Page 51

The light creeps in, staining the dark edges of night pink and gold.

I watch it bleed across the sky, washing away the last clinging shadows before I shrug into my hunting clothes.

The leather and buckles wrap my body in familiar weight, the chill of each metal button against my fingers a reminder that this could be the last time.

The last hunt. The last battle. The last anything.

A scuff of footsteps sounds outside. I don’t need to look to know it’s Aithinne, as impatient as ever. “So. One last glorious battle?”

I don’t answer, my mind forming strategies and desperate gambits. Fragments. I have advantages the Morrigan lacks—Sorcha’s grudging aid, the ability to wield the Book, the fact that she still needs me to craft her a new body. But none of it means anything if I can’t find the Book.

“With me,” I tell Aithinne, striding out of the cottage and into the grey light of dawn.

I march up to Sorcha, words tumbling out in a fevered rush. “Your brother knew the fae with the markings. The one we saw in the Morrigan’s realm. I need access to your memories again.”

Sorcha arches a brow. “It seems we’ve had this conversation before, you and I. As I recall, it ended poorly for you.” I lift my chin. Refuse to cede any ground. “There’s something I need to see. Someone.”

“So you’re asking permission this time.” Sorcha’s fingers close around my wrist, nails biting in. “This will be the last time, Falconer.” Her tone drops. “When we return, you stay out of my head, or I’ll carve my displeasure into your skin.”

I don’t answer beyond a terse nod.

I steel myself before pressing my palms to her temples. Her skin is cool under my touch, and I let my eyes drift shut, blocking out the physical world. Blocking out everything but the two of us adrift in darkness, connected by only a fraying thread—

Her mind opens to me. Thorns tear against my psyche, shredding rather than parting to let me pass. I bite down against a gasp as Sorcha guides me through the bramble, the bars of her memories scraping me raw. Back to the endless dark of her imprisonment.

Back to the screaming.

Sorcha trembles beneath my hands. I nudge us onward, chasing the wisp of the girl, the phantom flicker.

There. A fragment, blackened at the edges like a painting consumed by flame. Just an impression remains.

The fae, her fingers tipping Sorcha’s chin up. The inky markings down the female’s arms pulsing with light.

“Forget,” she murmurs, throat working around a swallow. “Forget how you found me. Forget what I am.” The fae’s voice drops, barely a breath. Reverent and resigned in equal measure—

What . Not who.

Ice slides down my spine.

I release Sorcha. She shudders back from me with a hiss. “Well?” she demands. “What did you see?”

“The information Aithinne gathered about the book never said anything about what happened to the Morrigan’s consort.

” It takes me a moment to find my voice.

“She . . . is the Book. That’s what Lonnrach was hunting.

The Book is part of her. She’s the Book .

” I whirl toward Aithinne. “You said it could be sentient, remember?”

Sorcha rubs at her temples. “Well, that explains the zeal with which she purged my recollection. And why only my bloodline can unlock it. I can’t believe I have a sentient book as an ancestress.”

Determination and resolve and something close to hope rises in me. “We have to find her.”

Aithinne’s grin is slow. “Oh, I love it when we waltz with near-certain death.”

Sorcha snorts. “This goes so far beyond mere idiocy that we’ll need to invent new words for the suicidal depths of this folly.”

I round on her, a snarl building in my throat. “And I suppose you’ve a better notion? Please, do enlighten us with your strategic prowess.”

“Settle your hackles, Falconer. I said it was suicidal, not that I had anything against a heroically doomed last stand.” She glances to the treeline where the abyss gnaws at the edges of our pitiful sanctuary. “This crumbling little island can’t sustain us much longer.”

Aithinne nods. “The humans will have to come with us. We can’t leave them to die when this last bit of earth gives way.”

Sorcha chuckles. “Oh, certainly. Drag a pack of fragile mortals into the lion’s den because clearly, this endeavour lacked sufficient pathos. Why not truss them up like sacrificial lambs first?”

“Sorcha,” I say. “Shut. Up. And get everyone. We’re going. Now.”

*

After we’re all gathered in one place, Sorcha takes far too long to find the breach between realms. The seam where worlds bleed together and ley lines intersect.

She trails her fingers over the petrified husks of trees, seeking the pinprick of a door, the barest suggestion of elsewhere.

“Microscopic,” she announces when she finds it, her palm pressed flat to a trunk.

