Page 41 of The Fallen Kingdom

There it is, the flicker of guilt in his gaze. So quick I almost miss it. I press on, knowing I’m right this time. “I thought of yourgifts. How you used to have yoursluaghdeliver Falconers’ bodies to Aithinne. And I thought she might be right. I thought you might be tormenting her again the way you used to.”

“Good,” he says coldly. “It’s easier that way.”

I raise my hand to touch his face. “But then I remembered the one time you felt guilt, when you killed Catríona, you delivered her yourself. You’re the one who takes those humans to Aithinne’s camp, aren’t you? Because she’s not the one you’re tormenting.”You’re tormenting yourself, I think.You are. As if he reads my mind, he says nothing. But I notice how his gaze softens. Because he is still my Kiaran MacKay. He is. “Don’t do this to save me, MacKay. Not when you’re the one who taught me that I need to save myself.”

“Kam,” he whispers.

I keep going, because I know I only have seconds to get him to listen. “When you did that, you taught me how to endure,” I say softly. “I’m asking you to do the same. I’m asking you to be stronger than your curse.”

This time, when he looks at me, I know he’s made his decision. “Then I need you to make me a promise before we do anything else. Before I take you to Sorcha.”

I swallow. “All right.”

“If I go with you and I become someone you don’t recognize, don’t let me hurt you. Leave me behind if you have to.” When I hesitate, he says it again. “Promise me.”

Then I do something I’ve never done in all the time I’ve known Kiaran: I lie to his face. “I promise.”

CHAPTER 20

I’VE BARELYwalked through the door where Kiaran is keeping Sorcha before I have the urge to run in the other direction. Now I understand what Kiaran meant when he said Sorcha was exactly where she belongs. Why he said she was paying for the things she’s done.

Since my time in theSìth-bhrùthI’ve become well acquainted with the fae’s creative methods of imprisonment. They employ power against their victims. Everything they do is intended to break you down little by little each day, each hour, each second. They make you decide which is easiest: death or handing over your soul.

“What the hell is this?” I breathe to myself.

Sorcha’s prison is a crossroads at night. She’s chained between two trees, one on either side of the road, and the shackles are so tight that her body is splayed and mostly immobile. The trees bend toward her, as if caging her in. The combined scents almost make me gag. Iron. Flesh. Something burning.

She looks so broken.

Along Sorcha’s arms and legs are long, jagged cuts that drip down her pale skin and onto the ground—where a pool of blood gathers so deep in a pockmark that it covers her to her ankles.

I should be satisfied to see Sorcha suffer—the way she made my mother suffer when she tore out her heart and left her to die in the street. I might have been, once, in the months after my mother’s death when I cared for nothing except vengeance. That Aileana wouldn’t have given a damn about compassion. Not for Sorcha.

But now...

Maybe it was thedaysweeksmonthsyearsLonnrach had me. Helpless. When he kept me in the mirrored room, he tortured me like this, with control and isolation. A punishment to fit my crimes. I had spent a year hunting the fae, and in my time with him, I was no longer the hunter. I was the prey. He made certain I never forgot that.

Lonnrach’s words echo in my mind, a terrible reminder of my own worst days.Now you know precisely how it feels to be that helpless.

No one deserves to be under someone else’s complete control, unable to fight back even if they wanted.

Maybe I’ve grown too soft. Maybe I’m just tired of death. Maybe it’s compassion that separates us from monsters.Does that make me better than them or does it make me a fool?

“Kam?” Kiaran’s touch is light on my arm, but I pull away. As if he reads my thoughts, his gaze darkens. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Do you come in here just to...”make her bleed? Like Lonnrach did when he visited me?

Some punishments are so terrible that they are beyond justification. But the fae operate under a moral code that gives little thought to empathy. Especially when that faery is the Unseelie King.

“I have many faults,” Kiaran says in a hard voice, “but I don’t torture for amusement.”

“You did once.”

Like you loved it. Like you lived for it. Because you believed emotion was a weakness.

His expression shutters. “If I ever reach that point again”—a flicker of a glance at me—“that’s when you’ll know I’m gone.” He gestures to Sorcha with a nod. “These are her memories. Her torture is self-inflicted.”

“Her memories?”

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