Page 37

The portal pushes me out at the edge of a dark field, bathed in moonlight that leeches colour from the world.

For a moment, I can only blink, eyes adjusting to the gloom after the blinding chaos of our flight. Shapes resolve out of the shadows—lumps and mounds dotting the landscape in eerie formation. Not rocks or hills. Something else. There’s something wrong.

Footsteps crunch through the brittle grass behind me, followed by the low murmur of Sorcha’s voice drifting from the skeletal treeline. “Ugh! Aithinne, would you let go of my—”

“Your arm is much less muscular than I thought it’d be.”

“That isn’t my arm, you halfwit.”

I turn as they stumble out of the forest’s grasping fingers.

Aithinne plucks twigs and leaves from her ink-dark hair, muttering under her breath. Sorcha tugs at her heavy crimson skirts, lips curled back from her teeth.

“Glad you made it,” I say.

Aithinne shoots me a quick, fierce grin. “Of course I made it. I’m amazing.”

Sorcha snorts, brushing dirt from her sleeves. “You were stuck in a tree. I had to cut you loose and haul your leaden arse through the portal—”

She goes still, the words dying on her tongue. Every line of her body goes taut as a bowstring. I follow her fixed stare past my shoulder, and my stomach plummets.

The shapes littering the field—their wrongness prickling my skin—are body parts.

Thousands of them. Limbs and hearts and viscera, sprouting from the churned earth like grotesque flowers. Organised. Catalogued. A garden of flesh and bone, tilled with perverse care.

Not a battle. Not even a slaughter.

Enjoyment.

Each piece remains intact. Unblemished. As if the fae they once belonged to could sit up and walk away, if only they weren’t in a dozen pieces. No rot. No decay. Only the thick, cloying reek of blood hanging heavy in the air. Fertiliser for this twisted harvest.

Heads loll on severed necks, features slack and yet still, somehow, alive. Watching through glassy eyes. Accusing.

I flinch back, gorge rising swift and vicious. “What the hell is this?”

Sorcha whirls on me, green eyes flashing.

“What do you think it is?” she hisses. “Every fool who ever came to claim the Book is here. Futile without my blood to open it. So the Morrigan plays with them for a few centuries until she grows bored. Then she kills them and adds them to her charming little garden.”

Beneath the caustic bite of her tone, a tremor. Fear, and the barest glimpse of remembered agonies. I feel the echo of her screaming as the Morrigan peeled her apart layer by layer, only to knit her back together. Again and again.

For a small eternity, Sorcha must have lived in visceral, bone-deep terror that one day, the Morrigan would grow weary of the game. That she’d end up here, in this field. Torn apart one final time and discarded like refuse.

Not a fighter.

Only another broken toy in the dirt.

My heart hammers behind my ribs as I take in the ocean of bodies stretching to the horizon. To amass a garden this vast . . . the Morrigan must have been harvesting fae foolish enough to breach her prison for thousands of years.

I cut a sharp look at Sorcha. “I thought no one could find the portal without your blood.”

She drags her attention from the carnage, her features shuttering into that familiar cool mask.

“How observant, Falconer. My ancestors would bring other fae to the doorway, collect their payment, and abandon them to the Morrigan’s nonexistent mercies.

” A blade-slash of a smile, edged in old bitterness.

“Why do you think I slaughtered all my relations? It wasn’t merely because I found them irritating. ”

“Except for me,” drawls a new voice. Quiet. Almost bored.

I go still. The low, mocking cadence slides down my spine with cold fingertips. That voice. The voice that haunted my nightmares, stalked my waking hours. Insidious as poison, hollowing me out inch by excruciating inch until I splintered apart.

Lonnrach.

Not lurking in shadow and memory now. Here.

Real.

My hand finds Aithinne’s, her skin clammy against my own.

She’s rigid at my side, each breath a shallow rasp that clouds the air between us.

And I know she’s trapped in an endless cycle of her own.

Reliving the long centuries in the darkness beneath Edinburgh.

Lonnrach killing her. Bringing her back. Killing her again.

He steps into the pale wash of moonlight, his smile a slow, terrible thing. “My queen,” he says, gaze flicking to Aithinne before shifting to pin me in place. “And Falconer. Risen from the grave and fighting alongside the one who put you there.”

My lungs seize. That gaze rakes over me like nails dragged over raw nerves. Stripping me bare and flayed. His laughter is rich and warm, and it curls in my gut.

“You’ve been busy, haven’t you, Sorcha?”

I can feel him staring. Silently commanding me to meet his eyes. To look on the face of my tormentor, my monster given form.

