Page 27 of Soulgazer

I glance down to see my pulse throbbing relentlessly at my wrist as though it, too, wants to escape. Out the window, a second stream of smoke ignites. I manage to dig my fist into the mattress and roll onto my side—gasping with the monumental effort. Sweat trickles down the small of my back and across the pads of my feet as tears slip down my chin.

This is the first time I’ve felt them in hours.

“Why has she gone quiet?” Mam’s voice was a splinter in the silence. My throat was burning—everything was burning—but I couldn’t scream. My body was the earth, and the earth was crumbling. An entire island lost to the sea.

Jerking. Shaking— Why couldn’t I stop shaking?

Phantom tremors dance across my bones. I’ve never been more terrified of myself than I was in the eternity after my father’s apothecary completed the second swirl of the triskele, separating my body from my mind.

I thrashed on the ground without reason, a plea lodged tight between my teeth. They rattled together and my mother sobbed, holding fast to me—why had she never held me like this before?

Until it stopped.

And I couldn’t feel Mam’s hands on my shoulders. Or the pain at my back.

I couldn’t feel anything at all.

My legs prickle as a thousand spiders seem to writhe across mycalves. I kick until they flee, sending the dense wool covers to the ground.

Outside the window, a third thread of smoke joins the other two.

I grit my teeth and heave against the mattress until, with a sickening lurch, my body topples to the ground. There, my limbs twist and jerk as I crumple between chalk-stained barrel rings, pressing my forehead to the filthy ground. I breathe slow and deep, rocking back and forth until every limb is mine again—aching, butmine.

“Why has she stopped moving? What the feck have you done?!”

Boots landed heavy on the floorboards, inches from my nose. A bone dropped, the needle splitting in two as ink sprayed across Da’s robes.

The apothecary sighed. “I warned you she’d react poorly. We should have begun the moment we collected her from that shack—small pieces, over time. Is that not what I advised?”

“Your advice is worthless if you do not fix hernow!”

Four sacrifices bend in columns of smoke to the sky, and I lock my eyes on the window. Ease onto my knees—bite down a cry when my strength falters, sending me back to the floor. My mouth tastes vile with the apothecary’s elixir.

If I can just make it to the water.

On a weak sob, I start to crawl.

Was I finally nothing? Were they happy now?

Da continued to argue as Mam sponged my brow. I couldn’t turn my head away from the irritating drips of water, or keep it from lolling as she dragged me onto the bed. The air was stifling when she tucked me in, singing prayers over my head. When the apothecary tipped a bottle into my mouth, I swallowed the best I could.

My mother had taught me nothing if not to endure.

To obey.

I nearly tip the basin over, grasping for the clay jug tuckedinside. Water streams down either side of my mouth as I drink, saturating my dirt-smudged gown. It’s not enough. I need more water. Air.

Wild.

The Wolf’s face flashes across my mind, and I drop the jug. Its handle splits as it hits the ground, the body lying cracked and worthless beside it. There is something in the mess I’ve made—a thing I’ve forgotten. But the pool of water is stunning, capturing all the moon’s blessed light.

“Tomorrow, then. We will complete the tattoo at first light. And gods be damned, Saoirsewillwed Rí Maccus before the sun sets.”

I trace a finger through the liquid, silver threads rippling out from the point. In another moment, it will be gone—absorbed into dusty knots of yarn, forgotten beneath someone’s heel.

Is that what I truly want?

My gaze flits to the window, where a fifth beacon of smoke has just barely begun.

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