Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-two
Saoirse
Air rushes in with a starved sort of violence, flooding my lungs as fast as the ocean did before.
I choke on the cool, strange rush of it until at last, it levels out and lets me go. Only then do I look up, expecting to see a dying fire and sloping cave walls.
Faolan stands there instead.
He stares at me, chest heaving in a wild echo of my own, before his eyes dart past my shoulders and his body swivels around.
Silvery water drips from his bare torso, the trousers slung low, pooling over the arrow-edged line of his hips.
Glancing down, I see the clothes I wore to bed plastered to my body, every curve and dip visible beneath the sodden cloth.
The shore we’re standing on is vaguely familiar, though.
Sand stretches beneath our feet, licked up by water that yields a thousand blue sparks every time a wave tosses onshore—as bright as starlight that just as quickly winks out.
But as I take a step back, what I thought was sand shifts and shimmers, powder-soft under my heel—a sort of golden dust that settles on my memory.
Like that on the vanishing isle of the Scath-Díol.
“It’s gone. The wolf. I…Saoirse?”
I glance up just as Faolan reaches for me, his hand hovering a spare couple of inches away. “You’re here?”
“I am.” My breath quickens. “But I don’t understand. I’ve seen this place before in your dreams, but it’s impossible that I—”
Faolan’s hand meets my collarbone, the heat of his palm scalding over my heart.
I jump back, gasping, as the colors of his bargainer’s mark whirl madly within their blackened edges, lighting up like the waves at our feet.
Like the scar across my own palm.
Violet streaks blend with the palest blush, cut through by forget-me-not blue, and the faintest hint of beryl—all of them colliding together in shifting patterns as gentle as a moth on the breeze. I’m still staring at it when Faolan laughs shakily, then grabs me up in his arms.
“Wait—Faolan!”
My body goes weightless as he traps it against his own, tilting the strange world even stranger.
Faolan twirls me once over those sparkling waves, his face buried hard against my throat.
I feel keenly the fingers molding my hips, the scrape of his beard along my jaw—banishing any lingering doubts that this is real.
And yet.
It could be a trick—of fate, or Maccus, or the Slaughtered Ones themselves.
“Faolan—” I grip his shoulders and push until he’s forced to step back, lowering me to that strangely soft ground. “Brona had the seanchaí send a message just after dark. What did it say?”
Faolan’s eyes flash, wonder turned to mischief as he grins. “You want to talk about that now?”
I nod, and he groans even as his fingers curl over my hip bones, calluses catching the damp cloth to stretch it taut over my bare skin below. His eyes follow the movement, hunting every hitch in my chest.
“Tavin said,” he murmurs slowly, hands sculpting higher to splay across my ribs, “you had a vision when talking to Maccus. That you’ve realized the relics aren’t magic, only tools, and…
” Grimacing lightly, he drops his forehead against mine.
“Feck’s sake, you’re here, love. Can’t we just take a second to—to hold that?
Take it all in? Do we really have to question every miracle that comes? ”
The “yes” dies on my tongue as Faolan’s touch drifts higher. Tighter.
His eyes lock on mine as he traces a wide circle, then cuts it once with a flick of his thumb.
My knees go soft even as I grip Faolan’s forearms, though whether it’s to keep my balance or push him away, I can’t tell. “What else did the message say?”
“Lass—”
“I just need to know. Otherwise…” My fingers flex on his skin. “How can I know this is real?”
Faolan’s hands go still, his mouth, always so unserious, thoughtful as he twists it to one side. “It said you found another relic. Róisín’s talon. Is that enough proof for you?”
Relief rushes through me, hot and fast, and I let go of Faolan’s arms to reach for his shoulders instead.
He catches my wrist before I can, frowning as he spreads my fingers with his thumb.
“Tavin also said you hurt yourself.”
I try to pull my arm away, but it doesn’t matter. There are no wounds in this in-between world to hide. No bruises where I’ve pricked myself to mark the soulstones, or bandages to cover the cuts I’ve had to endure.
“No more than usual.”
“Saoirse.”
“I needed to see what would happen. Maccus still expects me to awaken his hammer—”
“Because you volunteered yourself.”
“To give you more time. Faolan, we don’t know what he’s planning with the relics—or at all what they’re capable of.”
“So you, what, stabbed yourself with Roísín’s talon to find out?”
I stare at him blankly, my arm going stiff in his gentle grasp. “Whatever happened to ‘think of the reward, never the risk’?”
Faolan releases a hard breath, and I step closer, toes sinking into the malleable ground.
“What happened to believing in my magic? Believing in me?”
“I do, Saoirse!” Faolan stares at me with a wild-eyed desperation, then abruptly lets me go. “I do believe in you.”
“Then why—”
“I just don’t want Maccus to hurt you—or anyone, for that matter, because…” His gaze slides over me, narrowing at my hand. “Because you still believe the best in people, even after they’ve done all they can to prove you wrong.”
Waves stir around our ankles, foam clinging to my skirts as I knot my fingers in them to keep from…what, I don’t know. Faolan paces in front of me, eyes darting over the blurred edges of earth and sky: a feral creature suddenly pining for an exit.
A scared boy seeking home.