Slowly, I lift my chin. Take in the cruel blade of his smile. The way his pale hair catches the moonlight, limning him in ghostly silver. Lonnrach is beautiful, a portrait of lethal elegance and bitter grace. A devil garbed in a prince’s finery.

His eyes are the grey of storm clouds. Of stone.

And fixed on me.

Sorcha steps forward. “What are you doing here?”

Lonnrach tilts his head, unperturbed as he picks his way through the gory refuse. “I could ask the same of you. But I suppose we both already know the answer, don’t we? You came for him . Kadamach.”

Sorcha edges closer to me. Instinct prickles along my nape even before her fingers brush my wrist behind the billow of her skirts. Understanding jolts through me as she circles my hand, tugging at the second blade sheathed at my wrist. Subtle. Surreptitious.

“And you?” she asks. “You’re the last person I’d expect to find hunting for the Book. After you told me what a fool I was for trying.”

Lonnrach regards Aithinne with loathing. “I had a kingdom and queen to protect then.” Softer, barely above a whisper. “Now I have neither.”

Sorcha’s nails dig into my wrist as she continues easing the dagger free, inch by painstaking inch.

“Ah yes,” she says, canting her head. “How quickly fortunes change. One moment a golden knight, the next, a failed usurper with delusions of grandeur.” Her smile is a razor.

“So what pitiful scheme led you here? Did the Morrigan promise you a shabby little kingdom of rotting bodies? No, she’s far too selfish for that. A place in her bed?”

The silence spirals. Damning.

When Sorcha speaks again, her voice drips disdain. “Oh, you poor, pathetic creature. From one mad bitch’s knight to another’s bed warmer. Tell me, brother, is it everything you ever dreamed?”

Lonnrach goes still. Only the tic in his jaw betrays the violence churning just below the surface, pressing against his skin. “Better to be the Morrigan’s lover,” he says, each word precise as a sharpened blade, “than Kadamach’s cast-off whore.”

Every molecule of air seizes in my lungs. But I can’t look away from Lonnrach. Can’t escape the pull of his gaze as it finds me once more. Rakes over me in a twisted benediction that leaves me flayed to the bone.

“Little falcon,” he murmurs. Intimate. Proprietary. “She promised me I could keep you. That I could peel you apart and put you back together however I wanted. And when you were finally shattered to dust . . .” He takes a step forward. “You’d be grateful.”

The world narrows to his face. Those eyes, devouring me whole. Turning me inside out and laying me bare. And I can’t move. Can’t breathe past the iron bands constricting my chest. Can only watch, heart in my throat, as he reaches for me—

Sorcha’s voice cracks through the haze like a whip.

“Shall I share a secret, brother?” The dagger finally slides free with a soft snick.

“Leverage is the only currency that matters here. The Morrigan only needs one of our bloodline to claim her prize.” She smiles, cold and pitiless.

“Which means the other can die.” Her arm blurs. “And it won’t be me.”

The blade flashes end over end. Sinks into Lonnrach’s chest with a thunk. He staggers back, shock and fury warring across his face, but Sorcha is already seizing my arm in a bruising grip.

“Run!” she snarls, giving me a rough shove. “If the Morrigan made a bargain with him, she’ll be close—”

Something snares my ankle. One of the disembodied arms has me in its grasp, nails gouging into my skin as it tries to yank me off my feet.

It’s alive. The damn thing is still alive.

Sorcha lashes out with a vicious kick. Then she’s wrenching me forward, Aithinne stumbling along at my side.

“Aithinne! Stop staring, you dolt. Move your bloody arse!”

We run.

The field comes alive around us, a writhing mass of grasping limbs. They surge up from the loam, ripping at our clothes. Trying to drag us down.

A hand clamps around my forearm. I struggle against its hold, stomach heaving at the feel of cold, dead flesh. But the moment I tear free, another takes its place. And another. And another.

Movement flickers at the edges of my vision. My head snaps up, heart stuttering behind my ribs. Silhouettes emerge from the tree line, their outlines stark and strange against the waning moon. Dozens of them. Hundreds.

Not just a garden. An army of corpses, watching from the shadows with hungry eyes.

The Morrigan’s eyes.

“There’s nowhere you can hide that I won’t follow,” she calls, a dozen voices raised in eerie unison.

Sorcha glances at the assembled horde. Bares her teeth. “Come on, Falconer. Go .”

Together, we shove through the thrashing bodies with renewed urgency. Bones crunch underfoot. Viscera squelches. But there’s no time to be horrified, no chance to process the nightmare we’re wading through. We have to keep moving. To escape.

