Page 51 of Soulgazer

I rake my fingers back through my hair, until the Tooth is all I see. “It was my choice to come. If anything happens from here, Ríona Kiara’s made that known. I’ve never wanted anyone else to face the consequences of my actions.”

My foot slides easily into the lowest crevice, but another joins at its side.

Brona nudges me until I make room, then scales the section in three easy lurches of her small frame. “Follow my pattern. And for gods’ sake, don’t fall.”

Nineteen

“Keep up, Saoirse.”

I lift my forehead from where it’s dropped against the wall, sweat pouring down my temples and spine. There isn’t a single part of me that doesn’t tremble as we ascend the crumbling, pockmarked surface. If it weren’t for the footholds, I’d have no chance at all.

“Saoirse!”

Brona’s sharp tone has me reaching for the next divot, and the next. For once in my life, I can’t look down. If I do, I’ll fall.

But as we near the top, where it plateaus, something shifts around us. The wind, which had only nudged my back before, rips through my hair, coaxing me higher. I see the edge, and a thrill burns its way from my stomach up to my heart, then out to every limb.

Brona slips over the top, turning to catch my hand after. She pulls me up, and then we’re lying beneath nothing but sky, both of us breathless and shaking with the awe of such a discovery as—

The smell hits us at the same time, making our gasps turn to groans as we push onto our knees.

We’re kneeling on a surface just as wide as, if not wider than, the main deck of Faolan’s ship. Cranes cover every inch, their noiseseasily overshadowing our heaving breaths and the ruckus from below. Mates dance alongside one another as younglings trail after their parents, ruffling their fresh feathers. Nestled in a row of small, pebbled nests far along the edge, a dozen gray weans squawk and tip their heads back with beaks too big for them to carry, waiting for a feast.

Carnage surrounds us all.

Wherever there aren’t birds, there are streaks of blood, scales, and piles of near-rotted fish. The smell turns my stomach worse than the magic did, and that’s before I see a crane fly overhead with a fish writhing in its beak until it opens. The fish slams into the Tooth with a horrible thwack, killing it instantly as blood spatters the ground.

“Right. Better get on with it.” Brona pulls a knife from her boot and passes me another, brow raised. There’s a faint smirk on her lips and a dare in her eyes. I’m reminded of how Aidan used to challenge me. “Unless you’d rather collect shells and feathers? I can’t imagine the daughter of a king has ever scaled a fish.”

Shrugging off my unease, I force a smile and take the knife from her. “Never a magical one.” I crouch before the fresh kill and bite down hard on my tongue as I work my knife into the vulnerable stripe of its belly. “Have you ever heard of ‘An Bradán Feasa’?”

A half hour later, we’ve filled an entire sack to the tune of my story—one about an ordinary salmon who lived in a well and ate nine hazelnuts that granted him the knowledge of the world. I sift through the piles of fleshy gills and tie off a pouch of fishes’ eyes and another of scales, recounting another tale my nanny gave me, and a third all my own. Anything to distract from the gruesome work. I nearly throw up twice by the time it’s done, but when we straighten with our arms streaked in blood, I can’t help a smile.

“Not bad,” Brona says, swiping at a loose curl before she ties along strip of leather tight over her sack. “Better than the others have fared, I’ll bet.”

I glance over the edge we climbed and spot Faolan at once where he lies back in one of the currachs, all the others back in their own boats. There’s only the smallest splash of gold in his hull, none in the rest. A reluctant smile edges onto my lips as I weigh the sack in one hand. “Do you think he’ll be annoyed?”

“I hope so, the eejit.”

My smile widens as Brona joins me, snorting at the sight below. She kicks a rock off the edge then, and waggles her blood-streaked fingers while we wait for the splash. It comes three beats later. “There’s our way down.”

“What, falling?” I laugh until I realize her grin is not a show of amusement. She’s dead serious. “No.”

“You barely made it up at all.” Brona nudges another rock over. I feel its splash like a ripple in my blood. “I’m not trying to be rude, but do you really think you stand a chance of climbing down when you have allthatto contend with as well?”

My grip on the sack tightens. “I’m not going to jump.”

“Please, Highness, enlighten me about all the other choices at your disposal, then.”

“Brona, please don’t call me…”

Time stops as my vision narrows to one central point in the near distance. A flag—badly damaged, colors fading, barely more than threads at this point. But the familiar trio of silver-threaded mushrooms still manages to catch the light where it peeks above the still waters between one Tooth and the next.

“I’ll make it easy for you.”

“No—Brona, wait!”

Her hands meet my shoulders with a strength I had no idea she possessed. For a moment, we hang suspended over the ledge. ThenI’m falling through air and space, and I don’t even scream for the surprise of it all. Water slaps my side when I land, swallowing me whole. A splash sounds to my left a heartbeat later, knocking me into the wood of the boat, and then my head breaks the surface just beside Brona’s.

---