Page 103 of Soulgazer

“Perfect. And if we can’t make it in there?”

“I have a few other ideas.” His face falls when I don’t elaborate, but I pretend not to see it. “It’s two hours to the nearest village. We’d best get going.”

Thirty-Eight

The pain starts in the first village, if you could call it that. The houses are low and cramped, close together, the people dressed in cloth worn as thin as their faces. Every hand we pass is stained a chalky, porous white from harvesting the caipín baís. Even the children’s.

My stomach turns violently when a girl of three catches my fingers in her pale, mottled ones to lead me to the pitiful stable where we buy the only horse fit enough to travel. As I press an extra coin into the girl’s hand, I slip my little dream bear from the siren into her pocket as well. I hadn’t meant to take it with me from the Scath-Díol in the first place, but if I can’t fill the girl’s belly beyond tonight, at least her dreams will be kind.

The second village is worse. Muddy streets filled by gaunt figures with vacant eyes, so lost in the magic of the stalks, they’ve forgotten their families and homes. Their own names.

The third is so full of wandering spirits, I no longer try to put distance between my back and Faolan’s chest, but let him hold me until their hurt stops eating at my mind, pulsing beneath the marks on my back. But it doesn’t keep my soul from aching as we pass the final altar glimmering with aged soulstones until the dark forest swallows us again.

“Right. That’s enough.” Faolan eases the reins from my limp fingers once we’ve left the others far enough behind, tightening his arm around my waist as he pulls the horse to a stop. “Best stop here for the night.”

I don’t argue. I don’t say anything—barely have all day. Not since the little girl told me that each night at the eleventh hour, the ghosts shriek through the woods, their stones buried beneath rock and sea from a cavern collapse just before she was born.

“Saoirse?”

I blink and curl my leg over the horse’s shoulder to slide to the ground. Try to ignore the sharp pangs in my thighs, the ache rooted in my skull that crawls to every limb. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Faolan lands beside me, and for a moment we are apart. Then he catches my wrist, easing me to face him for the first time in hours. It takes everything I have left to look him in the eye. When I do, all I can think about is the way he watched me only a week ago with his fingers tangled in my hair, lips swollen from hard kisses.

Lips of a liar, same as mine.

Whatever he has to say, I’m not ready to listen.

I step back until my arm breaks free from his fingers and I can shake my head. “I-I’ll gather wood for the fire.”

“Hang on—” But I’m already walking away, unwilling to feel his pain alongside mine. The magic’s left me far too sensitive, my body vulnerable, spirit small.

When I return, he has the roll unfurled on the ground and the horse tied up, a circle of stones and packed dirt waiting for kindling. From one of the packs, he pulls out a loaf of bread crusted with nuts, and a bundle of dried meat, as I stack the wood. Onecrack of a Bruidin leaf from the tin in Faolan’s pack, and warmth bleeds through the air into our skin.

I’d forgotten how cold it gets on my isle by night, even in the dead of summer as we are. It’s all the pocks in the land, I think, letting in the sea and chill with it. Half of it’s gone to bog, strewn with peat moss andalwaysthe scent of decay. I’m halfway through rubbing life back into my fingers when I feel his gaze on me.

My heart launches a weak protest when I meet it.

Faolan sits with his knees drawn to his chest, dark hair pulled back neatly into a knot for once as he tears the bread in half and offers me a portion. His shirt lacks embellishment; the rings he loves so much are gone. The cloak is the only thing that gives him away, and only because it’s hanging half off one shoulder instead of pulled low over his head as it’s been all day.

“You’re really going to ignore me, then? Along with everyone else?”

I almost laugh as I take the bread. It’s like sand in my mouth. Of course it’s not actually me Faolan misses. It’s the attention.

I feel nothing. I want nothing. I am nothing.

I repeat the phrases in my mind until the pain dulls into something manageable, then force myself to meet his gaze. We couldn’t have the Wolf of the Wild spotted in case anyone talked, so I was the one to secure the horse and purchase lunch, facing my own people for the first time in my life. They wouldn’t recognize me. Not only because my parents kept us separate in the castle and the keep, but because I know well how to hide myself from the world. What’s more, I don’t even mind it when it serves me.

For Faolan, though, it’s little more than a small series of tortures.

“I’m not ignoring you.”

His scoff sets my teeth on edge. “Right. It’s just the ground is wildly intriguing at the moment, aye?”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Faolan’s eyes latch on to mine, wide and affronted, and I can’t help the smallest smile. But it’s brittle, as I remember the look on his face when his glove fell away. His story about a promise, a voice in the sea, and a girl with ocean eyes. “I’m thinking.”

“You could think aloud with me.” The hope on his face is boyish. Impossible to reconcile with everything else. Quiet descends for a beat too long, and his smile drops along with his face into his hands. “What’ll it take, lass? I’m going mad, guessing what’s running through your mind all on my own.”

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