The Vanishing Throne (37 page)

“I can't,” Aithinne says. “I'm sorry, I—”

“You need my blood,” he says, sounding so mechanical.

He draws his knife from its sheath and brings the blade down across his palm. I flinch at the same time Aithinne does, watching the blood pool there. Watching how the cold has gone out of his gaze until all that's left is the part of him that I've come to care for.
Kiaran
.

“Take it,” he tells her. “Take however much you need.”

If you're willing to do your part, I'll do mine
.

I never thought I'd hear you offer that again
.

His blood. Kiaran offered it for her, and he offered it again to bring me back. This was the moment that separated Kiaran from Kadamach. He was willing to try to save us.

“
Kadamach
.” Aithinne's commanding voice cuts across the darkness, unyielding. She's not swayed, even though her gaze is full of pity, grief. I can tell she wants to help him.

“Kadamach,” she says again, more gently this time. “I said I can't.”

“Why?” He speaks in anger, but I can hear the defeat, the breaking of hope.

“Because,
mo bràthair
,” she replies, “I can't bring back anyone you've killed.”

A breath explodes out of me. He killed her. He
killed
her.

I didn't love her nearly enough
.

No wonder he pulled away from me when I told him that Kadamach was capable of love. A sentimental fool, he called me. Because he had already killed the woman he loved.

“Why?” I don't know if I'm asking myself or the Cailleach. “Why would he do that?”

“I told you,” the Cailleach said stonily. She watches the scene before us as if she's seen it a thousand times, without an ounce of compassion. As if she doesn't care how much her son grieves, and finds it a bit disappointing that he does at all. “Kadamach was not made to love. His gift is death.”

Tell me, how much do you need to learn about my past before you understand that there isn't a single part of me that's human?

He may not be human, but as I watch him mourn the woman he lost—the woman he loved—I see that she left him with some small piece of humanity.

I was mistaken before. The first emotion I saw in Kiaran wasn't longing; it was shame.

The truth is we're both running from whatever fate has been decided for us. He is the faery whose gift is death and I am the girl whose gift is chaos.

We go together like fire and black powder.

Wherever she goes, death follows
.

I wonder whether the voices Daniel heard were talking about all the people I've lost, or if they were talking about
Kiaran. Perhaps he's my curse. Perhaps I'm his weakness. Together we left the world in ruins.

Kiaran runs his fingers over the woman's face again, tracing the scar that bisects her eyebrow. I watch him want her. She made him
feel
and he lost her and I ache for him.

“I couldn't stop myself,” he says. His voice is calm, collected, but I watch the rise and fall of his shoulders, the shuddered breath there. “I couldn't—”

“Shh. I know.” Aithinne kneels next to him. Their foreheads press together, and for a moment I imagine them when they were young, sitting like that, sharing secrets the way twins do. “I know.”

“Will you do something for me, Aithinne?” Kiaran says, closing his eyes briefly. “No one else is capable of transferring power. Take it out of me. Whatever it is that compels me to hunt. I don't want it.”

She pulls back. For a moment, I think she will refuse him, but I know she won't. That's not how their story begins.

“I can't take all of it or you'll die,” she says. Kiaran turns away, as if expecting to be disappointed, but she grips his arm. “But I can take just enough that you can make a choice. Who you kill, and if you don't want to. You won't need the Wild Hunt to survive anymore.”

Kiaran nods, and Aithinne stares at him. I can see that she loves him. No matter what he's done, or how brutal their war became, she still loves her brother. “I have to take away the part of you that holds power here.”

“I know that,” he tells her.

“No. Kadamach—” She grips his hand firmly. I can see how that surprises him, as if she hasn't touched him with affection in the longest time. “You need to understand. The part of you that's Unseelie will be gone,” she says. “You won't be able to enter the
Sìth-bhrùth
after this and you'll have to give up your kingdom. One step beyond neutral territory will kill you.”

“So be it,” he says.

A memory flashes of Kiaran and me at this loch, what seems like a million years ago now. We sat on those very rocks, Kiaran gazing with longing across the water.
It's a sacrifice I made, Kam. I can never go back there
. His choice. It was his choice to start over in the human realm.

Then I blink and the Cailleach and I are by the bonfire in the forest again. I am still sitting in the chair of vines and blue blossoms, my skin as cold as frost. The Cailleach releases me, looking older and frailer than ever, the thin bones of her shoulders jutting out beneath her shadow cloak. She leans on her staff and looks into the fire, the flames reflecting in that empty, dark gaze.

“What happened?” I ask. “When Aithinne took out his powers?”

“My daughter, young fool that she was, didn't realize that when you remove power, you need a vessel to hold it. Someone else has to accept it.”

“Or?”

The Cailleach's thin body shudders. “It becomes divided,
mo nighean
. You already know this from experience: As each Falconer died, their power spread among the survivors.

“My son's power went into every
sìthichean
who resided in the
Sìth-bhrùth
. Seelie became Unseelie; those with the power of creation now craved death. They can't survive without killing, just as my son couldn't. When he made that choice, the kingdoms fell. My children destroyed them both.”

I think back to the mirrored room, when I finally broke my silence with Lonnrach and asked him why he hated Kiaran so much.

Your Kiaran is the worst sort of traitor, and his sister is no different. Now it's up to me to fix their mistakes
.

Lonnrach was Seelie; Aithinne was his queen, and she sacrificed her throne. So did Kiaran. Now I understand what Lonnrach meant when he referred to their
mistakes
.

Aithinne's words to me in the destroyed Edinburgh flash in my memories.
You're not responsible for something we started
.

