Page 38

I land in a crouch, knees flexed to absorb the impact. For a heart-stopping moment, I expect to keep plunging through empty air, falling into the abyss forever. But the ground remains solid beneath me.

Slowly, I crack open my eyes. Blink. The cavern unfolds before me, a surprisingly dry and spacious pocket tucked away from the nightmare that nearly consumed us.

A fire pit dominates the centre of the space, ringed by a tidy pile of kindling.

More wood is stacked against the far wall, enough to last for days if we ration it carefully.

The flickering light casts dancing shadows across the pitted stone, softening the harsh edges and lending the room an almost cosy air.

“Well?” Sorcha’s voice cracks through the hush, edged in familiar impatience. “Are you two going to make yourselves useful or simply continue to gawp like concussed sheep?”

“Pardon us for taking a moment to marvel at our delightfully cave-like accommodations,” I say. “Truly, your taste in lodgings remains unparalleled.”

The space is hardly bigger than my closet back in Edinburgh. But the sight of somewhere even moderately defensible, absent the looming spectre of dismemberment and death? I could compose odes to these soot-stained walls. Sonnets to the dirt floor.

Sorcha, predictably, remains unmoved by our wonder.

“Yes, yes, it’s terribly quaint and charming. Now, if you’re quite ready, perhaps you might light us a fire.”

Ah. Of course.

I stretch out a hand. Concentrate on the pit in the centre of the cave until sparks dance between my fingertips. They swell, brightening from ember-red to searing gold—then leap. The fire roars to life, heat rolling over us in shimmering waves.

Sorcha makes a satisfied noise and settles primly beside the now-exuberant flames, skirts pooling around her.

I collapse across from her, muscles suddenly loose with exhaustion. “I’m sure this goes without saying, but it bears repeating. That stunt with the cliff? Reckless doesn’t begin to cover it.”

She lifts a brow. “Oh? I rather thought we were operating under the same definition of ‘reckless’ at this point. Refresh my memory, who decided on this adventure into hell?”

“That was different.”

“Was it?” She gestures idly at our surroundings. “We’ve landed in the one place the Morrigan can’t touch us. A place, might I remind you, that you had no notion existed until approximately three minutes ago.”

Well. She has me there.

“What is this place?” I ask, leaning forward to poke at the flames with a stick.

Aithinne makes a low, considering noise as she sits beside me. “It does have a peculiar aura about it. As if the veil is thin here.”

Sorcha’s lips purse. “Your powers of observation continue to astound, Aithinne. This is a pocket dimension. A bit of null space caught between the folds of the Morrigan’s realm.

They exist like bubbles. Drifting along the currents of her power.

” A pause as she tilts her head, considering.

“Think of them as her blind spots, if you like. And to answer your next burning question—no. I couldn’t simply ‘hide out’ in one of these pockets when that glorified carrion crow had me in her talons. ”

“And why is that, O Fountain of Endless Wisdom?” I ask.

She levels a flat look at me, clearly unimpressed by my cheek. “Because, O Perceptive One , they move around.”

Aithinne, who had been content to listen with an air of detached interest, stiffens. Her eyes cut to Sorcha, narrowed to glittering chips of obsidian in the wavering light.

“Move,” she echoes, voice dangerously soft. “As in . . . drift about at random? Disappearing and reappearing on an inconstant whim?”

Sorcha’s gaze remains fixed on the flames. “Yes.”

Silence descends, thick and charged. I stare at her in numb horror. “So when you urged us to take a flying leap off that cliff, you had no earthly idea whether this little sanctuary would be waiting at the bottom?”

She shrugs. “I took an educated guess,” she says. “After all, hitting the rocks would be infinitely preferable to being flayed alive at the Morrigan’s leisure. Besides if I wanted you both dead, I’d do the deed myself. Preferably someplace I could savour your last, rattling gasps at my leisure.”

Sorcha looks away, smoothing a hand over her skirts, plucking at them with an expression of mild distaste. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to attempt to salvage what’s left of my beauty sleep.” She stretches out on the hard ground. “Keep your inane prattling to a minimum, would you?”

