Page 43

My eyes nearly slide over her slight form. Her narrow shoulders hunch forward as if to whisper: You don’t see me, I’m not here, I don’t exist.

I’m spun away. Desperately, I crane my neck, fighting to keep her in my line of sight.

There. Standing by the exit, stillness in the churning riot of colour and motion.

This fae is built like a dancer. The scandalous cut of her gown plunges between the gentle swell of her breasts, and her arms are bare, lean muscle flexing beneath her skin.

Her skin—it’s covered in ink. A delicate lacework of shadow spiralling down her arms to curl around her fingers.

I saw her once before. The briefest glimpse of her silhouette painted in moonlight, there and gone between one blink and the next—in Sorcha’s memories. I remember the shape of her. A glaring hole in that tapestry of suffering, a piece cut cleanly away.

I don’t fight the hands that pull me into a turn. My mind is spinning, focused on this strange creature as I’m passed from partner to partner.

Her markings aren’t like Kiaran’s. Oh, there’s power there, thrumming just under the surface. But where his are the brutal lines of thorns, hers are something different. Smoke and shadow made flesh. Instinctively, I let out a tendril of power, probing for a signature—

Blank.

Not like a fae at all. Power, but different . As if she’s built of intersecting types of energies without one of her own.

Her eyes snap up to meet mine as if she can feel the weight of my gaze. The breath seizes in my lungs. There’s something fragile in her expression, hunted. A deer, poised on the cusp of flight.

She’s afraid of me.

I watch the knowledge ripple across her face, chased by a dozen other emotions too tangled to name. Surprise, confusion, a wary sort of yearning.

Who are you? The question builds behind my teeth, desperate to break free.

The dance spins me away before I can ask, hands grasping and eyes glittering with malice. When I turn back, she’s gone. A flash of ink-dark hair vanishing into the night.

Find her. Now. Hurry.

I lurch forward, fighting against the tide of bodies. Polite masks slip, teeth baring in snarls of rage as I shove toward the exit. Toward her. Hands grab for me—trying to pull me back into the fray. Predators dragging me down.

No. I won’t be caged again. I refuse.

I slam my fist into the face of the man blocking my path. Relish the wet crunch of cartilage, the hot gush of blood splattering my skin. Again. A blow to the stomach, doubling him over. An elbow to the temple, and he crumples.

Go. Get to the door.

I run. Skirts tangling around my legs, slippers threatening to slip from my feet. Damn this ridiculous frippery. I need my hunting leathers, more knives. The solid weight of steel in my palms.

Another gentleman looms up before me, arms spread wide. I don’t falter. I leap, muscles coiling, and my foot cracks into his groin. He makes a breathless sound of agony.

Ah, some tricks never fail.

Strong hands clamp around me. I let out a snarl, thrashing against their hold. I can’t move I can’t breathe there’s no air no space just the stink of sweat and cloying perfume—

I surge up, a scream tearing from my throat.

I claw and writhe, an animal fighting for its life.

My nails gouge flesh, my feet slam into knees and shins and soft stomachs.

Skin splits beneath the points of my teeth, blood flooding my mouth.

Hot and copper-bitter, the taste of my desperation. My rage.

More of them now, a sea of grasping hands and leering grins pressing in on all sides. No end to them, no stillness to catch my breath. Just the relentless crush, wave after wave, trying to drown me.

And through it all, I feel the Morrigan watching.

Say yes. Say yes. Her voice slithers through my mind, insidious as rot. I’ll make it stop. All you have to do is say yes.

No. I won’t submit. I won’t break for her.

The fae. I have to find her. Have to get out of here. Cruel fingers dig into my skin, scoring lines of fire down my arms. The gentlemen laugh, their voices blending into something ancient and Other. The eerie trill rises, swirling into a crazed crescendo.

The Morrigan’s laughter.

Something in me shatters.

“Let. Me. Go!”

Power explodes out of me. A maelstrom of light and heat, the deafening roar of a wildfire consuming everything in its path.

It sears the insides of my eyelids, whites out the world.

I scream. Bones bending, breaking. Remaking themselves.

It feels like dying. Like being unmade. I can’t breathe through the taste of ashes on my tongue.

A heartbeat. Two. An eternity suspended in flame.

Silence.

I crack open my eyes, squinting against the spill of light. The dancers are gone. Reduced to piles of smouldering cinders, smoke curling toward the frescoed ceiling. I sway on my feet, struggling to focus past the grey haze nibbling at the edges of my vision.

Too much. That was too much.

My pulse thuds in my skull, a frantic bam bam bam that drowns out all else. The air is too thick, too heavy. Something warm and wet trickles over my lips. I touch numb fingers to my face. They come away crimson.

I don’t have long now. I can feel it in the lead weight of my limbs. The grey tunnelling at the edges of my vision, narrowing the world to a single, wavering pinprick.

Find the fae. Before it’s too late.

