Page 37 of The Falconer

‘You do,’ he says. ‘You feel power.’

‘Aye,’ I sigh.

‘And you’ve sensed thesìthicheansince the first one you ever saw, haven’t you?’

The first faery. The first one the first onethe first one—

I shove away from his touch, so hard that I almost lose my footing. Cold puddle water soaks through my stockings.I won’t remember. I won’t remember. But I can’t stop the memories that gather and crash against me.

Blood. Blood coats my white dress, stains and slicks my skin from fingers to elbows. Lying prostrate in a thick pool of it on the cobblestones. I’m baptised in it, created, reborn. My stomach constricts with the thick, painful taste of iron.

Crimson suits you best crimson suits you best crimson suits—

‘No.’

I slam the palm of my hand into Kiaran’s nose with so much force that I hear bone crack. I have to escape that memory before it consumes me. Before I become that helpless girl who let it all happen.

I run. I dash past the nearby stand of trees and begin to round the base of the castle’s cliff. The once-distant clouds have gathered swiftly overhead and rain begins to mist around me. My feet ache with cold through my slippers but I ignore the pain.

I’ll never be weak like that again.Never. I can’t let myself.

Hands grab me from behind, pulling at my cloak. I stumble and nearly fall in my attempt to escape. My feet falter as Kiaran roughly turns me around. ‘Kam,’ he snaps, gripping my shoulders. Blood drips from his nose to his lips. He’s bleeding.

‘Your nose,’ I manage.

He touches his fingers to his face. His eyes meet mine and some emotion I can’t name flickers in their depths. Approval? ‘Don’t you understand?’ he says. ‘You’re the only one who could do this. No other human alive is capable of it.’

I twist out of his arms. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You do,’ he says. ‘Think back to—’

‘I don’t want to!’ My emotions are out of control and if I don’t rein them in, I might hurt someone. I might hurthim. I breathe deep. ‘I don’t want to remember. Don’t force me to do that.’ My voice is despicably thin, high-pitched. It sounds as if I’m begging him.

His depthless eyes search mine. ‘Kam, this is what you were born to be.Seabhagair,’ he says. ‘Falconer.’

I shake my head and swipe at my cheeks, now dampened by the mist. The word should have stayed a word. I can accept being made into a faery killer, but that I was born to do it? That it’s a gift I’ve had all along and never knew about? Believing I was weak that night last year is easier than knowing I might have had the strength to save my mother and didn’t know it. That I let her die.

Kiaran sighs. With exasperation or pity, or perhaps a combination of the two. ‘You sense fae power. You fight almost as fast as I do. You’re stronger than other humans, and you heal more rapidly.’ He touches his nose. ‘You did this. With more training, you could again. And when you kill a faery,’ he continues, relentlessly, ‘its power goes through you.’

‘How do you know that?’ I whisper.

‘You’re not the first Falconer I’ve met.’

His gaze softens and for the first time since I met him, I see sorrow there. Who has Kiaran lost, that he should feel so strongly? He drops his eyes and the sadness is gone. ‘But you are the last.’

‘The last?’

‘There were only a certain number of humans born with the ability to kill thesìthichean. Always women, always passed from mother to daughter,’ he says. ‘Your line is the only one left.’

‘Don’t you think that if my mother were a Falconer, she would have known about it?’ With both hands, I try to shove him, but he doesn’t even budge. ‘Don’t you think I would have?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Your line’s power became latent. Generations of women would not have known. That ignorance saved your family from being killed but made your abilities more difficult to trigger. That’s why I’m not naturally visible to you.’

‘I see.’ I say the words faintly, because I don’t know how else to respond.

‘Do you?’ He pins me with a hard stare, one that I swear sees right through me. ‘Kam, the Falconers have been tracked and slaughtered for centuries, even with their powers inactive. When you began to hunt alone, your kill signature became obvious to anysìthicheanwho knew what to look for.’

My spine prickles with dread, raising the hair along my skin as if I were brushed by cold fingertips.Generations of women. Generations. Tracked and slaughtered. My mind repeats his words, over and over.

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