Page 104 of Soulgazer

I fix my eyes staunchly on the fire, insides twisting again. “Is there a god that could turn back time? Or make you tell me the whole truth before I—” I can’t finish the sentence, not aloud.

Before I boarded the ship? Married him? Or back to the moment before he told me I was worthy of so much more than I’d been dealt?

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

He must sense some small part of what I’m holding back, because his shoulders drop as he pushes a log too hard in the fire, and the whole little pyre collapses in a shower of sparks. “No. But there’s a goddess of fate who set this all up nice and tidy, and she’s a real bitch.”

My laugh catches me off guard, breaking the heavy quiet before I can clap a hand over it. I glance toward the stars, where they peek out from behind leaves, half afraid she’ll manifest from my visions and lash out at Faolan. But it’s only us and the quiet. Finally, I drop my forehead to my knees and release all the breath that’s been trapped in my chest since the moment his glove fell away.

“Aye, she is. But you still played your part.”

“So did you.”

“At least I’ve owned mine.”

I almost regret the stillness that follows. But I can no longer swallow blame that is not my own, just for the sake of keeping the peace. Even if it means this fragile warmth between us is snuffed out.

“I’m sorry.”

My head jerks up. I hunt his face, his eyes, for the lie. The manipulation that must be there.

But it’s only Faolan—the boy who survived a shipwreck to carve an entire legend out of this vicious, hungry world. And still I wonder if it’s my ears that have got it wrong. “What?”

“I said I’m sorry.” Faolan’s lips flick up at the corners, but his eyes are sober when they meet my own. “I should have told you from the start, or at least after we were handfasted, but I’m…” His smile falters, then drops away. “I’m a selfish bastard at heart, and a proud one. I’ve worked bloody hard to get the ship, the name, and if I could never remember what it was like to be on those feckin’ rocks, nameless and completely alone—”

“You forget I was alone too.”

Wind rustles the leaves above our heads, as though the trees are listening as well. Smoke gathers between us, then trickles into the air. His calluses scrape my wrist, drawing me back to my body—to him. But I can’t meet his eyes. Not for this.

“Do you know that silence has a sound?” I curl my toes into the dirt. “It’s memory. Ghosts. You can think a million different thoughts and hear each one as though someone’s shouted it across the room.Murderer. Cursed. Worthless.”

My breath shudders when I take it in. “I used to press up against a wall to pretend someone was holding me. By the time I was sixteen, my left side almost always had a bruise. I didn’t talk to anyone for months—my father sent someone with suppliesevery full moon, but they were instructed to leave them at the path, as though I were contagious.”

“Saoirse…”

“And I would tell myself I feel nothing. I want nothing. I am nothing.”

Faolan has never gone so rigid as he does now. His knuckles are white where his fingers hold mine, breath trembling as it pours free from his lungs. “Is that what you tell yourself now? In the times when you go quiet, lost so far inside yourself that I cannot reach you?”

I squeeze my eyes shut until stars appear behind them, then nod as his thumb presses over mine. “It makes it easier.”

“Easier to what?”

“To forget the pain. The things I’ve done—or what’s been done to me. My…my father isn’t a good person.”

Faolan blinks, clearly taken aback. I almost want to laugh again, but I shake my head instead. “You asked me to share my thoughts. And that’s it. Even without seeing all we did today, or hearing Brona’s story, he’s never apologized after he did wrong. Not once, not ever.” I wonder if it would be better or worse if he had. “I never thanked you for taking me away from him.”

Faolan’s fingers pull on mine until I look up. He’s frowning at me, lips slightly parted until he leans in and tucks a dark lock of my hair back from my face. I’d hardly noticed it fall. “You’re the one who chose to leave him, lass. Hell, you swam across the bloody ocean to get away—don’t think I’ve forgotten that moment.” His thumb brushes my bottom lip. “All I’ve done is provide a ship and name to protect you, and a hell of a lot of trouble.”

I can’t help the smile, as out of place as it feels on my mouth. “I did, didn’t I?”

“Aye.” His gaze drops from my eyes to my lips, and it’s onlythen I realize his hand’s still holding my cheek. My stomach tightens in a way that’s familiar now, holding fast to the moth wings inside so they don’t escape when he touches his lips to mine. But as he leans forward with firelight flickering across his face and my head tips back, something unfurls inside my mind.

A glove removed. A secret shared.

The death sentence weighing heavier on my shoulders with each day that’s wasted.

I turn my head so his lips meet my cheek instead, wincing at the tender brush of it. “I can’t. Not after…I just…I can’t yet.”

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