Chapter Two
Two
Saoirse
The first morning I woke to a cold bed, there were still ashes drifting on the wind.
Faolan’s ship had burned through the night, fire flickering across the water, though it seemed dim from where we’d made our camp.
Brona, Nessa, and the rest of the wolves had divided hammocks and supplies with Aisling’s crew while Maccus sailed off in a fury with his men, but Faolan had gone quiet.
Lost somewhere inside himself as he fashioned a bed out of ferns and blankets, never letting me out of his sight.
He held me almost painfully close as the dark grew thick around us. But by sunrise, he was gone.
It’s been the same for nearly twelve weeks since.
My bare feet sink into pockets of moss as I walk the path between a cave at the base of the mountain Faolan had claimed as our own and the encampments crowding the shore.
Thick, silver-needled pines scatter the sunlight, casting marbled shadows that dance like the iridescent mark painted across my right hand.
Slowly, I tilt it to one side, watching as colors burst across my fingers, then settle into the flesh of my palm—a reminder of the moment I claimed this island and spared my husband’s soul.
Pity touching the mark doesn’t summon him.
I drop my hand and press forward as faint words begin to filter through the trees.
“…did you see…”
“—just this morning—”
“…can’t wake him…”
I stop just as the earth grows loose beneath my heels, soil and rock giving way to loamy sand. I fumble for the nearest tree, and my nails bite into the tender chasm between bark and trunk as I try to unclench my stomach. Force it to expand.
Magic is no stranger to me—at least, not anymore.
I no longer shy from the touch of another person for fear I’ll claim their lives or drive them mad.
Visions rise and fall like the swelling of the tide, easy to manage, and sometimes ignore.
Faced with one or two distraught souls, I can manage just fine.
But twelve? Twenty?
The voices rise and, with them, an overwhelming wave of panic—one that breaks against my mental barriers until I am the panic, terror consuming my flesh.
“He’s gone all stiff!”
“Maira guard his soul.”
Iron-wrapped shock strikes me in the chest as grief threatens to send me to my knees.
Pain, loss, horror—so poignantly felt in their mortal bodies—echo threefold within my own.
Tears well in my eyes as I double over, unable to so much as gasp as I drag my thumb over the wolf ring, pressing down until the physical pain reminds me I am here.
The wave breaks, and I am my own again.
Breathless and shaking.
Stars.
I flatten my hand over the ragged tree’s bark as the clamor begins to settle, breathing deep enough to expel every lingering ounce of emotion from my veins.
It’s a struggle not to turn back after—a fight against every instinct I’ve cultivated over the last twenty-three years to protect myself.
But even if I tried to flee, they’d only send another messenger to bring me back.
Hiding is not a luxury I’m allowed. Not anymore.
So instead of running, I lift my chin as Brona taught me and walk calmly past the tree line: savior of the Isle of Lost Souls once more.
Tents sprawl across the beach in a thick swath of canvas and rope, colorful flags hanging limply from some of their entrances, though most are left bare—a fresh start to mark their new lives on this island.
A choice I can only hope they don’t come to regret.
Chickens cluck in a makeshift coop, laundry flaps precariously on the line as children race beneath the dripping hems, but even their noise isn’t enough to distract from one cluster of tents in particular that bears the cupped hands of Clodagh proudly: a sign of the seanchaí, who were among the first to arrive.
Three women in soft yellow cloaks huddle outside the nearest one, their voices rising to a hysterical pitch as I approach.
“Do you think it was poison?”
“Surely not—but maybe it was the island! Did it…take him?!”
Another wave of dread crawls up my throat, too fast to swallow it back—until I catch a glimpse of the man they’re speaking of, lying rigid on a cot in the tent’s center.
Iron-haired and wrinkled, he lies with one hand over his heart, veins rising like roots between knuckles so prominent, I can imagine they’ve existed for centuries.
Already the skin between them pales to yellowish gray, his jaw askew, lips just barely parted.
Lips that were among the first to name me as queen.
The revered storyteller and seanchaí, Uilleag, is dead.
I remember seeing him for the first time at the Damhsa, unable to summon the words to properly ask for help.
That night, desperate to make something of myself and avoid further consternation from my da, I’d approached the seanchaí with one last, pitiful shred of hope in my hand and watched as he and the others dashed it against the wall.
