I think of our kiss, how his lips lingered against mine. His whispered pledge.Aoram dhuit. I will worship thee.
I drag my attention back to the seal again, the positioning of the symbols. I glance up. The clouds have begun to blow away, leaving behind a clear night sky bright with stars. I study the constellations.
Perhaps Kiaranwasmistaken, like he suspected he might be. If his sister had to alter the seal for this purpose, maybe she changed the sequence. The key to the correct placement of the rings might not have anything to do with a fixed position on the seal. Maybe aligning them to their position in the skynowis what relocks it.
I click the symbols into new positions, this time corresponding with the placement of the constellations in the sky. Once the first ring is completed, the seal begins to hum. I almost smile. I got it.
I click the second ring into place and the hum increases.
Sorcha’s voice mimicking my mother’s resounds in my head again.Falconer. . .
I put my hands over my ears as if that could somehow muffle her. Now I know why Kiaran told me to focus on my memories of that night at the loch, to let them ground me. They cleanse me of my rage until I’m left only with my memories of us together. Us hunting together, running through the city in the night. Sparring until the early hours of the morning. Lying in the grass, Kiaran telling me that he wanted to stay with me until the end.
They all anchor me. I ignore the wavering shield around me and click the third and fourth rings into place. Then the fifth.
Another memory interrupts, flashing violently in my mind. Sorcha ripping through my mother’s throat. Sorcha clawing open my mother’s chest. Sorcha’s wide smile as she holds my mother’s bleeding heart aloft.Crimson suits you best crimson suits you best crimson suits you best crimson suits you—
‘Stop it,’ I say. ‘Stop it stop itstop it!’
Make me, her voice whispers in my mind.
I try to rouse my memories of Kiaran again, but every time I think I’ve succeeded, I feel Sorcha in my mind. She drags me out of the calm space I want to be in and shoves me back into the body of the girl I used to be, weak and trembling and numb. She forces me to sit next to my mother’s dead body again, and feel the slick, heavy weight of her blood all over me.
‘Stop!’ I open my eyes again to meet Sorcha’s.
Sorcha speaks again with my mother’s voice, the voice that used to soothe and laugh and comfort me. ‘Then take my heart in return, Falconer,’ she taunts. ‘If you can.’
My memories of Kiaran cease to matter. There is only rising anger and the single image of one hundred and eighty-six crimson ribbons attached to pins on a map. All those people she killed. That’s all it takes to silence the rational part of me.
I stand with my blades in hand, about to stride out of that light shield to kill Sorcha.
‘Kam,don’t! The Seer’s vision!’
I look over. Kiaran’s eyes catch mine as he blocks another blow from Lonnrach. I stop at the edge of the light, my foot poised to take that last fateful step.
And I can see everything so clearly, perhaps the way Gavin did. I see myself stepping through the shield. Maybe I kill Sorcha and Kiaran dies. Or maybe she kills me. In both versions of that reality, the city falls. The buildings are reduced to rubble and ash. Everyone I love dies. That’s how the vision ends.
Sorcha would try to convince me that vengeance is worth risking everything for. But the dead don’t come back. I know that better than anyone.
‘No,’ I tell Sorcha. I make the decision I hope will change the vision. I step back towards the seal and think of the words Derrick said to me after I destroyed the map. ‘I won’t ever let you break me.’
I ignore her efforts to scratch her way into my mind, to expose every memory, every nightmare, every rage-fuelled fight I’ve ever had. She tries to draw me back into that vengeful part of me again, into the irrational creature who would abandon the most important thing of all just to kill her.
I won’t be that person for her. I click the sixth ring into place and listen to the pleasant hum of the device intensify again.
Glancing up, I look at Kiaran one last time before I align the final ring. The position of the blood moon. He and Lonnrach are still fighting, their power beginning to scorch the earth black around them.
‘Goodbye,’ I whisper to him.
Before I click that last ring into place, Lonnrach grabs Kiaran by the shirt and throws him into the shield.
The shield snaps and breaks with a tremendous clap, gold light cracking around me. Kiaran crashes into me and I end up sprawled on the ground beneath his heavy body.
‘Kiaran?’
I manage to push him off me. Part of his face is scorched from the shield, skin blackened, bone showing through. His eyes are closed and he isn’t moving. I frantically search for his pulse. My fingers touch the blackened, withering skin at his throat and it nearly breaks me. Tears fall from my eyes.
‘Kiaran.’ I shake him. ‘Kiaran, wake up.’ He still isn’t moving, not even breathing. I shake him harder. I hit his chest. I scream at him. ‘Wake up! Kiaran!’
Boots crunch through the dirt in front of me and I look up to meet Lonnrach’s hard, crystalline gaze. ‘He’s alive, Falconer. Even a shield as strong as that isn’t powerful enough to destroy him.’
My brief moment of relief is crushed by the dawning horror of what I’ve done. The seal.Oh, God.
I push to my feet, lurching back to the device so I can align the last circle and save us all, but Lonnrach seizes me. The bite of his blade is sharp under my chin and I feel a trickle of blood slide down my throat.
‘You really believe me to be your worst enemy.’ He glances over at Kiaran, an emotion in his gaze that I can’t comprehend. Then he says something I’ll never forget. ‘You’ll wish you had killed Kadamach when you had the chance.’
