Chapter Five
Five
Faolan
For all my dreams of drowning, I never thought I’d be fool enough to suffocate on dry land—and yet here we are.
I’m a selfish coward. A feckless eejit.
I stop at the curtain’s edge, lungs seizing up like I’ve dunked them in sap as Aisling spits words Kiara’s way. “All I’ve done for months is beg Etain to send supplies. Now here I am standing at the very edge of her good graces—and for what? For Faolan to act like it’s all some great burden?”
“It is a burden.” Kiara drops to a crouch, reaching for Aisling’s shoulder. “Be fair, Ash—”
“None of this is fair!” Aisling shoves Kiara’s hand aside, gold bracelets dancing in the light.
“None of us wanted to inherit the tuatha, or be responsible for the lives of thousands of people—but it’s our birthright.
Our duty. And I can’t keep overtaxing Bridled Stag just so you can lie to me while Faolan complains about having to wear a crown. ”
A throat clears from the shadows. The curtain swirls against my legs.
Callen nods in my direction as Saoirse’s breath traces up my neck—rushed and tight, like the blood pounding in a bodhrán’s beat through my limbs.
Aisling’s jaw goes slack when she sees me. “Faolan. I—”
“No, go on.” I stalk closer. Relish the shadows cast over their pale faces when I do. “Finish what you were saying. Tell me how grateful I should be.”
Kiara rises to her feet, face wiped clean of feeling.
But I don’t care about her. Not now.
My eyes are on the red-faced princess at her side.
“All I’ve ever wanted in life was freedom.”
Aisling’s eyes blur, but even so she manages a small scoff. “Yes, we all know—”
“No, you don’t.” I spit the words out like they’ve gone foul.
“You are heir to the richest island of the Crescent. Not once have you ever gone hungry, lacked shelter, or wondered whether your life held any significance at all. You’ve never paid for that power.
You could use it to change your circumstances.
Sculpt life however you see fit—don’t give me that look, I know all the shite about duty and lineage.
But just because you won’t do it doesn’t mean you can’t. ”
Aisling flinches as a hand lands on my shoulder, soft and cool.
An unwelcome balm to my rage.
“Faolan, you don’t know what she’s been through—”
“And I don’t bloody care!” My muscles spasm as I pull away from Saoirse’s hand, staggering to the side—shaking.
Why in shade’s realm am I shaking? I round on Aisling, watching as angry tears gather in her eyes.
“I paid the price. In blood, sweat, and steel, I did. Every choice I’ve made, every story I’ve spun, was for a life without gods or masters or kings.
So what makes you think for a second I’d be grateful to be trapped here, wearing one of your feckin’ crowns? !”
Silence falls, and I wait for it to feel like triumph. For that miserable, snarling beast in my chest to disappear.
Instead, Kiara digs in her pocket and hurls a sack of coins at my feet.
“You want your freedom? Take it. No one’s stopping you.”
I stare at the silver pieces spilling over themselves in the light. Remember saying some version of those words to Saoirse once, coaxing her to run away on my ship even as she tried to explain all the reasons she couldn’t. How flippant I was in dismissing them.
Kiara crosses her arms, one brow slashed high like it’s been carved by a knife. “Well?”
My spine goes limp as all that fire within me burns out.
Her eyes flash darker when it does.
Feck.
“You’ve had your freedom from the moment we landed on the Isle of Lost Souls. You’ve chosen to stay.” Kiara reaches down to Aisling, swiping a finger along her damp cheek. “That’s more than the rest of us will ever get.”
In the shadows behind her, Callen stiffens where they lounge against the tent pole.
I turn to reach for Saoirse, but though her body remains, her heart’s worlds away.
It’s like a beast’s gnawed a hole straight through my gut.
“You don’t have to be grateful, Faolan.” Kiara helps Aisling to her feet. “You don’t even have to be happy. But you do have to accept that this is a choice you have made and decide whether you’re going to keep making it or spare us the dramatics and leave.”
It’s a funny thing, indignation.
How fast it comes on. How quickly it goes.
Aisling clears away the rest of her tears with a dignified swipe of her sleeve, and guilt snaps the last threads of my resolve. I was an arse to her first. Saoirse said as much. And Kiara—skies above, I hate it, but she’s right. I could leave.
