Page 140 of Soulgazer

Home.

I’m cominghome.

The sky is split between the moon and her starry companions as she rises slowly into the night. Muireal’s constellation is almost perfectly aligned. I walk until my legs burn, and the earth plateaus beneath my feet. Without looking, I know we’ve reached the very center of the isle.

It’s strange, though. I’m not winded or sore or even scared, because for once in my life, I know exactly where to direct my steps. Iknowthat the path winds through narrow, sweeping cliffs to hide away the heart of the isle from the world outside. One by one I navigate them, fingers tracing the patterns and symbols carved into rock, until I step through a wall of mist into a scene of pure paradise.

A series of pools lines the rock going all the way up to the snowcapped top that soaks up moonlight all but one night a month and pours it into the waters that flow down, down, down to collect just before our feet. I’ve never heard such lovely music as the sound the water makes, passed from one pool to the next, paler than bone or sand or snow, their shallows gleaming like mother-of-pearl with all the discarded soulstones.

“It’s here! I told you.” I’m laughing as I turn to see Faolan and the others, but none of them are smiling. Faolan steps forward, his beautiful jaw set tight as he reaches for my hands to pull the ring free.

“No!” I jerk back, but this time he doesn’t yield.

He removes the ring, and the earth turns as black as shadow. We are standing on brittle bones and forgotten memories, with barren scoops of earth holding only foul, stagnant muck.

The Isle of Lost Souls.

“This…this isn’t right.” I crane my neck to search for Muireal’s constellation in the sky, but clouds streak over the moon, blurring its position. “We’re here. We tracked the moon, I-I found the stupid ring—it’s not supposed to be this way.”

I swipe the ring from Faolan, and he drops his head, searching the ground fruitlessly for a clever way out like he’s managed to take all his life. I see the cracks form until the mask crumbles. Falls away entirely. “No. It’s not.”

Kiara steps forward, face gone to stone. “Faolan, you’d best figure this outnow. I’ll not face Maccus empty-handed when he appears. For all we know, he’s already laid anchor.”

“What do you care?” he asks, voice chained at the edges like he’s barely restrained a scream. “You’ll have Aisling to back you and—”

“Shemeans war.” Kiara flings a hand my way, and nausea takes me over. “Your choice to take Saoirse means war, and I was willing to fight it with you, but without this damned island—awakeand alive—to negotiate with, we’re all fecked.”

The words should cut like a knife, but I’m as empty as the land beneath my feet, its veins dry of the magic that once dwelt in the goddess.

Magic…that now lives in me.

My fingers waver as I roll the ring between them and stare at the perfect blue gem that throws a thousand different colors every time it catches the light. It’s almost like a living thing, this relic worn by my ancestors.

Restored by my blood.

A chill sweeps my neck, but I tilt my head and slowly slide the ring onto my finger.

Captive soul, your blood shall free…

Is that truly all it would take? It seems so simple. A prick of the finger, a couple of drops, just what it took to fix the ring and walk through that doorway. Yes, the gods were slaughtered like animals—bled like them, too, until the earth drank everything they had—but they weregods. My line is only blessed. And this island already held magic before they hid it away. Surely all I need to do is recall it to life?

I ignore the arguments around me, the sound of my name being called, as I tug a dagger free from my belt and nick my smallest finger. One, two, three drops fall to the ground, and I hold my breath, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing does.

“Saoirse, we need to go.”

I want to scream. To rage. I’m about to slam my hand into the earth andmakeit work when someone seizes my arms and lifts me as though I were a child—lifts until my feet clear the ground, until I forget what it is to breathe, as I come face-to-face with the man I have now fled twice. Rí Maccus.

Stars save me from the Stone King.

Fifty-Three

We are going to break each other.

I am shattering in a thousand different places as I watch Rí Maccus sink his fists into Faolan. Still, the cries he releases are nothing to the soul-wrenching sound he made when he first saw the kiss of fire upon the sky as they dragged us away from the pools and down closer to shore—like an animal mourning.

Because his ship’s sails are afire, lit up like a phoenix’s wing. A great and terrible beauty that I swear I feel rip straight through his heart and into my own.

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