“Frankly, the simplest solution is still for Kadamach to shove a blade between his sister’s ribs and be done with it. ”

“He’s not overly fond of fratricide,” Aithinne says dryly. “Can’t imagine why.”

Kiaran’s arms cross over his chest. “I can solve the problem of her flapping tongue if you’d like,” he says to his sister. “Permanently.”

“So hostile.” Sorcha holds out her hand. “Give me your blade, handsome.”

Sorcha slices the edge of Kiaran’s dagger down her palm and presses it to the tree. The air ripples.

Beyond, the city is waiting.

I can feel it watching with a million eyes as we step through the fracture between worlds.

As reality peels back, one layer and then the next, depositing us again on the silent street.

The same empty shops and hollowed-out buildings loom against the lightless sky.

If the Morrigan knows of our return, she makes no sign.

Edinburgh has always felt alive to me, thrumming with memory and spirit.

But this false city is a husk. A ribcage with all the flesh rotted away.

And above it all, the sky is an endless abyss.

Not a star, not a wisp of cloud or sliver of moon.

Just a great hungry nothing pressing down, down.

As if the atmosphere has been plucked away, leaving only the void.

“Oh my,” Catherine murmurs.

Gavin steps onto the pavement. “I should feel at home,” he says, “and yet I’m bloody terrified.” He crouches to touch his hand to the cobblestones. “It’s real.”

“The Morrigan always had a flair for the dramatic. Never met a tableau she didn’t like.” Kiaran tips his head back, surveying the towering edifices around us. “Though I’ll admit this is rather trite, even for her.”

“It would take forever to search all this for one fae,” Catherine says. “I’ve heard that those tenements off the High Street go deep underground. Warrens and warrens of tunnels.”

“I changed my mind,” Sorcha says. “This isn’t suicidal, it’s just stupid. Hopelessly, recklessly stupid.”

Aithinne rolls her eyes, not bothering to disguise her irritation. “So negative. If I didn’t know better, I’d think your heart wasn’t really in this last glorious charge.”

Sorcha shrugs. “Perhaps we ought to divide our forces, cover more terrain.”

“We’re not splitting up,” I say. “Catherine, Gavin and Daniel can’t endure the Morrigan’s powers.”

Sorcha flicks a dismissive glance at the humans. “I don’t blame her if she kills them quickly. Mortals are so irritating. All those fluids and feelings, positively exhausting.”

“It must be difficult,” Gavin retorts, “being the only one here that everyone loathes. Lonely at the top, is it?”

Sorcha curls her lip at him. I can practically feel the curl of her power, the itch for violence. If Derrick were here, he could search the buildings for us as quick as a wink. He could flit ahead, ferret out the fae with a jaunty salute. If he were here—

He’s not here, and you have to focus . I block out the doubts, the low sounds of the others murmuring to each other.

The city is hushed as we make our way down the street, the shopfronts looming like mausoleums in the dark.

“Perhaps she’s nipped into a pub for a quick one,” Sorcha says. “You know, take the edge off before the big murderous finale. I know I could certainly do with a dram or twelve of something potent.”

Aithinne’s expression could curdle milk. “Do you actively try to be such an unrelenting harpy, or does it come naturally?”

“You’ve been touchy lately,” Sorcha says. “Is your impending doom putting you off your feed? Why don’t we solve all our problems right now and let me tear out one of these noisy mortals’ throats? Slake my thirst till the end of the world.”

I shut my eyes, searching for calm amidst the roil and crash of panic. In the Morrigan’s illusion of my mirrored cell, she wore Lonnrach’s face. She clawed inside my mind and rifled through the wreckage, exposing every crack and wound.

If her consort observed it all from the glass—if she saw my city . . .

There are few places here where I would have sought refuge. Havens and hideaways from the monsters forever nipping at my heels. But now, removed from reality, my city is only an echo.

Where would I go if I wanted to be safe? If the Book saw this city in my memories, where would she run to, to hide from the Morrigan?

There aren’t many places where she would have seen me seek refuge. Just . . .

I have an idea.

I send out a pulse of power, a fine filament stretching gossamer-thin through the streets. Searching, seeking. And there, in a shuttered corner of the New Town, I find it.

A flicker. A sigh.

Small, barely noticeable. The gentlest exhale, like a breeze rustling leaves.

“I know where she is,” I say.