Page 82 of The Fallen Kingdom

A low gasp, caught in a scream. A familiar sound, one I used to dream about every night. One that Lonnrach forced me to remember in the mirrored room.

This is how my nightmare begins.

My heartbeat slows to a heavy, drumming cadence. I slowly walk along the path between the rosebushes, shivering in the winter breeze. It’s all familiar. It’s exactly the same, right down to the number of steps I take, the rustle of my skirts as I make my way to the back fence that borders the street.

As I approach the gate, my mind is screaming at me to find the girl I saw. To concentrate. To focus on something else. It is a constant beat ofDon’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. This isn’t real. Don’t look.

But I’m compelled.I have to look.

I step forward and shove through the hedges.

There they are, my mother and Sorcha. Sorcha doesn’t hold her tenderly, not like a lover, but the way a wildcat might hold a mouse: a violent grip, all fingernails dug into skin, lips at her throat. Then Sorcha throws back her head to catch her breath, her fanged teeth shining with blood.

“Stop,” I whisper, unable to help myself. “Stop.” I shove open the garden gate.

I’m not that frightened girl who huddled behind the wall so the monster wouldn’t see. I’m not the same Aileana who didn’t put up a fight. I’m not the same Aileana who watched her mother die.

“Sorcha!” My power roars within me, ready to be unleashed—

Sorcha looks up at me. Only her eyes aren’t the familiar green ones that gleam with malice.

No, they’re the strange, bright sapphire eyes of the Morrigan. I see a flash of those uncanny irises, of a thin knife-edge smile, right before she tears out my mother’s heart.

A choked cry erupts from my throat before I can stop it. My chest tightens and I can’t get in enough air and it’s happening again and it feels real and I’m here and the air is cold, and she’s hitting the ground with a sickeningthud—

Then I’m on my knees beside my mother. My power coils back painfully inside me as I hold her motionless body in my arms and her blood is warm and her eyes are sightless.

Just like the first time. Exactly like the first time.

The sounds of slow, soft breathing make me look up.Sorcha.

I watch as the Morrigan’s blue irises seep away into green ones, and then Sorcha looks around, startled. “What the—”

The Morrigan possessed Sorcha’s body and did this just to punish me. She must have caught enough glimpses of my memories back in the ballroom to re-create this: The memory that has tied me to Sorcha forever.

The memory of when her precious little bird shattered my life.

When Sorcha looks down at me—at my dead mother in my arms—she goes still. And I swear I see something akin to remorse in her gaze.

Then my arms go slack and light. When I look down, my mother has disappeared—the Morrigan’s illusion gone.

It was a threat. A warning.I’ll kill everyone you love if you don’t help me.

I stay kneeling in the cobblestone street. I ignore the dull headache that is a reminder of my impending death, and I stare at the faery who took my mother from me. Who used me. Who manipulated me. Who stole from me. And now I know exactly how she managed to escape the first time.

In the end, I was forced to let her fly away. I never got over losing my little bird. She was my favorite.

“You made the Morrigan a vow, didn’t you?” I ask flatly. Sorcha looks away and I have my answer. My laugh is rough and dry. “No excuses? No funny retorts, little bird?”

Sorcha’s eyes flash. “Don’t youdarecall me that.”

I rise to my feet, realizing I’m back in my hunting clothes. I’m wearing Kiaran’s coat. The dress and the slippers are gone, and the blood has disappeared from my hands. None of it was real; she stole it from my memories, from Sorcha’s memories.

“Why not? That’s what you are. The Morrigan’s caged little bird.”

Sorcha slaps me so hard my face whips to the side. “I did what I had to,” she snarls. “To survive. To get out of here. So I made her a vow that one day I would bring back someone who could open the Book.Youwere asking.Youwanted this.”

An opportunity presented itself, so I took it. Those were her words.

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