Page 55 of The Fallen Kingdom

“You never said what made you give up,” I say to her.

I’m surprised by the small hint of humanity in the depths of her usually cold green eyes. I’ve seen moments of her emotions before, when she looks at Kiaran with longing. But this is something more, a sense of loss I recognize from having keenly felt it for so long.

“The Morrigan will do whatever it takes to break out of there,” she murmurs. “The moment we go in, she’s going to decide which of us are the pawns, and which one of us is the key to her escape.”

I swallow hard. “Which were you?”

Sorcha’s smile is both bitter and brutal. “Neither. I was her entertainment.”

With that, she steps back and gives me a look as if to say,How about it, Falconer? Is he worth it?

Kiaran’s eyes catch mine. His expression is unfamiliar, unsettling. A glimpse of something dark and hungry just beneath the surface, barely contained. His curse. The curse I have one chance to undo.

Save me, Kam? You’ll wish you’d killed me.

I look away sharply, and step through the portal.

The hallway on the other side is similar to the one we’ve left—a wide, shadowed passage. Only there are no doors—at least, none that I can see through the swaths of dead ivy that snake across the stones from floor to ceiling. Not a single green leaf remains on the foliage, just withered brown vines that extend down to the dark end of the corridor.

I shiver in the chill from the old damp stones, my breath exhaling in white mist. The cold is a bone-deep kind that comes not from the temperature but the atmosphere. The walls feel too close and too far away at the same time. As I stand there, the hallway grows darker, colder, longer.

Somewhere in the ivy—in this dead, empty space—someone is watching me.

I turn in dread. Kiaran, Sorcha, and Aithinne step out of the portal—and it disappears, closing up like a quickly healing wound. Then it seals shut as if it had never been there at all.

“Well, this isn’t a good sign,” Aithinne says, studying the ivy. She slides her finger along a branch. “This place feels wrong. Dead.” Then she mutters: “Why couldn’t it have been kittens? Just once?”

Sorcha stares at the hall, going pale with fear. “It didn’t look like this before.” A soft curse on her lips. She’s realized something. “The Cailleach was holding this place together. Now that she’s dead and her powers are in the body of an incompetent human, this realm is falling apart just like ours.” She glances sharply at Aithinne. “I should push you onto Kadamach’s blade myself. I’m not going to die because he’s grown too soft to kill you.”

“Not helpful,” I snap.

“I don’t care. This changes things. Do you realize how desperate the Morrigan will be to escape? This is her last chance.” She steps back toward the portal we just came through. When she finds it closed, she shuts her eyes. “Kadamach, just murder your idiot sister and become the next Cailleach. Save us the trouble.”

“I’d rather kill you. Now find the Book.”

Sorcha straightens. “If it were that easy, it wouldn’t still be here, would it?” she snaps. Then, to me: “Pray you survive to make it yours, Falconer.”

She pushes past us, and the rest of us follow. As we continue through the dead vines, the hallway keeps stretching ahead. It never changes. The vines blur together in a seemingly endless branch, withered and dead. Leaves litter the floor, the only indication that this place had once been bursting with life.

Were the plants a cruel taunt the Cailleach left for the Morrigan, a reminder that she would never, ever see true nature or the world again? Or perhaps they were a small kindness the Cailleach gave to her sister before shutting her in here and throwing away the key: a garden to grace her prison walls.

As we push through a jumble of leaves, I cast my senses out slightly, enough to search the hallway without exhausting myself or becoming consumed by my powers. A sudden chill glides across my skin and I pause. There are eyes on me again, in the walls, beyond those leaves.

A voice stirs across my mind—one similar to the Cailleach’s, but not old and frightened and dying. This voice is powerful. It sounds like a promise of death.

I see you.

The air in the hallway thickens, rippling as if a small pebble had been tossed into a pool of water. We all come to a sudden halt. Next to me, Kiaran whispers a foul curse.

“I take it you all felt that?” Aithinne asks. We nod. “Anyone else get the sense they’re about to be gutted and strung up by their intestines?” she says. When we nod again she adds, “I’ve never felt trousers-pissing terrified before.”

Kiaran grasps his blade. “Aithinne,” he murmurs, his eyes on the dead vines. “That’s more information than I cared to know.”

“You’re so delicate,” Aithinne says lightly, but she steps closer to me with her sword out, too.

A scrape of rock against metal from somewhere in the hall makes us all jump. Sorcha’s breathing turns uneven. “I say we kill the Falconer,” she says. I don’t miss the tremble in her voice. “Old magic loves a good sacrifice.”

I glare at her. “Does it? You do realize everyone here hatesyou, aye?”

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