Page 6

Derrick urges me through the trees at a merciless pace. I focus on placing my boots, on each ragged inhale and unsteady exhale. But the thin, unsatisfying oxygen offers little relief for my burning lungs.

Unease gnaws at my mind, cold and relentless.

This forest feels wrong in some intrinsic, bone-deep way I can’t define.

I brush my fingertips along a passing trunk, only to recoil at the sickly sensation that slithers up my arm.

The tree’s fading life force quivers beneath my touch, sluggish and weak.

Like the laboured heartbeat of some dying thing drawing its final, rattling breaths.

All around me, skeletal branches creak and groan, shedding crisp leaves that carpet the path ahead in brittle drifts. The land is withering by slow degrees.

A whisper from my memories, like a winter breeze at my nape.

When I fade, both realms will share the same fate. They die with me.

My breath snags. Who said that

“Aileana!” Derrick’s impatient voice snaps me from my troubled reverie. He hovers before my face, hands propped on his hips. “Have you heard a word I’ve said?”

I duck under a crooked, creaking bough. “Of course I have. Every captivating syllable.”

“Liar.”

A faint smile tugs at my lips. “I confess, my thoughts drifted a bit. Why don’t you summarise the highlights?”

Derrick makes a great production of smoothing his tunic and preening his wings before launching into his tale.

“As I was saying, we were hunting some nasty fae or other when you—and I mean this with affection—proceeded to fall on your arse not once, not twice, but three spectacular times. Tumbling right down the muddy riverbank in your posh silk gown, no less. Ruined the dress, but it did make for a rather diverting spectacle. All that fine silk plastered to your legs, rivulets of water dripping down your heaving—”

“Yes, thank you,” I interrupt before he can expand any further.

“Don’t get prickly. I’m simply illustrating what an entertaining, mishap-prone menace you were.”

I make a derisive noise. “And I died not once, but twice? Coming back from the grave is such a common occurrence that you just waited around anticipating my inevitable return for the third go-around?”

“That’s correct.”

“I must have endured a lifetime’s worth of trauma if perishing and then returning was just another mundane day. No wonder I blocked it all out if dying was a hobby.”

Derrick just hums. His small hands are plaiting my unruly locks into some semblance of order. I don’t have the heart to tell him his efforts are wasted on the tangled disaster that is my hair. The first brisk wind will tangle it into a bird’s nest again.

“You exceeded the typical number of lives allotted to most humans,” he says, as if this explains everything. “I figured you were owed a couple more.”

I pick my way across the mossy, leaf-strewn forest floor. “Based on what logic?”

“A cat gets nine lives, so surely you get an even dozen. You always were overachieving, even at coming back from the dead.”

“Well, I appreciate you having such unwavering faith in my abilities. Most wouldn’t stake the fate of the world on someone who perishes every other week.” I pause. “Especially after you burned my body on a pyre and entombed my ashes.”

It must have required immense power to resurrect me—to rebuild bone, muscle, heart and mind. All of it shaped back into a living, breathing being.

Derrick just pats my shoulder. “Yes, well, one must keep morale up somehow.” My feet are silent on the ground as I slip through the trees, my movements light, my pace quick. Something in my memories demands that I hurry.

For what?

Derrick seems to sense the shift in my mood. “I know that look. That’s your ‘I’m brooding’ look. Are you planning to disembowel something?”

“No.” My temples throb with building pressure. I press the heel of one palm to my forehead as if I can force the memories back through will alone. “Don’t you wonder what brought me back? Why I’m here again?”

“Of course I do,” Derrick sniffs. “Your memory is shite. You smell strange—like lightning and rain. Your eyes are strange, your scars are gone. Your skin is—”

“Strange?” I guess wryly.

He huffs. “Feverishly hot. Constantly radiating heat, which I’m certain isn’t normal. Don’t humans die if they get too hot?” When I open my mouth to reply, he shushes me. “Never mind. And stop asking the other questions because once they’re answered, it will ruin everything. I just know it.”

I grind my teeth in frustration. “Something revived me for a reason.”

“Now, now. No need to get yourself worked up over abstract worries. We have to put more distance between us and the bodies before nightfall.”

I don’t waste precious breath responding, just focus on each punishing stride carrying me deeper under the towering pines’ branches.

We plunge into the forest’s depths as the light mellows to gold.

When we find a dilapidated cottage nestled between sheltering elms, the last stubborn rays of the sun have already surrendered to oncoming dusk.

Derrick surveys the shelter, satisfaction smoothing away his frown. “This should suffice,” he declares. “It’s remote enough. We can rest here tonight.”

