Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-eight
Faolan
When I startle awake, it’s to the feeling of wet hair dragging across my face and a small hand winding tight around my own.
“Saoirse.”
Relief overcomes any self-control.
I heave her soft body into mine as fiery blue waves climb over our legs, golden sand stretching out for leagues below. Her fingers spread across my chest, digging into the flesh there as I bury my face in the side of her neck, an apology already on my tongue.
She pushes me back before I can give it a proper home. “How are you here?! It’s still daylight.”
“I know.”
“You’re sleeping?” At my nod, she releases my chest to press her hands over her eyes. “Stars above, I was having a vision when I saw you drowning again, and I—”
“I’m fine. Well—not fine, I’m just…” My arms tighten at the small of her back, guilt making jelly of my bones. “Recovering. We were attacked.”
“What?”
I tell her in a mad rush, what happened on Painted Claw: the ambush outside the apothecary’s shop; Lorcan’s stabbing and Aidan’s burns; the way Kiara and the others looked at me.
The way I could have avoided it all, had I listened to a single fecking one of them.
“I could have gotten them killed. Almost did.”
“But Lorcan’s alive?”
I nod, and she exhales hard. “Thank the gods.”
An acrid taste floods my mouth. “It wasn’t the gods. It was healers, and Lorcan’s mam, and—and his own stubborn will.”
“I know that.” Saoirse blinks, pulling against my hold. “It’s just a saying, Faolan.”
“Well, I wish we wouldn’t say it.”
She goes stiff. Then, without a word, Saoirse peels my hands off her waist and steps back until I can’t help but see the whole of her disappointment.
The sight damn near rends me in two.
“Feck, love. I’m—” But the “sorry” dies on my tongue, killed by Kiara’s words from before.
I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to do better. Be better.
I swallow the apology down, then let go of Saoirse’s hands to sink to the ground, running my fingers over my arms, where I could swear I feel furry bristles poking through.
There once was a boy with no name who longed for a cloak of wolfskin.
“I owe you an explanation. A proper one, not—not just another story.”
There’s a rustle as Saoirse shifts, one foot to the other, and I don’t have to look to know she’s biting her lip. But then she lowers herself beside me—not touching—and tilts her head to one side.
“I don’t mind your stories, Faolan. I love them most of the time. It’s just…I would like some truth as well.”
“Right.”
I rub at the place on my chest where those cuts ought to be and force myself to meet her gaze, knowing it’s always been pointless to hide anyway.
I’ve never met someone so clear-eyed—and maybe that’s what’s set me running scared all this time, because pathetic or not, I wanted to be her hero. The legend she clung to in the dark.
Instead…
“I was born without a name.” Her eyes flit back and forth between mine, and I can’t help a small laugh. “You already knew that, then.”
“Only because Etain told me.”
“Of course she did.” I squeeze my own shoulder, then drop my hands to the earth.
“She only knows because she’s ancient and has a disastrously good memory—and there was the nasty business with my father abandoning his betrothal to one of her wains.
” My stomach leaps as Saoirse watches me.
I calm it by tracing patterns in the sand.
“Almost no one else remembers, though, outside of Kiara. And stars know I’ve done my damnedest to blot the memory out. ”
“But people remember you. They talk about it all the time, the lad who survived three days on the rocks and—well, you told me the truth of it, but it’s still part of the story.”
“Exactly. It’s heroic, memorable. Then there’s the bit about running away with Captain Keegan’s crew.”
“Right, but I’ve never heard anyone mention a sect of Clodagh, or the seanchaí or the Gan Ainm.”
“Because they keep to themselves, and because…I was forgettable back then.”
Saoirse scoffs, and I raise a brow. Reach over to tap her hand.
“ ‘I want nothing, I see nothing, I am nothing.’ ”
She startles back, arm stretched between us so that our soul marks gleam in the strange light. “You remember that?”
“It would be hard not to.” I shake my head.
“The first time I heard you say that, I was furious. It put me right back there in that ugly old gray tunic with their chants filling my ears, and—don’t be mad at me for this, but for a while, I thought you might be lying about where Dermot banished you.
If it was really the Gan Ainm who’d taken you in? ”
“I hadn’t even heard of—”
“I know.” I start to pull my hand back, but Saoirse holds fast. “They don’t take outsiders, anyway. Not unless they’re willing to swear their whole lives off—right down to their names.”
Saoirse says nothing. Just laces our hands together, tracing my knuckles with her thumb. It eases the knot my guts have tied themselves in.
