The Vanishing Throne (39 page)

“
No
.” Aithinne suddenly squirms against him. “Don't let anyone see me like this.”

“Take her behind your door, Seer,” Derrick says. “I'll stitch her up myself.” A wee grin crosses his face. “I'll even be gentle.”

“You'd better be,” Aithinne breathes.

Now that that's settled, I ask, “Where is Kiaran?”

Gavin and Derrick both look to the water. I follow their gaze across the beach, to the ocean waves tumbling in. Kiaran stands fully clothed, the waves around his knees.

He's staring out to the horizon. Blood trails from his hands in the water behind him. Then he looks over to the beach, and his eyes meet mine. My heart drops. His eyes.
His eyes
. The look in them reminds me so much of Kadamach. The deep, never-ending darkness in them. The hopelessness.

“He went out there when Aithinne couldn't bring you back,” Derrick says.

I'm about to go get him when Aithinne grasps my wrist. Her eyes are still unfocused, but somehow she finds the strength to pull me down until her lips are at my ear. Her message is whispered for me only. “Today was a reminder that he'll lose you someday.” Her next words are spoken with regret: “Falconers always die young. Always.”

She loses consciousness and Gavin turns to take her inside.

My gaze meets Kiaran's again and it's like the entire world dissolves away.
I know
, I want to tell him.
I know everything
.

He looks away from me sharply, as if he heard my thoughts. Maybe he did. Before I can stop him, he strides out of the water to the dark entrance of the cave.

Later that evening, I stare at the pile of pieces on my worktable, a collection Derrick has no doubt been amassing during my entire three-year absence. There are broken flintlock pistols and watch fobs and pinions and screws, scraps of metal from various sources.

“They're for you to work on,” Derrick had said, as he fussed over me after stitching up Aithinne. “Look at all the shiny ones! Those are my favorites.”

I think what happened to me frightened him, though he'd never say so. Aithinne had healed my body right away, but she had spent several hours searching for me through the veil. It seemed like so much longer, as though the Cailleach and I had been drifting in and out of memories for an eternity.

“I need to be alone for a while,” I tell Derrick. “Just to understand what happened.”

His wings flick together. “You want me to be quiet?”

I smile and shake my head. “
Alone
alone.” I brush a hand down his wings. “Can you go and check the wards again?”

I can't help but be worried about the Cailleach. Even though Aithinne told her she didn't want the throne, the Cailleach doesn't strike me as someone who takes no for an answer.

I may have limited powers in your realm, but I know that everyone you have left is in that underground kingdom. Surely you want them safe?

“
Fine
,” he mutters. “But you had better tell me everything later.”

He flies from the room in a stream of light. I sigh and look out the window. It's snowing again in the fake ruined Edinburgh. My house is the only one in the square still left standing. From here, I can see the destroyed walls of the castle—the way the vines have overgrown in what was once the gardens on Princes Street.

I consider wishing the room in some other place. Argentina, perhaps. Or the West Indies. Somewhere warm. Somewhere that looks nothing like Scotland, where I can sink my toes into sand and forget for a while.

But then I look outside and watch the snow fall onto the pavement that no longer exists and I wish for nothing else.

One of the cogs Derrick was just handling rolls to the floor with a sharp rap that draws me from my reverie. I scoop it up and place it among its metal companions. My eyes rove over the shapes, the way they fit together.

Once I would have been able to piece them together with little trouble at all. It never took any planning or forethought; building came as naturally to me as breathing. Inventing new weapons was like putting together a complex puzzle—an exciting new discovery. At the very least, it staved off my nightmares.

Now I don't even have that small bit of comfort. Today the shapes seem foreign. I can't figure out if they fit together. I don't know what to make, or how to make it.

I pick up a piece and hold part of an old clock-face.
What would I do with you
?

Without meaning to, I feel the power inside me uncoil. It flows through the veins of my arms, down my wrist, and pushes out of my palm, its heat warping the metal. The hands of the clock-face spring up and twist to become petals. The other metal parts curve around it to form a flower stem made of glowing, melted gold.

It's beautiful. I'm in awe. I made that.
I made it
.

A swift knock at the door breaks my concentration and I drop the golden flower to the carpet with a thump.

The bedroom door behind me opens and clicks softly closed. “
Derrick
,” I sigh, turning in my chair. “I
told
you—”

My breath stops. Kiaran. He's still soaked from the waves and the rain. His clothes drip onto the carpet. Now that I have the Sight, I realize just how much he shines, a tawny sheen to his glistening skin. And his eyes are so luminous, bright. I was wrong to compare the color to lilac. The flower pales in comparison.

His hand is bound with a torn scrap of linen, blood seeping through the fabric from a cut like Aithinne's that still hasn't healed.

I stare at the crimson stain blossoming through the white material and remember him stroking the dead Falconer's face, leaving a streak of red against her tan skin. I flinch and turn back to the metal pieces, not even seeing them.

What do I say?
I don't even know how to begin. “How's your hand?”

Oh, for god's sake
.

Kiaran doesn't answer. His boots thump across the carpet, and suddenly he's close to me, so close that we're almost touching. “What happened on the other side?” he asks.

When I don't respond, he puts a hand on my cheek and turns me to face him. His eyes are so different than they were in the past. Not
empty
. “Kam?”

