Page 12 of The Vanishing Throne

I finally notice the subtle resemblances between Aithinne and Kiaran. They have the same gleaming dark hair, the same skin – pale and shining like moonlight. And their eyes, while different in colour, share a similar intensity. She presses her brows together in concentration the same way he does.

For Kiaran’s sake – and for mine –I suppose I should be pleasant. ‘I’m glad you made it out of the mounds,’ I blurt without thinking.

The second the words leave my mouth, I regret them. I notice how she goes still, how her concentration seems to waver and the light fades slightly from her eyes.

‘Aye,’ Aithinne says softly. ‘I made it out.’Finally, she looks at me. Her gaze lands on my scars, on the one she noticed before that’s still bleeding. ‘And so shall you.’

And now you know precisely how it feels to be that helpless.

Unlike Aithinne, I didn’t have a thousand faeries in the mirrored room to torture me.I won’t ever forget that it was your kin who put us there. That your precious Kiaran and his sister helped.

She was trapped there for more than two thousand years with the enemy in a tomblikeunderground with no escape. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what she went through.

As if realising I’m studying her, Aithinne sucks in a breath and concentrates harder. After a few quiet moments, she says, ‘I can’t open the door here. The wind is blowing in the wrong direction and we don’t have time to wait.’ She presses her palm flat against the platform. ‘We’ll have to find it.’

She’s speaking in riddles, for all I understand. ‘Find what? The wind?’ Perhaps my sanity? I believe I have lost something after all.

Aithinne gestures over my shoulder and I look.Oh, bloody hell.

Atop the cliff is one of the deep, dark forests I had seen when I first arrived. This one is so thick that no light reaches below the canopy of branches. The shadows there are a curtain hiding everything from view. The black metal trees tower high, the area in front of them obscured by thick mist that settles at the edge of the cliff.

I’m not at full strength to defend myself, and she’s suggesting we go throughthere?

‘Hell,’ I mutter. Louder: ‘Couldn’t you open a door somewhere else?’

‘I could open one anywhere,’ she says, not seeming the least bit concerned. ‘But if we don’t want Lonnrach to send an army after us in mere seconds, we must go through there. That’s where the wind changes.’

I realise then that Aithinne is making our platform move out of synch with the rest of the rocks and buildings. We rise above the dark ravine, higher and higher, until we are level with the edge of the cliffs. From here, I have an even better view of the forest.

If anything, it’s only more frightening close up. At least from afar the trees didn’t seem capable of mortally wounding me. The branches are sharp and pointed, like spikes shooting off in all directions, and so knifelike that a mere brush against them could prove fatal. They gleam black, smooth as polished chalcedony. Despite their semireflective surface, no light escapes from between them.

The platform reaches the edge of the cliff and Aithinne waits for me to step off. My slippers touch the soil; the rocks beneath my feet glitter like smooth, perfectly cut and polished clear gemstones. Diamonds, perhaps. At any other time, I would have stopped to admire them. Instead, I stare up at the trees with dread.

‘Whatever you do, don’t wander off,’ Aithinne says, moving to stand beside me. ‘Ruaigidh dorchadas.The shadows in there are living creatures. Do you understand?’

‘Not really.’ I have visions of murder by tree. It’s rather gruesome.

Aithinne straightens. ‘It’s really very simple,’ she says, looking up at the branches. ‘Try not to die in there. Don’t trust the darkness. Easy. How humans managed to survive from caves to tenements without knowing any of this, I’ll never understand.’

I bristle, offended on behalf of my own kind – but then haven’t I thought the same thing? I’ve marveled before that humanity – which was once hunted to near extinction by the fae – let their wisdom be whittled away to mere children’s stories. Half of the stories are misleading nonsense, and the other half are outright rubbish. The folly of humans is truly astounding.

‘People know about the fae from stories,’ I tell her, listening to the metal tree limbs sing and whistle as the breeze rushes through the forest. ‘They just don’t believe in them any more.’

She studies me quietly, for the longest time. I don’t miss the flicker of pity that crosses her features, quickly chased away. ‘You’re wrong,’ she tells me. ‘I’d say they believe in them now.’

I think of the scenes Lonnrach showed me what seems like so long ago. Princes Street in ruins. Ash falling from the sky. I’ve lived with those images in my mirrored prison.They’re burned into my memory. Eventually I had to stop wondering whether Gavin, Derrick, and Catherine survived. I had to stop picturing the horrible ways they must have died. If I hadn’t, Lonnrach would have found a way to use those memories against me. He would have broken me.

If anyone had survived, they’d have new nightmare stories to tell their children. About how one day an army of fae came through Scotland and destroyed everything. They’ll never even know about the girl who failed them all.

‘Aye,’ I say softly. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

Together, we enter the forest.

Chapter 6

Beyond those first few trees, the darkness in the forest is thick. It presses against me, a solid weight. The temperature drops. Suddenly, the air is frigid enough that I shiver in my thin shift.

It smells of ash in the forest, like smoke and embers from a recently extinguished fire. The taste of power here is strong, a dryness like soot, with a lingering taste of peat. It’s abrasive, as rough as pumice.

---