Page 47

Kiaran’s head snaps up, my blood painting his chin. His lips peel back from his fangs, a vicious snarl building in his throat. His eyes meet mine, and the yawning abyss of them steals my breath.

Bottomless and bleak, not a shred of Kiaran left.

Because they’re not silver anymore. The mercury bleeds out into a cruel, bright blue.

No.

The Morrigan. She’s seized on Kiaran’s lapse in control to dig her claws in deep and use him to hurt me.

There’s no time to think. To second-guess the instinct screaming in my skull. I let the dregs of the Cailleach’s magic boil up. Let it sear through my muscles.

It shoves out of me in a blazing light, slamming into Kiaran—into the Morrigan using his body. The impact hurls him across the room, mirrors shattering in his wake.

My pulse roars in my ears. I try to stand, to will my legs to bear my weight, but the world spins and heaves.

Derrick’s voice—an urgency bordering on panic. “What the hell is going on? Has MacKay lost his damn wits?”

I shake my head. “Not. Him,” I manage. “The Morrigan.”

Derrick makes a low sound. Hands fluttering over me, ghosting over my wounds. As if he’s not quite sure where to land. Where to even start putting me back together.

“Oh God,” he breathes. “Aileana.”

In the periphery, a dark shape unfolds from the floor. Shaking glass from hair and shoulders.

The Morrigan hauls Kiaran’s body upright, blue eyes fever-bright. “You want me to stop?” she croons. Licking my blood from his lips. “Say yes, sweet Falconer. I’ll give him back to you.”

“No,” I snarl, baring my teeth.

She only laughs. “Then I’ll sacrifice my first pawn.”

He—she—moves. A blur coming right toward me.

I lunge sideways, narrowly escaping the collision. “Kiaran,” I pant. “Push her out. Don’t make me do this.”

A harsh laugh scrapes out of him, cold and cruel. “No matter how hard you plead, he can’t hear you. He’s mine now. He’d cut your heart out with his teeth if I wanted.”

I grasp the dagger from my belt and twist to face him, fingers tightening around the worn leather of the hilt. Bracing for the onslaught.

Derrick lands on my shoulder. “Are you mad? You can barely keep your feet under you, let alone fight him off!”

Kiaran lunges, dagger unsheathed and singing. I barely get my own up in time, our forearms slamming together. The impact judders down my arm, nearly knocking me to my knees.

His next blow batters me back a step. Then another.

Each parry is weaker and sloppier than the last as exhaustion drags at my limbs.

There is a merciless poetry to the way Kiaran— she— moves.

A savage grace. Wielding his blade with lethal precision, herding me where she wants.

Angling me toward the mirrors at my back.

I give ground, fighting for balance on legs that threaten to buckle.

The Morrigan is going to make me kill him—unless I say yes.

“You’re losing,” Derrick snarls in my ear. “Any slower, and it’ll be bits of you coating the walls.”

“Not. Helping.”

Kiaran flows forward. His dagger flashes too fast to follow—

“Left!” Derrick barks.

I obey. Fling my weapon up to catch the killing blow a mere hair’s breadth from my jugular. I twist away.

Derrick directs me again, noting each subtle shift of Kiaran’s muscles, each shattering blow before it lands.

And I gain ground. Pushing Kiaran—her—across the room. Snarling through the burn in my lungs. Through the haze threatening to pull me under.

Until my guard slips. A half-second too slow.

Kiaran’s fist cracks into my jaw, an explosion of bright agony.

The ground rushes up to meet me. I hit hard, skidding through shards that cut and catch and tear. The world pitches sideways, going grey at the edges.

“Get up, you reckless twit! Up!” Derrick’s frantic voice reaches me as if from a great distance, smothered by the roaring static filling my skull.

Move. Have to move. Have to get up —

Footsteps, unhurried. The Morrigan’s laughter in Kiaran’s rumbling baritone.

“Shall I sacrifice my pawn?” she purrs. “Or will you say yes?”

“No.” I force it out past the pain.

Derrick’s slight weight lifts from my shoulder. The sudden absence, a vital piece ripped from me.

“Stay away from her,” he snarls.

No —

My consciousness narrows to the flash of Derrick’s wings, the shout tearing from his throat as he streaks toward Kiaran. Toward the Morrigan’s bared teeth, the cruel promise of her smile.

I force my battered body up on trembling arms that barely hold my weight. Have to get to him. Have to stop this —

Too late.

Her fingers snatch Derrick from the air. They close into a fist. Squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until the sickening crunch of bones breaking reverberates in my chest.

The Morrigan flings the broken ruin of him away.

I shatter .

