Chapter Twenty #2
I glance at Brona, then nod to her belt where her usual knife lies: smaller than the ones they were practicing with, and as sharp as a blade of sea grass.
She pulls it free with a soft schk and passes it over, knowing well my habits by now.
I take one slow breath as I pierce the tip of my finger with the blade, then turn my hand over and let the drop fall.
When my blood hits the crystal surface, it’s as though lightning strikes my heart.
—
It’s worse than Maccus’s memories. Worse than the vision of the gods I slipped into beneath the Scath-Díol, because these are only fragments. Lurid slivers of color and sound whirling around me until, all at once, they form a single image.
A slender being with long, bent fingers and iridescent hair.
Horrifyingly beautiful.
Desperately cruel.
She kneels in a puddle of crimson, hand wrapped tight around a crystalline talon. Hollow-eyed, she stares at the body laid out beneath her—at the soulstone lying on their mangled chest. Drool puddles at the corner of her mouth, dripping slowly down the corpse’s rib cage.
“The magic is dying,” she croons, dragging the talon down her forearm. Digging it into her skin. “There is no other way.”
The very air recoils. She speaks with a liar’s tongue.
And there’s something wrong in the way she cradles it as the talon begins to glow.
Wrong, how she balances it between too many knuckles, poising her talon over the—
I scream as the vision tilts, the cave flashing back into focus before its mouth gapes wider, water spilling in. Dark and frothing—hungry—it swirls around my ankles.
Drags me to the ground.
“Drink the bones dry, oh, drink the bones dry…”
I scrabble against stone to gain purchase, nails splintering as I claw at the ground—and all the while, Faolan’s voice echoes around me.
A hollow memory of a desperate song.
“Drink the bones dry, oh, drink the bones dry
’Til the earth cries out in madness,
’Til the ceasing of the tide.”
I lose the fight.
“A thousand years it gave us, by blood and sigil, tied…”
Water rips me from the cave’s mouth—flings me into a devouring, fathomless sea that wants to swallow me whole.
“ ’Til mortal gods grow thirsty, and—”
I kick against the churning darkness, feel my body dragged like a plaything around and around—not by a current, but by a vicious whirlpool.
One that’s caught me in its raging, empty mouth.
—
“No!”
The vision breaks and I am lurching against the cool cave floor as Brona crouches before me and Callen stares, wide-eyed, their hand wrapped around Róisín’s bloodstained relic.
It takes precious moments to understand what just happened. Seconds in which shock turns to nausea, and then a feverish cold that saps my energy, leaving me panting on the ground.
“Saoirse?” Brona swipes a frantic hand through my hair. “What in shade’s realm—are you all right?”
Coughing—choking down air that still feels like water—I nod.
Brona jerks me into her arms, winding them tight around my frame. “Feck’s sake, I’m starting to hate magic!”
“I know.” Tremors wrack my body as her curls crush against my cheek.
“I’ve never had a vision like that. It was…
” The words trail off as past her shoulder, I see Callen gaping at the crystalline talon in their hand.
Its colors and facets remain as they were: dull, but varied within the grooves lining its curved sides.
But the marks seem shallow now. The surface less pocked, the tip painted as bright as poppies.
It’s not quite whole again, as my bone ring was, but not so ancient and weathered either.
Callen slowly raises their eyes to mine.
“What did you see?”
“I—” My head lurches, the floor dipping like the ship during a storm.
Brona steadies me with a firm arm around the waist, but it takes long seconds to gather my thoughts enough to respond.
“I saw Bandia Róisín. She was—standing over a body. Cutting herself with the claw and then holding it over a…over a soulstone.”
Brona stiffens, but I don’t dare look at her.
Don’t think of the cracked, empty one Lorcan had found, now sitting in a pouch beneath my makeshift bed.
“And then I was drowning.”
Callen’s brow gathers like the folds of my skirt. “There are no tales of her summoning water—but she was an artist. It was said with one stroke of her talon, she could make masterpieces of men.”
It echoes the stories I grew up with: ones of the mysterious goddess’s tattoos granting talent, fame, fortune, lust. A painter could receive wings on his back, allowing his arm to pose weightless over a hide for hours.
Singers like the siren I met at the Scath-Díol would have nightingales added to their throats to sweeten their tunes.
People would take the trade of poison for pleasure—a short, bright life in place of embers burning ’til dawn.
“Do you think that’s what you saw?” Callen asks, looking from me to Róisín’s talon. “Her imparting magic into the person?”
I open my mouth to respond, then snap it shut. I don’t think those stories typically involved the person sprawled, chest carved open, on the ground.
“Maybe.”
Callen’s expression wrestles with worry and awe. “Nothing I tried ever worked.”
“It wouldn’t,” I say, slowly pushing myself to my feet. “My ancestor’s ring did nothing until I coated it with my blood. Maccus was right about that.”
Brona makes a soft sound of disgust, but Callen slowly turns the talon over. Presses it to their skin, releasing a drop of blood that yields—nothing.
Callen frowns. “Then the relics themselves aren’t magic. They’re just—”
“Tools.”
Callen’s mouth falls open, another question on the tip of their tongue—but I shake my head, then groan when it sets it to swirling once more.
“I don’t have answers.”
“But you could—”
“Callen!”
I sway where I’m standing, and they both lurch forward. Brona loops my arm over her shoulder, guiding me sweating and weak to the pallet on the floor. I collapse onto the scratchy blankets and shut my eyes—more to avoid answering Callen’s questions than to rest.
“Enough of this. There’ll be plenty of time in the morning,” Brona says, fussing with the blanket.
“I’ll talk with Aisling and Etain—I know them better than you—and have Bríd send a message to Tavin with what we’ve learned.
You’ll smooth things over with Maccus tomorrow.
Just…for now, let’s get some sleep.” She glances at Callen, who tucks the talon back beneath their shirt, muscles tense. “All of us.”
“Fine.”
They arrange a guard together—Brona taking the first shift by the cave’s mouth. I try to protest but she ignores me. And as wind trickles across my skin, drying the sweat on the back of my neck, I can’t help remembering the sight of Róisín hunched over that body.
Her hand over the soulstone.
That sickening song.
My lips form the words as my head grows heavy, lulling me to an uneasy sleep.
Drink the bones dry, oh, drink the bones dry.
Drink.
Drink.
Drink…