Page 39

The darkness presses close. A single lantern flickers on the ground, its light barely piercing the gloom. It illuminates a small figure hunched beside it, no more than a slip of a girl.

The first thing that hits me is the stench. It coils in my nostrils, clogs my throat until I’m choking on it. Death and decay, underscored by the coppery tang of old blood. I press my sleeve to my face, but it does nothing to block out the miasma.

This isn’t real , I remind myself. It’s just a memory. Sorcha’s memory.

As I draw closer, details resolve out of the shadows.

The fae—no, Sorcha — is slight, bird-boned.

A fragile wisp of a thing drowning in a tattered dress.

Her hood has slipped back to reveal a tangled mane of black hair, lank and dull in the wavering light.

She hums as she works, a half-forgotten snatch of melody that raises gooseflesh on my arms.

It takes me a moment to realise that what I first dismissed as a mound of stone is something entirely different. A heap of bodies piled like refuse. Pale, bloated limbs. Sightless eyes. Gaping mouths stretched around silent screams.

The dead, and there are so very many of them.

They stretch out into the darkness, row upon row of Unseelie soldiers still clad in armour. The metal winks in the feeble light, splashed with gore.

I watch, bile rising in my throat, as Sorcha grasps a corpse by the arm. Drags it free with a wet sound that turns my stomach. Her movements are economical, almost graceful, as she strips the armour. She sorts the body into a separate heap, as tidy as a merchant displaying their wares.

She drops the armour into a wooden vat at her feet, picks up a horsehair brush and begins to scrub, cleaning away the blood and filth until the metal gleams. Her hands are steady, but exhaustion hangs off her like a shroud.

The bruised hollows beneath her eyes. The ashen cast to her already pale skin.

She’s rail-thin, collarbones jutting under the thin wool of her dress. Malnourished. And still, she works. Like a—

Slave.

The word lances through me, sharp and brutal.

I crouch beside her, watching as she works.

As she scrubs and sorts and starts all over again, an endless cycle of futility.

Every so often she dumps out the filthy water, refills her vat from an underground spring.

Picks up her brush and loses herself in the rhythm of her task once more.

Minute tremors wrack her hands. I can hear the hitches in her breathing as exhaustion makes her clumsy. Her song gutters, but still, she pushes on. Refuses to succumb.

There’s a terrible kind of strength in that, I think. The strength of a survivor. Of someone tempered like steel in the flames.

Time loses all meaning in the gloom. Seconds. Minutes. Hours, perhaps. I can feel myself slipping, tipping forward into the endless drone of Sorcha’s work. Into the susurrus of her song.

The click of the latch shatters the silence.

I jerk upright as the heavy wooden door creaks open, spilling blinding sunlight into the dark.

Sorcha recoils with a hiss, eyes slamming shut against the brightness.

I feel the yearning rise in her. To be out there.

To feel the kiss of wind on her skin, the sun’s warmth. To remember what it’s like to be alive.

Instead, she’s here. Surrounded by the dead.

Drowning in blood and shadows.

The silhouette in the doorway resolves into a male form as he steps inside, pulling the door shut behind him. Sorcha tenses. A cornered animal, hackles rising.

He closes the distance between them. Copper hair, glossy in the lantern light. Eyes like chips of flint, cold and merciless. But there’s satisfaction there, too, curling at the corners of his mouth.

“You’re making good time.” His voice is a dark purr. “Such an efficient little worker.”

He reaches down and tugs her hood off. Slides his fingers into her lank hair.

Sorcha goes rigid but doesn’t pull away. Only the flexing of her fingers in the muck gives her away, as if she’s imagining his throat crushed between them.

I silently urge her on. To make fantasy a reality, to feel his windpipe break —

“Have I not been fair?” he muses, winding a lock of her hair around his finger. “Merciful, even?” His smile is sharp. “Four hundred years I’ve given you to repent. When will you take your rightful place at my side?”

Sorcha wrenches out of his grasp with a snarl. She spits at his feet, saliva splattering across his polished boots. “ Never . I will never submit to you.”

He tsks. Reaches into his coat and pulls out a silk handkerchief, dangling it between them like a taunt.

“Clean it up.”

For a moment, I think she’ll refuse. That she’ll lunge for his throat, tear it open with her teeth. But she snatches the fabric, scrubs at his boot until the leather gleams. Tosses it back with a sneer.

“Happy?” Venom drips from the word.

“Not even close.” He loosens the dagger at his hip. Sends it clattering to the ground between them. “Pick it up.”