They’d dismissed not only me but the idea of the Isle of Lost Souls’ existence.
The island of which I am sole guardian now.
Fisting a hand against my middle, I wait until I can be sure my voice will not shake when I speak.
“Blessed seanchaí? I received your message.”
Immediately the youngest, Bríd, whirls around, copper strands catching the light in her braids as she bows.
“Bandia Saoirse, may the stars praise you and your wondrous name!” She reaches for my skirt, and I gently sidestep before she can grasp the material and bring it to her lips. Already heat creeps across my face.
“Please, I’ve told you, there’s no need for…” Her eyes are as round as a begging dog’s, and my stomach churns anew. I turn back to the others—both thrice my age, and less easily impressed, though their reverence is still unnerving. “What happened to Uilleag?”
“He went to bed angry, my queen.” The second seanchaí, Maeve, grips her cane with a trembling hand, though her nose, as always, jerks toward the sky.
“Bedded early last night after recounting the final battle over the Spring of Leigheas, and never joined us this morning. I thought I’d find him sulking, but instead… well. Clodagh bless his soul.”
Her eyes go to his sagging face and purple-veined hand, and again I have to brace myself as I realize what’s been left unsaid. I am the keeper of this island—the queen they all chose to serve. I cannot run for my bed or the mountain spring or even my husband’s arms.
A man is dead, and it is my duty to figure out what to do with him now.
“You said he retired in anger.” Another thought occurs, though the absurdity trips my tongue. “Had he quarreled with anyone?”
Bríd’s earthen eyes grow misty as she looks from his prone figure to me and then quickly away. “A-aye. Last night, he told me I make history a theater with my voices and embellishments, so I said he was a boring old toad. Do you—do you think I killed him? Because—”
“No.” It would be inappropriate to laugh, though Faolan would in a heartbeat.
Again, my rib cage aches.
Damn him.
“No, I don’t think you killed him. It just…felt like the right question to ask.”
I clear my throat, glancing at the body again.
Uilleag was to turn nine and eighty this winter.
Of course he’d likely just died of old age.
But how can I tell them that I’ve never experienced death before?
Not like this. I saw it in my brother’s drowning, Conal’s watery screams still echoing through my head.
I saw it in battle, on Faolan’s ship and in claiming this island.
In memories when I hold the soulstones and guide their spirits to rest. But this is the first time I’ve encountered a shell of a person whose body simply… gave out.
There’s only one thing for it.
Biting my lip, I tuck the patched, well-worn linen of my skirts out of the way and kneel.
“No one can be faulted for the turning of time. Isn’t that something he liked to say?”
At the summer solstice, when Uilleag’s ship first arrived, he’d approached me with tears in his eyes and a cloth sack of soulstones bearing his lineage, five generations past. He watched me release them: his mother, grandmother, ancestors he’d never met, children taken too young.
And he confessed to me, weeping, that he’d long since renounced the gods.
But he would swear his loyalty to me.
“Bríd, could you fetch me a basket? Please.”
The words are distant as a humming starts low in my spine once more, magic pooling in my belly before spilling out into every limb.
I raise a hand over the old man’s mouth, and the opalescent sheen of my palm washes his skin with color and light—as though rebuking the decay of his flesh that has already begun.
“Uilleag, your life was well spent, history preserved by your tongue. You honored the Crescent with your stories and will honor it further in the next life to come. Rest now.”
With a gentle tug, I ease the soulstone from his cold mouth.
It’s truly a miracle I don’t vomit.
“Praise be to the Soulgazer.”
“Long live Bandia Saoirse!”
Someone tosses a flower at my feet, the sea aster’s soft, dusky petals a mockery against my cracked, dirty heels.
Past the seanchaí, a couple of girls from Painted Claw stare at me, their hands linked and lips parted in awe.
An older woman is in tears above them, touching her abalone shell pendant—a piece of jewelry that’s become common in the last month as a way to honor the Isle of Lost Souls.
A way to honor me.
I curl my fingers around Uilleag’s soulstone and bow my head, embarrassed by the gathering whispers and worshipful tones—until Faolan’s voice rustles at the back of my mind.
Let them see you, lass. People need hope.