Page 22 of The Vanishing Throne

All sense lost, I run toward the city. My feet pound through the dirt and grass as I make my way down the crags. Aithinne calls after me. Her voice is carried by the wind, her power trailing behind me in a soft, lingering caress across the back of my neck. I grimace at that brief inhuman touch, a reminder that she is one ofthem, and they destroyed everything.

I’ve never hated them more.

I splash through puddles along the slope of the crags. The skies have opened in a sudden downpour that slicks my skin and makes running all the more difficult.

When I finally reach the streets that once surrounded the Queen’s Park and Holyroodhouse, my shift is soaking wet. My legs sting from various cuts and bruisesbut I hardly notice as I race along the thoroughfare now overgrown with weeds.

The palace itself has been decimated, the once beautiful towers destroyed. All that remains are scorched black bricks and a few pieces of wall from the quadrangle still left standing. Fragments from the nave of the beautiful abbey that had once graced the property lie in pieces on the ground, covered in moss and grass.

I sprint past it all, up to what was once the centre of the city. My feet pound across dirt and rock, but I don’t stop– not even to look at the destruction any more. If I pause for even a moment, I’ll have to remember that I failed. Kiaran and I tried to prevent this, and we didn’t succeed –Ididn’t succeed. And Lonnrach’s army destroyed it all.

You sacrificed my realm to save yours.

Now nothing remains but the surrounding rubble; a city that has been entirely demolished and left to ruin. The earth has come to reclaim it in vines and moss that now cover everything.

Home. I have to go home. The North Bridge is still only half-standing – the result of my fight with the redcap. The city workers never had time to rebuild it.

Don’t think about it. Keep going.

I take the long route up what used to be the High Street, past the collapsed stone buildings of Old Town, and make my way to the underside of the castle crags. My feet are sore and wet with blood, slapping against stone with every step.

It isn’t until I reach New Town – where Charlotte Square once stood – that I even pause. The square is deathly silent, no birds or animals rustling amid the rubble. There is only me, my body trembling, the sound of my panting from running so hard.

My house … god, my home –it’s still standing, but it’s hollow, empty. The foundations groan as I approach, as if the structure could cave in at any moment.

It’s far too dangerous to enter, but I approach the white-columned abode anyway. I slip through the overgrown grass that peeks between the cobblestones. The front door is propped ajar. Dust falls and the door creaks on its hinges, resisting as I push my way inside.

Destroyed. It’s entirely destroyed, as if something came through here with immense force. Splintered wood litters the beautiful Persian rug that once graced the antechamber, now ruined by dust and soot and dirt. My mother’s paintings – herbeautiful Scottish seaside views – are in pieces on the floor, stained and barely visible beneath the mold.

It doesn’t smell like home. My father’s scent doesn’t linger at all, not even the aroma of pipe smoke that always remained in the hallway no matter how long he’d been gone. My home smells empty, as though no one has lived here for a number of years. As though no one has evenbeenhere for years.

I sense Aithinne behind me without hearing her approach. I choke back the sudden taste of her faery power. She’s so silent, the way Kiaran is. I don’t even hear her breathe.

I’m ready to ask. I have to. ‘How long was I in theSìth-bhrùth?’ I try to keep my voice steady and barely succeed.

Thedaysweeksmonthsyearsstretched on so long that, like Lonnrach, I had no concept of time. There was nothing to measure it, no clocks to give me a sense of its length. Even if I spent a short while with Lonnrach – no matter how long it felt – the days would have gone by more rapidly here.

Aithinne sighs. ‘It would have only been weeks for you there. Seven or eight at the most.’

‘Don’t do that,’I say sharply. ‘Don’t pretend to misunderstand me. How much time passed outhere, Aithinne?’

‘You know I can’t say.’

‘Then find a way to tell me. The plant growth out there couldn’t have happened in a short amount of time, I know that much.’

‘Daoine sìthare more connected to the earth than mostsìthichean,’ she says. ‘When the others escaped the mounds, they would have influenced nature without meaning to—’

‘Aithinne.’ My hands curl into fists. Violent Aileana is in my mind, smiling, encouraging my anger. I try to tamp it down, to put her back where she belongs. ‘I said find a way to tell me.’

‘Months,’ she whispers. Even with that, her voice trembles around the vow.

The trees here couldn’t have grown in mere months even with the fae affecting growth. The vines couldn’t have overtaken whole buildings. They could only have done that in the span of years – and years consist ofmonths. The fae are experts at deceptive language.

‘No tricks.’ I don’t bother to keep the sharpness out of my tone. I’m finished with faery vows and riddles and secrets. ‘No half-lies.How long?’

I turn to her, then. I let my rage show, the Violent Aileana Lonnrach saw inside me.We’re the same, you and I.I’m past reason, past all sense. I am the inhuman thing he saw whomirrors his own. Now I know that grief has carved parts of me hollow. It let in the darkness, and now it’s marked in my bones. A sleeping beast.

I issue a single command: ‘Count. Count how many years.’

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