The Vanishing Throne (31 page)

I've never seen the city so quiet, so empty, not even when I went on my late-night hunts. Even then the buildings around me had lights on, servants in the basements gossiping as they completed their chores. Now I walk down the desolate
street and there is no sound, nothing but rain and my footfalls. The buildings around me are immaculate white brick and stone, one right after the other—and without a soul to occupy them. Charlotte Square is a barren place of rich buildings left abandoned.

Down on Princes Street, I stare across the dark, grassy park at the remains of the castle perched on its crag. Nothing but the front part is standing; the rest of the stone stronghold is scattered in pieces across the grass below.

I close my eyes and picture the castle precisely how it was in my memory of
before
. The castle was such a prominent structure in the city, towering right in the center. It was beautiful, its foundation created to look like it was carved out of rock.

When I open my eyes again, the castle is whole. Complete. Beautiful once more. I almost cry at the sight of it.
It's not real
, I remind myself.
This is an illusion
.

The landscape senses my mood and I watch the castle walls dissolve as if water had been thrown onto a painting. The whole parts of the building crumble and fade back into ruin.

I blink back tears and walk the streets of my imagined Edinburgh. It's so cold and empty that I begin to regret coming. I could never be one of those people Catherine described, who go behind their doors for one last glimpse of the places they loved before they die. There's too much pain here, too closely entwined with my guilt.

I begin to notice how false it feels, how limited my imagination is. How the farther out from the city center I
walk, the more my memory of the place begins to blur, and so do the buildings.

As I reach Holyrood, the tenements glimmer as if under water, eventually composing themselves into what I
think
they looked like. All I recall are tall structures, but not the features, not the things that made each one unique. Now they begin to mirror each other. A long row of buildings that look
exactly
the same. I try to change them, to test my memory and recall the nights I ran through these streets on a hunt, but can't. The bricks and stone and mortar simply rearrange themselves into more of the same.

I lose the illusion. I let it all go and picture the buildings as they were when I came back from the
Sìth-bhrùth
. The walls collapse into ruined brick and rubble, completely taken over with moss and ivy.

It's a reminder, a message I have to accept.
This is what you've already left behind. There's nothing else
.

I shut my eyes. My fault. All my fault. All I had to do was reactivate the seal and all of this would still be here. It would all be as it was.

When I open my eyes, I'm in the Queen's Park. The grass is the same pale amber it turns every winter. The muddy trail that leads up to Arthur's Seat is just ahead, the ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel beside me. I breathe in the scent of the park, and the smell is exactly the way it was that night: fire and ash and rain.

Around me, the battle is frozen, a perfectly formed picture of my memory. The fae soldiers have me surrounded. Each of them is stopped in action exactly as they were when
they tried to break through the shield of light that surrounded me from the seal.

At my feet is the seal, how it looked during the battle. I drop to my knees and press my fingertips to the outer edge, to the parts of the clock-face, to the pieces of the compass—then to the symbols Kiaran had me draw. The gears glow with a tawny sheen,
tick tick ticking
in a pleasant hum.

“Aileana.”

I look over my shoulder to see Gavin there; I hadn't even heard him come down the path. He wears the same clothes he did when he went out riding, mud-covered with faint stains of blood.

I can't help it; my gaze immediately goes to his scars, those new features on a face I have memorized over the years. Now I have to leave him again.

“What do you want, Galloway?”

His attention is on the battle all around me and the ruined city in the distance. I watch as he studies the demolished tenements. He stiffens as he scans the battle and takes in the way each soldier is stuck in a fighting stance to attack me.

The girl whose gift is chaos
.

“Why are you out here?” he asks. “Don't do this to yourself.”

I focus on the seal again. It doesn't seem as beautiful as it once was, perhaps because it's simply a product of my memory, not the uncanny fae invention that was so magnificent that I ached to create it.

“Do what?” I ask flatly.

“Surround yourself with this.” Gavin flings a hand to the view of the city. “Bloody hell. Your room I can understand, but the entire damn city?”

“I imagined it because it's all I can think about.” I suppress my irritation, my anger. “How did you even know where to find me?”

“Easy,” Gavin snaps. “I followed the trails of guilt. Which looked like entire streets of destroyed buildings.”

“You came through my door. You followed me here,” I remind him. “Why?”

Gavin sits next to me in the cold grass. He's quiet for so long. I watch his chest as he breathes, the slow inhale and exhale there. Finally, he says, “I needed to explain myself. Why I said those things to you before I rode off.”

I put up a hand. “You really don't need to. I understand.”

“No, you don't understand,” he says tightly. I see how conflicted he is, as if he's debating telling me. “I've spent the last three years convincing myself that this was all your fault.”

I go still. The ache in my chest returns. “Did you?” I speak calmly, so calmly, in a voice that doesn't match how I feel at all.

I've become skilled at making it seem as though emotions don't affect me, that I don't feel anymore. But in this place, the weather doesn't lie. I can't pretend well enough for it to remain unaffected by the turmoil inside me. The clouds darken, heavy and black.

Gavin's attention doesn't waver from me. “You weren't here to deal with the aftermath,” he says. “You didn't see them slaughter everyone we knew, and you weren't there when we lived in ruined buildings that smelled of death. We used to pack up every morning to move again in the hope that they wouldn't find us. And I blamed you. I blamed you every damn day. We needed you, and
you weren't there
.”

I can't breathe. I'm afraid that if I do, I won't be able to control my tears. My eyes burn with them.