With that, she rolls onto her side. Presents us with the rigid line of her back.

With a sigh, Aithinne curls up beside the fire, her breaths evening out into the slow, deep cadence of sleep between one blink and the next.

And I’m alone with my thoughts.

My mind worries at them the way my tongue probes a rotten tooth—carefully at first, prodding at the outer edges. Then harder. Harsher. Somewhere beyond the protective veil of this pocket realm, Kiaran is alone. Fighting a fae who knows every intimate detail of his hunger.

My eyes sting, gritty and hot.

A feather-light touch grazes my shoulder. Sorcha stares back at me, green eyes luminous in the gloom. At some point in my spiral, she shifted into a sitting position. Drew close enough to reach out. To offer comfort or a killing blow, I can’t be sure.

But her face is a careful study in blankness. As smooth and remote as the surface of a frozen lake.

Only the slightest furrow between her brows betrays any emotion. “You’re thinking too loud,” she murmurs, gaze flicking over to Aithinne’s slumbering form. “Keep going, and you’ll wake her.”

Silence unfurls between us, broken only by the soft pop and hiss of the flames. I burrow deeper into Kiaran’s coat, breathing in the lingering scent of him.

“We’ll find him,” Sorcha says, the flickering light casting strange shadows across her angular face. “Kadamach is stubborn and difficult to kill. And he’s not injured, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’d feel it if he were.”

I exhale, long and shuddering. “Can you feel his hunger through your vow?”

A muscle feathers in her jaw. “No. That sort of intimacy is only felt between true consorts. But rest assured, when that mark is on my hand and we complete the bond, I won’t deny him what he needs. I never did, even when I ruled at his side without it.”

Something squeezes in my chest at the reminder. Of their past, of her claim over him. Of the future I’ll have when Kiaran is nothing but a memory. And a part of me wonders how long it will take for him to fade—his voice, his face, his touch.

“I wish I knew why he chose you,” I say. “As his first consort. Even if he didn’t mark you.”

She turns her head to pin me with that fathomless green gaze.

“That,” she says softly, “is a question I’ve asked myself every day for centuries.”

I lift my chin. “And what answer did you come up with?”

A pause, taut and humming. “There are some things that go beyond love,” she says at last. Gently, almost. As if she knows the words will flay me open and is trying to blunt their sting. “Some things that carve deeper.”

My throat aches, tight and hot.

“Like what?”

Sorcha smiles, bleak and humourless. “Like seeing someone at their lowest and most degraded . . . and treating them with kindness anyway. Like offering a hand to a broken creature, even when you know they might bite it off at the wrist. Kadamach was the only one who never used me. The only one who saw beyond the snarling, snapping beast my master made of me. And I loved him for it. Love him for it still, though he’ll never look at me the way he looks at you. ”

“And yet you forced him into that vow.” I keep my voice light, but can’t hide the hint of bitterness behind it.

You still took away his choice.

“Your problem,” she says, enunciating each word with crisp precision, “is that you still think in terms of black and white. Good and evil. Heroes and villains.” She scoffs, a harsh, grating sound.

“But the world isn’t divided into neat little boxes.

It’s all shades of grey, blurring together until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

Because you need to understand. This quest of ours?

It will break you in ways you can’t begin to fathom.

Strip you down to the bones and dig out everything soft. Everything human.”

She reaches out, quick as a snake, and seizes my wrist. Her grip is bruising, grinding the delicate bones together until I grit my teeth against a gasp.

“And when it does,” she breathes, “when you’re raw and bleeding and so desperate you’d sell your soul for a scrap of hope . . . you’ll realise the truth.”

I stare at her, heart rabbiting against my ribs. A distant, gibbering part of my mind screams at me to pull away, to put as much distance between us as possible. But I’m frozen. Pinned in place by the terrible knowing in her gaze.

“What truth?” I whisper.

Sorcha smiles. A slow slash of teeth, devoid of warmth or mercy.

“We’re all monsters in the end.”

And then, before I can react, she lunges forward. Slams her palms against my temples and wrenches me into her mind.