Page 32 of The Vanishing Throne

A flicker of regret flashes in his gaze and I’m startled by it. I’ll be damned. He never regrets anything. He looks over at his sister. ‘I release you from your promise.’

Her smile is gone. Aithinne doubles over, her tongue darting out of her mouth. A gasp of pain escapes her lips, her breath shuddering. Her delicate shoulders hunch forward.

I’ve never seen a vow rescinded. If it hurts that much, I can’t imagine what it would look like if a faery ever broke it.

Kiaran watches Aithinne intently, as if checking to make certain she’s all right. When her body seems to relax, he turns back to me. The carefully controlled mask he’s always worn – that keeps his emotions so composed – has slipped. He’s preparing to tell me something, and this time it’s not good news.

I almost tell him to wait. I want to keep the happy cocoon of joy. I want him to put his arms around me for a few minutes more before it’s bad news all over again. But putting it off doesn’t make it go away, nor does it become any easier when the time finally comes.

You thought all of your friends were dead. You dealt with your home being destroyed. Whatever this is, you can bear it.

I steel myself for thisrevelation. ‘What is it?’

‘There’s one last thing you should know.’Wait, I almost say.Wait. Don’t say it.But he does. ‘We couldn’t find your father, Kam.’

I wasn’t expecting that to hurt so much, for me tofeelso much. I turn sharply away from Kiaran, so he won’t see that my eyes are getting wet again. Because this time I couldn’t bear an embrace.

‘Oh,’ I say softly, unable to form even another word.

My father and I were never close. We were never affectionate, not even after my mother died. He spent so much time away in the country and even when he did return, we lingered in our Edinburgh home like ghosts haunting our familiar rooms. When he spoke to me, it was always briskly, bordering on irritated, and I always assumed he treated me that way because I wasn’t the son he so desperately wanted.

After my mother died, Father’s indifference toward me only grew worse. He was stuck with a daughter and had no chance for a son unless he remarried. According to Scottish law, I was his heir.

I can’t forget the night I said goodbye to him. When he told me,You look so much like her.Likeher, my mother. Before she died, I was a reminder of all the years they tried for a son. After, I was a constant reminder that he had lost her and she wasn’t coming back. That I was a poor substitute. I was never as kind or as patient or as selfless. I was always the daughter he didn’t want.

Yet I hoped – always hoped – my father would come to love me. I still did, even after I went into battle. Now I am a true orphan, both parents lost to the fae.

‘He could still be alive,’ Aithinne suggests softly.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kiaran sharply shake his head at her. He knows as well as I that it can’t be true. More than likely, my father is dead. He was probably killed the night I sent him away from the city; when the fae rode in, he wouldn’t even have seen them coming.

I block out the images from my mind – of my father dying, being murdered bythem. ‘We should go,’ I say, no emotion left in my voice. ‘I’m sure we’ve lingered here too long already.’

Chapter 13

We ride through the countryside on the faery horses Kiaran brought. The only time I ever rode one was during the battle, and then briefly. I don’t remember it being this fast; the creature – Kiaran named it Ossaig – cuts through the landscape like a blade through skin.

We don’t stop for the longest time. When the horses reach water, they leap through the air, graceful as ever. Their hooves are a blur across the water, so featherlight that they sprint across the surface. It’s as if we’re flying. Their hooves strum against the ground like hummingbird wings, like a song on the breeze.

But the air around us is still, as if we’re moving so quickly that all time has stopped. As if we’re frozen in a single moment – except we aren’t. Though it feels as though mere minutes have gone by, nightfall turns to deep dark starry night, which turns to morning as the sun rises over the mountains. The entire countryside is illuminated, the rain clouds tinged golden from the blazing light.

The scenery around me is startling. I’ve never seen the landscape so vibrant, soalive. Justas in Edinburgh, the faeries’ freedom has caused the flora to grow over, far more rapidly than it would have naturally. The horses race through forests that weren’t there before, and hills that have risen in my absence. The countryside of Scotland has been reshaped, re-created throughbattle. The land south of the Highlands, once flat farmland, has been made uneven by craters and valleys and rivers.

We cut across a field and down a hill, where we’re met with the sight of another city in ruins. My heart slams against my chest.Glasgow.

I haven’t seen our rival city in years, not since my father took my mother and me there to oversee another one of his properties. The city is now nothing more than smashed buildings and piled rocks and overgrown shrubbery; the damage is far more extensive than in Edinburgh.

We pass between ruined tenements,fallen stones piled high. I try to close my eyes and block it all out, but I can’t take it any more. ‘Stop.’

My horse comes to a halt and I slide off her back to stand among the ruins, so bright in the setting afternoon light. As in Edinburgh, there are sporadic domiciles still standing, but the fae have shattered all the beautiful modern buildings on Queen Street. And the rest … there are craters amid the destruction, newvalleys between the streets. As though the fae were playing a game while they destroyed it all.

My fists clench as I stand in the thick grass and deep muddy soil. Something sticks out of the dirt. I nudge it with my foot. When it doesn’t dislodge, I lean down to pull it out of the mud.

A boot. A child’s boot.

I drop it and back away, sensing Kiaran and Aithinne have stopped behind me. ‘It’s like this all over Scotland, isn’t it?’ I can barely say it. My throat almost closes.

Suddenly Kiaran is next to me. He’s standing so near that his arm brushes mine. ‘Not just Scotland,’ he says quietly.

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