The clouds open and it begins to rain, fat droplets that roll off my hair and into my eyes. I don't even feel the cold. I'm empty. “Gavin—”

“Don't. Let me finish.” The anger seems to extinguish inside him. “When I saw you outside the city and you hadn't aged a day, I realized . . . 
Christ
.” Gavin's breathing is hoarse, his body trembling from the cold I can't control. “You're just one person, and I blamed you for not saving the world.”

I watch the raindrops trickle off my fingertips and onto the seal. How can I make him understand? How can I explain to him that Lonnrach took me and I paid for what I did?

Before I realize, my thoughts have changed the landscape again. The hills of the park disappear like a washed canvas and the new place begins to take shape around us. The structure forms into an arched room—

“No,” I whisper, backing away so fast that I collide with a mirror. “No no
no
.”

I twist and strike at the mirror with my fists hard enough to bruise. I claw with my fingernails. I can't
think
. I'm breathing so fast that I can't get in air.

“Aileana!”

Hands grab me from behind, but I wrench myself away. “
Don't
! Don't come near me.”

This is
really
going to hurt
.

“Aileana.” Gavin's calm voice breaks through my panic. He says my name again, crouching beside me. He whispers it over and over, as if reminding me who I am.

I never heard my name in this place. It was never spoken. First I was
Falconer
, and then I wasn't even that anymore. I was Nothing. No one.

Then Gavin's hands are on my arms. I jerk away, but he tries again, so gentle. “You're all right,” he says, and then I'm letting him put his arms around me. I bury my face in his shoulder so I don't have to look. My body is shaking. “You're all right.”

It's not all right. What he did to you, it's not all right
.

“Just breathe,” he tells me. “Breathe.”

Gavin holds me while I try to control myself, to calm myself down. I keep my eyes squeezed shut. I press my fingertips to the bite-marks on my neck. My pulse is beneath those scars. I concentrate on the rhythm, on the way each beat reminds me:
You're alive. You're not really there. This is an illusion
.

Your name is Aileana Kameron and you're alive
.

When I settle down enough, Gavin pulls back slightly. “What is this place?” he asks.

“The prison. Where Lonnrach kept me in the
Sìth-bhrùth
.”

I don't need to see Gavin to sense his surprise. I can feel it in his embrace, how still he is. I open my eyes. This time I'm able to look at the place that was once my prison and bury the fear inside of me. The domed ceiling arches so high above us, every inch of space covered in mirrors. The reflection doesn't show Gavin; it shows me sitting on the floor with my nails digging into Lonnrach's teeth marks as I try to remember. As I
force
myself to remember.

I pull away from Gavin to feel for the twin scars on my own arm. The way the skin is grooved against my fingertips. Eighty-two teeth. Two thousand two hundred and fourteen individual marks.

“The mirrors were there to amplify my memories,” I say, keeping my voice even. “Lonnrach would come here and he'd steal them from me for information. He'd—”I lift my sleeve. “He did this to me. He said he needed my blood to see.”

“Aileana—”

“Aithinne said he only kept me here for a couple of months in fae-time,” I continue, “but it felt longer. I don't remember—” I pause at the memories that threaten to overtake me.

When I speak again, I keep my voice deliberate, almost cold. “Do you understand why I can't forgive you for the wisps, Galloway? You brought me back
here
. After everything
I did to escape, you were the one who made me go through it again.”

Gavin looks stricken. This time, he doesn't reach for me. He doesn't try to touch me. I watch him take in my new scars, the tiny ones interspersed between Lonnrach's. Scars he was responsible for.

“I can't tell you how sorry I am,” he says. “There are no words. Nothing excuses what I did to you.”

Even though I haven't forgiven him yet, his words calm me. They calm me just enough that the mirrored room disappears around us and we're back in the Queen's Park. The soldiers no longer surround us. Gavin and I are alone with nothing but the seal between us.

“You have to know,” I say. “I blamed myself too. I believed you were all dead and thought what happened with Lonnrach was my punishment. I've replayed the last moments in the battle a thousand times. I should have been stronger—”

“No,” he interrupts, reaching to squeeze my palm. “I never told you about my vision. What I saw.”

“What?” I whisper.

“When I finally pieced it all together, I foresaw you attacking Sorcha. She would have won and all this still would have happened. This was always meant to happen. I was just so angry that I couldn't admit to myself that it was never your fault. Not really.”

I don't tell him what I really think: that it feels like the fates use Gavin's Sight to taunt us with visions of future events that we can't prevent. I couldn't stop Scotland from
falling to ruin despite his warnings. What good is being able to see the future if you can't change it?

“So here we are,” I say with a bitter laugh.

“Here we are,” Gavin repeats softly. He looks down at our hands. “Some things can't be prevented. I should have realized that sooner, when I still had the gift.”

That draws my attention. “
Had
?”

“I haven't had a vision since the night you left.”

I make my face go blank, so he can't tell what I was thinking before about his power being more like a
curse
. “I'm sorry,” I say.

Gavin's smile is quick, forced. “Liar.” He takes in our surroundings again. This time, without the soldiers there, I notice how his attention lingers on the landscape. “You never did answer my question about why you came here.”

Because even though it's an illusion, these are still my memories. Because I don't have a home anymore. Because the fae took it from me
. “I just wanted to see it,” I tell him. “Before I leave.”

“Daniel told me.” He pauses. “He told me about the voices, too.”

Death is her burden. Wherever she goes it follows
.

I wish I had never heard Daniel's premonition. I wish I could forget those words.

“I don't want to put the rest of you in danger,” I say.

“What will you do out there?” he asks.

Lonnrach will never stop hunting me. An immortal can afford to be patient; all he has to do is capture me and take me to the
Sìth-bhrùth
again. This time, he'll lock me up and keep
me bound. And when he finds whatever it is he's looking for, he'll come back to finish me off and take my power.