Chapter Forty
Forty
Faolan
Blood sprays across the deck as I wrench my sword from the neck of an oilliphéist and turn, only to watch as my wife drops into a pit of scales and corpses like it’s a bed of fecking flowers.
“Saoirse!”
It’s too late. The sea swallows her up seconds before the clouds shift, letting a streak of light in.
I tear the satchel from over my shoulder and thrust it into the apothecary’s arms, giving Sionn a bodily shove into the captain’s cabin.
Then I race for the edge of the splintered deck, leaping across a gaping chasm where the hatch to the lower deck used to be.
But it’s a piece of shite that hasn’t been swabbed in gods know how long.
As I land, my boot slides as another wave sweeps the planks, dragging me hard toward the broken edges and hungry waves below.
I drive a dagger into the wood before it can, every muscle straining as I kick my legs in unison, swinging my body toward the captain’s wheel until I manage to wedge a boot between two spokes, pushing myself upward—twisting immediately round to search the waters for a dark head of hair.
Instead, I’m greeted by a massive bloody serpent snapping its jaws, its body leaping a hand’s length higher with every jerking slap of its knife-edged tail.
I could get five hundred gold pieces just for that alone.
I swear hard as I wrap my arm twice around a rope and cut the end loose, swinging out above its translucent fins and spikes to perch high on the railing instead.
“SAOIRSE!”
There’s still no sign of her.
No loose black curls or ruddy cheeks. No screams either—but I can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or not.
The rain lets up just enough to hear the oilliphéist hatchlings shriek, rays of sunlight revealing the creatures feasting on the fallen sailors unfortunate enough to have sailed under the command of a desperate man.
For a moment as my eyes skate over the restless waters, the pits and gashes our ship’s become, guilt drives an arrow into my heart.
I ignore the pain of it.
Break off the shaft and force myself to focus.
But I’m not fine.
I’m not fine, and Saoirse’s drowning in a tangle of monsters, and—
My breath stops, legs tensing as I prepare to dive.
I’m not leaving her to do it alone.
If she dies, I’ll—
“Faolan!”
I glance down and—there she is. My girl with ocean eyes.
Saoirse, determined and lovely and wretched, scrambling up the railing like it’s a ladder, her eyes massive and churning like the sea just beneath her heel. Saoirse, who I last saw pinned down by the Stone King. The legend who tamed the wolf—the woman who became a goddess just to spare my soul.
Saoirse, who’s so focused on reaching me she doesn’t see the oilliphéist curled around the captain’s wheel, its viridescent eyes tracking her form.
Time slows as it did at the soul pools the night Saoirse slit her wrist.
The wood beneath her boot cracks. Rain splatters, masking the sea serpent’s hiss.
And Saoirse tumbles to the ground.
I pit my full weight against the rope and leap, feet clearing the air as the sea serpent uncoils itself, mouth gaping, fangs bared. It lunges for Saoirse—and I land hard on its head.
“What the feck are you doing, lass?!”
The oilliphéist thrashes as Saoirse finds her footing again, chest heaving while she stares open-mouthed as I climb the rope, hand over hand. One more hard kick with both my legs and the beast skids down the slanted deck, barreling back toward the water.
I don’t wait for the splash.
Saoirse’s body trembles as she lets go of the railing, and I loop an arm through it, latching the other around her waist.
“Bleeding skies, Faolan, why are you—”
I kiss her before she can ask, pulling her flush against me.
My heart wants to pound its way out of my chest and directly into hers, skin and bone hardly a barrier compared to the weight of my wanting—of my fear she’d been lost. I kiss Saoirse until I feel her soften, and some of that desperate terror abates, and even then, I only pull back because the ship lurches again, threatening to give way.
But I don’t let her go, and I don’t move more than a breath back.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
Her eyes widen, brows flicking together at the center before easing down. “You felt it break?”
“Felt what break?” My fingers find her shirt, winding the damp wool into a knot at my palm. “All I know is I was on the job for Kiara one second, and then seeing flashes of you the next before—nothing. I thought Maccus had killed you. Or taken you, or—”
“He tried.”
“And we sent messages, but—”
“Etain smuggled us onto her ship.” Saoirse shakes her head, hair scattered across her skin like crows taking flight.
