Derrick dives to the ground and starts digging with a combination of his hands and small bursts of power. He moves the heavy dirt and rocks with surprising speed and efficiency for such a small creature, heaping them in a pile on the forest floor. In no time, the hole grows a few feet deep and wide and he just keeps going.
When he catches me staring, he says impatiently, “Well? Don’t just stand there. You slaughtered them, you help bury them.”
I shake my head and grasp one of the dead faeries, grunting as I pull him across the ground. With all that armor on, the faery is heavier than he looks. “Is there a reason we’re hiding them? Why can’t we just leave them behind?”
“Because, my forgetful friend, unlike the rest of the sìthichean, daoine sìth don’t decay. We’re in the middle of a tense accord between the Seelie Queen and the Unseelie King, and once he discovers the bodies of his dead soldiers, things are bound to become terrible very, very fast.” Derrick says it evenly, but there’s a note of worry beneath his words. An urgency. “The King is going to assume Aithinne has declared war. Burying his scouts will buy us enough time to warn her.”
I just came back from the dead and I’ve already started a war between two monarchs. Brilliant. “I didn’t mean to—”
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he says shortly. “One of them has to kill the other, and they’ve been delaying it in the hope that another solution will present itself. It hasn’t. This was inevitable.”
No wonder the other faeries were talking about territories and the Queen sending someone to kill for her; we must be on the King’s land. That pricks at a memory at the back of my mind, another important one I can’t recall.
It’s to do with the monarchs. The King. I may not remember his name, but the emotions I feel when I think of him are strong. I cared for him. Deeply enough that Derrick’s words fill me with dread.
Ask something else. “They have to?”
“They don’t have a choice,” he says.
“Then I need to speak with the King.” I need him to know I’m alive. “I’ll tell him it was me. It doesn’t have to be inevitable.” I know it doesn’t have to. There has to be something else—
“No,” Derrick says.
“Derrick—”
“It won’t make any difference,” he says sharply. “We’re running out of time.” The ground rumbles and his power tosses so much dirt that it smacks into a nearby tree. “We have to accept that one of them is going to die and she’s the better, kinder monarch. She should be the one to live.”
In the middle of dragging the third body toward the pit, I freeze at his words. She should be the one to live. We’re running out of time.
He sees my expression and slows his digging. “Hell,” he mutters. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I don’t reply. Blurred memories surface. They’re an assault of images and words, none of them clear except for an urgency that leaves me trembling. A desperate sense that it isn’t too late, that we can save them both. But when I try to see how, pain slams through my temples so hard that stars flash in my vision. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out.
“Running out of time?” I ask, voice hoarse. I shake my head in frustration. What’s the point of being brought back if I can’t remember anything?
“You’ll see. The land is crumbling just beyond the forest border.” Derrick returns to his rapid digging, only this time his movements are more agitated. The pit is at least six feet deep now, but the fae would be able to smell their dead past that. He keeps going. “Our realm is breaking apart because they refuse to kill each other. If one of them doesn’t die, we all will.”
Our realm. There it is again; the voice in my memories is whispering something about curses and power. When I push for more, my head starts pounding again. I wince and press my fingertips to my temples.
When I glance at Derrick, he looks away. But I’m nothing if not persistent. I want to know who the Unseelie King is. Why I feel so strongly. “If you think he should die,” I say quietly, “shouldn’t I at least speak with him before the end?”
Derrick’s mouth presses into a hard line. “You weren’t here to see the things he’s done,” he says quietly. “He’s so far gone, he might not give a damn about you.”
I blanch at that, blinking back the tears that suddenly prick at my eyes. I don’t have a response; there’s nothing from my memories to insist that Derrick is wrong. Only what I feel. And I don’t know if I can trust that, either.
So I roll the corpses into the pit and help Derrick cover them up with dirt.
CHAPTER 4
DERRICK URGES me through the forest at a demanding speed. If I slow to a jog, he pushes me to go faster. “The farther we get from those bodies before nightfall, the better,” he says. “I’ve got people to warn.”
I almost stumble over a tree root. I’m breathing so hard I can’t say anything at first. Finally, I manage: “Fly ahead?”
Derrick’s mouth sets in a line. “No.”
“But—”
“I’m not leaving you.” His wings flick in agitation. “Not when I’m half convinced you’re the product of either some insane dream or my overactive imagination. And I just got my shoulder seat back. Now, move your arse.”
I pick up my pace, sprinting until my muscles burn. Neither of us speaks, not even hours later, when we find an abandoned cottage deep in the woods. Derrick decides we’re far enough from the dead forest to rest for the night.
And not a moment too soon, because I am about to keel over.
The thatched roof is sturdy enough to keep out most of the rain. The air inside is musty. A single hole in the corner of the stonework lets in enough rain that water and moss have spread along the walls.
My feet ache. Carefully, I lower my sore body to the cold stone floor and sit while Derrick rummages in a trunk on the far side of the room. The blankets he finds inside are moth-eaten and dirty, the old wool riddled with holes. With a contented sigh, he pulls a needle and thread from his coat pocket and starts stitching up the fabric.
“Derrick.” I test the weight of his name on my tongue, hoping to use it to conjure a memory. The sense of home returns, the comfort, but no memories. No images of my former life.
“Aileana.” I try my own name, reaching to the dark parts of my mind. I have to know why I came back. How I came back. I whisper my name over and over until it’s a breath on my lips. Until it’s no more than a sound. That feeling of immense burden rises again and I try to weather it. I let the storm build and see where it takes me, but beyond it, there’s still nothing.
Oh, confound it. I give up.
“I had another name,” I say, irritated by my inability to recall even the most basic things. “Didn’t I? It was shorter. One syllable.”
Derrick goes quiet, and his fingers are suddenly still. He’s avoiding my gaze. “You did.” He jabs the needle through the material and bites his lip. He’s thinking hard, that much is obvious.
I narrow my eyes. “I may not have my memories of you, but I know that look. You don’t want to be honest with me.”