Sorcha does, her hand curling around the hilt. I see the longing in her eyes. The way her gaze flicks to all the places she could slip the blade in and watch him bleed.

But she doesn’t. And that terrifies me more than anything.

His lips peel back from his teeth, a shark’s grin. “Press it over your heart.”

Sorcha trembles as she obeys. As she sets the point to her chest, right over that rapidly fluttering pulse, I want to scream. To slap it away.

“Harder.” A hissed command, brimming with dark satisfaction. “Break the skin for me, lovely.”

Sorcha’s jaw clenches. A muscle flutters wildly in her cheek, but still, she does as he says. Pushes until the fabric of her dress darkens, until scarlet wells up. She makes a slight, hurt sound. Bites down on her lip until I see blood bead there too.

“Good.” He croons it, reaches out to stroke her hair again as she shakes. As tears track through the grime on her face. “Remember this moment. Every time you think to defy me, picture my hand over yours. Imagine how easy it would be to drive the blade home.”

Her chin jerks up, eyes narrowing even as she bleeds. As the stain spreads across her chest. “I’d thank you for it.”

He laughs. Digs his fingers into her jaw, forcing her to meet his gaze.

“You’re twice as spirited as your mother ever was. I should have known it would take centuries to break you.” His head tilts. “Some days, I regret accepting your bargain. Allowing you to trade your life for hers. I wanted you too much to think clearly.”

Sorcha’s smile is a knife-slash. “How inconvenient for you.”

His grip tightens, grinding bone. With his other hand, he traces the arch of her throat. Lingers on the marks etched into her skin like a brand. A vow. One she’ll bear for centuries to come, a chain she can’t slip.

“I’ll savour it all the more when you bend. When this mark becomes a badge of pride instead of a burden.” His nail scores the sensitive flesh, raising a thin line of blood. Sorcha flinches, a minute ripple. “You’ll come to me willingly.”

She doesn’t even flinch. “I’ll see you on your knees first.”

For a moment, I think he’ll hit her. That he’ll take that knife and prove exactly how much power he holds over her body.

But he shoves her away, mouth twisting. “Another century, then. This time, without even a donor to slake your thirst. Let’s see how long your pride sustains you when hunger gnaws at your bones and madness creeps in.”

He moves to the door. Throws it open so the sunlight lances in, throwing everything into harsh relief. The corpses. The blood. The broken creature kneeling in the filth, hate and defiance etched into every line of her.

“You’ll break. And I’ll be there to put you back together however I please.”

Then he’s gone. Shutting her back into the dark. Into a world of bodies and rot and endless, endless death.

But as I stare at Sorcha—at the set of her shoulders, the way she pushes herself upright on trembling limbs—I don’t see despair in her eyes.

No, it’s something far more dangerous. More unforgiving.

Wrath.

It burns there, cold and eternal as the heart of a star. A promise and a vow, written in fury and the shattered remnants of her soul.

This memory isn’t a confession. It’s not a bid for absolution or pity.

It’s a warning. A reminder of what she endured, and what was taken from her.

Because one day, Sorcha will have her vengeance. She’ll carve it from the world with her bare hands.

*

The memory shifts, colours bleeding together like ink in water until a new scene takes shape. Sorcha’s underground tomb dissolves, giving way to an opulent tent fit for a king.

Or a monster.

Rich tapestries drape the walls, scenes of carnage and conquest picked out in gold threads. Battles between Seelie and Unseelie, light against dark. Aithinne against Kiaran, a tragic dance spanning centuries. At the back of the tent, a cot draped in silk looks too small to be real—an afterthought.

No, it’s the massive oak table dominating the space that draws the eye. A general’s table, scarred and gouged, littered with maps and scattered markers. And standing over it all, Kiaran.

Only it’s not him. Not really.

Oh, the face is the same—those stark, brutal angles, the slash of his mouth. But the eyes . . . the eyes give him away. Lightless and empty, twin voids that pull the warmth from the air. Windows into an endless abyss.

Kadamach.

He’s bent over the largest map, attention fixed on the ink whorls denoting armies and territories. Seelie holdings and Unseelie strongholds, laid out like puzzle pieces, waiting to be rearranged. To be conquered.

Across from him stands Sorcha’s master, hands braced on the table’s edge. Tension lines every inch of him.

“Send the fleet,” the master says, jabbing at the parchment. “Take the port villages and cut off their supply lines. We can force them to retreat, shore up our position.”