Makes it almost bearable to spill out the rest.
“I was nothing for the first thirteen years of my life. Called ‘Gan Ainm’ same as all the rest. Our clothes were plain and cut from the same cloth, no jewelry or bright colors allowed—stars above, you even had to ask permission to try a new style of braid. The idea was purity: keep your lives simple and your minds rich and intact. The seanchaí were all storytellers, but the Gan Ainm claimed they were the only ones who kept records untainted by allegiance to a certain tuatha or to their own family ties. Winds of fury, even my parents—”
My hand goes limp in Saoirse’s, but she grips it like a vise, her gaze gentle. Earnest.
I take a deep breath and press on.
“I didn’t lie to you about my parents. My mother’s name was Iona, and she was a healer—a guardian of the Spring of Leigheas.
My father’s name was Barden, and he’d left Ashen Flame to train with the seanchaí before they fell in love.
It was him who wanted to join the Gan Ainm—he had an obsession with our history, and every godsdamned nuance of the law.
Mam went along with it because she loved him, but even when I was small she kept her… rebellions. And in turn, I kept mine.
“I was five the first time I was caught stealing. Nicking berries from the kitchen, because they’d only give us a wee handful each for our porridge.
Berries became buttons, buttons became ribbons, became…
anything interesting I could find. Then, by nine, I found a path through the woods that led to a village where—winds of fury, you wouldn’t believe the sort of hauls I came away with.
But there were informants in the village too.
Traders who provided the Gan Ainm with things we couldn’t handle ourselves in the community.
Snitches who were keen to tell our leader of the scrawny lad nicking their stuff. ”
My heart beats faster as I remember it in painful flashes.
Sausage. Whiskey. The first coin I ever held.
That cursed cloak of wolfskin.
Our palms light up against each other, and I almost release Saoirse’s hand…then stop myself. Watch as her eyes shift, her mouth falling open as she must see it too. And part of me wants to let go of her at once—to run right back into those waters and take my chances with the waves.
But this time, instead of fighting it…I lean in.
Picture the walk to the village. The wee stone houses with their yellow-painted doors. My mother’s face when she found my nest in the bedroom, tucked under the mattress, and her attempts to scold me even as she laughed.
I can’t quite breathe properly when the memories stop, fingers cold and slick with sweat.
And somehow, I feel Saoirse’s question before she can ask it—like it’s popped into my own head.
What happened?
“I was arrogant.” It’s not a strong enough word.
“Full o’ myself? I’d just turned thirteen and thought, a grown man needs a proper cloak, and what better than one I’d seen tucked at the top shelf of the trader’s hut, sewn of the silkiest fur you could imagine.
It was gray—and believe me, I know the irony in that—but a shade closer to silver.
It was getting colder, too, so I thought to myself—well, lad, you could spend the winter shivering in the same frieze tunic and tatty old rabbit skin as always, or you could make like a hunter through the woods. ”
Anger tangles with decades-old guilt in my throat, climbing high until I shove it back down.
Admit the part out loud I haven’t said to anyone. Not even Kiara.
“So I stole the cloak. We’d been warned many times before—there was an incident with a horse, and the Gan Ainm came to my mother and father and told them that if I was caught one more time, I’d be forced out. I knew, and I did it anyway.”
Saoirse finally unfurls, cupping my cheek as I lean into the touch.
“They caught me the next morning. Found the wolf cloak, and a whole pile of treasures, and told my parents it was time for me to go. But my parents—stars love them, they weren’t going to send me off alone, especially with the snows coming in.
So they packed their things—what miserable few they were allowed—and with the last of the money Da had brought with them, they chartered a wee boat and set off for Ashen Flame. ”
Her face falls, and I know it’s hit her.
The worst thing of all.
“Aye,” I murmur. “It was my fault. I—I should’ve told you last summer, when you were confessing what happened with your brothers. All that shame and guilt. It would’ve been a fair trade, and I—”
Saoirse kisses me, cutting me off as her hand tangles in my hair and then slides down to curl tight over my jaw.
I lean into her, breaths sharper now, body tense—but she breaks the kiss before I can pull her close.
Shakes her head, drops her forehead to mine.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m sorry.” I reach for her shoulders, then settle my hands firmly over her arms instead. “I’ll say it a thousand more times if you need me to—”
“I don’t.” Her laugh is followed by a frown. “It’s just…the pageantry of you.”
I shut my eyes on a groan. “I know.”