Page 6 of The Vanishing Throne

A memory. Violent Aileana was the symbol of a memory. Though she’s gone from the mirrors, I still sense her in the back of my mind. The knife-pricks haven’t disappeared completely. I can picture her fierce smile.

‘What do you mean?’ I try to keep my voice calm, even as the whisper ofcrimson suits you bestbrushes across my mind like the quick swipe of a blade.

‘We found that information could be extracted from the memories of our enemies.’ Lonnrach steps away. Now he’s slowly removing his coat, folding it. ‘This hall amplifies the images and allows them to take form. Since Kadamach slipped out of my grasp before I could do this, I’ll have to settle for you.’

God.The first fragment of fear makes me shiver. Sorcha had used my memories against me before, forced me to relive things I’d rather forget.

‘Whatever you’re looking for, I don’t know where it is.’

Lonnrach places the coat on the floor. Then he’s rolling up a sleeve, baring the smooth, shining skin of his forearm. Like he’s about to get messy.

‘It’s fascinating the way human minds work,’ he says casually. ‘My kind can recall flawlessly, our memories perfectly intact. Humans remember in pieces. Everything is given an order of importance and the rest is repressed.’ Now the next sleeve, ever so slowly. ‘Of course, that means slower extraction, more time-consuming. Your mind would break too easily.’

Slower extraction. Your mind would break too easily.He’d fracture it anyway, bit by bit, to find what he wants. I may be a Falconer, but I’m still human.

‘If I knew of an object that aided the fae, I would have remembered it,’ I say quickly, trying to defuse the situation.And I would have found it and destroyed it.

Lonnrach’s eyes meet mine. ‘You spent a year training under my enemy and that rogue pixie. I assume they often spoke about things you didn’t understand.’

I press my lips together before I utter an oath. Kiaran and Derrick were fond of riddle-like sentences, hinting about things in their past they both refused to discuss. Sometimes they used another language entirely, either inGàidhligor a fae language that resembled it, knowing damn well I couldn’t understand them.

‘Even what you did understand would be useful,’ he continues. ‘Their weaknesses.Yourweaknesses.’ Before I can say anything, Lonnrach is suddenly right in front of me, reaching for my wrist. ‘I want to know everything,’ he whispers, his steel-grey eyes glinting. ‘I’ll take every memory you have, if that’s what it takes. I just need to use your blood to see.’

Your blood.

A sudden memory of my mother strikes me. Her in Sorcha’s embrace, Sorcha’s teeth dripping with blood. My mother’s.

No. No no no.The vines tighten in my struggle, only slacking on my arm to allow him to pull it up – toward his lips.

Lonnrach opens his mouth and over his perfectly white, straight teeth, two rows of razor-sharp fangs descend.

Just like Sorcha’s.

I go numb, dead inside. I couldn’t move even if I tried. He’s abaobhan sìth, too. A vampirelike faery who resembles something out of a nightmare.

Lonnrach utters six words over my wrist, spoken with a hint of a smile, the words coming out in a hiss: ‘This isreallygoing to hurt.’

Then he bites down.

Chapter 3

Lonnrach’s bite is like venom moving through my body, burning within my veins and down my spine. It’s pain so explosive that I feel nothing and everything all at once: my skin stretched over bone, my blood rushing and pounding through my limbs, my muscles seizing.

Lonnrach lifts his head, only for a moment. His mouth is smeared with my blood. His eyes are closed. Just before I feel the bite of his fangs again, he whispers, ‘You taste like death.’

Memories explode through my mind, images passing by so quickly that I can’t even hold onto them. At first they’re all inconsequential thoughts, repetitions of the time when my mother was alive. Back when my days were all etiquette, tea, and practising dances, with evenings spent building inventions with her.

I can feel Lonnrach tossing them aside, deeming them unimportant.

My mother’s laugh startles me from my outrage. I almost shout at him to stop, but all he allows is a split-second image of her wide smile, as clear as if she were in the room with me. As if she wereright there. The scent of her heather perfume fills my senses, then is gone just as quickly.

I’m whisked away. Images flood harder with no order to them at all. The nights before the battle when Kiaran and I hunted together, when we ran through the city like vigilantes. The images are a torrent of hunt, stalk, kill,and depart.

I can feel Lonnrach trying to redirect everything into a cohesive stream, to slow down the memories so he can inspect them more closely. He’s going back to the beginning, to the night before I met Kiaran.

Don’t!

Before I can stop him, I’m suddenly standing in the back garden of the Assembly Rooms. I’m wearing my white silk dress with its lace and floral trimmings. My beautiful slippers peek out at the bottom, the painstakingly embroidered pink rosebuds visible in the bright moonlight. Mulled wine is warm in my belly and my vision is swaying and unsteady from drink.

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