Page 95 of The Vanishing Throne

‘This is the way it has to be,’ the Cailleach says, approaching me. ‘My daughter must have her powers restored.’

‘I don’t think so.’

I surge toward her, my fingers closing around the delicate skin at the Cailleach’s neck. But she moves fast, smacking her staff into the side of my face. I hit the ground again, clawing into the spongy dirt there. Blood drips from my lips and splatters against the dark ground.

The Cailleach grabs me by the front of my shift, picking me up with little difficulty. Her talon-like nails dig into my skin.

I meet the cold abyss of her gaze and try to hit her, to dosomething, but my arms are pinned at my side, dead weights. The taste of her power is an excruciating thing, all needle-like electricity on my tongue.

‘You can’t best me,’ she says. ‘So I’d advise you to simply accept your fate. Wouldn’t that be easier?’

I find myself able to move my tongue, my lips. I mutter, ‘I’ll kill you first.’

The Cailleach sighs and releases me. Though I’m standing, I still can’t move to strike her. She looks frail again, so frail. As if she might break. If I were a better woman, I’d pity her for her apparent weakness. But I’m not a better woman. I’d rather take advantage of her delicacy and use it against her.

‘I’m dying,mo nighean,’ she says in that soft, shaky old woman voice.

I hear the slightest tremor of fear there. The fear of an immortal creature, who has been alive since the creation of mountains and the movement of glaciers, who is finally,finallyfacing the uncertainty of her death.

‘When I chose to reproduce,’ she continues, ‘I gave up my immortality. Like my mother, who was the Cailleach before me.’ She holds out her hand, the skin gnarled and old again. ‘This is the curse of my lineage. I die the same as a human, only more slowly. I must have someone to take my place before I am gone.’

Lonnrach’s words about theSìth-bhrùthcome back to me.

The land was whole, and now it’s cracked right down the middle. It’s all falling apart.

It’s falling apart … falling apart …

Without a monarch, the Sìth-bhrùth will wither. Someone must take her place.

The Cailleach – or perhaps the one who came before her – created the worlds, the seas, the landscape. She made them possible. If she dies, they’ll go with her. If theSìth-bhrùthis breaking apart, the same might happen to the human realm. She’s formed them both with her hammer and staff.

All at once,my blind rage dissipates like smoke. I can think more clearly.

‘If I die,’ I say, ‘and Aithinne’s powers are restored, Kiaran’s won’t be. That can’t be undone. The fae will still be corrupted.’

The Cailleach draws up, her face shuttered. Her young self returns: beautiful and formidable and strong – and even more frightening. ‘Aye. That’s the path your …Kiaranchose. He can’t be fixed.’

Fixed.As if he were broken.

‘Kadamach was always stronger than Aithinne,’ the Cailleach says, backing toward the fire. ‘He had proven himself worthy to take my place. Until he fell in love with thathuman.’ Her eyes are hard, glinting like steel. ‘My daughter might have created the Falconers, but your death undoes that. My son … for Kadamach to fall in love is unforgivable.Weak.’ She spits the word as if it’s a curse. ‘He’s not fit to rule.’

‘It isn’tweakto love someone, or to have compassion.’

Do you think me weak because I feel?

No. Never. That’s what makes you Kam.

‘You’re a fool girl,’ the Cailleach snaps, folding her frail body closer to the fire. ‘This is the way it’s always been, the curse my lineage has carried for ages. Two children born to power. Each rules a separate kingdom to prove their worth. The strongest one always begins the war and kills the other. Kadamach failed in his task.’

And kills the other.

Aithinne’s voice echoes in my mind from that day in Edinburgh, her voice all too knowing and sad.We are all the stag.

She understands fate. The life of a hunter and the death of its prey. Because she and Kiaran were always destined to be one or the other.

Yet Aithinne let herself love the brother who was supposed to kill her.

‘You would let that happen,’ I say tightly. ‘You would let your children go to war?’

---