Page 24

As I step through the doorway into Sorcha’s prison, the air hangs thick and foetid, saturated with the copper-bright tang of blood and slow decay. It coats my tongue, burns my nostrils, until I’m half-convinced I’ll never be clean of this place.

Every instinct screams to run. Before the darkness creeps inside and makes a home behind my ribs. But Kiaran’s words tether me.

Where is she, Kiaran? Where did you put her?

Where she’ll keep. Until this world burns to ash around her.

The cell’s walls are slick and glistening.

And everywhere, the shadows coil and seethe.

Given form and purpose, twisted into implements of torment.

Tendrils jut from the walls, poised to flay and pierce and rend.

At the chamber’s heart, the shadows weave together, and within that web, limbs splayed like a pinned butterfly . . .

Sorcha.

Memories claw their way to the surface, visceral and raw.

It wasn’t so long ago that our positions were reversed—that I was the one bound and helpless.

The fae have a particular talent for unmaking a person.

For shredding self and sanity with exquisite precision until nothing remains but tattered ribbons.

In the Si?th-bhru?th, I learned that lesson well.

Too well.

Kiaran’s fingertips graze the small of my back, the lightest whisper of sensation. But it’s enough to anchor me in the present. To keep the undertow of memory from dragging me back down.

“Second thoughts?” he asks. “It’s not too late to devise an alternate strategy. One that doesn’t involve facing your murderer. Personally, I’m rather partial to disembowelment.”

I lean into him. Just for a heartbeat. Let his nearness steady me.

“Two options,” I murmur. “The male who shredded our bond and tore open my mind for amusement, or the female who ended my life. It has to be their lineage’s blood, and somehow, I think you’d object more to using Lonnrach.

Sorcha, at least, was courteous enough to grant me a swift demise. ”

“I could always extract Lonnrach’s blood while I’m carving out his heart. Kill two birds with one very satisfying homicide.”

“Tempting. But unless you have him stuffed in your pocket, we’re stuck with her.”

Blood drips from Sorcha’s wounds onto the grimy stone floor. The metallic scent turns my stomach, and I swallow back the surge of bile scalding my throat.

“Quite the macabre addition,” I whisper to him. “Having your shadows feed on her.”

Kiaran shrugs. “I contributed the shadows, but this particular torment is self-inflicted. These are the shapes of her own memories.” A beat. “But I’m open to creative input if you have any thoughts. I always enjoy a collaborative evisceration with you.”

Shadows slither across the ceiling, their passage a sibilant counterpoint to the rasp of our breathing. And beneath it all, a subtle thrumming. The pulse of this place worms its way under my skin. Trying to burrow into the seams of my mind to draw the memories out.

I don’t realise I’ve taken a step back until I collide with Kiaran’s chest. Shards of memory pierce me like hooked talons.

“Is this . . .” I swallow, my tongue suddenly too large for my mouth. “Is this what Arion and the others did to me? Is that what your shadows are recreating?”

I can’t make myself say it. Before she slid her blade between my ribs the first time.

“Yes,” he says, clipped. “It is.”

All those bites. Those cuts. The laughter and crooning voices cajoling me to be still while they peeled me open and scrawled their marks into me. Thalion’s song vibrating against my throat as he drank. Arion’s fingers bruising my hips while he bit and tore.

All those wounds have been erased, but they still marked me deep down.

“Look at me,” Kiaran says softly, cupping my chin in gentle fingers. “Don’t pity her. Remember, that was you bleeding on the ground at her feet. She helped put you there.”

“I know.” But something twists at the sight. Some vital, integral human part of me that, despite everything, can’t rejoice in another’s suffering. No matter how deserved. “It’s just . . . no one should endure that. Not even her.”

“Always trying to save everyone, even the ones who hurt you.” A wry, exasperated curve of his lips. “You have the softest heart of anyone I’ve ever known. I hope you don’t expect the same from me.”

“I prefer you exactly as you are. Difficult and deadly and mine. So treat my soft mortal heart gently, won’t you?”

Ducking his head, Kiaran slants his mouth over mine in a swift, searing kiss before he pulls away.

Sorcha hangs motionless. “Come to admire your handiwork, Kadamach?” Sorcha’s voice is a ruined rasp. “Or did you wish to gloat over your mortal pet’s miraculous return?”

Kiaran prowls around her—a predator toying with its prey. “You know I’m a connoisseur of elegantly wrought agonies. But much as I’d relish taking my time, I’m afraid I haven’t the luxury today.”

A broken sound wrenches its way out of Sorcha’s throat—it takes me a moment to recognise it as laughter.

“Time? What is time to us, to you? This—” she jerks her chin at the shadows slowly flaying her apart “—is who you really are. What you try so hard to hide from her.” Her fevered stare slides past Kiaran and fixes on me. “Does she know the things you’ve done?”

“She’s seen enough,” he says, soft and lethal. “And what little mercy remains to me is in precious supply. You remember how I was with none at all.”

