Page 23 of The Fallen Kingdom

“He’s preparing to go to battle with me,” she says softly. “The first thing he does is close himself off.” Her expression is impassive, but her tense shoulders betray her emotions. “I’ve seen it before.”

My heart aches for her. “When?”

“It’s what our mother did after we grew into our powers.” I notice her hand trembles when she pushes her hair back. “Among thedaoine sìth, there’s no difference between Unseelie and Seelie at a young age,” she explains. “We’re born with the same rudimentary abilities. We all even have fangs, though Seelie have no need to use them.”

Daoine sìthare the most powerful fae in the Courts. They’re also the most human-looking, though their level of beauty is beyond compare.

I never realized they all had teeth like Sorcha and Lonnrach, a second level of sharp fangs that descended from their gums to make it easier to feed on human blood and energy. I had always assumed it was their lineage, but perhaps the legend of the vampiric faery called abaobhan sìthsimply grew from the centuries when Sorcha slaughtered humans while the rest of thedaoine sìthwere trapped beneath Edinburgh—in a prison of Aithinne’s making.

“Since my mother couldn’t have known which Court we’d eventually lead,” Aithinne continues, “Kadamach and I were raised together for centuries. When we finally came into our mature powers and he couldn’t stop himself from killing his first human, I knew what he was. What it meant.”

“That you’d be separated,” I say.

Aithinne nods. “It happens. Siblings belonging to the same Court are more common, but separations aren’t unheard of. Kadamach and I tried to hide our respective abilities at first; we didn’t want to be apart. He’d kill human after human, and each time he would be his usual self for just long enough that I’d forget what he was...then he’d turn into someone I barely recognized before he hunted again.” She shrugs. “Eventually he couldn’t hide it from our mother. So she took us to our respective Courts and refused to allow any contact. She said it would be easier for us to go to war one day if we stopped thinking of each other as brother and sister.”

I look again at the dark palace Kiaran built. “So he’s using her tactics,” I murmur.

I edge closer to the cliff and peer over the crag. The fall is straight to the bottom. I’ve leaped off this bluff before and would have died if Kiaran hadn’t been with me. I can’t get to that island by myself. Even with the Cailleach’s abilities, I’m still human. The rocks below would break me.

“Open another portal,” I say to Aithinne. “He’ll speak to me.” He’dbetterspeak to me.

Aithinne studies the palace and the soldiers guarding it, assessing how I’d go about getting in. She gives a small shake of her head. “I believed that once,” she tells me. “I just hope he doesn’t do to you what he did to me.”

“What did he do?”

“It was years after we were first separated. My mother had taught me to despise him and I never could. So I went to him.” She gestures down to the island, her expression almost cold. “It was exactly like that—right down to the same number of soldiers. Kadamach is a creature of habit.”

“Did he speak with you?”You don’t want to know, and yet you ask anyway. The price you pay for truth is knowledge.

“No,” she says flatly. “He timed how long I stood outside the gates. For each minute I waited for him to see me, he had hissluaghcapture my most vulnerable subjects. And then every day, for five hundred days, he sent me their bodies.” Aithinne’s hands are fisted at her side. “They were his firstgifts.”

I flinch.Now you know. You are a damned fool.

“Why do you think he leaves those people at my border?” Aithinne flushes with anger. “He’s telling me he’d kill them if he could. He’s provoking me.”

The Cailleach showed me some of the worst parts of Kiaran’s past, things I’ll never be able to forget. I won’t excuse what he did. Some things are so terrible that the price of forgiveness becomes insurmountable.

But Kiaran has spent two thousand years trying to atone. I have to believe that there’s still a part of him that is seeking redemption, the part of him that chose a human name. The part of him that I came to care for.

When Lonnrach kept me prisoner, Kiaran never gave up on me. I won’t give up on him, either.

Fool that I am.

“He saved my life,” I tell her. “I owe him a debt.”

Aithinne nods once, her expression conflicted. “All right.” She steps back abruptly from the cliff. “All right. When I hear back about the Book, I’ll make you a portal. If you’re right, and he is still your Kiaran, he’ll want to help.”

“And if he isn’t?”

She lowers her eyes, but not before I see the regret there. She doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t have to. I can see the answer in her features as surely as if she had spoken the words aloud.

Then I’m going to have to kill him.

CHAPTER 11

THAT NIGHT, I sleep next to the fire, and I dream of Kiaran.

We’re in a bed in an unfamiliar room, as opulent as anything that might grace a royal palace. Above us hangs a chandelier formed from teardrop pieces of dark opal, alight from within with red flame. The gleaming walls of the room are sculpted from obsidian, etched with elaborate designs like those on Kiaran’s skin. Reaching up from floor to ceiling, the pattern stretches in elaborate, pointed branches.

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