I cradle his slight, tattered form in my cupped palms with no memory of falling to my knees. No memory of the broken scream ripping its way out of my throat, jagged with grief.

“Derrick.” His name breaks on the edge of a sob. Splinters in my mouth like glass. “Don’t go. You can’t.”

His tiny chest stutters against my fingers. A hitching rasp. “Don’t cry,” he slurs. “I don’t like to see you cry, darling. You’re my favourite.”

Something lashes out of me. A sob, a scream.

He doesn’t move again.

No. No no no —

I clutch him closer with bloodied, shaking fingers. As if I can pour the dregs of my own life into the cracked remnants of his.

He can’t be gone. He can’t . He’s a fae. Immortal. He was ancient long before I was born and should have endured long after I returned to dust.

But there’s no clever quip. No indignant huff, eyes sparking with mischief. With life. Just the feel of his small body cooling by degrees in the cradle of my palms.

And in that moment, that single suspended heartbeat, something in me breaks loose of its moorings.

I throw my head back. And I scream. Wild with it, this bottomless, roaring agony. It pours out of me in a wave of energy—edged in teeth and the promise of violence.

And the last fraying tether on the Cailleach’s power snaps.

Argent light blooms around me. I barely feel the sting of it surging through the cracks in my skin. Welcome the bright flare of pain, the sear of magic.

The mirrors burst. The fabric of the realm shreds.

Someone is saying my name. Hands grasp my shoulders.

Trying to draw me back from the edge. But it all feels distant.

Happening to someone else wearing my skin.

I’m cut loose, divorced from flesh and bone and all the fragile mortal trappings.

There is only the thunder of my own power. The yawning void cracking me wide.

And it hungers .

“ Kameron .”

I go still. Something deep in my ruined chest clenches. Stirs to wakefulness.

My eyes open, and there he is. Kiaran. On his knees, violet gaze tracking over me. Over the dead pixie held to my chest.

He swallows. “Kameron,” he whispers.

“ Don’t .” It’s little more than a snarl.

Because I already know what he’ll say. I can taste the shape of the apology on my tongue. Hear the crack and bleed of the broken words rattling behind my teeth.

I’m sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to.

“I know.” It rasps out of me, raw and ragged. “I know.”

And I do. Because this is what she does. The Morrigan unmakes us. Breaks us apart and puts us back together wrong. Until we break the way she wants us to.

And I won’t let her.

I stagger upright. The Cailleach’s power floods all my aching hollow places. I reach for it, pull it into my marrow. Let it suffuse my blood with flame until I burn with it. Just for a moment, a handful of stolen heartbeats, it washes out the grief. The pain.

Everything.

I barely feel its teeth. Something in my chest cracks, spiderwebbing under the strain. This might kill me.

And that’s all right. If it means getting Derrick out of here, laying him to rest—

My hands clench, nails biting deep. I won’t leave him here to rot. Not after he gave his life for mine without thought, without hesitation.

I draw on the dregs of my power, letting it build and build. Cresting like a tidal wave. The concussive blast punches a hole straight through the realm, tearing it wide. For a heartbeat, the world is nothing but light, whiting out thought and sensation.

Black creeps at the edges of my vision as I stumble forward. On the other side, the cool night air kisses my fevered skin. Moonlight limns the trees in silver. For a moment, I can only blink up at the familiar stars.

I’m out.

We’re out.

But there is no triumph. No relief. Only emptiness. Like a vital part of me has been carved out, left behind to wither in the dark.

I crumple forward, barely registering the squelch of frigid mud between my scrabbling fingers. I can’t feel the cold. Can’t feel anything.

“Marchioness!”

Gavin. His voice is far away, smothered by the static roaring between my ears. Strong hands catch me by the shoulders, dragging me up.

Distantly, there is a clamour of voices. Crowding close. Sorcha and Aithinne—my power plucking them from the Morrigan’s realm. Catherine. A small, distant part of me knows I should reassure them. Explain. Pull the shards of myself together into the shape of a functioning person.

I don’t have the strength. Everything I am has narrowed to the rapidly cooling weight in my hands.

Someone is pulling me away from Gavin. I feel myself lifted. Cradled against a broad chest. The rich scent of pine and petrichor envelopes me.

“I have you, sweet lass,” Kiaran murmurs against my temple. “I’m here.”

I bury my face in his shoulder and let myself sob. I let him hold me, filling the tender cracks that need mending. Soothing all those scattered shards. He’s done it before. He knows how to piece me together in the wreckage of so many fae who have tried to break me.

Because when we’re finished here, I’ll carve my revenge into the Morrigan’s flesh.