I could take a ship—any ship I wanted—and sail to the farthest reaches of the Crescent. Farther, even, than anyone else has tried going before. I could sail the seas for a whole year without touching land, sink Maccus’s ships just to spite him, chase riddles and legends to my heart’s content.
Except I won’t.
I’ll never do any of those things.
Because the woman I love tethered herself to this place by magic. She can’t leave the island, and I can’t leave her.
My lungs stick again, and this time there’s no fighting it. I let the useless things collapse.
There once was a boy with no name who longed for a cloak of wolfskin.
“Right.” The word pitches in the middle, weighed down by everything inside. I swallow hard. Roll my shoulders back and trick my face into a smile. “Sorry, Ash.”
Kiara narrows her eyes once, but Aisling just blinks, a last bit of moisture clinging to her lashes. “I’ll accept your apology…if you trim your beard.”
A laugh bursts free before I can stifle it—and thank the stars for that.
“Fine. Done.” I pinch the space between my eyes, squinting until the burning stops. “Kiara, are you going to tell us why we’re all here, or do I have to drag it out of you?”
Her soft chuff is reassuring.
The sight of my wife is not.
Saoirse stands exactly as I first saw her: wings drawn in, head tipped down, lip caught between her teeth.
She’s made herself so fecking small, whatever’s left of my black heart breaks.
I don’t bother picking up the pieces. I just stride over and catch her hand—the same one I brushed off not two minutes ago.
“Saoirse?”
She doesn’t look at me, her chest hitching in sharp, wee bursts.
I run a thumb between her knuckles, sliding the wolf ring straight. “I’m sorry, love.” My thumb curls under her wrist, turning it over so I can place a kiss inside her palm.
She closes her fingers before I can. “I’m fine.”
I open my mouth to argue, but she’s already pulling away—pulling me with her toward the paint box, combs, and circle of polished bronze.
“Kiara?” Saoirse nods to my cousin, but any fool could see her smile’s an open wound. “Your plans.”
Kiara glances up, twirling a blade twice as large as an arrowhead across her fingers. “Aisling, you’ve dismissed all the servants?”
“Yes, before you came in.”
“Good.” Kiara cuts her eyes to me, knife still dancing away. “Faolan? Your decision.”
I train my eyes on her reflection as I drop onto the silk cushion, stomach pitching while I weigh her words.
You want your freedom? Take it.
Saoirse reaches past me for a bottle of oil, her hair brushing my cheek—oats and sea aster filling my lungs.
No one’s stopping you.
There’s another world where I’d snatch her up, throw her on a ship, and sail us far away from here.
But that’s not the world she chose, and so it’s not one I will either.
“I’m staying.”
Kiara tosses the blade, and I catch it before it can lodge itself into the tent wall.
“Then let’s begin.”
I drag the beaten edge of Kiara’s razor down my jaw, flattening it with a tilt of my wrist so the rough hairs fall neatly into line.
Behind me, Saoirse stands with her thighs spread, threading oiled fingers through my knotted hair.
Any other night, this would be an ideal situation: the two of us tangled together and preferably naked.
But it’s hard to feel easy with her limbs all stiff.
Hard to feel much of anything save a restless sort of exhaustion as Kiara pours five cups of wine, passing two to Callen and Aisling and then setting the rest on the paint box between us.
“I’m making a bid for Ríona Ard.”
A bolt of shock passes through me—too sharp to just be my own. I stare dumbly into the polished bronze as Saoirse yanks back her fingers, blade slipping as that rush of emotion snuffs out.
Blood trickles from the nick left behind.
“High Queen?”
I set the razor down and grab for a cloth to clean up the blood instead.
Behind me, Saoirse stumbles back a step, lips parted, though whether it’s from what we felt together or Kiara’s revelation, I’m not sure. “Why would you want to do a miserable thing like that?”
“You tell me.”
Kiara tips her cup back, draining it in a single swallow, and my own hand twitches reflexively to do the same, casting aged blackberry and currants to dance across my tongue, dredging up memories of the first time I tasted this wine.
Memories that grow clearer the second Saoirse threads her fingers in my hair once more.
Kiara, round-faced and heavily freckled pushing her way past the court of Ashen Flame.
Her skin was as gray as a corpse’s, sparks still clinging to her hair.
She’d begged anyone who’d listen for help those days, when wildfires reigned unchecked across her island and the horses dwindled to a sparse dusting across the land.
