The fae are going to cut them off once they get to the cliffs.”

I'm already on my feet, grabbing the sword Aithinne gave me. I wrap the belt around my waist and buckle it closed. “Don't worry,” I say to Catherine. “I'll bring them home.”

Tavish looks up. “You'll
what
?”

I stride to the closet and knock twice before opening. Derrick looks up from his pile of silks. “Well, look at you! Sword at the hip, murderous expression. Going out for a slaughter?”

I smirk. “Going out to
save
people.”

Derrick rises to hover in front of me. “A change of pace for you.” He grins. “I like it. What do you need?”

“Find Kiaran for me,” I say. “Tell him he gets to stab something.”

Derrick wrinkles his nose. “I was hoping for a more exciting task, but fine.
Fine
. I'll go get the bastard.”

He leaves so fast that all I see is a streak of light out the door. I follow him, snatching up my freshly filled blunderbuss
on the way out of the room. As I'm slinging the holster across my back, Tavish stops me. “You're not going out there.”

“And you're going to stop me . . . how?”

Tavish raises an eyebrow. “Look, lass, I understand wanting to help, but there's nothing you can do.”

Aithinne's laugh comes from behind us. “He's so handsome, but not too bright,” she says fondly, as if he were a pet. “And he still hasn't learned never to underestimate a woman with a sword and a firearm.”

I turn to see Kiaran and Aithinne striding across the balcony toward us, Derrick just behind them. Aithinne flashes Tavish her most winning smile, which looks more than a bit frightening. “Hullo!” she says to both of us serenely. “We're here to rescue your friends, and all their limbs.” A pause, then: “Well, no. I can't promise
all
their limbs, but most, surely . . .”

“What my sister is trying to say,” Kiaran interrupts, “is that we'll bring them back alive. Mostly in one piece.” I love the way he looks at me then, with expectation, a hint of a smile.
God, I missed this
. “Ready?”

Yes
. “Always.” I ignore Tavish's bewildered expression and ask, “Where do we need to go?”

W
E RIDE
for the cliffs on the west end of the island. Ossaig runs at full speed, charging hard across the land. Skye in winter is icy; all of the branches and grass are framed in thin crystals that crunch beneath her hooves as we make our way up the hills.

Trees have fallen across the slopes, their branches crackling and groaning around us. I can't help but admire the way Kiaran rides beside me. There's such command, such calm in how he holds himself—the way he does everything.

I force my attention back to our route through the forest. Snow falls across the icy terrain, melting against my face. The atmosphere Ossaig creates as she runs is heated. Her coat steams, as do my clothes and my skin. I rest my hand against the warm, soft fur along her neck and whisper a single word:
Hurry
.

She speeds forward. She doesn't tire; I never even hear her breathe. But I feel the movement of her mechanical parts
against my thigh, the way they pump the gold liquid through her veins in a constant beat.

Even the snowy landscape in Skye is beautiful, unearthly. The hills are dusted and capped with white, the grassy meadows coated in a fine layer of frost. We head through the line of trees into an area of woodland that's thick and difficult to see through. It's a tangle of sharp-limbed branches, covered in snow so fresh that it hasn't been disturbed yet.

Branches tug at my hair, my coat, snapping off around me. Ossaig runs silently, her hooves barely touching the forest floor. I dart a glance behind us and there aren't even prints left in the snow. It remains undisturbed, as if she floated right over it.

“Head north.”

Kiaran's voice startles me. I look over. “What? But Tavish said—”

“He's right,” Aithinne says. “I hear them just over the hills.” She flashes a smile at Kiaran, catching up to us with a quick urging of her mare. “So you're not completely unobservant after all, little brother.”

He doesn't look at her. “Being forty seconds older than me doesn't give you an excuse to call me
little
.”

I don't hear a bloody thing—only groaning, cracking branches. Not even birds or rustling animals. Still, I lightly tug Ossaig's mane and urge her to follow Kiaran and Aithinne. In our way are trees with thick branches, swaying from the breeze. Past the woods up ahead I can see a clearing. Ossaig races toward it and we explode through the trees. She stops short
above a high cliff. Below, the sea batters the rocks in a violent swell. Mist sprays my face and adheres like ice to my skin.

I scan the rocky edge and spot figures in the distance—three of them—with a contingent of fae at their backs. About fifty total.
Oh, hell
.

We stop and Kiaran says to Aithinne, “It's been an age since you've seen a battle. Do you think you can keep up?”

Aithinne looks smug. “Of course I can keep up. I'm amazing. I always was the better fighter.”

“Better at cheating,” he mutters, watching the Seers hurtling toward us with the army at their backs.

“Oh, please. Accusing me of cheating is a sore loser's excuse for not
winning, mo bhrathair
.” She smiles at him. “You need to improve your footwork. It's terrible.”