Page 145 of Soulgazer

Doubt rips through my concentration for just a second, halting the slip of the blade. “You’ll die if I do.”

“I don’t feckin’care!” Rage explodes across his face once more as he rips the laces of his glove apart, then slams his bare hand against the silver barrier of moonlight. He turns his face to the sky as the bargainer’s mark ripples, screaming at a god he barely believes in. “Do you hear me, damn you?! Let her go! I’ve had my thirteen years—she’s barely begun to live.Let her g—”

“Faolan! This is my choice.Mine.”

“Then don’t make it,” Faolan snarls in response, body coiled against an enemy neither of us can fight. But his eyes…his eyes are wounded and wild. Two glistening halves of the same treacherous sea I’ve always yearned to drown in.

I’m drowning now as that sea spills over.

“Don’t make this choice, Saoirse. Don’t—don’t leave me.”

I take a step closer, and his iron jaw quivers. Another step, and all my husband’s fury implodes on a keening wail. It brings me to my knees until we mirror each other—the fallen magpie and her wretched wolf.

“We were just a story, remember?” My lips tremble from the weight of a smile. “One of your epic tales. When I was grieving and homesick, completely alone, walking those cliffs by thecottage and praying I could just fall…youwere what called me back from the edge. The Wolf of the Wild saved me long before I was the Stone King’s bride.”

Tears blur my vision as I reach for his hand, flattening mine to the barrier just over his soulstone mark. The colors ripple in response.

“You were always my favorite legend, Faolan.”

His eyes drop to the dagger.

“And legends don’tdie.”

I slit myself open from elbow to wrist as Faolan screams my name in the same savage howl he released when they burned his ship.

The dagger drops into the dirt at my feet as blood laces down my arm, beautiful and macabre. It breaks across my skin in a dozen tiny rivulets, then showers to the ground.

Silver-tinged waters erupt wherever my blood falls.

Thisis magic.

Raw and unbound, it pours from the earth in rivulets that flow not toward the sea, but above—to the mountain, and the heart of the Isle of Lost Souls. They swallow the moonlight from above and replicate it in silver streams that climb over my feet. Blood drips from my fingertips and the waters reach up to meet it, until some of the light slips into my veins, pulsing beneath my skin to the very heart of me.

I scream at the first touch of the goddess’s might. Scream like a woman bringing life into the world and a babe drawing its first breath, the beauty and pain wound tight into one vibrant being. Then I collapse onto my hands and knees as the water laps at my thighs, circles my waist, and finally covers my head.

And there she is. Hovering just above me.

The lost goddess.

Her hair is the night sky, swirling with stars and draped over skin that glows with the moon’s caress. If the ocean is reflected in my eyes, it was born first within hers. Her hand grazes my jaw, as lined as the riverbanks after a drought, and gently she tips my head back.

“Heir of sight. Daughter mine.”

Tears stream down my face. “I’m here.”

I’mhome.

She smiles, and it’s as if I’ve waited a lifetime to feel its warmth on my face. Nothing about my body feels strange now. The magic’s hum is no more than a butterfly’s wing at the back of my mind. I am as lush as the island recalled fully to life, part of the earth and stardust that formed it, breathing in sunlight and shadow both. I am not useless, or worthless, ornothing.

I am. And that is enough.

Her lips meet my forehead, and I swear it makes my blood sing.

“We’ve waited a long time for you.”

“What do you…”

She casts her hair back with the sweep of an arm, and five figures emerge from the dark. My mothers. Grandmothers. Women who neglected their magic and forgot who they were.

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