Page 68 of The Fallen Kingdom

No. She must be half-lying somehow. Sorcha is manipulative enough to figure out how to get around the truth. “I don’t believe you,” I snarl. “Last chance to tell me the truth.”

She presses her lips together, her eyes narrowed into slits. “I. Don’t. Remember.”

I don’t hesitate. I slam through her mind. Not like before—this time I’m careening through her thoughts in a loud, demanding crash. A struggle to find the right thoughts, the right images, the right memories.

Show me.

Sorcha isn’t prepared for how frantic I am. For the urgent, desperate clawing and shoving through her mind. I am frenzied and determined as I sift past the images, of her and Lonnrach by the tree, of her running, of some girl with long hair and pale skin marked with something, but it’s too dark to see.

I keep going until I come to a memory that makes me stop. An image so terrible I choke back tears.

Sorcha is in a bloody heap on the ground of a forest just like the one we’re in. I don’t know what I’m seeing; I didn’t know that limbs could be turned all those different ways, bent, mutilated. Some no longer attached. Blood in a thick dark pool around her. Her breath coming out in a rough wheeze as if her lungs were partially collapsed.

She’s singing in the fae language, the words catching in her throat. The warbled song of a broken girl.

How was Sorcha even alive? How? With her healing ability bound—

I have my answer a moment later when a woman with black hair and pale skin approaches.

Aithinne?

I almost drop Sorcha in surprise, but then Aithinne turns and I see her eyes. Blue eyes that shine as bright as cut sapphire—not the swirling, molten silver of Aithinne’s eyes. This is the Morrigan in Aithinne’s form.Oh, god. The Morrigan kept Sorcha alive.

She strokes a finger down Sorcha’s bloody, tear-tracked cheek. “I like this song. You have such a beautiful voice, little bird.” Then she seizes Sorcha by the hair and says, “Come along now. Let’s put you back together and try something else.”

The Morrigan drags Sorcha’s broken body through the dark trees. Sorcha never stops singing.

CHAPTER 31

ISHOVE AWAYfrom Sorcha and retch. After her memory, I doubt I could have held anything in. My mind keeps turning that image over and over again; Sorcha’s broken limbs. Sorcha’s disjointed song.

I was her entertainment.

“Didn’t like what you saw?” she says mockingly behind me. Beneath it, I hear a tremble to her voice, a hint of vulnerability. “First lesson, Falconer: Don’t break into someone else’s thoughts unless you can handle them.”

Aithinne grips my arm to help me up. “What did you see?”

Everything. I shut my eyes briefly.Everything. “I’m sorry.”

I look up at Sorcha to find her clutching the trunk of a tree as if she were steadying herself. As if she were gathering the broken remains of what armor she has left and putting it into place. Armor I tore away like it meant nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat.

Sorcha’s eyes flare with rage. “I don’t want your pity.” Her lip curls. “Do you want to know why I hate you so much, Falconer? It isn’t your pathetic little romance with Kadamach. You’re a girl with a passably pretty face and a bit of skill in battle, and he’s a man and men are fools. No, I hate you because you believe yourself so far above my kind, when the truth is you’re just as ruthless as the rest of us.”

I have no retort for her, no clever response. Because it’s true. I’m a war-hardened girl whose desperation is chipping away at my soul. I broke into her mind twice.

“Let me repeat what I said earlier now that I don’t have a blade at my throat: I. Don’t.Remember.” She says the last word in a snarl. “When I came here the first time and the Morrigan captured me, she sent me to search for the Book since she needed my blood to open it. I found it. But I don’t recall how or what it looks like. I just know that somehow I lost it, and the Morrigan found a great deal of delight in punishing me for my failure.”

She sent me to search for the Book. “Do you mean to tell me,” I say carefully, “that the Morrigan doesn’t have the Book?”

Sorcha regards me impatiently. “Someone give this human a bauble for her detective skills. You’re truly a wonder, Falconer.” At my glare, she explains, “The Book was hidden here, and when the Morrigan came looking for it, the Cailleach trapped her. The Morrigan has been searching for the Book and an escape ever since.”

The story that said the Morrigan found the Book was wrong, then. That means we still have the chance to claim it.

I stare at Sorcha, uneasy now after everything I saw in her mind. She’s telling me the truth. I know it. I have so many questions, but first...“If you can’t recall how you found it, then maybe Aithinne can—”

“No.” Her lip curls. “If the Morrigan couldn’t dig that memory out of my mind, what makes you think this incompetent simpleton can?”

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