Chapter Ten
Ten
Saoirse
The woods are thick with silence, air unnervingly still as Faolan and I stand in lockstep, our chests sliding against each other with every hard breath.
His arm lies rigid across my hip bones, my hand clenched over the curve of his jaw.
Between us, our soul-stained palms tangle together as I try to make sense of what I saw.
What we both saw?
“Saoirse, what—” Faolan swears. Steps closer, until I’m not sure which beats louder: his heart or mine. “What was that?”
“Maccus. In the soul pools. I-I was trying to tell you—”
“No, love, that’s not what I—” Faolan shakes his head, releasing my waist to capture my hand instead. Fingers stiff, lips parted, he traces the opal sheen at its center. “I saw your vision.”
My mouth runs dry. “How did you…that’s not…”
“Possible?” A flicker of a smile touches his face. “Stars, the number of times I’ve heard that—”
“Faolan.” I ball my hand into a fist. “Think. The only other time someone else has seen a vision with me, it drove him out of his mind.”
The smile drops, but Faolan doesn’t let go. He raises my fist instead, until my knuckles graze his lips and his thumb skates over my veins, up to the tiny scar left by our handfasting.
“Do I look mad to you, love?”
A sharp trill tears through the tree limbs before I can respond.
Faolan jerks back, shoving me behind him as a slick metal slide announces his dagger—but no enemy crashes through the brush. No late nightingales take to the sky. I cling to a low branch as my eyes hunt desperately through the wood for whatever caused the sound.
“There,” Faolan whispers.
A violet-hued orb of light weaves strangely through the pines. There’s something familiar about it, though—something that eases my grip on the wood even as Faolan haltingly lowers his blade. But it’s only when the whistle comes again that understanding crashes through my body.
“Brona!”
She winces as she picks her way over a root, the crystal lantern swinging in her hand. “Be a bit louder, won’t you?”
I slump back against the tree. “Gods. I thought—”
“Thought some bird had magically picked up Faolan’s tune off the ship?” Brona scoffs, then lifts her brows altogether when she sees the dagger in Faolan’s hand. “What’s this, then? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our ways.”
Faolan blinks—hard—then swears as he tucks the blade back into his belt. “Obviously not.”
“Obviously.” Brona quirks her lips to one side, then jerks her lantern toward the mountain path. “The crew’s waiting at the top. Are you two coming, or…?”
Faolan glances at me, hand still clutched around the dagger’s hilt, a question in his eyes.
I flex my fingers, the soul-bargain mark dull and still.
Secrets are what got us here in the first place.
It’s time for them to be done.
“We’re coming.”
Faolan breathes out hard, then hitches on a smile. “And we’ve got one hell of a story.”
“Brilliant. Up you get.”
Wind tears at my skirts as we ascend the path toward the mountain, past the cave and up the narrow strips of land hiding the stone steps.
It rips my hair free of its braids and Maccus’s crown, pushing me into Faolan, who keeps a hand on my back as we climb.
By the time we reach the plateau and all its simmering pools, my lungs burn and my ears ring—but it does nothing to stifle the wild burst of relief and joy at seeing the wolves together.
Tavin sits at the hot spring’s edge, black hair streaming over the intricate tattoos on his back.
Beside him, Nessa sprawls fully naked in the water, copper hair plastered to her scalp.
Steam curls around Brona’s calves as she tosses her dress onto a rock bed, snatching a flask once it’s done.
And at the pool’s center stands Lorcan, waist-deep and laughing over something Nessa has said.
The only ones absent are Oona and Bowden, but it’s no surprise.
After months of foraging and trying to feed whoever wound up on this island, the siblings had taken their leave, and Faolan, true to his word, let them go.
Still, it’s not enough to dim the warmth from Lorcan’s smile.
“About damn time.”
“Sorry we’re late,” Faolan calls out, already ripping off one boot and struggling with the other. “Saoirse decided to try her hand at a drinking game.”
“Stars, and she’s still walking?” Nessa lifts one pale leg high, rolling her ankle. “That’s an improvement.”
