Page 91 of The Vanishing Throne

‘Aye,’ the Cailleach says quietly.

I think back to all those times I tried to piece together Kiaran’s past and I tried every combination possible – each more awful than the last – but I couldn’t imagine this, not this.

My affection for Kiaran has blinded me. Even with the glimpses I saw of Kadamach, I could never truly comprehend the awful things he did because a part of medidn’t want to. I didn’t want to think of the thousands upon thousands of people he was responsible for slaughtering. Because the Unseelie King wasn’t like the other fae. He lived and breathed death. He would burn the world to ash.

You’ll always be Kiaran to me.

Kadamach. His name is Kadamach, and he’s the Unseelie King.

Now I understand why so many hesitate when the Cailleach offers them the truth. Truth is never as pretty as a lie. It’s never as appealing. It’s a sword to the gut, the thing that reminds us that some people aren’t who we thought they are.

Truth forces us to confront the ugliest parts of the people we love. The monstrous parts.

I drop my gaze. ‘I’ve had enough.’

The Cailleach is unmoved, her face back to its beautiful form. Now that I see it again, I realise how very much she looks like her children. The same dark hair and flawless features and bottomless eyes.

‘You accepted my offer,’ she says, her staff thumping against the ground. The snow falls around us. A cold windslices across my neck and I shiver. ‘I’m not finished yet.’

‘Why do you care if I know the truth?’ I say bitterly. ‘You want me to stay dead. You’re only showing me these memories to keep me here.’

The Cailleach’s beautiful face sinks into askull, only for a blink. She is an ocean of secrets, a faery as old as death itself. And yet … and yet there is something almost vulnerable about how frail she becomes sometimes, how she looks at me.

‘That is only half true,mo nighean,’ she says, her voice trembling as a human’s does in their advanced age, in their twilight hours before death. ‘I told you: I took from you, too. Since I cannot offer you life, I offer you this. It’s all I have left to give.’

‘You took—’

We’re interrupted by a scream of agony. There’s a woman kneeling by the fire, Aithinne’s hands pressed to either side of her head. They’re both bleeding, Aithinne from her hands, the woman from the cuts on her face. The falcon has gone.

Aithinne’s expression is one of complete concentration, her eyes tightly shut. She looked like that when she healed me.God, how that hurt.The woman screams again and I’m shocked when light seems to emanate from beneath her skin.

‘What’s she doing?’ I say. The other women look equally anxious, distrustful, but they remain in their places, in their semicircle around the flames.

‘This is how you earned your ability to kill my kind,’ the Cailleach says, sounding tired. She leans on the staff as if she can barely stand on her own any more. ‘You have my daughter’s blood in you, her powers.Myblood.’

So they’re not my powers. The Falconers were created because Aithinne couldn’t bear to kill her own brother. We were created for their war.

‘Then I’m part Seelie. Not human, after all,’ I say bitterly.

‘Human enough,’ the Cailleach snaps.

I watch Aithinne step away from the woman. Over and over, the future Falconers kneel before her; again and again they give the same agonizing scream. Not one of them declines. Not one of them decides to leave, or shrinks back in fear. This is who they are to become: warriors. Pain is simply the first part of the battle.

I think of Aithinne’s words as the last woman stands.In the end, we are all the stag.

A single screech sounds from the forest, then a dozen more. I step back sharply as falcons emerge from the trees, their wings fanning the fire. Each bird has black and white stripes that run from the very tips of their wings across their feathered bodies. They dive for the women, each falcon claiming one. Their claws sink into the women’s tender skin, drawing blood as they perch on their shoulders, calmed now. The women gasp in pain, but no one screams.

They each have a falcon, connected to them by blood. They’ve earned their titles.Seabhagair.Falconer.

The last falcon flies to Aithinne and resumes its position on her shoulder. But her hands are shaking and her nose is bleeding, dripping over her lips and down the pale column of her neck. She no longer holds herself with the same confidence and power, with that spine-straight-shoulders-back stance. Her skin has lost some of its effervescent luster; not much, but still noticeable.

‘It weakened her,’ I say softly.

The Cailleach looks at me again and her face is old, wrinkled, her skin pale and dull. Her white hair is no longer shining; it’s stringy, thin. ‘As the last Falconer, you hold all of the powers she lost this night. When you die it is restored to her. She will be whole again.’

Unless someone steals it first, I realise.You have something I want, Lonnrach toldme that night of the battle. I have Aithinne’s blood inside me.The Cailleach’sblood – old magic.

If Lonnrach succeeds in finding the crystal and taking my power, he’ll use it to kill Kiaran and Aithinne.

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