“But there was no seanchaí with us, and even if there was, the only ones with your hair were back on the island, and I—” Her eyes tear up as she curls her fingers round the back of my neck. “I should have kept a lock.”
“Never mind that, just—come here.”
I drag her body closer as shrieks echo below and wind rages above, parting her lips like it’s the last time I’ll taste her.
She seems to think so too.
Saoirse clutches me close. Wraps her hands in my hair, the torn, bloody linen of my shirt.
I barely feel the sting of those cuts from Painted Claw—not when her touch spreads like honey across my skin.
It’s only when lightning strikes the rock nearest us that we break apart, Saoirse’s eyes bottomless and wet.
“In case we don’t make it through this—”
“We will.”
“Faolan.”
Another snarling screech comes, echoed by three more below us, and when I chance a look down, my lips go slack with the number of those damned creatures from stories of the deep. There must be dozens—hundreds—of oilliphéist hatchlings, curious and hungry from their awakening in the storm.
Saoirse grabs for my hand, my fingers already parted, making easy knots of our hold.
“Listen, Faolan. I should have told you before.”
“Really, darling, now’s not the time.”
“But I lov—”
I stop her words with a frantic kiss, passing a thumb over the wolf ring resting on her knuckle—a moment of stolen sweetness before we break it again.
“Tell me later. When I know you mean it.”
Her face shifts once, sadness and amusement passing like ships in the night, and I kiss her one more time before my eyes jump from the nearest of the serpentine beasts to the patterns of the currents carrying bodies and debris.
Tavin and the other wolves have climbed to the highest bits of the mast and woodwork, heading for the nearest Tooth.
But we’re too far from them. Too high to clear the water—it’s a bloody miracle Saoirse wasn’t snapped up or run through when she leapt in the first time.
I blink. Squint my eyes to study that section of the water again, rife with fins and scales.
“…How did you make it here?”
Saoirse’s finger traces the web between my finger and thumb. “I swam?”
“No, I meant the sea beasts. How did you avoid them?”
“I stole Callen’s relic.” Blinking away rain, Saoirse dips a hand into her trouser pocket and lifts it free, a thin trail of blood leaking from a small cut at the edge of her palm. “Before I leapt, I-I was thinking about Róisín, and your story about her slaying the oilliphéist—”
“You—winds of fury, you’re not saying you tried to call down the stars, are you?” I jerk my head up, searching the angry, rain-slewed sky, but Saoirse grabs my chin and guides it back down.
“No. Nothing like that, I just—when I hit the water, the nearest serpents scattered away. They learned to fear the taste of her blood. It was a lucky guess.”
I stare at her for a long moment, then laugh. “A damn clever one.” Shaking my head, I scoop Saoirse closer, burying my mouth against her cheek. “Gods, you’re so clever.”
She turns her face into my chest, and I squint through the rain to see the rest of the crew. Her brother. Etain’s ship, and the waves finally calming down.
I brush a lock of hair back from her temple. “Do you still have your knife?”
“I dropped it.”
“Thank the stars you didn’t lose the talon as well.
” Taking her hand again, I ease one of the wolf daggers from its place at my hip and extend our arms over the waves.
The nick I give her wrist is as small as I can manage, but I still hate it when she gasps in pain.
Blood wells up, a brilliant dot against all those blues, whites, and grays.
“Right,” I say, letting go of her hand to sheathe the knife, then wrap an arm around her hips. Tucking my face against her throat as she pulls in a breath. “Is there anything in particular you were thinking of when you did it?”
Her lip quivers as she laughs, uneasy. “You. And how we found a whole bloody island based off a scrap of song?”
My own laugh comes as easy as breathing, then slips off into the wind.
“Stars, but I love you,” I whisper, even as that beast inside me quivers.
The part that swept her through the last storm with ease.
I’d stored up so many potions, trinkets, woven charms, and treasures on that ship and my person, I’d felt invincible: a story unfolding, a man who was a little more than mortal, whose legend did not end in death.
But she’s eclipsed me, this girl I found at the Damhsa.
This woman who’s upended the world.
“You can do it, love.”
I kiss her shoulder and drop my chin there to watch.
“Tame the sea.”
Saoirse breathes out slowly, then jerks her arm once and lets the drop fall.
It’s like the moment a dolphin enters a writhing cloud of fish.
