Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
ALLERIA
“No. I—”
I’m still half-smiling, waiting for him to continue, when his gaze shifts. It moves past my shoulder and fixes on something behind me. Everything about him goes still in a way I’ve only ever seen right before something dies at his hands.
What is he looking at? What is behind me?
My smile slips. Before I can say anything, he speaks again.
“Alleria.” His voice is so flat and careful that every part of me goes cold. “Don’t. Move.”
I freeze with my hands half-buried in the sand. “What? What is it?”
He doesn’t answer straight away, his focus on whatever is behind me, and my heart slams against my ribs. It can’t be the Sluagh. The Sluagh only comes out at night. So what is it?
“Cairn?” My voice comes out shaky.
His gaze shifts back to me. “It’s a vaelcait.”
“A what? What does that mean? What is it?”
“A predator native to Nightward land. It hunts along the sea’s edge for fish.” His voice stays low and even. “And it’s very territorial.”
“Then we need to leave.” I plant my hands into the sand, ready to push myself up.
“You have feline predators in your world, Alleria. What do they do if they’re hungry and something moves across its path?”
I swallow. “They attack.”
“They attack,” he repeats softly.
I desperately want to look behind me and see where the creature is. “Can we make it to the steps?”
“It’s faster than either of us can run. You need to summon your steed.”
For a second his words don’t make sense. I stare at him, and a laugh claws its way up my throat.
“Now? You want me to do that now? Cairn, it’s right there. Call Selveryn. Call him! Do whatever it is you do, and—”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” I roll forward onto my knees, ignoring his demand to stay still, and twist to look behind me.
I immediately regret it.
The vaelcait moves forward slowly, stomach low to the ground, eyes fixed on us.
Even crouched, it’s huge. Its paws have to be bigger than my head, and silver claws flash whenever it sets one down.
Its black fur blends into the dark sand, flickering in and out of view as it passes through the cliff shadows.
“Cairn, please. Please. I’m asking you, summon him, and get us off this beach.”
“No.” He doesn’t move. “I’m not going to call Selveryn for this.”
“Why?” The word comes out strangled, my throat tightening, making it hard to draw breath. “Why won’t you—”
“Because next time you’re trapped, I might not be here to rescue you.”
“So you’d rather risk dying than summon Selveryn?”
“I don’t believe I’m risking anything. You are more than capable of summoning your steed, if you want it enough.”
I gape at him. “Are you seriously turning this into a lesson?”
One shoulder lifts in a shrug. “It’s almost here, Alleria. It’s already gathering itself to jump.”
My gaze swings back to the monster. He’s right. It’s paused in the black sand, back legs tucking in, muscles coiling, even as I watch.
I know what that crouch means. My entire body is screaming at me to run, but the certainty that running will be the thing that gets me killed is louder.
I twist back to Cairn, and claw for the bond between us, desperate to know what he’s planning to do. Because he can’t really mean to just sit and watch, surely? I slam into something, and then his presence is there, but what reaches me isn’t fear. It’s an entirely unbothered calm.
He doesn’t care. He’s sitting here with his arms folded, and he doesn’t care.
Fury rises, replacing the panic so fast it blurs my vision.
I’m going to die on this beach so he can prove a point.
The vaelcait launches upward. It comes off the sand in a black blur, low and impossibly fast. I scream, and something tears out of me without warning—a surge of wild, raw power—and smoke and fire pour up out of the sand at my side.
The heat scalds the chill of fear straight off my skin, and between one heartbeat and the next a creature is there, taller than me, and ash-pale through the smoke. Sparks scatter where its hooves come down, and flame-filled eyes meet mine.
But it’s too late.
The monster hits Cairn in the chest. His arms come up to shield his face as the impact drives him back into the sand. I scream again, one hand flinging outward toward him, and the thing at my side wheels with me.
Cairn is down. He’s on his back with that thing on top of him, and I don’t know what to do. I have no blade, no idea how to use whatever just came out of me, only this creature I don’t know how to command.
“Cairn!” I lurch to my feet, then freeze.
He isn’t screaming. He isn’t bleeding. He isn’t even fighting to get free.
There’s an enormous black animal sprawled across his chest with its paws planted either side of his shoulders, and he’s just … lying there. Its head lowers while I watch, and it drags its tongue up the side of his jaw.
What is happening?
A sound rolls out of it, a deep rumble that carries over my ragged breathing and the crash of the sea.
Is it … purring?
It is.
It’s purring.
Cairn remains flat on his back with his arms half-raised and his face turned toward me to avoid the tongue that’s now trying to wash the rest of his face. He’s wearing an expression of absolute disgust.
“Get off me, Dubh-chrá.” The words are muttered from between gritted teeth, but the cat just keeps licking him.
The steed beside me nudges my shoulder with its nose, and huffs in a way that almost sounds like a laugh. But nothing about this is funny.
My hand is still out. My heart is still throwing itself against my ribs. My throat is raw from screaming. And terror still floods through me.
I can’t make any sense of what I’m looking at.
“What …” The word comes out as a croak. “What is happening?”
The cat gives one last drag of its tongue before Cairn finally manages to get a hand under its chest and shove. It pours off him like water, sliding off his body and then rising to pad a few feet away. It sits with its tail curled around its paws, watching us, smugness radiating off it in waves.
Cairn pushes up off the sand and rolls to his feet, brushing the black grit from his shoulders and back. There’s a wet streak up one side of his face, and he drags the back of his hand across it, grimacing.
He’s standing there wiping off slobber, and acting like it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.