Kiara the girl-queen, haggard but hopeful as she squinted at me in the line of Keegan’s crew, and recognized her own kin. “I’ll spare your life,” she’d said, “and in turn, you’ll spare our land.”
Kiara of thirty summers, watching her clever Wolf fiddle with a new leather glove.
“The Isle of Lost Souls?”
“Aye.”
“Are you mad?”
“Usually, but not this time.”
She’d snorted softly. Glanced across the hall of Ashen Flame to the blood-orange sky outside. It was wildfire season, and though she’d tried her damnedest and built only on solid ground, the grasslands would not be contained. “You really think you can find it?”
“Obviously.” I hadn’t meant it at the time—I was feckin’ terrified.
But then she’d swept a hand over the star chart between us and said, “If you’re right about this, it changes…everything. We’d no longer be dependent on gods or magic; we’d be—”
I drain the cup of wine and set it aside, blinking until the memories disappear.
“You want to save the Crescent?”
“From itself. Yes.” Kiara fills her cup again, swirling the blue-black liquid before taking another sip. “We’ve grown too dependent on dying magic. It’s all gone wrong since our ancestors slaughtered the gods. Before that, even, if you listen to the seanchaí’s oldest songs.”
“I have, actually.” Callen wipes their mouth with the back of a hand. “Which means I know we’ve been blessed with magic since the first wayfarers arrived on these lands. Magic that, yes, has gone awry from time to time, but—”
“Tell me how much of your island is left untouched by Bandia Róisín’s magic.”
Callen’s smile slips. “The woods are beautiful.”
“And deadly.” Kiara shakes her head. “Any plant that grows on Painted Claw has a fifty-fifty shot of leaving the eater paralyzed or worse, and those odds have only grown since we were born. You rely on Bridled Stag for food, aye?” Again Callen stills.
“So do we all. Theirs is the only island suited for growing grain. But, Aisling, what were you saying before Faolan walked in?”
Aisling blinks three times, then stares into her wine. “Bridled Stag is overpopulated. Locusts and rats are breeding by the hundreds thanks to the fertility magic. They tore through more than their usual share last season.”
“Reborn Stalk is sinking.”
I crane my head back and Saoirse lowers her hands, eyes soft as she takes the others in. “It’s slow, but it’s happening. The land is more bog than not, the Dromlach Cliffs crumbling because the land’s so riddled with caverns, it can’t hold them up.”
Kiara nods. “We rely on the old magic too heavily, and sooner or later, that support will give. Then what are we left with? Lands that cannot support life? Starving peoples who will murder one another for scraps? The largest islands will dominate the lesser, and those who seek power will claim it—unless we establish a new era now.”
There’s a soft clink of metal as Callen lowers their cup.
Aisling’s confusion shifts to a wary sort of awe.
“We could rise above the ruin. Lacerate the rot. We could end these mindless circles we all spin in, pretending everything’s fine when it’s not.” Kiara’s eyes snap as she talks—a wildfire trapped in emerald. “The gods are dead. Their magic is drying up. And no one is coming to save us.”
My throat convulses with the need to laugh.
To tell Kiara she’s being even more dramatic than my own little speech was earlier, and that you have to charm people if you want them on your side.
But Aisling’s eyes are shining. Callen looks less jaded than they have in years.
And—godsdammit, even I bear the irritating seed of hope inside my chest.
Because for all her faults, Kiara is my cousin.
Legends run through our blood.
“So, yes,” she says, lifting her silver cup to the light. “I am going to make a bid for High Queen. I’ve already united the dead with the world beyond. Now it’s time to take care of those that remain. Together.”
Aisling hesitates, then touches her cup to Kiara’s. Callen rolls their eyes but after a moment does the same.
I wait for Saoirse’s move. Look to her as she bites that lip again, rocking once on her heels.
If she doesn’t take the bait…
Her hand curls around the cup Kiara placed on the paint box, oil-slick fingers struggling in their grasp. But a second later, Saoirse, too, joins the toast and Kiara’s shoulders drop an inch.
“It’s settled, then. In two days, I’ll ask for your votes when I put it forth to the autumn council.”
Wine sloshes as they put their cups together.
The nick from the razor bleeds, but I let the cloth fall.
It hits me, then, what’s been twisting in my gut.
Kiara doesn’t need me. Not anymore.
She looks at my wife, Callen, and Aisling with a tenuous smile.
“We are all we have left.”
I’m out of the tent before they can even swallow.