Sorcha ignores him. She rakes me with a slow, insolent appraisal.

“Aren’t you the tenacious little cockroach?

” she croons. “Crush you underfoot, grind you to dust, and you still keep scuttling back for more.” A ragged chuckle scrapes out of her.

“I should have ripped your heart out and devoured it while Kadamach watched. Denied him even that pathetic scrap to mourn.”

I say nothing as I stare into Sorcha’s face—and I remember. The shock of metal slicing through my breastbone and driving the air from my lungs. The wrenching, sickening grind of steel grating against my ribs.

Twice now, this fae has tried to kill me. Once with remorse, once with malice. Once I survived it. Once I didn’t.

Second choices are so revealing. That last time, she stole more than my life. More than my future. She took Kiaran from me. Shattered our bond, made me crawl out of my own grave to get him back.

Then her gaze drops to my hand, to the absence of my consort mark, and a vicious little smile curves her mouth.

“How curious,” she purrs. “The prodigal pet returns from the great beyond, yet her precious master hasn’t bothered to mark his territory again. Don’t tell me you’ve gone off her already, Kadamach. The novelty’s worn thin? How dreadfully disappointing for her.”

Fury ignites in my veins, begging for brutal release. Power whips through me, chaos howling inside my skull. I bare my teeth, seconds from lunging for her—

But Kiaran’s touch at the small of my back halts me. He leans in close, his breath a caress on my cheek. “She’s baiting you,” he murmurs, his thumb tracing idle arcs between my shoulder blades. “Lashing out. She can’t bear being pitied by you, of all people.”

Keeping Sorcha in my periphery, I turn my face into his. “What’s your suggestion, then?”

“Find the weakness in her armour. The festering wound she’s so desperate to keep hidden.” Slowly, methodically, he drags the pad of his thumb along my cheekbone. Igniting sparks beneath my skin. “And then? Dig your fingers in deep and tear until she breaks.”

Kiaran turns back to Sorcha.

“Despite everything,” he says, terribly gentle, “my consort pities you.”

He reaches out and traces Sorcha’s jaw with a finger, a whisper of touch. She flinches like he’s carved her to the bone.

“Do you have any idea,” he continues conversationally, “what it does to me to be denied my vengeance on the one who murdered my mate? The one who shattered my soul? It forces me to get very, very creative. And the only reason your heart still beats is so I can kill you by inches.”

His power lashes out in seeking tendrils of shadow. They coil around Sorcha’s throat and squeeze, crushing tight until she’s writhing against her bonds, skin mottling as she fights for air.

“Kameron,” he says, as calmly as if he’s enquiring about the weather. “I assume you’d like a turn now. Should I continue choking her while you ask your questions?”

For a moment, I’m frozen. Torn between the part of me that wants to watch him peel Sorcha apart layer by screaming layer . . . and the stubborn shred of humanity that rails against sinking to her level.

But it’s that tiny, unbroken shard of my soul that finally draws me to Kiaran’s side. I lace my fingers through his, where they clench at his side. A lifeline thrown into the churning dark.

“Is this hurting you?” I ask. “Your vow . . .”

“Pain and pleasure are old friends,” he says. “Don’t fret over my comfort, mo chridhe .”

I squeeze his hand, my touch gentle. Coaxing. “Drop your hold on her.”

For a long, suspended moment, I’m not certain he’ll listen. That the shadows devouring Sorcha will constrict and constrict until there’s nothing left but pulp and ruin.

But to my relief, the dark coils recede. Unclench from her throat and slink back beneath Kiaran’s skin, leaving Sorcha limp and gasping.

He brushes his lips over my temple and steps back.

“You think you understand us. Understand me,” I say to her, my voice steady.

“But your first mistake was defining me by his claim. Your second was letting me see how you look at him. How it must hurt to know that mine is the name he calls out in the dark. That you thought your vow gave you ownership, and then you watched a mere human carve beneath the ugly thorns you left on his body and take his heart for my own. Every bloody piece of it.” Her smile is gone, and like Kiaran instructed, I take that slight weakness in her armour and shove the blade through it.

“It must eat you alive. Knowing you’ll never be more than a regret. ”

Her control snaps, and her power slams into me.

But I meet it with a lashing wave of my own.

I’m a black hole, a collapsing star, and the force of my power is unmatched by her.

An ocean swell of boiling shadow crashing against the brittle confines of my ribcage.

It wants out out out , wants to plunge its hooked talons into her chest and shred her from the inside. Crack her open and scoop out her heart.

“The Book of Remembrance,” I say. “You’re going to tell us how to find it. Now.”

Sorcha goes still, power pulsing as if surprised by the question. If I were not watching her, I might have missed the infinitesimal widening of her eyes.

And I press that to my advantage.

The shadows binding her begin to splinter and warp, fissures spreading. As if the room is unable to withstand the violent pressure building between us. And though I try controlling it, focusing it, I can’t stop my power from tearing into her mind.