Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Faolan
Drowning isn’t quiet, or peaceful, or any of the other sad shite poets like to spin. It’s a fight, same as any other. The only difference is the ocean doesn’t bleed, no matter how you thrash against it—and still, like a mouse with its tail already down the cat’s gullet, you will try.
So even as I shut my eyes against the wave that closes over my head, fur and neat’s-foot oil skating across my mouth, I have to accept the truth of it.
No matter how many times I go through this, I’ll always be that stupid feckin’ mouse.
Silt and broken shells tear at my arms as the waves pull me under, like a mulish puppet snatched onstage by its strings.
If it were a gentler day—less cold and murky—I might be able to swim for it.
But even then, the cloak of wolfskin I’d spent so long coveting would have dragged me down, silver clasp locked tight at my throat.
And so, again, I drown.
Salt clogs my nostrils while jagged rocks beat my skin apart. My hand slaps frantically against a flat stone to try and hoist myself up, but it’s slick. Coated in green algae, impossible to climb. There’s a moment when I could accept my fate—open my lungs and let the sea take over.
I pass it by with a foul gesture.
My cloak drags me deeper. Fingers sliding free. All light ceases to exist and just for a second—just like every time the sea swallows me up, leaving nothing behind—I wonder if they’ll finally be happy.
If the Gan Ainm will know they’ve won.
A solid weight drags up my throat and onto my tongue as the dream turns back to memory, my mouth slackening to let the ocean flood in.
At last, I begin to die.
My legs twitch instead of kicking, hands scraping over ragged, sore skin. As if I could scoop the water from my lungs, or put myself together before the storm and sharks rip me fully apart. I almost let the sea win.
Let the Gan Ainm have their way.
And then I throw a hand over my mouth as clarity stabs sharp in the back of my mind. Force the soulstone back inside and do the one thing I swore I never would again.
Pray.
And then she’s there, hazy and light. A woman made of silver and forget-me-not blue.
I wait for the offer. Her smile and scrap of song as she pushes air back into my lungs.
Instead…her face morphs into something familiar.
Cheeks rounding, eyes softening at the corners, full lips parting as her hair shifts from silver to pure black.
But it’s the expression that tips her hand: puzzled and pretty.
The same look she’s worn since the night we first met.
“Saoirse?”
Her smile draws wide. Teeth grow longer.
Something twists inside me—horror and panic blooming as the goddess and my wife disappear, and a wolf painted in gleaming blue light stands in their place.
Watching me.
Waiting.
With a guttural shout, I wake up.
Sweat bathes my skin, pooling in the rough creases of my palms, and for a second, the bargainer’s mark shimmers.
My fingers scrabble for a Bruidin leaf, cracking it so the spark leaps into a flame.
The colors on my hand go still the moment light touches it, fixed like an opal, blackened at the edges, just like it was the day Saoirse healed me.
Still, I stare until the leaf’s nearly burned out, then drop it onto the bronze plate covered in crumbs from my dinner as darkness closes back in.
I reach for the ugly doll I swiped from our cave—the one made to look like my wife—and tuck it against my chest. It takes time, but eventually the easy sway of the ship lulls me back under.
And then I’m drowning again.