My abused legs nearly buckle with relief. I stumble through the weathered door into the derelict single room. Every muscle in my body screams for respite. I’m soaked with sweat, my filthy clothes clinging to my slick skin. I can’t even summon the energy to glance around our makeshift quarters.

Settling onto the dusty floor, I watch Derrick rummage through an old trunk.

He tuts in disapproval as he sorts through its contents, muttering about human tastes being drab.

The soft susurrus of his wings and his indignant grumbling lull me toward much-needed sleep.

But too many questions still swirl through my mind, keeping oblivion at bay.

“Tell me more about my life,” I say.

He blinks up at me, nonplussed. “What sort of life does any daft young woman embroiled in fae affairs have? Exceedingly brief unless she has a pixie around to keep her from charging headlong into danger every five minutes. Which reminds me, we really must have a talk about your alarming self-destructive tendencies, darling.”

I open my mouth to make a scathing retort about bossy pixies who apparently excel at scolding but fail at providing straight answers. But the fight goes out of me before I can craft a scathing response.

“Continue,” I say tiredly.

Derrick’s face scrunches up, clearly debating how much to reveal.

But he heaves out a dramatic sigh, throwing both hands up in surrender.

“Oh, very well. If you must know . . .” He taps his chin, considering where to begin.

“Let’s see . . . you were born in Edinburgh, grew up privileged with all the trappings.

Your favourite colour is green, your favourite tea has enough sugar to rot teeth, and you had a frankly alarming number of knives about your person at all times.

You refused to let me collect ears, which I’m still bitter about. And—”

“Ears?” I interrupt, staring at him. “I drew the line at you collecting ears?”

“Like I said, you were distressingly dull.” Derrick waves a hand. “Regardless, you were a catastrophe-prone menace. But one I was rather fond of, against my better judgement.”

“I think I was a woman of good sense and taste if I didn’t let you go around gathering body parts.”

The glare he sends my way ought to have set me on fire. Then he returns to rummaging, ignoring me.

I try whispering my name into the stale cottage air, rolling the syllables over my tongue. “Aileana.” Again, firmer. “ Aileana .” No memories surface, just a lingering sense of dissociation. As if that name belongs to a stranger. “I had another name. Didn’t I?”

Derrick’s movements still, his glow dimming by a degree. I watch him tense, refusing to meet my stare. “You did,” he says.

I see him turning something over behind those clever eyes. Debating which tidbits to reveal or bury.

I cock my head, studying his pensive profile. “I may not remember you, but I know that look on your face. It means you want to lie to me. Or at least conceal some truth.” My fingers curl into frustrated fists at my sides. “Tell me, or I won’t let you sit on my shoulder.”

“Kameron,” Derrick says with a sigh. “ He called you Kameron, your surname.”

I whisper the name over and over, shaping my lips around each syllable until it becomes divorced from meaning. Just breath and motion. Yet something vital slots into place. An intrinsic piece of myself slides back where it belongs, like the final talisman whispering open a rusted lock.

Kameron feels like wild freedom and midnight’s sheltering embrace. It’s the glint of candlelight off steel, the whisper of silk and heated skin. The shape of my name in a lover’s mouth, whispers traced over the frantic flutter of my pulse.

The promise of pleasure and pain entwined until nothing matters beyond shared oblivion. The slide of skin and the cadence of ragged breaths. The heat of his body moving over mine.

Oh god.

My trembling hand lifts to press low over my sternum, fingertips fitting over the scar bisecting my chest. Even through layers of cloth, I can trace that neat line left behind by a killing thrust. The phantom ache.

As if it wasn’t mere months ago, but only yesterday, that blade pierced my heart and ended me.

“The Unseelie King.” My voice sounds far away to my own ears, an intrusion on this unmoored moment. “He was . . . we were . . .”

I can’t bring myself to finish the thought. Can’t force my lips to shape the words. Consort. Lover.

Derrick’s glow dims. “Do you remember him?”

I just shake my head, the motion stiff. Detached from the rest of me. As if I’m an outside observer in my own body.

Silence spans between us again, filled only by the pop and crackle of flames in the crude hearth. I welcome the flickering heat against my clammy skin. Focus on it rather than the yawning void where memory should be. Where he should be.

“Did I love him?” The question spills from me in a broken whisper.

“More than anything,” Derrick says. No judgement shadows his ageless features.

No recrimination for loving the fae he’d called rabid.

A plague on this earth.

I shut my eyes against a swell of emotion I can’t define. Not grief, not anger. An awful combination of both.

“And did he love me?”

Derrick’s voice comes gentle. “He loved you so much that when you died, he might as well have died with you.”

I see him in my memories—a blurred impression of pale skin marked by ink, and eyes like storms contained behind glass.

Just a shadow. A ghost. But he feels like home.