Kiaran and Aithinne began it all: the Falconers, the battle that trapped Lonnrach's soldiers underground. They're the reason every fae I ever hunted existed for nothing but the kill. Lonnrach even mentioned the small number of humans the fae lured into the underground were barely enough to keep them all sated—because they needed that human energy to
live
.

There's just one last thing. One final truth I need to hear. “What did you mean,” I say quietly, “when you said you took from me, too?”

The Cailleach is a sunken shell, thin and cavernous. The grip of her shadow cloak slips to reveal her collarbones. Her ribs are visible beneath the thin skin of her chest.

“You don't really think the
baobhan sìth
could have killed all the descendants of the Falconers, did you?” she says in a
dark whisper. “Not with my son protecting them. His powers are far greater than hers.”

I swear my heart stops. I can't breathe. I stare at the Cailleach's aging form and the old rage inside me stirs. I suddenly recall Sorcha's words on the snowy cliffs when she froze all those soldiers. That she was risking
her
wrath by warning Kiaran.
Her
.

“You helped her slaughter the Falconers. Didn't you?”

“Aye,” the Cailleach says. “I used what power I have left in your world to interfere.” I think she's looking at me, but I can't see beyond the hollowed eyes of her skull. “I helped her take your mother from you.”

In an instant, the rage inside of me surges, unbidden, unrelenting. I had almost forgotten how it felt, how the heat of it sets my skin aflame, how it whispers in my ear and tells me my purpose is vengeance. Retribution.

I rise from the vine seat with the slow, deliberate movements of a killer. There's no fear in the Cailleach's gaze. No remorse. It makes me want to slay her slowly. And without a weapon, I'll do it with my bare hands.

I leap for her, poised to break that thin, skeletal neck. A bolt of lightning strikes the ground in front of me. It cracks the earth with a tremendous clap, and the force of it knocks me off my feet, sends me sprawled on my back. I release a breath through the agonizing tightness of my chest.

“This is the way it has to be,” the Cailleach says, approaching me. “My daughter must have her powers restored.”

“I don't think so.”

I surge toward her, my fingers closing around the delicate skin at the Cailleach's neck. But she moves fast, smacking her staff into the side of my face. I hit the ground again, clawing into the spongy dirt there. Blood drips from my lips and splatters against the dark ground.

The Cailleach grabs me by the front of my shift, picking me up with little difficulty. Her talon-like nails dig into my skin.

I meet the cold abyss of her gaze and try to hit her, to do
something
, but my arms are pinned at my side, dead weights. The taste of her power is an excruciating thing, all needle-like electricity on my tongue.

“You can't best me,” she says. “So I'd advise you to simply accept your fate. Wouldn't that be easier?”

I find myself able to move my tongue, my lips. I mutter, “I'll kill you first.”

The Cailleach sighs and releases me. Though I'm standing, I still can't move to strike her. She looks frail again, so frail. As if she might break. If I were a better woman, I'd pity her for her apparent weakness. But I'm not a better woman. I'd rather take advantage of her delicacy and use it against her.

“I'm dying,
mo nighean
,” she says in that soft, shaky old woman voice.

I hear the slightest tremor of fear there. The fear of an immortal creature, who has been alive since the creation of mountains and the movement of glaciers, who is finally,
finally
facing the uncertainty of her death.

“When I chose to reproduce,” she continues, “I gave up my immortality. Like my mother, who was the Cailleach before me.” She holds out her hand, the skin gnarled and old again. “This is the curse of my lineage. I die the same as a human, only more slowly. I must have someone to take my place before I am gone.”

Lonnrach's words about the
Sìth-bhrùth
come back to me.

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

It's falling apart . . . falling apart . . .

Without a monarch, the
Sìth-bhrùth
will wither. Someone must take her place
.

The Cailleach—or perhaps the one who came before her—created the worlds, the seas, the landscape. She made them possible. If she dies, they'll go with her. If the
Sìth-bhrùth
is breaking apart, the same might happen to the human realm. She's formed them both with her hammer and staff.

All at once, my blind rage dissipates like smoke. I can think more clearly. “If I die,” I say, “and Aithinne's powers are restored, Kiaran's won't be. That can't be undone. The fae will still be corrupted.”

The Cailleach draws up, her face shuttered. Her young self returns: beautiful and formidable and strong—and even more frightening. “Aye. That's the path your . . . 
Kiaran
chose. He can't be fixed.”

Fixed
. As if he were broken.

“Kadamach was always stronger than Aithinne,” the Cailleach says, backing toward the fire. “He had proven
himself worthy to take my place. Until he fell in love with that
human
.” Her eyes are hard, glinting like steel. “My daughter might have created the Falconers, but your death undoes that. My son . . . for Kadamach to fall in love is unforgivable.
Weak
.” She spits the word as if it's a curse. “He's not fit to rule.”

“It isn't
weak
to love someone, or to have compassion.”

Do you think me weak because I feel?

No. Never. That's what makes you Kam
.

“You're a fool, girl,” the Cailleach snaps, folding her frail body closer to the fire. “This is the way it's always been, the curse my lineage has carried for ages. Two children born to power. Each rules a separate kingdom to prove their worth. The strongest one always begins the war and kills the other. Kadamach failed in his task.”

And kills the other
.

Aithinne's voice echoes in my mind from that day in Edinburgh, her voice all too knowing and sad.
We are all the stag
.

She understands fate. The life of a hunter and the death of its prey. Because she and Kiaran were always destined to be one or the other.

Yet Aithinne let herself love the brother who was supposed to kill her.

“You would let that happen,” I say tightly. “You would let your children go to war?”

Her teeth flash, razor-sharp. “Why wouldn't I?
My
mother did.”