The Vanishing Throne (35 page)

I swear she almost smiles. She drops my chin and the temperature rises suddenly. I'm left breathing hard, swaying from dizziness, but I manage to stay standing.

“Why?” I say between breaths.

“You're a Falconer,” she says simply, moving to stand near the fire. It lights her momentarily steady features, her high cheekbones and heart-shaped mouth. A face that is just as immaculately fae as the rest of them.

I hear the double meaning in her statement:
You slaughtered my own
.

I look around for any way to escape. Running into the forest might lead me back to the voices. Fighting the oldest faery in existence might not be terribly wise—

“Look at me,” she snaps. Her voice is a cold blade down my arms; it draws my attention back to her. “My daughter, Aithinne, should
never
have created your kind,” she says. “Your existence has been catastrophic for both humans and the
sìthichean
.” She studies me, her eyes dark and endless. “Surely you can see that?”

I stare at her, cold to my core.
Should never have created the Falconers
.

Created the Falconers
.

I slowly piece together everything I've learned about Aithinne. She fought alongside the Falconers. She was
trapped during their battle with the fae. She has the ability to heal. To bring back the dead. The gift of creation, inherited from the Cailleach. Her mother.

Kiaran's
mother.

“Falconers are human,” I whisper. “The fae can't create humans.”

I recall Daniel's words, so matter-of-fact.
You're not human
.

The Cailleach's eyes linger on me. There are a thousand thoughts in the way she regards me, starting with pity and ending with distaste. Because no matter what, humans will always be beneath the fae, both in strength and experience. We don't have a thousand lifetimes that chip away our emotions.

We burn bright, and we burn out. That's what it means to be human.

The shadows of her cloak snake up to reveal her pale fingers, long and gnarled and spotted with age. She leans down and presses her fingertips briefly to the wet soil, the skin of her hand growing more youthful and pearlescent as I watch.

From the ground grows a single vine. Long and thick as a tree branch, it curls around itself over and over until it forms a seat. The flowers along the vines blossom, the petals a bright, glowing teal.

“Sit.” The Cailleach gestures. “And I shall show you the truth. Everything you desire.”

I hesitate. The fae don't offer anything freely, not without an exchange. “What do you want in return?”

I could die in the chill of the Cailleach's smile. I feel the weight of her years like I'm being eaten up by the ground, a force pulling me down into the earth.

“Ah,
mo nighean
. I have already taken from you,” she murmurs. “I have your life. There is nothing else you could offer me. I could keep you in my forest for an eternity, but instead I offer you truth. This is not something I give freely.”

The version of truth the Cailleach offers is always brutal; I don't want to accept. If what she said earlier is true, then she's drawing out my time here so Aithinne can't find me.

If you don't come back, I'll leave them to Lonnrach's mercy
.

If Kiaran is the Cailleach's son, that isn't a threat I should take lightly. I trust him with
my
life, but not the lives of my friends—not Gavin or Catherine or Derrick.

They mean nothing to me
.

“And if I refuse?” I ask carefully.
Am I allowed to refuse?
To offend a faery is to invoke her anger, and the wrath of the Cailleach is unparalleled.

The Cailleach's expression is ruthless. “It's your choice, of course,” she says lightly, but her words don't match her face. “I may have limited powers in your realm, but I know that everyone you have left is in that pixie kingdom. Surely you want them safe?”

This is what
choice
means to the fae:
Deny me and I will kill everyone you love. Deny me and I will make you sorry
.

I have to accept. I'll find a way to trick the Cailleach if I have to, but right now I can't refuse her offer. “Very well.”

She reaches for me, with a hand that has thinned enough to show bone. Her face changes again, and it is how I imagine Death—skeletal, with eyes like an endless abyss.

The Cailleach touches the crown of my head and before I can do anything, the
brìgh
that was in my hair falls to the ground. The flowers are withered and dead, the glow within the center bulb gone entirely.

Her cavernous eyes meet mine. “It's just you and me,
mo nighean
. My daughter will never find you now.”

I feel the first cold touch of fear, then her fingers brush my face. Her touch is like a blade driving through my skull. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out.

“Open your eyes,” she tells me. “
Look
.”

I do as she commands and I realize we're not in the forest anymore, not near the fire. I'm not sitting in a seat made of vines and flowers. We're in a field surrounded by the dead.

Human bodies lie at our feet, scattered across the dark meadow. Most of them are women. Some have their throats slit, and others lie with their backs to the sky as if they had tried to run. Their blood glistens in the moonlight, the scent of death lingering in the air.

Oh god
. I double over. I almost cast up everything in my belly. I couldn't take a single step and hit grass. “What did this?”

The Cailleach betrays no emotion. “My son.”

Kiaran
. Kiaran did this. “Why?” I can barely speak.

I think of the way Kiaran looks at me when I manage to get through to him, how he looked when he told me
he missed me. The way his lips pressed to the scars at my throat—

I killed humans every day. Until I spoke a vow
.

He did this. He killed all of these people.

“Most humans can't resist the lure of the Wild Hunt,” the Cailleach explains. “Every herd needs to be culled,
mo nighean
, even human ones. This is my son's purpose.”

“This isn't a purpose,” I snap. “It's a pointless slaughter.”

The Cailleach looks disappointed at my response. “Death
always
serves a purpose.”

She moves among the bodies with the grace of water. She leans down and lightly touches the face of a young woman. Before my eyes, the girl's flesh sinks into her skull. Her bones wither and fade to dust. And from the earth rises a single flower, beautiful and perfect.

“My son is the fire that destroys a forest,” the Cailleach continues. “My daughter is the rain that makes it green again. This is the course we tread over and over throughout the ages.”