“Was that really necessary?” He casts an irritated look at the animal, who just blinks at him slowly.
I try to speak, but nothing comes out. I stare at him, then at the enormous purring creature, and finally at the steed standing beside me.
“What in all the gods' names just happened?” My shout echoes off the cliffs surrounding us.
He turns to face me. His eyes go to the steed and a smile curls his lips.
“I told you how it works, Moirthalen.” The maddening calmness of his tone makes me angrier.
“A steed first forms through need or necessity.
I could have wasted an entire season walking you through it, and you'd have reached and tried and found nothing. Then that,” he waves toward the vaelcait, who stretches out and washes its paws, never taking its eyes off him, “came down off the rocks. I had a choice. Wait while you struggled and failed, or use the opportunity that arose.” He shrugs. “So, I used it.”
“You used it.” My shock at his casual tone makes me sound strange and flat.
“He was never going to hurt you. You were never in any danger.”
And that’s the thing that snaps the last cord holding me together.
“I was never—” My voice climbs and breaks. “You sat there. You sat there with your arms folded and you let me think I was going to die.”
He says nothing.
“I begged you.” My hand is still shaking when I point at him. “I begged you, Cairn. And the whole time you knew. You knew exactly what that thing was. You knew it wouldn’t hurt me. You knew I was safe, and you let me feel every second of it because it was useful?”
His jaw tightens.
“Useful.” I say it again, and it comes out flat.
“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Any time you find something you can use to manage me.
Because that’s all I am. Something to move.
Something to manage. Something to knock unconscious when I’m inconvenient and send to another world while you stay behind. ”
I drag in a breath, but it does nothing to calm me. “Do you have any idea—No. No, you don’t. Because nothing touches you, does it? You’re carved out of stone, and I’m … I’m down here screaming in the sand. And you find that educational—”
“Alleria—”
“Don’t!” I take a step back, one hand lifting between us. “Don’t you dare say my name like that. Like I’m something you need to calm down.”
The words come faster now, almost merging into one another, and I can’t stop.
I don’t want to stop.
“You used magic on me. You took my choice away from me, and I woke up in Underhill. I woke up in another world with your Guard around me and you were gone. Do you know what that felt like? To open my eyes and realize the world had changed again while I was helpless?"
He goes still.
“And I swallowed it.” My voice shakes, but I keep going. “I swallowed that, too. Because there was always another reason, wasn’t there? Another danger. Another thing I had to understand later. Another answer I wasn’t ready for.”
I drag in a breath, but it doesn’t slow anything inside me.
“I am so tired of later. I’m tired of being told don’t move, don’t speak, don’t answer the voices in the dark, don’t open the door. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Like I’m a child who’ll get herself killed if any of you aren’t watching me every second of every day.”
His eyes stay on mine, unreadable, and that makes the fury burn hotter.
“I have done everything you’ve asked. Everything.
Even back when I thought you were going to kill me.
I hid what I’d learned about you. I stayed silent.
I chose you over my own people. I stayed with you.
I chose you, Cairn. I stayed with you. I followed you.
And now I look at my reflection and it isn’t my face. These aren’t my ears, Cairn!”
I claw at the point of one, the wrong shape of it under my fingers.
“Someone did this to me. Someone hid what I am from me for my entire life, and nobody will tell me anything. You won’t tell me anything. I ask and ask, and you give me half a truth and a closed door!”
My voice keeps rising. I don’t care.
“My father put a rope around my neck. My own father! And my sister stood there and watched. And Nella … Nella handed me to Brennan with a smile because she thought she was saving me. And Brennan—”
His name closes my throat.
For a heartbeat he’s everywhere. The weight of his hands. His breath at my ear. Fourteen years of him looking at me like I was already his.
I drag in air and force him out of my mind.
“Every single person I ever trusted has failed me. Every single one. And I keep getting up. I keep getting up, Cairn! Do you understand what that costs? Do you understand what it takes to wake up in another world with another truth cut out from under you, and still stand there while everyone decides what you can handle?”
My voice breaks, but the words keep coming.
“Then you sit on this beach, and you decide my terror is a teaching tool.”
I’m across the sand before I even register moving, and my hands slam against the front of his chest.
He doesn’t move.
Both my hands are flat against him, all my weight behind them, but he doesn’t even rock back. He just stands there, taking it, as immovable as the cliffs around us.
That makes something ugly tear loose inside me.
I hit him again. Then again. With fists now, striking the unyielding chest in front of me because I can’t reach my father. I can’t reach Brennan. I can’t reach whoever changed my face, or whoever stole my life and left me to find the pieces scattered through two worlds.
So I hit Cairn.
I hit him until my arms turn heavy and the sounds coming out of me stop being words. I hit him until my legs fold beneath me, and I drop to the sand on my knees with my fingers still curled, hauling in breath after breath that won’t fill my lungs.
The fury drains out of me as fast as it arrives, leaving nothing behind but trembling arms and the humiliating heat of tears tracking down my face.
Tears I hate shedding. I hate the wetness of them.
I hate that he gets to see them. And I hate that I can’t make them stop any more than I could stop the flow of words.
A hand settles on top of my head, then slides down to cup the back of my neck.
I should shove him away.
I should hate the weight of his hand there.
I don’t have enough of myself left to do either.
When I finally force my head up, he’s crouched in the sand, and his gaze is fixed on me with an intensity that strips the last remaining air in my lungs.
“There you are.” His voice is soft. “I’ve been waiting for the real you to show herself.”