Page 111 of Soulgazer

Forty-One

“You stupid, selfish whore!”

I barely have time to shield my face before Da shoves me through the doors of the great hall, sending me sprawling onto uneven flagstone. My knee splits wide open when I fall. “Do you have any idea what your reckless frolic with that lad has cost me?!”

I scramble to my feet, keeping my eyes on his polished boots as blood spreads across my trousers. Behind me, bodies collide and Faolan curses, but I don’t dare look back to see if he’s all right. History in my father’s house demands that I keep my eyes down.

I squeeze my hands into fists to hide their shaking. The woad wolf dances as my tendons shift below.

“Because of the delay, Rí Maccus has refused to send his stonemasons to reinforce the central caverns. Two collapsed in the last storm, taking a row of cottages with them.”

My gaze drags up to his waist and the gleaming bronze of his belt. Higher to each flash of gold, silver, and glittering gems wrapped along his knuckles as he gestures through the air. They are nothing like the chalk-tipped fingers of that little girl.

Heat creeps up the back of my neck as cold takes over the rest.

“Fifteen dead. Elders, mothers—an infant only days old.”

Bodies swim before my eyes—too thin by half, hands ashen practically from birth, their eyes dulled not by death but by exhaustion and hunger or the mushrooms they’re sent to harvest. Meanwhile my father’s own stomach has rounded in the last five years, stretching silk he never used to wear, and my jaw threatens to break from clenching.

“All of them gone, thanks to your selfishness.”

I look up, teeth bared like the wolf that I’ve become.

“Myselfishness, Father?”

His pupils draw to pinpricks as ice fractures the air between us. But when his hand meets the back of my neck, I shove his arm away before he can force my head down.

My rage leaves no space for a collar I’ve long since outgrown.

“You’ve carved holes into an island that’s already sinking. Ten new caverns in the past year along the center and south, the fields left to seed as you demand higher taxes and longer nights. And the temples?” My laughter is a knife’s edge, cutting through the sound of a scuffle behind me. “When the people go hungry, when accidents plague the new caverns or half a harvest is destroyed by pests and storms—you blametheirlack of piety to gods you don’t even believe in!”

His hand strikes through the air like a snake’s bite, and I flinch against a slap that never lands.

When I look up, Faolan stands between us, his lip bloody and chest heaving as he grips my father’s wrist, white-knuckled with fury, wrapping his other hand around Da’s throat. The guards are at his back in an instant, weapons drawn, but Faolan does not yield.

“Lay another hand on my wife, Dermot, and you’ll lose it.”

My wife.

My entire body curls around the word as its effect ripples through the court. Strikes my father. For a second, his eyes widen and he looks as if he might believe Faolan. But then a nasty smile splits his face and he steps back, waving off the guards with his free hand.

“You sound a touch possessive for a boy who holds no real claim over my daughter.” His gaze levels on us as Faolan steps back to my side, his arm locking around my waist. “Whatever she’s told you, it’s a lie. Her mind’s muddled—just like my mother’s—and as such, any vows you might have exchanged are null and void by the word of her king.”

“If her mind’s no good, why do you keep pushing Maccus on her, then?”

Da’s eyes narrow, and I wrap my hand over Faolan’s at my waist, threading our fingers tight.

Da lifts one brow. “Rí Maccus does not need a mind. He needs a body. And I need—”

“To pull that great stick out your arse. Saoirse is as clear-minded as a sage, and my cousin Ríona Kiara can speak to that fact herself.She’sthe one who conducted the handfasting.”

All expression drops from my father’s face, and my mouth goes dry because I know what comes next. But Faolan doesn’t stop—he doesn’t know what it means when Dermot goes silent.

“And if you think my cousin, thequeenof Ashen Flame, will take kindly to how you’ve treated us today—”

“Can Kiara attest to the consummation as well?”

My fingers fall from Faolan’s as he releases a tight breath meant to sound like a scoff. But Da is not watching Faolan; he’s readingme. And I’ve rarely succeeded at hiding anything from his eyes.

---