Page 28 of The Fallen Kingdom

So I just happened to be a convenient vessel to hold her powers, which are slowly killing me. I release Aithinne. “Tell me everything the wisp said.”

“He said that long before the first Cailleach became monarch of the fae, the Old Kingdom was ruled by another queen. She was the Cailleach’s sister.”

I sit on the bed to buckle my boots. “Why do I have the feeling this doesn’t end well?”

Aithinne looks amused. “My kind makes a lot of noise about being better than humans, but when it comes to power, immortals aren’t immune to greed. We’re not like lobsters.”

That makes sense. After all, I’ve met plenty of fae who—“Wait, what?”

“Lobsters,” Aithinne says again, just in case I misheard her, and I rather hoped I had. “I hear they’re biologically immortal,” she explains, “and exempt from greed. And they’re funny looking, so I’ve decided they’re my favorite.”

“First of all,” I say, “I don’t think that’s true. Second of all—”

“So maybe it isn’t true, but what do you think of a lobster for a pet?” Aithinne asks suddenly, as if she’s thought long and hard about this. “I used to have a falcon—”

“Aithinne.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. Those two thousand years she spent underground really affected her focus. One minute she’s intense, the next minute she’s talking about lobsters and driving me insane. “You’re distracting me again. What was her name?”

“The falcon? Oh, her name was—”

“The Cailleach’s sister.” Blast it all. “Soldiers coming. Impending war. Our possible demise. Talk quickly.”

Aithinne waves a hand, as if it’s a minor detail. “She was called something different then, but her name has lived on as the Morrigan.”

That nameis not a minor detail.That namedoes not deserve a hand-wave, as if to say,oh, it’s just So-and-So from Such-and-Such.

What little I know about the Morrigan is only from legends, but they were certainly enough to leave a terrifying impression. Like the Cailleach, the Morrigan was considered a goddess—a powerful creature of war. Though the Cailleach was capable of brutality, there were plenty of stories that spoke of her small acts of kindness.

The Morrigan had no acts of kindness. She was renowned in stories for the death and destruction she wrought.

She was the faery who almost wiped out the human race.

CHAPTER 13

REMEMBER THATnot-good feeling?” I ask Aithinne.

“The one you had a moment ago?”

“Right. That feeling. It just got worse.” I draw in a long breath. “Let me guess—and I am saying this purely on it being the worst thing I can come up with since I have a habit of attracting disaster. The Morrigan wrote the damn Book, didn’t she?”

“I’m afraid so.” Aithinne looks at me, concerned. “You’re not going to vomit again, are you? Would you like a bucket?”

“Just tell me about the Morrigan and the Book.”

She moves to sit next to me on the cot. “It started out as a history of the fae. How we were created, our great families, the geography of the Old Kingdom. When the Morrigan became monarch, she began to use it as her spell book.” She smiles sadly. “The Morrigan was the first Seelie Queen, you know? She loved knowledge. But the more she wrote, the more the Book became a creature independent of its creator.”

I swallow hard. I don’t like the sound of that. “What does that mean?”

“We have a belief,” Aithinne says, “that if you put enough power and importance into an object, over time it can take on a life of its own. It can become a force, capable of being used for great things—or terrible things.” Her eyes meet mine, intent. “You saw this with the crystal. How Sorcha was able to project enough power through it to overtake mine. If that’s done enough times, the object becomes infused with that power.”

The crystal. It was once a part of the Old Kingdom, the only relic of its kind left. Believed to have been lost, it was actually buried beneath the pixie kingdom. It was so powerful that the pixies were able to create small worlds within their city, built at the whims of their creators.

I can’t help but feel for the scar beneath my shirt, my fingertips grazing the upraised skin. When Lonnrach discovered where the crystal was, he demolished the pixie kingdom to unearth it, hoping to use its power to steal mine. Instead, Sorcha used it to turn Kiaran back into the Unseelie King.

I tried to destroy the crystal the night I died. I failed.

“Did the Cailleach use the crystal against the Morrigan?” I ask, trying to keep the emotions out of my voice. Sometimes my memories are too much to bear. “Did she overthrow her?”

“No.” Aithinne shakes her head sharply. “As long as she had the Book, the Morrigan was much too strong. She grew more cruel, with an insatiable desire for war. The Seelie powers she had were twisted into something darker, and she became the first Unseelie. She gifted loyal subjects with the same abilities. They grew into the Unseelie Court.

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