Page 146 of Soulgazer

It’s clear they remember themselves now.

Gráinne stands at the front, no longer a specter but flushed with promise, her eyes alight. Beside her is another version of us, with my nose and Gráinne’s high cheeks. The others are unrecognizable, born in the age of the Daonnaí, but all our eyes are carved from the sea.

“Little Soulgazer.”

I turn to the goddess again, my heart filling the quiet of this place. “I never knew.”

“It was not for you to know.”

What else is this world made of that we cannot see? I glance to the walls of swirling water around us, shadows shifting behind their might. “Why now? Whyme?”

The lost goddess lifts her hands, and between them appears an orb. It pulls on my insides like the ocean’s tide, drawing me close. And yet it’s familiar as well.

I tilt my head, considering the freckles at her wrists. A mark at her shoulder.

“Muireal?”

Her smile is a comet’s blaze, lighting the night sky. “You found my relic.” She gestures to the bone ring. “As well as my name.”

I shake my head. “No, my friend Brona—she told me of the constellation. It’s an old story, passed down for…” My eyes skate over the women as the pieces fall into place. “Five generations.”

Muireal brings her palms together until the moon sinks into her flesh. “Fate preserved my name in the stars, though the others stole the rest. You witnessed their destruction?” I nod. “It is the lot of a Soulgazer to see too much. You will draw love. You will draw hatred.”

“I…will?” I glance down at my hands, bloody and pale. “But I thought…”

“You have a choice to make: rest or awaken. Should you choose to sleep, your spirit will part to the next realm and your body will decay. Should you choose to awaken, your body will heal as your spirit expands within its boundaries.” Muireal lifts my chin with a finger, until I meet her fathomless eyes. “But be warned. If you go back, there is no escaping the magic. You will be bound to the dead, releasing their souls and tied forever to this land.”

For a moment, I doubt my choice as my life hangs in the space between us.

I could draw back now. Turn my head, reject my birthright,bleed all my magic into the land and live on as nothing more than a legend. The story of a fanciful girl who carried the blood of a goddess, wed the Wolf of the Wild, and sacrificed herself to resurrect an island lost to myth.

I could be loved that way, shaped into whatever the seanchaí desired.

Let me make a legend of you.

The voice wraps around my flesh—salt and silk.

Faolan’svoice.

“Awaken.”

I blink and wait to regret my impulse. The choice that promises all risk and very little reward. But Muireal only smiles like she knew I’d choose it all along.

“Then take my breath, and return.”

I take one more look at Muireal’s midnight hair and starlight skin, memorizing it for when I’m only mortal again. Then I tilt my face forward and seal my lips to hers.

Fifty-Five

The magic does not rush or ruin me like I might have expected, but trickles back in like the gentlest of rains. It comes in awareness of the living souls on land, their hurts and fears and disbelief. The knowing settles in my bones and remains, not a thing to fear, but to guide me along in quiet ebbs and flows I must learn to read. And the stars—I tip my head back to see through the water, even as they whisper in the darkness.

I must learn their language. Learn the sea.

Learn myself.

I am one with the magic now, neither master of fate nor bound to its whims. I will listen and watch, speak her truth, and guard the souls.

There are so many souls to call home.

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