Page 83 of Soulgazer

We float, and then we fall in a tangle of limbs and low curses.

I gasp, drawing in deep lungfuls of stale air as Faolan rocks to his heels and casts a wild look about the chamber, cavernous and intimate all at once. Pillars surround us, joining walls that slope toward a near-perfect circle high above our heads, where an opening allows the sun to shine through.

Except it’s not the sun. Inconstant where it should be steadfast, and blackened at the edges like a fallen star. It casts a strange silver light on the artwork that spills across the walls. Painted cranes, cracked mountains, toxic serpents.

“Just another adventure.” Faolan’s voice comes high and a touch tight as he stands, lifting me by the arm. My knees crack as I join him, a consequence of kneeling constantly in prayer.

“Right.” I take a step, and my foot meets water with a delicate splash, the sound reverberating until an entire rain shower echoes around us. Beautiful but haunting. Like the figures stretched from floor to ceiling that grow clearer the more my eyes adjust, broken only by the pillars—

No. Not pillars.

Thrones.

My breath stops.

These arethrones. Impossibly huge, but unmistakable, and carved straight into stone beneath the portraits of the Slaughtered Ones.

“Faolan, do you see…?”

I could swear a heart beats somewhere beneath the lingering damp. Humming through my blood, my bones. Gods, my teeth ache from clenching—the price of withholding the magic outside the rock.

I am so tired of fighting it.

My steps bring me to the nearest seat, and something catches hard in my throat when I recognize the patch of blueish-white veiled mushrooms at the goddess’s feet. A cluster of stars painted above her dark curls I’ve always known to represent the formless babe nestled in its mother’s belly.

Bandia Eabha, patron of the smallest island—myisland—and protectress over childbirth, maidens, suffering, and forgetting. She holds life and death between her hands. To her left stands Clodagh, goddess of healing, justice, legacy, and the dawn. Her throne crawls with serpents, heather, and balancing scales.

I walk helplessly along the edge of the room and meet eachgod’s or goddess’s eyes upon the wall—great beings I’ve spent my life begging to take away the very same magic that’s led me to this place now. Róisín’s eyes glint as I pass them, the goddess of artisans, shifters, storytellers, and twilight, who guards the Isle of Painted Claw. Patron of my old playmate Rí Callen.

I stop beside Faolan in front of Maira: goddess of Ashen Flame, guardian of the sunset and trade, warriors and horseflesh. His face is almost bitter as he studies her proud countenance and the vibrant swarm of equines that make up her skirts like a school of fish.

“Do you claim allegiance to any of them, Faolan?” I whisper, but the words still scatter across the ceiling above.

Discontent shifts to outright disgust on my husband’s face as his gaze slides past Maira’s throne to Clodagh. But then he blinks, and his smile emerges—startling. Flippant, even, as he shoves a hand through his hair. “No. They’re more useful to us dead than they ever were alive. At least this way we have access to their magic on our own.”

I wince at the irreverent words spoken so boldly beneath their watch, but he must be right. They are only stone and memory now.

Faolan cocks his head. “Funny, though. There should only be six.”

“There are. Six gods for the six islands.”

“Then why’s there a seventh throne just behind you?”

My ankle nearly turns as I spin on my heel. He catches me with an arm about the waist. “No, that’s not right. There are only six. Róisín, Eamon, Odhrán, Maira”—my eyes find each god in turn as I name them, reaching my patroness and passing her—“Clodagh, and Eabha.”

But there between the portraits of the first god and the last lies another, just as Faolan said.

A seventh throne, as clear as day.

It’s split nearly in half with the mark of a great hammer, cracking up the walls to distort her image above. Shards of labradorite drip from her empty eyes, clinging to the crumbled remains of her skirts. The only place untouched is her feet, licked by rolling coils of sea-foam.

I take a step, and the magic’s call slides over my body like a second skin. Pain prickles in response, honing into a knife’s point at my back with every subsequent step. By the time I reach the base, boots dragging through crystals and dust, I can barely catch a breath for its violent struggle within me.

“Tell me.” I dig my hands into my sides to keep them from shaking. “Tell me what to do.”

Kneel.

The impulse is so powerful, I drop to my knees and gasp when they bruise. Faolan reaches for my shoulder, but I push his hand away. “Not yet.”

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