What do I tell him? The truth the Cailleach showed me? Kiaran tried so hard to hide from that part of himself. He changed his name. He sacrificed his throne. He gave up everything, and I wasn't supposed to know about it until he was ready to tell me.

The way he looked down at the other Falconer, the way he touched her . . . I wasn't supposed to see that, either. I was an intruder in his most intimate and private memories. Just like Lonnrach was in mine.

I pull away from him and watch the snow fall again in big fluffy flakes that cover the ground and turn trees white. “I'm sorry,” I say.

“
Kam
.” His voice is hard. “Tell me.”

Just don't look at him
.
“I saw the Cailleach.”

If I weren't listening, I might not have heard his sharp intake of breath. The air between us turns cold. He moves away. “Then she offered you something. I assume it wasn't life.”

The snow falls harder, harder now. Not even the front steps of the house are visible. “She offered me truth.”

The silence between us stretches vast; it seems like hours. If I were to look at him again, I know I'd find his expression cold and calculating as he decides what to say next. Kiaran is careful like that.

“I see,” he finally says.

And that's it. He doesn't explain; he doesn't need to. He knows what I saw and what I learned.

“Why did you kill her?” I keep my gaze on the blizzard outside, the intensifying weather, even though I can barely see the ruins of the city through it. “That's the only thing I don't understand.”

I don't need to explain who I'm speaking of. He knows. I can tell by the way he tenses beside me, by the way he goes so quiet.

“Nothing had ever surprised me like she did,” he says. He stands by my chair and watches the snow fall. “I never thought I was capable of feeling anything until I met her. I never thought I could . . . want anyone. Not the way I desired her.”

But you murdered her
, I almost point out. I don't say anything; I keep my gaze on the snow piling high outside, lit gold from the street lamps. “Not even Sorcha?” I ask tentatively, and then wish I hadn't. It's just a guess, a stupid guess.

Kiaran looks at me sharply but I don't meet his gaze. “Did she show you that, too?”

I wish I wasn't right. I didn't want to be. Tears prick behind my eyes. “She didn't have to,” I say. “I've seen the way Sorcha looks at you.”
The same way I look at you
.

Kiaran's hand curls into a fist. “Sorcha was my consort,” he says evenly.

My fingers brush the scar that holds the memory of when I first met Sorcha, when I first realized she and Kiaran knew each other.
You're still bound by your vow to me
.
Feadh gach re.
Always and forever, remember?

“Then your vow—”

“It's an old custom to make a vow to one's consort. So I said the one that bound us together.”

He made you think he cared about you. Kadamach doesn't give a damn about anyone, least of all you
.

I wish Kiaran had told me all of this before when we ran through the streets at night and killed monsters together. None of it would have mattered then because Kiaran was my means to an end. He was how I planned to achieve my vengeance.
Teach me everything you know and I'll tear out her heart for what she did to my mother. Tit for tat
.

But now . . . now I wish he had no past, that he was a slate wiped clean the moment he saved my life and whispered six words:
We're going to kill them all
. Then it wouldn't hurt so damn much that the faery who murdered my mother was also his consort.

“How did you meet the Falconer, then?” I ask, not wanting to talk about Sorcha anymore.

A slight smile plays on his face. “She tried to kill me.”

Most people would be dismayed by an attempted assassination, but Kiaran seems to regard it as either flirtation or flattery—possibly both. “And that must have warmed the cockles of your dark Unseelie heart.”

“Of course not,” Kiaran says. “But after several attempts I began to admire her tenacity.” His face softens. “That was the first emotion I'd experienced in a thousand years and I wanted to
know
her.”

Something in me stirs, something I haven't felt in a long time. I hardly recognize it at first, it's so foreign to me: I'm
jealous
. I knew about the other Falconer and that Kiaran loved her, but listening to this is like a knife twisting through my gut.

I don't say anything; if I do, I'm not certain I could keep the jealousy out of my voice.

“We met in secret for months. Until one of my subjects brought me a Seer,” he says. “It was one of my amusements: to tear out their eyes before I killed them, just to see what their last vision was.”

I try not to picture it, and I fail.

“The vision was of me killing
her
.” Kiaran speaks so mechanically, as if he's practiced this. He isn't watching the snow fall; he's reliving his memory, the moment of his past that changed everything. “I thought I could prevent it from coming true if I stopped seeing her.” His jaw clenches and he looks down. “If I stopped hunting humans.”

He goes quiet, and I wonder if he'll continue. It's suddenly so clear now why he refused to tell me about Gavin's vision before the battle.
You would try so desperately to prevent it, and every conscious decision you made would only help the vision come to pass
.

Kiaran takes a breath. “Without the Wild Hunt, I started to die. My kingdom began to crumble. When I was at my weakest, Sorcha brought me a human. She was trying to save my life—
our
lives.” He closes his eyes briefly. “I couldn't stop myself. And of all the humans Sorcha could have chosen, she made sure it was—”

“Your Falconer,” I finish for him. I'm torn by so many emotions. Sadness. Jealousy. Anger at Sorcha.

And . . . and . . . 
wanting
. How stubborn emotions can be, how complicated and difficult. Despite all the things Kiaran has done—things I've seen—I still care for him. I want him.
I want him like he was when he was in those frigid waves with me, whispering encouragements in my ear. I want him the way he was in the ruins of Glasgow, tracing my scars as if he were memorizing them. I want him just like this, laid bare and vulnerable. I
want
.