Page 90 of The Vanishing Throne

Chapter 30

The Cailleach glides through the lines of bodies, each one sinking into the earth as she does. ‘Come. We’re not finished here.’

In a blink, we’re walking down a dirt path between wee stone huts with thatched roofs, the village dark and quiet. Not even a rustle of birds in the trees. Snow falls around us, melting as soon as it touches dirt. The Cailleach moves across the road with the careful, frail walk of a crone, her back hunched, salt-white hair loose around her shoulders. Her skin sinks into her bones again, withered and leathered and old.

Just around the bend is a bonfire. Glowing cinders rise into the sky and snuff out, leaving behind the scent of burning yew. Thirteen women are gathered in a half circle around the dancing flames. Their voices fill the night, some in winged whispers, others in firm voices, all in a language I’ve never heard before. They wear crudely dyed layered hoods and dresses to protect them from the cold.

I recognise one of the women.Aithinne. Her eyes glow silver and gold in the firelight, her hair sleek and black as ink. She looks like a goddess, shining in the moonlight. A falcon perches on her bared shoulder. Not even its formidable claws can puncture her invulnerable fae skin. It seems content to rest there, its wings tucked in, its back straight and proud.

Aithinne raises a hand to silence the harsh voices of the women around her. That’s when I look at their faces, the tears, the anger, their palpable grief. I’ve never seen a group of people look so helpless. Sohopeless.

‘Who are they?’ I ask the Cailleach.

‘The first Falconers,’ she says. ‘They were the sole female survivors of their village. My daughter sang the song that lured them here.’

I stiffen, expecting the worst after what the Cailleach showed me in the field. When the Cailleach promises truth, it always hurts. It lifts the veil from the secrets people keep and strips everything bare until you wish you’d never seen it. You wish you had never accepted.

Aithinne manipulated these women to come here. After what I learned about Kiaran I’m half-expecting her to murder them right in front of me.Don’t make me hate you, I think.Please don’t make me hate you.

I study the women, the smudges of dirt on their faces, their clothes splattered and smudged with blood, the tear tracks down their cheeks. They are not warriors, not the hardened Amazons of myth I thought they’d be. Instead, they’re scared women who have just lost their families, who have learned first hand how brutal the fae can be.

When Aithinne speaks, it’s in another language –and yet I understand the words. The Cailleach’s doing.

‘I have called you all here to reach an accord,’ Aithinne says in a commanding voice I’ve never heard from her. One woman begins to protest, but Aithinne’s power cuts across the bonfire like a stock-whip to shut her up. ‘I didn’t give you permission to speak.’

I flinch, remembering Lonnrach’s voice in my ear, whispered through sharp teeth.I didn’t say you could move.

This isn’t the Aithinne I’ve come to know, the Aithinne who saved my life. Who offered to take my memories of Lonnrach if it eased my pain. She sounds likehim, like she doesn’t give a damn about humans.

More than that, she stands with all the confidence of a warrior, a leader: shoulders thrown back, chin high and proud, those uncanny eyes full of fire. The falcon on her shoulder pulls back its wings and beats them briefly. She is an unrelenting presence, powerful, terrifying, like her mother.

This is the Aithinne who had never been trapped underground for two thousand years of torture.

She’s speaking again, circling the fire and watching each woman with that unreadable gaze. ‘None of you have need to fear me. I’m not the one who slaughtered your families.’ She comes to a stop, her skin shining. She is a magnificent, frightening, and so very inhuman. ‘But I can offer you vengeance against the one who did.’

I glance at the Cailleach. Her expression has hardened, eyes sunken into her skeletal face. Whatever Aithinne is about to do is the source of her mother’s rage.

My daughter, Aithinne, should never have created the Falconers.

A wave of uncertainty passes through the group. The woman who tried speaking before suddenly finds her voice, hoarse, barely audible. ‘This is a trick.’

I expect Aithinne to respond as harshly as she did before. But instead, I see a flicker in her gaze, a weakness in that hardened armour. She grieves, too. ‘No tricks. No deceit. I want you to take from him what he stole from you.’ Then, a whisper. One I just barely catch: ‘What he stole fromme.’

‘What does she mean?’ I ask the Cailleach. I don’t want to ask, but I need to know. ‘What he stole?’

The Cailleach leans on her staff; it freezes the ground all the way to my bare toes. ‘She grieves the loss of her subjects. Those my son killed. My daughter was born too soft. Calling on humans to fight on her side in a war …’ She curls her lip in disgust. ‘I would have killed her for it myself if I could. ’

Hersubjects? The pieces start to connect: I fit together storiesand everything I know about Kiaran and Aithinne. Everything I learned about the fae.

Two kingdoms of light and dark, each with one monarch, and the faeries of each kingdom served a single purpose: the dark kingdom brought death, and the light kingdom brought creation.

My heartbeatpounds in my ears. The women around the fire are standing, but I can’t even focus on what they’re saying any more. All I can think about is Kiaran sitting on the rocky beach after the battle with themortair.

Why were you searching for the crystal?

I was Unseelie, Kam. What do you think? I wanted it to kill the Seelie Queen.

‘Aithinne is the Seelie Queen,’ I whisper. ‘Isn’t she?’ Then I say the words I didn’t want to, the part of the story I hope isn’t true but I know with everything in me that it is. ‘And Kiaran is the Unseelie King.’

---