“Faolan, I—” I reach out to stop him, but he flinches before my fingers can graze the rigid line of his back. My hand falls empty between us, heart sinking fast. “I believed in you.”
A strangled, mournful laugh escapes his throat. “Aye, and look where that got you. Nearly drowned at the Teeth. Your hand flayed by fire to the bone.” He hooks my wrist with a finger, tracing the silvery scars. “Veins slit, throat cut open—”
“It got me a life I could make something of.” I jerk my hand free. “A life that’s mine!”
His eyes narrow. “Hardly much of a life, when you’re stuck being everyone else’s bloody martyr.”
If I’d plunged into the sea in midwinter, it would shock my body less.
Hurt carves a stark, stunning abyss in my middle as rage numbs my fingertips, spilling down my spine. Tears fog my vision until I blink them away—fragile, furious trails of lightning that dash down either cheek.
Faolan’s taut expression drops as he marks their path.
“No. Feck, I didn’t mean—”
“You did.” My voice is hollow. Everything is hollow. “Of course you did. You—you wanted to make me a legend. Remember?” I take a step closer, not bothering to disguise my pain. My fury. “What do you think stories are?”
Faolan falls still for once, like he did in the cabin the night he revealed my secret to the crew.
And like that night, I stalk forward. Don’t bother to hold my tongue.
“You created the Wolf of the Wild from the worst memory of your life. You told me so yourself. The child who survived a shipwreck on nerve, cunning, and skill was really just a dying boy grieving his parents—my gods!” I halt in front of him, chest rattling with every hard breath.
“No one else alive knows that story—not even the wolves. Stars’ sake, you didn’t even let them know about the soul bargain until it was nearly too late!
You call me the martyr, but you’ve sacrificed vulnerability to feed a legend, to the point where you would have died to hide from your own fear—”
Faolan snarls. “I’m not afraid!”
“Oh, yes, you are.” I grab his hand before he can pull it back, turning it over so the bargainer’s mark flares up between us. “You’re terrified someone might actually see you—that I might see you. You admitted as much after we lay together the first time, evading me for weeks—”
“And then I told you I loved you,” Faolan snaps, eyes darting between mine. “And you said nothing back.”
“I did!” A sob convulses my throat as I hold on tighter. “I told you—”
“That you didn’t want to trap me—well, guess what, darling, I’m fecking trapped.” Faolan breaks away to pace out of the water and onto dry land. “We both are. And I can’t even choose to stay with you—where I want to be—because you sent me away!”
“To find more relics. To keep Maccus from—”
“To feck with Maccus!” Faolan shouts the words into the empty sky. “To feck with Kiara, and cages, and all the bloody gods and their stupid bloody relics. All I want is—”
“Freedom, I know.” My feet sink hard into the ground as I chase after him. “So why didn’t you take it?!”
“Because I want you more!”
He rounds on me until we’re toe-to-toe, panting and flushed, light scattered across our faces from the waves and our palms both. A bead of liquid treks down Faolan’s temple, sweat or seawater falling to mix with tears that he scrubs away with a damp sleeve.
I catch his arm before he can finish, pulling it down until our eyes meet.
“If that’s true,” I say, as soft as I can manage, “then I need you to understand that this is me.”
“No.” He shakes his head vehemently. “No, I don’t buy it. Having to cut yourself open every day—to bleed for these people who will never be satisfied? Who will turn on you the moment you can’t do it anymore, it’s—”
“It’s no different than you. Look at me, Faolan.”
His eyes meet mine, the blue cut into a thousand different facets around the black.
Every single one of them flies directly into my heart.
“If I’m a martyr, then you’re a mask.”
My husband goes rigid, his gaze honed tight. Swallowing, I press on.
“Both of us have sacrificed for what we want in life, or what’s been required of us. The Wolf saved you once. More than once. But it was never meant to consume you—to take so much of yourself that you start to disappear.”
A divot appears in his cheek as he clenches his jaw tight. “The Wolf is the only reason I am here.”
“I know.” My hand trembles as I drag it up and down his arm.
“I know you, but—gods, I know you in spite of yourself. You’ve tried to hide your worst parts from me: your fear and anger.
Your heartbreak? It took me stripping your glove off myself to confess about the soul bargain and drowning, and even after that…
you’ve still never told me about the Gan Ainm. ”
Instantly, I know I’ve said the wrong thing.
Faolan springs back from me, ripping his arm from my grasp.
White flickers around his eyes as they go wide, his lips parting, every muscle coiled taut.
“How…” He blinks furiously, raking his hands through his hair.
“How did you know…” He stops. Grips the base of his skull, eyes half-hurt, half-afraid cutting to me. “Saoirse, did you see—”
Stomach pitching, I shake my head. “I didn’t see it. Etain told me.”
“She what?”
Faolan curls over himself, crouching to the sand as I stare helplessly from the water’s edge.
Water that’s swirling higher round my ankles, licking up my calves.
But Faolan is hurting. Pain drips off his shoulders like rainfall.
I start forward. Stop as my feet begin to sink.
“Faolan?”
“She had no right. No one is supposed to remember—I don’t want to remember!”
“Faolan! I—”
It’s too late.
A wave flurries up my body in a whirl of sharp blue light, sweeping me under even as he turns and screams my name.