“It’s a bloody shock is what it is,” Lorcan says, crooking a finger to Brona, who tilts her head, considering, before she steps straight into his arms. “Did she win?”
“We’ll know by morning.” Faolan peels his shirt free, then turns to the laces of my gown as I untangle the crown from my hair. “Are you lot drunk yet?”
Brona weighs the flask in her hand. “Not nearly enough.”
“Good,” I call over my shoulder as the dress sags, then collapses in a beautiful heap. I top it with the crown. “We need to talk.”
Immediately, Nessa groans. “S’far as I can see, we’ve done plenty of talking, and not nearly enough feckin’ about.”
“Patience, you.” Faolan catches my hand, tugging me toward the water—grin turning feral when I notice he’s nude. “The night’s still young.”
Bubbles rush around my ankles, chasing the edges of my shift higher as Faolan’s grin slips to something softer, hunger painting his eyes nearly black.
“Oi.” Nessa splashes him square in the face. “If I can’t get any yet, you can’t either. Now, what did you want us gathered for?”
Faolan flicks the droplets free, then pushes back his hair. “Information. Secrets. Anything of interest that’s happened while we’ve been stuck here.” Again, his eyes dart to me—to my palm. “And to tell you a bit of what you’ve missed.”
Nessa stops her splashing. “I thought Tavin was reporting to you.”
Faolan glances at his old quartermaster, something uncertain crossing his face. “Aye, he did once or twice.”
Tavin shifts. “I wasn’t sure it was safe.”
“Feck’s sake, you two.” Brona rolls her eyes, leaning back into Lorcan’s chest. “We’ve had to give up territory. Plenty of wayfarers are vying to claim the spot the Wolf left behind—especially on Painted Claw. Rian’s staked his claim over half the Docklands by now.”
“Are you serious? That conniving piece of—” Faolan shuts his eyes, ribs dragging beneath his skin as he takes a breath. “Never mind. We’ll deal with him later. What of the other islands? Reborn Stalk and Frozen Hearth?”
Lorcan glances my way. “Brona went home for a few weeks to visit her mam. Picked up some stories off the Dromlach Cliffs about Rí Aidan and the goings-on.”
Brona caps the flask, turning it over in her hands. “They’ve stopped production of the caipín baís on Reborn Stalk.”
A burst of steam erupts as I jolt away from the rock wall. “What?”
“It’s true.” Brona meets my eye. “Your brother stopped collecting the tax, shortly after taking the crown. Some speculate it was your mam’s idea—she’s looking after things while he’s away—and some think it’s only for the coming winter, but there was tale of a cavern being lit on fire by his guards.
And”—her gaze flits to Faolan—“there’s a rumor about the apothecary. ”
Shock trickles down my spine until I bend it, easing fully back into the water. “He’s gone, we know. Aidan just told me.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
Frowning, I shake my head.
Brona turns the flask over, then tosses it my way.
“There’s a pub on the docks near the Dromlach Cliffs that’s always full on account of my mother’s maps.
Sailors flock to the liquor, but navigators flock to her, and one in particular told me about a stranger he’d encountered on the solstice, with fingers all shriveled and bent like a corpse. ”
I dig my own into the hardened leather as Brona shifts into Lorcan’s side.
“Apparently, the slimy bastard gave him a handful of silver to cross the channel that night and spent the whole journey clutching a beaten-up old satchel to his chest.”
I uncork the flask and drink until my throat burns. “I’ve seen it. Stole from it, the night I ran away to join you. Gods, I should’ve dumped the stupid thing into the sea.”
Faolan scowls. “Think there’s been enough time to make more of the ink?”
“It’s possible. When Da captured us, he said Sionn had started a new batch the moment our ship set sail.”
Faolan swears and slips a hand beneath mine, dragging the flask to his own mouth. When he speaks, his voice is a golden rasp. “Right. That’s another threat we have to take care of.”
“Another?” Tavin asks. “How many threats could you have possibly gotten, stuck here for twelve weeks alone?”