In a single instant, they scatter from the place where her blood landed, leaving the ocean placid there just as a ray of sunlight burns through the storm.
I feel her shoulders jerk as she laughs, startled and absurdly beautiful, and a ferocious sort of pride swells up my chest even as something darker nips at its heels.
I shove it away before it can sink its teeth too deep.
It doesn’t matter that my plans were pointless. That I’ve turned this ship into a graveyard and I’m damned lucky all of my wolves and her brother survived. Saoirse, breathing hard, eases her way down the deck by my side until she can touch Róisín’s blood-coated talon to the water.
Like a candle blown out, the rest of the fight ceases to exist.
Tails flick restlessly before vanishing beneath the surface, the oilliphéist hatchlings swimming away as though they’ve been burned.
The other ship comes into focus then, Brona standing at the farthest reach of the helm, bronze skin paler than I’ve ever seen it as she screams something neither of us can hear.
Rí Callen and Aisling join her with a slew of sailors hauling ropes and ladders over the ship’s edge.
From there it’s all bodies: mine lowering Saoirse’s into the sea, then catching ropes and attaching them as Tavin, Nessa, Lorcan, Kiara, and Aidan crawl their way down alongside the handful of sailors who managed to survive the initial crash.
It’s only as the last of them makes their way across the rope, one hand over the other, that I remember the apothecary.
I turn to locate him, his name already on the tip of my tongue, when I spot the skeletal figure with a lurch.
Sionn is tangled in a heap of crumbling wood where the captain’s cabin once lay, one leg pinned beneath a collapsed wall, the other half of his body straining to get free.
His eyes are frantic—mad—as he wrestles like a fly caught in a spider’s web.
My leather sack lies tucked beneath his arm.
“Free me.”
I rock forward and stop when the wood whines under my heel. Splits. The storm might have abated, but the damage is irreparable. One wrong move and this whole part of the ship could collapse—will collapse. Half of it is already underwater.
The rest won’t be long after.
As though he knows it, Sionn’s throat strains with another plea.
“Help me.”
Milky yellow-white flashes as the apothecary’s eyes roll back, nails breaking with the effort to push the waist-thick blocks of wood free. But he’s too weak for it. Even without the potion I spilled on his flesh earlier, he couldn’t do it.
I can’t manage it either.
At least, that’s what I tell myself as I take a step back.
“Don’t you dare abandon me,” Sionn snarls. Across the water, Saoirse calls my name.
“Why? You would have left me,” I say, the justification coming too easily to my tongue. “You’re working with Maccus—”
“I was trying to spare the Crescent his filth!”
I pause, then release a shaky laugh. “You’re no hero.”
A rope snaps, flaying the apothecary’s back as it passes by.
We have seconds to spare—precious few moments as guilt wars with instinct, and that word circles around my head.
Hero.
I could be a hero again.
Could spare Sionn’s life, bring him back to Etain’s ship and let Saoirse determine his fate. He could be of use with the relics.
Or…he could persuade the others to help him. Callen or Aisling, both. He’s done it before.
My eyes drop to the leather bag just as another rope snaps, then another, the whole section of ship tilting against the Teeth. Sionn writhes like an animal then, tugging viciously at his trapped leg even as blood pools below it.
“You’re no hero,” I repeat, and the apothecary stops.
Stares at me, a ruthless, knowing set in his expression.
It’s over in three seconds.
I swipe for my leather bag, and he binds it against his chest. But the man’s brittle—weak—and I pull it away, hissing as his long, flaking nails gouge into my arm. He screams insults at me, lost in the sounds of wood groaning and the last peals of thunder tearing across the sky.
“Come back! Free me, you miserable fecking dog—you need me!”
“I need nothing from you that’s not in here.”
“Stop! Don’t do this—” Finally, releasing a weak sob, the apothecary reaches for me with bloody fingertips and a broken face. “Please.”
I close my heart against the sound as my own words ring in my ears.
You’re no hero.
But it’s easy to shrug off.
To remind myself that legends don’t have to be good. They just have to be remembered.
My grip doesn’t falter as I loop the bag over my shoulder, reach for a secure rope, and hurl my body as far as I can get toward the sea just as the last piece of Kiara’s ship breaks and vanishes below the waves.