We’re nearly halfway across when Aithinne slams her boot down on a grasping set of fingers. She shoots Sorcha a look, panting. “I don’t suppose this mad sprint includes an actual plan?”

“The plan”—Sorcha jumps a flailing limb, teeth gritted—” is get to the woods.”

“Oh good, how silly of me. I thought perhaps they were enchanted Morrigan-proof woods—”

“Currently wishing they were enchanted to repel insufferable—”

A hand clamps around Sorcha’s ankle and she crashes to the ground. Cursing, I seize her arm and heave until she’s free. We scramble up, chests heaving.

“This seems an opportune moment to sear us a path, Falconer. Be a dear and annihilate these wretched things, would you?”

I shake my head, breath shredding my lungs. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what? Deign to make yourself useful?” She kicks out viciously as another hand makes a grab for her, lips peeled back. “If you’re going to be dead weight—”

“I mean,” I hiss, ducking a grasping set of arms, “that these powers are killing me. Draining my life every time I call on them.” When she just blinks at me, I drag a hand over my face. “I won’t survive it. Not for much longer.”

Calculation chases across her face, there and gone. But before she can retort, Aithinne cleaves through the bodies blocking our advance. Hacks and slashes with single-minded ferocity until a narrow path opens up ahead.

“As lovely as this heart-to-heart is, might you continue when we’re not on the verge of gruesome dismemberment?”

She has a point.

We stagger forward, slipping and sliding through the mire. The treeline draws closer. Safety. Escape. If we can just reach it—

The Morrigan’s voice slithers through my head, insidious as rot. “This won’t save you.”

I glance over my shoulder—and nearly falter. The bodies we left broken in our wake are rising up. Knitting back together and shambling forward on shattered limbs. More spill from the woods.

They’re on us. We’ll never make it, not like this.

Not unless . . .

Praying I don’t drop dead on the spot, I wrench around and fling out my hand. Power explodes from my palm, a seething tide of darkness that slams into the advancing horde—pure, undiluted destruction.

The earth erupts. Bones shatter. Flesh melts and sloughs away. It won’t hold them for long—already, I can see the bodies starting to reform. Twitching fingers and limbs dragging themselves together with wet, meaty sounds. But it’s bought us a chance.

“That won’t keep her down forever,” I bite out. “Move.”

We stagger into the treeline. Skeletal branches claw at hair and clothes, leaving stinging welts in their wake. But we don’t slow down. Can’t afford to.

Except the deeper we plunge into the woods, the more my unease grows. These are the Morrigan’s hunting grounds. We’re only delaying the inevitable, and she knows it.

“We can’t keep running,” I hiss, ducking a low-hanging bough. “She’ll pick us off one by one.”

“Shut up,” Sorcha snarls. She banks hard to the left, skirts tangling around her legs. “I know what I’m doing.”

Aithinne shoots me a commiserating look as we scramble after her. Leaping gnarled roots and rotting stumps, breaths sharp and staccato. The darkness presses close. I can barely see my hands, let alone the ground.

But there, up ahead—a flicker of light through the trees. Pale and wavering, like moonlight on water. Sorcha angles toward it with single-minded intensity, her profile blade-sharp against the gloom.

We burst into a clearing, skidding to a halt at the edge of a cliff. Before us, a waterfall plunges over the sheer rock face, roaring into the mist-shrouded darkness far below.

And Sorcha . . . Sorcha is smiling. A wild, reckless slash of teeth.

“Now we jump.”

I whip around to face her, certain I’ve misheard. “You can’t be serious.”

She spreads her arms wide, a mad glint in her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, is plummeting to our potential deaths somehow less appealing than being flayed alive by the Morrigan’s army of corpses?”

A beat. Two.

“Well, when you put it like that.” Aithinne cracks her neck, bouncing on her toes. “I do love a good spot of cliff-diving. Rather final way to go if we’ve miscalculated the depth, though.”

With a jaunty salute, she takes three running steps and hurls herself into the void. Plunges straight down, down, down, until the mist swallows her whole. Not a scream or a splash to mark her passage. Just empty air and roaring water.

Sorcha’s hand finds mine. Cold and white-knuckled. I clutch her just as fiercely, the pressure grounding. Real. When I turn to face her, the hard slash of her mouth softens. Just for a moment.

“Together?” she asks, tilting her chin at the abyss. The ghost of a challenge.

I meet her gaze. “Try to keep up.”

Then, before I can second-guess myself, I leap.