“Three, so far today. Likely more to come by morning.”
The quartermaster scoffs, long black hair falling forward as he studies us both. “Care to elaborate?”
My throat burns from the whiskey, head still spinning from the wine, but Maccus’s eyes are sharp in my memory. His words echoing in my ears.
That is something I hope you hold the answers to.
“Maccus approached me in the soul pools earlier,” I say, stoppering the flask.
“He knelt beside the water and offered me apologies and that crown. But then I stumbled and he took my hand to steady me—while I was standing in the water, blood marking my hands. It should have set off a vision at the very least, but there was…nothing.”
For once, none of them says a word.
I tell the crew of the void inside Maccus—that cavernous, lonely space where his soul ought to be.
Only once did I feel something human inside him: the night we first met, when Da promised the Stone King my hand.
But whatever scrap I’d encountered, it’s long gone by now.
Faolan slings an arm over my shoulders as I speak, wrapping it across my chest as the bargainer’s mark flickers once, then settles against his palm.
Staring at it, I slowly turn my own hand outward to reveal the soul stain on my skin.
It’s the final piece of this growing puzzle—one I share in halting sentences, about how Faolan and I walked in each other’s memories while these scars lit up, as though our minds were one.
“Have any of you ever heard of such a thing happening? If one of the gods shared a special connection with the recipients of their mark?”
The wolves stare blank-faced at me before one by one, they shake their heads.
Nessa sits up then, water streaming down her breasts. “There was a song my nan used to sing me, from a stiff old group on Frozen Hearth. A warning—but don’t ask me to repeat it, I’ve only a head for the bawdy ones.”
Lorcan shifts where he stands beside Brona, fingers passing gently up and down her side.
“I…haven’t heard of that, no, but there’s one thing I found that might have something to do with it.
A couple of weeks back, I chased down a rumor about miraculous healings on Frozen Hearth, near the Spring of Leigheas.
People were going on about a gift from Clodagh—you know how those religious types can get—but it’s been decades since those waters ran pure, so I assumed it was rubbish. Only…”
He stops, and Brona nudges him with an elbow, her jaw tight, face drawn.
Breathing deep, Lorcan lets go of her waist to slip a hand into his pocket.
“Look, I didn’t know how to make sense of it—and I’d have given it to you last night, except we got delayed in the storm.
” With hesitant fingers, Lorcan slides something halfway out: a round object that’s ashen and dull: bleached like a sea star washed up onshore too long.
“But I found this on the outskirts of the village where the rumor started, and…”
He tosses the object to me, and my entire body goes numb when I catch it between my palms.
It’s a soulstone.
Or…was.
I tilt my hand slowly and watch the moonlight slide over its surface without any sort of change—no shimmer of color or glint of light.
Nothing like the soulstones I’ve held these last few months, releasing them to the island’s waters and whatever lies beyond.
There are the markings of a triskele on one side, distinct and true, but on the back?
A jagged split, like the stone was cracked in two.
“What is this?”
Lorcan rubs at his neck. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“It’s a soulstone. But it’s also not, it’s—”
“I know.” His eyes are haunted as he shakes off his hand. “It’s empty, thank the gods, or else I’d have gone mad by now considering I’d already picked it up before I saw the triskele.”
I stroke its surface again and wait for something—anything—to call out.
Nothing happens.
“This isn’t right.” I turn it over again, tracing the crack with my fingertip. “Even when I release a person’s spirit, the soulstone’s colors stay fixed in place—like Faolan’s hand, with black edges. They don’t just…go away.”
A hand covers my own, silvery sheen flashing on his palm. A perfect match for mine.
Faolan’s face is grave now, rings flashing on his fingers as he turns the stone over twice. My heart picks up as I look from him to the others, then slowly shake my head. “I—I don’t know what any of this means. Faolan, have you ever heard of its like?”
Faolan steals the hollow stone back with a flick of his finger. But for the first time since I met him, there is no quick smile, nor even an effort at one. He shakes his head and slowly rests the stone back onshore.
“No.”