Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-four
Saoirse
In another realm, far-flung from this one, I wonder if the lost goddess feels pain every time I drive a knife into my skin.
The blade is a ritual piece: small and silver, fitting neatly in my hand.
Marked with Clodagh’s symbol, it was made to be wielded only by the goddess’s most dedicated healers—an honor bestowed after years of apprenticeship—but as Faolan pointed out when the seanchaí gave it to me, no one would begrudge a god-touched queen her tool of holy sacrifice.
Especially one willing to flay her flesh for them every single day of her life.
Martyr.
My lip curls as I step out of the hot spring, steam clutching my body like a scorned lover’s grasp.
Heart racing, sweat pooling at my lower back, I take five long paces away from the water and sink onto a flat stone.
The bowl is already waiting for me, stained and set neatly on a length of wool.
Beside it sit fresh bandages, white heather, yarrow.
A gleaming altar just waiting to mock me.
Having to cut yourself open every day—to bleed for these people who will never be satisfied?
I shut my eyes for just a moment, then take a breath in and make the cut.
Twin streams of blood race down my elbow to spill into the bowl, as bright as the berries of a guelder rosebush.
The pain is a distant thing—forgettable, even, after performing the act almost weekly since awakening the Isle of Lost Souls.
In some ways it’s easier to think of it as a ceremony. A noble, necessary sacrifice.
In others, it’s become as mundane as my monthly courses—an indelicate but requisite part of life.
Hardly much of a life, when you’re stuck being everyone else’s bloody martyr.
I tip my head back in an effort to drown out Faolan’s words and take in the jaundiced, murky stretch of clouds flung across the sky as though by the hand of a careless god. No crimson streak of dawn cuts through their sickly nature, no gulls stretch their wings. There is only blessed silence.
Until leather boots slap across stone.
Brona emerges at the top of the mossy stairway wearing trousers and a sword, her rich brown curls secured on top of her head with a gold hairpin.
Instinctively, my fingers loosen on the silver knife—then go slack altogether, sending it clattering to the rocks beneath me as Brona turns to help Ríona Etain onto the plateau.
“Brona, what—”
Our eldest queen emerges by the hot springs with a grunt, her cane bowing slightly as she leans into it with her full weight.
I’ve never seen her outside her court regalia.
There is no crown or layers of fine jewels, no berry stain to her lips.
Sweat clings to the marigold silk of her robe and the limp silver braid hanging down one shoulder.
Those same bruised clouds cast a pallor across her bronze skin—but they can’t touch the wonder in her eyes or the bolt of hope that shoots from her chest straight into mine.
“This had better be worth the climb, girl. Healing springs like those on Frozen Hearth? My bones are aching from the weight of all those fools and their great heaps of bull—”
Her gaze falls on me. On the blood pouring down my arm.
Disappointment crumbles that hope to dust.
“…Oh.”
“Nana, what are you talking about?” Aisling steps up behind her, red-cheeked and clutching several layers of bright skirts to keep from stepping on them. They drop like a flurry of feathers as she takes in the sight of me as well. “Oh.”
I drop my gaze, crumbling yarrow and moss together in my fist before pressing them hard against the cut. “Oh.”
Aisling blinks. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Aye, you did, girl,” Etain says, her cane tapping a path toward the waters. “Bloodletting’s a proper sight.”
Brona chuffs. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Aisling shifts, those skirts fluttering across the rock as she does. “I just didn’t realize that was the reason for the bandages. I thought…well, she used a needle during the equinox.”
“Aye, because that’s a far prettier sight than watching this play out.”
Aisling starts to protest, but her grandmother cuts her off. “The navigator is right. Very few people could tolerate seeing what it takes to lead. The mess of it all.”
My fingers slip on the damp swatch of moss and flowers as I watch Etain stroking Aisling’s hair with a bent hand, thumb passing twice over her granddaughter’s temple. Affection wraps around them like a tangible creature, even when Etain is correcting her.
Hot, wet liquid trickles from my elbow and I have to reach for more herbs to pack the wound.
The envy that blooms in my belly is all mine.
Aisling, for all her losses, has always known the sturdy cradle of Etain’s love.
Most of the crew have memories or mothers to lean on, and while the Ring of Stars is broken and erratic, at the very least each and every one of the rulers had some form of guidance.
None of them was ever left utterly alone.
I’m just reaching for the bandages when a hand gets there first, Brona lifting a brow like a challenge. “Going to fight me on this, Wolf Tamer?”
For a second, I think of snarling—until I see the concern in her eyes. Feel the gentle way she adjusts my arm, then catches a dagger from her belt, slicing neatly through the cloth fastened above my elbow.
Instantly, the tightness of my skin eases, that wild buzz of sensation at my fingertips gone.
“Thanks,” I breathe as she winds the bandage over my cut, tears gathering hard behind my eyes.
“Don’t mention it.” Tucking the end of the cloth between two strands, Brona straightens. As she offers me a hand up, her eyes go to the old queen, who watches with a keen gaze, wind drawing wisps of gray hair across her lined face. “Right. Forgive my exaggerations, Your Majesty—”
“Most people would call them lies.”
Brona’s lips stretch in a quick smile, though her eyes stay cautious. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure what might happen if some of Saoirse’s blood made it into the spring itself. Maybe it could offer healing.”
Etain barks a laugh, waving a wrist limply through the air. “Enough of that. I’m only mad you wouldn’t let me have some of those strapping young bucks carry me up, but it’s done. Now, help me out of this robe and tell me what you want.”
Brona cuts her eyes to me, and I have to bite my cheek to keep from laughing.
At least, until Aisling peels Etain’s robe free, revealing the frail body below.
