Page 73 of Soulgazer

Yet the stonemasons of Maccus’s isle did. Suspicious of the Serpent King’s growing coffers and army, they crept up the mountain one night to destroy the spring and divert its waters into ruin. It halted the king’s plans for expansion and wealth and obliterated the world’s most potent balm—the final and most vicious crime of war before the six kings and queens formed their Ring of Stars.

“Your ma was from Frozen Hearth, then? She was a healer?”

“Wanted to be a seanchaí, but, aye, she was—and my gran, and her da before her.” Faolan glances up, and a touch of warmth returns to his eyes. “But before you ask, I’m shite at healing. Really just bollocks at it. I can wrap a wound and manage this, but otherwise you’re best trusting your own needle.”

“And yet you don’t keep a surgeon?”

As quickly as his smile appears, it falls when he looks at my hand. “I thought…maybe the healing instincts would kick in when it really counted.”

A wave of pain pushes through me at the reminder, clawing up my arm. “Faolan. You were dying two days ago—or it looked like it, anyway. If I hadn’t…if I hadn’t known what to mix together, you’d be gone.” I shake my head, then wince at the way it spins. “Why didn’t you tell anyone to fetch this for yourself?”

“Well, I didn’t say I was bad at healingmyself. I’m alive now, aren’t I?”

I frown, but when I try to protest further, Faolan drops to his knees in front of me. The sight does something to my head—or perhaps it’s the shock, because absurd as it is, all I can think of is Nessa’s story at dinner. “Are you going to…worship me now?”

Faolan fumbles the cork. “Sorry?”

The pain loosens my tongue, turning my skin hot, then cold. “Earlier. Nessa said her mother told her the only men worth having are those who worship a woman on their knees. Only…I still don’t know what she meant.”

Faolan stares at me for a full five seconds, and then his forehead drops to my knee as a heavy laugh wheezes from his chest. “You could try the patience of a feckin’ saint, Saoirse—skies o’ fire.” Something like relief chases across his face when he lifts his head, and then his eyes flash dark. Without warning, he leans forward and presses a kiss to the soft inside of my thigh.

It doesn’t matter that my skirt forms a barrier between us. Heat blooms like a water lily in morning from the spot he’s kissed, unfolding inside me until the pain dulls to the back of my mind and all I can imagine is those lips traveling until they find skin.

“At a better time,” he says, nuzzling that same spot with his cheek, scruff scraping through the fabric. “When I know you mean it. Ask me that again, would you?”

“A-aye.”

Faolan captures my gaze one more time, then tears the cork free with his teeth, cradling my hand in his own.

My skin is black and burgundy, with wide-open blisters creeping along the lines of my palm to the network of veins at my wrist. Bone shows through on the end of my smallest finger. Strangely, I hardly feel it. It’s the other injuries that hurt—my head, the mark on my cheek, the parts that struck the desk and wall. Yet the horror of the sight lurches in my gut all the same.

Faolan must feel it, too, because his smile drops. The hand holding mine grows slick with sweat. A vision starts in spurts from where our skin touches—fades to nothing thanks to the pounding in my head.

I start to slump over, and he swears, rocking forward to scoop me up with his uninjured arm. In a flash, Faolan presses my back to his chest, guiding my head into the crook of his neck while pain eats away at my sense.

“I’m sorr—”

“Hush.” Something warm and soft presses to the top of my ear. His lips? Faolan’s words brush against that same spot, and my eyes flutter shut. “I already told you, Wolf Tamer, you don’t have anything to apologize for.”

A weak laugh escapes me. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

He snorts, but the hand cradling mine shakes. “Remember who you’re talking to, love. Regret’s just a part of living. Now, brace yourself.”

I open my mouth to ask what he means when Faolan blows onthe burned flesh of my palm, then mutters something that sounds suspiciously like a prayer. A scant second later, he tips half the vial into my palm.

“Faolan, why don’t I feel—feck!”

Worse curses die on my tongue as I flinch, then buck, but Faolan’s grip on my wrist is like an iron manacle and I’ve no choice but to sit and suffer through. Blisters become islands as the glowing water slides across my flesh, until they rupture and that strange blue-green light covers my palm. The colors shift as red eats away at the black, and a thousand tiny needles shove their way into my flesh.

“Steady—your skin’s just knitting itself back together. Look.”

I don’t look. Ican’tlook. All I can do is arch halfway off his body as the needles turn into blades, then flames. A scream wrenches from my lungs as my neck strains until I drop my head back.

And then it’s over, as quickly as a storm blowing past.

“Stars above.”

Vaguely I’m aware of Faolan’s lips at my throat, his breath as ragged as mine. The grip on my wrist slackens, then falls to one rounded thigh. Again, he kisses my ear, and then chases it with a command.

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