Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-one
Faolan
“Drink up the nectar tucked under the petal, folded up sweet as a shy budded rose…”
The song trips off my tongue with the easy patter of long memory as I wander, aimlessly, into the dark.
“The blooming is comin’, just keep up the tonguin’ ’til tha’ dewy flower quivers and grows.”
There’s no light to see by—and nothing on my person to cast it either. My pockets are empty, clothes soaked through. The earth sinks with my every step, water pooling round my ankles every time I drive my foot into the ground.
“Slicker than silk, you can lap up its milk. Let greed take you over ’til it’s all gone.”
I lick the corner of my mouth and taste salt.
Right. I was drowning again, wasn’t I?
Thrashing against the waves, shoving a soulstone back in my throat—the usual order of things. What’s not usual is waking under a starless sky rather than in my own damned bed.
“Then unfurl those petals, an’ hoist all your—mettle.”
A patch of shadow shifts out of place.
I stop walking—but don’t let the song go. Not while there’s a chance the thing in the void is listening, and certainly not while I reach for the daggers usually strapped to my side.
“And plunder her soundly from dusk until dawn.”
My hand closes over nothing right as the dark looks back.
I don’t wait to see what it is.
I just run.
Muck sprays up my legs as I tear across ground I’ve already covered, slipping and sticking in the loamy, damp mess of it.
It’s not long before my feet hit water—vibrant blue light flaring every time I take a hard step.
It steals my attention. Snatches my feet down into the mire when I hesitate a second too long.
One second is all that thing needs to catch up.
Sheets of glowing water spray into the air as the creature leaps beside me, all bristled edges and heavy, wet breaths, and I don’t need to look hard to see it—not the massive, leggy frame or the pair of lupine eyes gleaming through the dark with unnatural light.
As if I’d cut my soul-bargain mark open and an entire wolf crawled out.
“Wake up.” I thrust my hand into the ocean, scrubbing my face with handfuls as though that might actually work. “Wake up, dammit!”
Streams of salt water run down my cheeks, burning my eyes until I rub fiercely at them, holding on to a pathetic, half-baked hope that when I can see again, the beast will be gone. I’ll be back in that miserable cave with Saoirse. Everything will be as it was.
My sight clears and I whip my head toward the animal.
The wolf is still there.
“Feck!”
I try running again, but the water’s gotten too deep, risen up to my waistline by now. So instead, I kick up my heels and swim for it—cutting through the sea right as it swells.
Turns my body over.
Closes over my head.
I’m drowning again—only this time, I’m highly feckin’ aware of it. My arms rip uselessly through the tide’s pull, legs kicking against nothing, lungs convulsing. Then the memories appear, rapid and senseless—a soulstone in my hand, a goddess reaching out.
A goddess whose features blend, again, with my wife’s.
“Saoirse!”
She blinks, features wavering as they did in my dream before.
I swim frantically toward her, reaching across the distance, black spots dancing before my eyes.
It’s too late.
Too much distance.
My lungs collapse, muscles flag, her name weighing down my tongue.
“Saoirse…”
As the world starts to wink out, her hand finally reaches toward me—touches me at last. Our palms press, and the waters erupt as light floods in, snatching us both out of the darkness and out of the sea.