Page 42 of The Fallen Kingdom

“This is what she did to people when she lured them to crossroads at night.” Kiaran leans against the doorframe, his features shadowed in the moonlight. “The chains are dipped in water infused withseilgflùrso her powers are bound. The power here forces her to endure the deaths of those she’s killed. It’s considered a fair punishment.”

A breeze picks up, gently rustling the trees that line the road, and the faint scent of blood reaches me. Sorcha’s chains clink softly together, an eerie sound.

She still hasn’t looked up.

I don’t realize I’ve stepped back until I bump into Kiaran. “You think me cruel.” When I don’t respond, he says, “This is what she did for thousands of years to your kind. Every night. She doesn’t deserve any pity.”

“What about what you did?” I can’t help but ask. He may wear the penance of his kills on his skin, but it’s nothing likethat. “What was your punishment?”

He’s unreadable, frustratingly so. I hate when I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

Kiaran drops his hand from my arm. “I gave my heart to a human.” He walks away before I can respond.

After a moment’s hesitation, I follow.

Sorcha never even looks up as we approach. Her dark hair shines in the moonlight, hanging down to her hips. It hides her face like a shroud. She wears a thin black dress that covers her from wrists to ankles, like something a woman would wear to a funeral. She looks so small like this; her shoulders are hunched forward, hands hanging weightlessly. The chains are the only thing holding her upright.

It’s such a macabre sight that another jolt of pity goes through me. That only grows as we draw closer and her short, wheezing breaths fill my ears. I shudder when I hear them.

I hate that sound.

They’re the quick, panting exhalations of an animal in so much agony that it’s all they can think about. If I’d heard that during a hunt, I would have killed the creature quickly. It would have been the right thing to do. It would have been a mercy.

I know that pain firsthand. I breathed like that after Lonnrach’s interrogations.

We stop in front of her, and beneath the cascade of her hair, I see Sorcha’s bloody lips curve into a smile. One that doesn’t fool me.

“Have you come to gloat, Kadamach?” Her voice is rough, like she’s been screaming. “Or are you simply here to watch and enjoy my punishment? I don’t know why you ever gave up your crown. Unseelie suits you.”

“Do you think I enjoy this?” Kiaran sounds tired. “I never wanted to be your King.”

“You did once.” Sorcha’s laugh is more of a choke. “You were willing to kill for it. The old you would have looked at all this blood and told me it was a waste. That I should have bled them all dry.”

A sudden image bursts across my mind. Sorcha at my mother’s neck, teeth buried in her skin. Her pulling away, lips covered in my mother’s blood. It marked her pale skin as starkly as oil on porcelain.

I can’t hold back the sound that escapes my throat.

Sorcha jerks her face up, and her eyes narrow at me through the veil of her deep black hair. Then she throws back her head and laughs, a throaty scratch of a noise that echoes in the night, half-crazed.

“For a human, you don’t know how to stay dead, do you?” Her smile slices through me like a blade. “I should have cut out your heart and eaten it. Like I did with your mother’s.”

I’m struck by memories of everything Sorcha has ever done. The night she killed my mother. The pain of her driving a sword into my chest. The jarring, ugly scrape of metal through the sinew, muscle, and bone of my body to strike right through my heart. And Kiaran looking up at me through it all. She took from him the one choice he had made for himself: not to be King.

My thoughts must be so clear; Sorcha only laughs harder, an arrogant, mocking laugh that says:I don’t feel for you. I don’t care about you. I am remorseless.

“You were right,” I tell Kiaran tightly. “She does deserve this.”

Sorcha’s rough chuckle is self-satisfied. “Oh, don’t tell me,” she says. “You saw me hanging here and you felt sorry for me. How sweet.”

“A momentary lapse in memory, judgment, and sanity that won’t happen again.”

“She’s such a mouthy little human, Kadamach. And here I thought you preferred your pets silent.”

“They were never silent,” Kiaran replies casually. “You couldn’t hear them over the constant noise coming from your wide-open trap.”

“Maybe not silent, then,” she says with a sweet smile. “But always on their knees.”

I take a sharp step toward her, but Kiaran stops me with a restraining hand on my shoulder. He’s back to calm, practical Kiaran. I’m grateful for that, at least. Especially now that we’re in the worst possible situation.

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