I want to tell the Cailleach that I don't think mass slaughter is part of the natural order. That I would never be willing to stand aside while the fae hunted in my city—the way I did when Sorcha killed my mother—because that's just what they do. Humans don't exist to be killed whenever the fae desire. Exactly what
purpose
does that serve?

I swallow all my anger back and ask, “Why are you showing me this?”

The Cailleach plucks the flower and crushes it in her fist. It falls like ashes from her fingers. “This is where it all began.
This Hunt, this field, and these deaths. Kadamach declared the war right here.”

The war? “They're Falconers, then,” I say flatly.

“No,” the Cailleach says. “The men of their village all had the Sight. The women who died here couldn't resist the song of Kadamach's Hunt.”

That clenches my stomach even more. If these women weren't Falconers, they would have been helpless. They were just scared humans who got in the way of a Wild Hunt, and Kiaran had slaughtered them like they were nothing. They had no way to defend themselves, no power against him. The men—the Seers—who lie in this field must have died trying to save them.

“And I suppose the fae didn't give a damn about them,” I say bitterly.

She turns her gaze to me, and it's hard, unforgiving. “Plenty of
sìthichean
died on this battlefield alongside your humans.”

Good
, I almost say but don't. “And their deaths weren't
pointless
, either, I suppose?” I say, trying to keep my tone even.

“Don't bait me, child. This was necessary to secure the future of our kind. Kadamach played his part to perfection.”

I rake my gaze across the land, over the hundreds upon hundreds of dead women and men, and I can't control my fleeting, awful thoughts. The one that stands out most is the memory of Lonnrach's words:
You should have killed Kadamach when you had the chance
.

Kiaran's past is littered with the dead; his secrets could fill the spaces between galaxies. He lured humans with the
same song Lonnrach's soldiers used to kill those in my city: my family, the people I knew my entire life. And just like those soldiers, he left humans scattered across the land like waste.

“I don't understand,” I say. “What part?”

“To live the same tale through the ages,” she says softly, almost to herself. Then: “We are all creatures of war,
mo nighean
. Kadamach taught you that, did he not? Battle is in our blood.” The Cailleach turns away, the shadows of her veil crawling like snakes on the ground. “It's how our civilization rose. It's how we became conquerors.”

T
HE CAILLEACH
glides through the lines of bodies, each one sinking into the earth as she does. “Come. We're not finished here.”

In a blink, we're walking down a dirt path between wee stone huts with thatched roofs, the village dark and quiet. Not even a rustle of birds in the trees. Snow falls around us, melting as soon as it touches dirt. The Cailleach moves across the road with the careful, frail walk of a crone, her back hunched, salt-white hair loose around her shoulders. Her skin sinks into her bones again, withered and leathered and old.

Just around the bend is a bonfire. Glowing cinders rise into the sky and snuff out, leaving behind the scent of burning yew. Thirteen women are gathered in a half circle around the dancing flames. Their voices fill the night, some in winged whispers, others in firm voices, all in a language I've never
heard before. They wear crudely dyed layered hoods and dresses to protect them from the cold.

I recognize one of the women.
Aithinne
. Her eyes glow silver and gold in the firelight, her hair sleek and black as ink. She looks like a goddess, shining in the moonlight. A falcon perches on her bared shoulder. Not even its formidable claws can puncture her invulnerable fae skin. It seems content to rest there, its wings tucked in, its back straight and proud.

Aithinne raises a hand to silence the harsh voices of the women around her. That's when I look at their faces, the tears, the anger, their palpable grief. I've never seen a group of people look so helpless. So
hopeless
.

“Who are they?” I ask the Cailleach.

“The first Falconers,” she says. “They were the sole female survivors of their village. My daughter sang the song that lured them here.”

I stiffen, expecting the worst after what the Cailleach showed me in the field. When the Cailleach promises truth, it always hurts. It lifts the veil from the secrets people keep and strips everything bare until you wish you'd never seen it. You wish you had never accepted.

Aithinne manipulated these women to come here. After what I learned about Kiaran I'm half expecting her to murder them right in front of me.
Don't make me hate you
, I think.
Please don't make me hate you
.

I study the women, the smudges of dirt on their faces, their clothes splattered and smudged with blood, the tear
tracks down their cheeks. They are not warriors, not the hardened Amazons of myth I thought they'd be. Instead, they're scared women who have just lost their families, who have learned firsthand how brutal the fae can be.

When Aithinne speaks, it's in another language—and yet I understand the words. The Cailleach's doing.

“I have called you all here to reach an accord,” Aithinne says in a commanding voice I've never heard from her. One woman begins to protest, but Aithinne's power cuts across the bonfire like a stock-whip to shut her up. “I didn't give you permission to speak.”

I flinch, remembering Lonnrach's voice in my ear, whispered through sharp teeth.
I didn't say you could move
.

This isn't the Aithinne I've come to know, the Aithinne who saved my life. Who offered to take my memories of Lonnrach if it eased my pain. She sounds like
him
, like she doesn't give a damn about humans.

More than that, she stands with all the confidence of a warrior, a leader: shoulders thrown back, chin high and proud, those uncanny eyes full of fire. The falcon on her shoulder pulls back its wings and beats them briefly. She is an unrelenting presence, powerful, terrifying, like her mother.

This is the Aithinne who had never been trapped underground for two thousand years of torture.

She's speaking again, circling the fire and watching each woman with that unreadable gaze. “None of you have need to fear me. I'm not the one who slaughtered your families.” She comes to a stop, her skin shining. She is magnificent,
frightening, and so very inhuman. “But I can offer you vengeance against the one who did.”