I stagger forward on clumsy, uncooperative legs. Urgency keeps me moving, lurching from wall to wall down the echoing hallway. I ricochet off a marble column, the impact jarring me.

Don’t fall. If you do, you won’t get back up.

My balance tips and swoops. I swallow down nausea, fix my eyes on the spots of light up ahead. Not much farther now. Through the double doors, out into the garden. Each breath is a serrated blade sawing at my throat.

Almost there. Just a little . . . more . . .

The world blurs. Tilts.

I’m falling before I register that my knees have given out, the floor rising to meet me. Gravel bites into my palms with a fresh burst of pain. When did I make it outside? I can’t remember. Everything is smeared, jumbled. I press my cheek to the ground, sucking in gasps.

A rustle of silk reaches me. The scrape of a shoe, there and gone.

Sorcha.

She crouches an arm’s length away, moonlight painting her features into something feral. Primordial.

The Morrigan’s words slither through my mind. It shattered my heart when I had to open her cage and let her fly away. She was my very favourite plaything.

Rage burns through me.

“You made the Morrigan a vow.” It isn’t a question. “That’s how you escaped here the first time.”

Her throat works around a swallow, but she doesn’t look away.

I laugh. It comes out cracked and dry. “No excuses? No funny retorts, songbird?”

Anger flashes in the green of her eyes. There’s the Sorcha I know. The one with thorns for a spine.

“Don’t call me that.”

This is the truth of her, laid bare. The endless screaming fury of a creature that’s had everything ripped away, over and over again, until there’s nothing left but a howling void where a soul should be.

I push myself to my feet. The tattered remains of my gown are gone, the illusion stripped away. The weight of Kiaran’s coat falls around my shoulders, his scent clinging to the collar.

A small comfort.

“Why not?” I ask her. “It’s what you are, isn’t it? The Morrigan’s caged songbird.”

I see the blow coming—could dodge it.

I don’t. I let the slap land. Let my head snap to the side with the force of it, the shape of her hand blooming red and hot across my cheek.

It feels like penance, almost. Or maybe atonement.

Because no matter how much I hate her, a part of me whispers that we’re standing here on this dark garden path because of my choices.

“I did what I had to,” she snarls, baring her teeth.

“To get out of here. All my memories of finding the Book were carved out of me somehow, and she sliced the consequences into my flesh. So I made her a vow that one day, I’d bring back someone who could use it.

You had the Cailleach’s power. More than enough strength to wield the Book.

” She takes a step forward. “And you demanded my help. You wanted this.”

“And if she gets the Book?” I ask. “What then? You know what she’ll do. What she’s capable of.”

“I’m not a fool. Why do you think I offered a vow to you?

As long as my blood is the key, I hold the power.

And I’ve promised the Book to you. Little Miss Righteousness, the shining moral compass of our merry band of monsters.

” Her laughter is a scrape of sound. “Of course you’ll do everything to keep it from her. Even if it destroys you.”

“I think you meant for it to destroy me,” I say softly.

Sorcha’s hands flex at her sides. For a heartbeat, I think she might strike me again. Wrap her fingers around my throat, squeeze until the world goes dim and hazy at the edges. It would be a fitting end, almost. Poetic in its brutality.

But she only tips her chin up. “I know,” she says roughly. “I know what I’ve done.”

And that, more than anything, is what loosens the tangle of anger knotted beneath my ribs. Because this is the closest Sorcha has ever come to an apology. To admitting she’s just as lost as the rest of us. Just as desperate.

Just as broken.

I open my mouth, searching for the right words. But before I can give them shape, a voice shatters the silence.

“There you are!” Aithinne’s relief is palpable as she slips out of the shadows pooling at the base of a crumbling wall. Aithinne closes the distance between us. Her gaze cuts to Sorcha, a considering tilt to her head. “I see you’re still alive. How inconvenient.”

Sorcha flashes her fangs in a smile. “Disappointed?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s a certain pleasure in knowing I’ll have the chance to kill you myself.”

“Aithinne,” I say, “did you see a female fae on your way here? Small, with markings on her arms?”

Her brow furrows. “I don’t— Aileana, what are you talking about?”

A movement flickers in the corner of my eye.

It’s her.

The fae slips out from a narrow service door set into the crumbling brick, little more than a smudge of shadow. For a heartbeat, she pauses, hesitation written into every line of her as she darts a glance back over her shoulder.

Our eyes meet. Something like panic crashes across her face.

And then she’s running. A flash of pale limbs and flying hair, swallowed up by the darkness bleeding between the crumbling buildings.

No.

I lurch into motion, my body reacting on pure animal instinct. I have to reach her. Have to catch her, pin her down and pull the answers from behind her teeth, learn the secrets she’s carrying—

A male emerges from the shadows. Pale hair, pale eyes. The flash of a blade, and the world goes red red red .

Time is a distant thing, a skipping metronome beneath the roar of my pulse. His hands close around the fae’s arms.

And Lonnrach smiles.