Page 98 of Soulgazer

No one is laughing now.

I sit alone beneath a murky sky, stars quenched by hungry clouds. The others tuck themselves into a half circle across the deck, and even Lorcan avoids my gaze. The fruit gathered at Aisling’s Cove is gone, the fish from the Teeth as well. I crush a lump of crystalized honey against a wooden bowl with my spoon, dragging it through the boiled oats until they’re edible once more. Still, the ache that began at the base of my skull last night radiates across my entire body, and for one ridiculous moment, I want to go home.

But that’s exactly what we’re doing.

“Right.” Nessa taps her spoon once. She doesn’t look at me. “We could cut our losses. Take on another adventure; quick enough, word will die out about the Isle of Lost Souls. Give them something else to talk about by the solstice—”

“That only works if the princess goes home.” Brona’s back is rigid as she speaks.

Faolan doesn’t bother looking up from his place at a barrel, map laid out over its top. “Saoirse stays. You all agreed to it after I first met her.”

Tavin shifts, Nessa exchanging a look with him before she rests the bowl against her knee. “That was before we knew about the soulstone business, Faolan. You never said her magic comes from those.”

“And?”

“Can we really trust it?” I force a bite as Nessa’s gaze burns against my skin. “There’s a reason the Daonnaí rose up against the gods.”

“Saoirse’snota god.”

“Aye, but you claim she’s descended from one of their handmaids. Touched with their magic, even if it’s only a drop in her blood. Once upon a time, lad, a drop was enough to behead someone.” Nessa nudges Tavin’s boot, and he scowls at the nautilus shell in his hands. As the seanchaí of the ship, he should be the first demanding honesty and quoting the ancient laws. It would only be just, after all, if they voted to expel me.

I would do the same, wouldn’t I?

Tavin sighs when Nessa kicks him again. “Stealing a bride on the eve of her wedding is one thing, Faolan, but what we’re talking about here…She’s not an ordinary girl. And clearly her father knew that, or he wouldn’t have been so keen to steal the ring back, let alone hide her away.”

“Or,” Faolan says, finally looking up. “Rí Dermot’s a greedy bastard through and through, and he doesn’t want Kiara to be the one to find the Isle of Lost Souls.”

“So he was going to use Saoirse to find the isle himself?” Tavin frowns. “If that’s so, why marry her off to Rí Maccus?”

The spiraled tattoo scorches beneath my skin. I grimace and press my back to the railing until it bruises more than burns. I’m so tired of their questions. Tired of my useless tongue.

“Her father doesn’t believe in the Isle of Lost Souls. He only wants the power Maccus has to offer.”

“So let him have it,” Brona snaps, tossing her bowl to the ground. “You swore when I signed on to the crew that we’d have nothing to do with Rí Dermot, yet here we are charting a course for his island while hisdaughtersits there, sulking—”

I jerk to my feet, but Faolan raises his hand. “Saoirse is my wife. Whatever ties bound her before, they were cut the moment she pledged herself to me.”

“So that’s why you really married her?” Brona laughs, and that heat inside me shifts. Grows teeth. “Please. All it would take when we enter her father’s waters is for Saoirse to say we kidnapped her, forced her into a handfasting, and then she’d be free to—”

“To what?” My voice strikes the air like a blade I don’t have the strength to soften anymore. “Flee into the loving embrace of my father? It’s clear you know what he’s like. So perhaps you meant my mother, a woman whose only advice was to keep quiet, please, and obey my husband on my wedding night.”

Faolan starts toward me, but it’s my turn to stop him. “Or is that who you mean I should run back to? The Stone King.”

Some tiny part of me whispers caution as I meet Brona’s steady dark brown eyes. Feel the wide gazes of the others on my spine. The things I say cannot be swallowed back down—but for once, I have no will to.

I am hungry to be heard.

“You’re right, all of you. I could go back and be his queen. What was it he told my father—first payment when the marriage is consummated, second when my belly swells, third after I’ve borne him a child that survives? AssumingIsurvive long enough to create one.”

Faolan tries to come between us. “Love, you don’t have to—”

My hand doesn’t falter as I hold it firm against his chest. “Imade the choice to come. I struck the deal with Faolan, I concealed my magic from everyone, and whatever that makes me, I amnotmy father’s daughter. I—” My voice breaks as I catch sight of the woad wolf at my wrist, howling the sweetest silent song. It would break me to never hear it again, to forget that one night I belonged.

The wind shifts, and my grip on the fury falters. Dissolves it enough for pain to slip through.

Stars above.

I turn so I don’t have to see their faces, forcing myself to breathe past the stinging in my eyes. I want to burn those words to ash and run. Not to my old home, not to the life that once awaited me, but back to who I was becoming mere days ago. It’s unbearable to think I’m losing her already.

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