We all fall silent as Aisling tucks the robe onto a small boulder, Brona hesitating before she pulls off her boots and walks over to offer Etain a hand into the bubbling spring.
The lines of Etain’s bones and muscles are clear as she stretches out her arm.
Her breasts lie flat over her rib cage, skin almost translucent in the dim, predawn light.
“Stop gawking,” she snaps, and almost as one we jump, making her cackle again. “For a bunch of girls who’ve grown up surrounded by death, I’d think you’d have enough brains to recognize the sight of it.”
“Nana, stop.” Aisling stands rigid with the robe still clutched in her fingers, raw silk sliding across the stone.
Etain settles into the coils of steam with a grunt. “It’s not something to be afraid of, love. Not anymore.”
Her eyes drift to me where I sit, blood still dripping into the partially filled bowl.
I tear my gaze away, taking a damp cloth to the ruddy brown stains smeared across my skin as Etain hums.
“As long as we have a Soulgazer here, there is nothing to fear from death.”
My scrubbing stops.
These people…who will turn on you the moment you can’t do it anymore.
Slowly, I set the cloth down. Reach for the glass vials set at the water’s edge with curled leaves sticking out their tops to funnel the blood inside, and set to work filling each of them.
Just as I’ve done for three moon cycles.
Just as I’ll continue to do for…
Panic squeezes my chest as I stopper one vial once it’s full and then carry on with the next.
And the next.
And the—
My finger slips, some of that precious gods’ blood splattering across the wool and rock below. I swear under my breath, setting it down before another splash steals my attention: Aisling entering the hot spring beside her grandmother, and Brona perched on its edge.
All three of them are watching me.
“What?” I don’t bother to hide my panic or soften the snap in my voice—not when it’s being fed by their own pity, confusion, and wariness. “It’s just as you said. There is nothing to fear from death.”
“So long as you are here to release the soulstones.” Etain tilts her head, thin silver braid dragging through the water as she does. “Will you be?”
“I…” Brona catches my gaze, shaking her head—but Etain sees her.
Her withered lips curl in a tight smile. “I see.”
“That’s not—I will be here.” For the rest of my life. “I took an oath to the goddess when I awakened the island.”
“Aye, but we’ve seen oaths broken plenty of times before.
It’s what got us all in this mess in the first place.
” Etain leans heavily back onto a smooth ledge, the very same spot where Nessa had lounged just the other night, and my whole body aches with longing at the memory of all that laughter—the pure joy of having the wolves gathered again.
It was a moment I’d been craving for months—one that came and left all too quickly.
Is that what keeping this promise means?
How long can I sustain myself on memories? How long until Faolan comes back with the relics, and we…what? Hand them over to Kiara? Hide them until we’re old and sickly ourselves—our spirits haunting the land because without me to release the soulstones…
A horrifying emptiness settles in my belly.
It wouldn’t be just me. Not forever.
Despite our best efforts, Faolan and I might still have children.
Gods, we both might want children someday.
I remember the flashes of his visions that night in the woods, after I’d sworn myself to Kiara and tried to release him from his oath: the little girl with my eyes and the scrappy lad with his.
Both of us want a life together—a legacy together—but at this cost?
I stare down at the vials of blood. The dagger.
My bruised and bloodstained arm.
I would not bring a child into this. Would not force them to bleed for the world. But even as I think it, some small, traitorous part of me whispers: Then why do you do it to yourself?
Heart beating violently, I push to my feet.
“I will not abandon the Isle of Lost Souls. I will not forsake the dead.”
Again that voice whispers, But will you forsake yourself?
Martyr.
Martyr.
MARTYR.
Brona touches my arm. It’s only then I realize how badly I was shaking.
I stumble to the ledge beside her, folding my body into a knot: arms around one leg, the other curled beneath me. It’s still not enough to make that voice go away.
All the while, Etain watches me, drumming a heavily ringed finger along her jaw.
“It’s an interesting thing, an oath,” she says at last. “It’s terribly binding in the moment, but easy to forget once the person you swore it to is dead. Ach, but this steam won’t do. Fetch me my pipe, would you?”
I blink and glance at the robe spilling off its perch. It takes only a moment to find the antler-bone pipe in its folds—my lips parting helplessly as I touch it, and feel…
Ríona Etain’s eyes are steady, almost daring, as I turn it carefully over, studying the pocks and grooves along the bone: the rim of the bowl, blackened and chipped, brimming with a leaf I’m careful not to breathe too deeply of.
It feels the same in my palm as Roísín’s talon—could easily call to me if I held it even an inch lower on my arm where drops of blood still dry.
The thought curls slowly inside me.
I could take it now. Demand she let me awaken this relic, the same as I attempted with Callen’s.
But it’s their voice that dispels the idea, in the end.
And what makes you think you won’t become one of them?
Pressing my lips together, I bring Etain the pipe and a small painted box with Bruidin leaves, which she slides open to crack one neatly in her hand.
“Our ancestors, the Daonnaí, made oaths to their gods before killing them. Every single one of them broke their promise when they raised their blade.” Etain looks out toward the sea, where sunlight has just started to skim the horizon.
“So many traditions spited after their downfall, so many arts and customs lost.”
Brona crosses her arms. “What are you getting at?”
“Isn’t it odd that the Isle of Lost Souls was hidden for two hundred years, but the soulstones continue to exist?
” Etain draws a breath from the pipe, smoke devouring the steam around her.
“Odd that the relics lost their power once their gods were slaughtered, but our spirits remain trapped until Saoirse releases them with her blood.”
Holding her pipe aloft, Etain studies its face, then blows a single ring, trapping it at the center.
“Almost like the soulstones weren’t given to us by the gods at all.”