Page 17 of The Falconer

I pretend I’m about to aim high again and lash out my foot to distract him. With a quick swing, I arc downwards and swipe him across the throat – the one place on his body an iron blade will puncture his fae skin, even if it could never kill him. A thin line of blood spreads across his smooth, pale neck.

‘Clumsy now?’ I grin.

He rips theseilgflùrnecklace off me and throws it away. I hear it fall somewhere at the other end of the close. I gasp and stare where he’d been standing. I can’t see him without the thistle, not unless he wants me to.

‘Now do it again.’ His words echo around me. ‘Without the thistle.’

‘MacKay,’ I say calmly. ‘Don’t be unreasonable.’

Of all my lessons, this one is the worst. I hate knowing my lack of Sight is my biggest weakness. If Kiaran wanted to, he could exploit it and murder me. I’d be dead before I could open my mouth to scream.

‘I don’t give a damn about being reasonable,’ Kiaran whispers. His breath is soft on my neck, there for an instant and gone. I shove my hand out and find only empty air. ‘Cut me again,’ he says. ‘If you can.’

‘MacKay—’

His invisible hands grab me and slam me into the wall. My grip on thesgian dubhloosens and it clatters to the ground. Warm blood trickles from my mouth. I clench my jaw against the pain. I won’t give in to it. That’s a lesson of his I’ve actually come to appreciate.

I retrieve my knife, then spin to confront the empty close. The still lingering taste of his power indicates his nearness, but I can’t tell where. How can I win a fight with Kiaran if I can’t see him?

Silence. Kiaran moves with a sly agility, skilful and quick; he makes hunting an art. Not even his breathing betrays him. Experimentally, I strike with the blade and hit nothing.

‘What do you feel?’ He’s behind me.

I whirl, blade raised, but he grabs my arm and shoves me again. When I swipe at where he was, he’s already gone. ‘Annoyed.’

‘Wrong answer,’ he says in that disembodied echo. ‘Tell me what youfeel, Kam.’

The shortened version of my surname is supposed to be practical, a quick single-syllable thing to call me when we’re in the throes of a fight – a name he has come to always use. Now it rolls off his tongue in a single breath, almost a whisper. A dare.

I search for some sign of his location but find nothing. I could be alone with only the rain pattering on the rooftops for company.

‘Tell me.’

How can I tell him I feel little else but rage? That it allows me to live day to day and hunt nightly for the faery I want to kill most? Without it I’m a void, a bottomless crevasse. Empty.

Kiaran and I have little connection beyond our names. We battle, bleed and hunt together almost every night. He teaches me how to slaughter in the most effective, brutal ways possible. But I’ve never told Kiaran why I hunt, and he has never told me why he kills his own kind. This is our ritual, our dance. The only one that matters.

So I’m not certain what compels me to whisper, ‘I don’t feel anything.’

Kiaran doesn’t respond. The air around me feels still, despite the rain. I jump when his warm, invisible fingers touch my hair and he pulls a damp tendril from my cheek.

‘If that were true,’ he murmurs, ‘you wouldn’t be here.’

I shudder as Kiaran’s power glides across my skin in a single inviting stroke.

‘I thought we were fighting.’ I arch my neck to his touch without meaning to.

Faery power shouldn’t feel this seductive. The strong taste of wildness that has been with me since our chase from the High Street strengthens as his aura surrounds me. I want to lose myself in it. Something about it makes me want to run barefoot through the forest, through thick ocean waves, and—

Kiaran drops my hair. ‘You lose.’

I know it the moment he steps away. The warmth from his body is gone and cold seeps through my rain-damp clothes. Suddenly his tall, lithe frame appears in front of me.

‘You cheated.’

His lips curve into a smile that promises so many things I’d rather not contemplate. ‘Are you really going to try that argument?’

‘You used your powers.’

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