Chapter Forty-One
Forty-one
Saoirse
The oilliphéist’s shrieks fade into the distance as Faolan hoists me over the railing by my waist, both of us landing with a hard slap on the polished deck.
His limbs jerk and twitch as my own legs burn, ignited by our furious, unsteady climb.
I’m just starting to roll over—to reach for him again—when Brona hurls herself into me so hard, I wonder that she doesn’t break my ribs.
“You eejit! Of all the thoughtless, impulsive, deadly stunts you could have pulled—”
“I know. I’m—” A cough breaks my apology, rough and wet.
Her hold relaxes, and then she’s peeled off of me by Lorcan, whose jaw clenches tight, the arm not holding Brona lying stiff against his side, bandages slung over his shoulder.
Nessa leans heavily against one of the ship walls behind him, hands on her knees, a row of sharp scales cutting into the skin of her throat.
Aisling is curled up as tight as she can get into Kiara’s chest beside her, Kiara’s eyes sweeping the deck, her face gaunt beneath the freckles.
Faolan and I both see Tavin at the same time—sprawled on a pile of ropes, a shard of wood sticking up from his thigh.
“Shite.” Faolan touches me once in passing, then goes to kneel at Tavin’s side, reaching for the wood at the same time as I turn my head frantically, looking for Aidan.
He’s not there.
My eyes flit past the marigold tunics of Etain’s sailors to the bodies they’re hauling over the rails: some of them untouched but sodden with seawater, drenched in their comrades’ blood.
Others are missing limbs, fingers and feet.
Some are simply missing pieces, while others barely resemble humans at all.
None of them are my brother.
“Where is Aidan?”
Kiara looks up, the name jerking her out of her fugue. “He wouldn’t jump.”
“So you left him behind?!”
“No!” Kiara blinks hard, salt and blood still staining her eyes. Aisling curls closer to her side. “No, I shoved him into the water, then dove. I assumed he could swim.”
“He can, but—”
“Water paralyzes him.” Faolan looks up from Tavin’s side, one hand pressed hard on his quartermaster’s thigh to stem the blood as one of Etain’s crew kneels with bandages. “I guessed it when we first took him. It’s why we cut the ropes as soon as we set sail. The lad’s terrified of swimming.”
“Dammit.” Kiara starts to rise, but two of her rescued crew part and that’s when I see him.
My only surviving brother, pale beyond recognition, huddled in a knot at the base of the mast.
At first, I think he’s dead like so many of the others—the truth of it strapping my feet to the planks like they’re stones, ready to drown me.
But then his shoulders spasm, those dark curls jerking as he shoves his face deeper into his knees. A keening sound lies low in Aidan’s chest.
I move before I can think twice about it, crossing over oiled wood splattered with gore to drop to my knees by his side. “Aidan, what—”
“He’s dead.” The words fumble their way across Aidan’s half-frozen lips. “He’s dead because of me. Conal’s dead.”
“I know—but that was a long time ago. Aidan…”
I search Aidan’s face, one hand hovering over his shoulder, as a fresh hurt pulls at his edges.
I remember this pain.
Know the panic carved deep into Aidan’s throat as it convulses in an attempt to swallow.
Even without seeing his memories, I know what they are because I’ve lived them too.
That frantic pulse muted by the water, then amplified until it’s the only thing you can hear.
Lungs shrinking beneath the weight of the water crushing you down, down, down.
Holding Conal’s soulstone was like holding his dying heart.
And for just one second, some small, selfish part of me wants to avoid it—to avoid Aidan’s skin, his body, lest that pit of guilt swallow me as well.
Except as my fingertips brush his collar, it…doesn’t.
Nothing surfaces between us, save for his tight, shallow breaths.
I don’t have time to think on it—to mourn or puzzle out why his soul doesn’t call out to me. Instead I wrap my arms around him as tight as they’ll go, cradling Aidan to me like I’d wished someone had done for me those seven long years.
“Aidan,” I whisper, pressing my palm into his back. “You’re on dry ground now.”
“The sea—it swallowed me—”
“I know. Breathe.” I dig my fingernails in harder between his shoulder blades until he winces, awareness cutting through the terror on his face. “You’re not in the water. That’s air in your lungs. What does it taste like?”
His chest hitches as Aidan turns his face up to me, frowning in confusion—then clearing as he recognizes me at last. “Blood. And brine.”
I wipe some of it off his face with my sodden sleeve, water still dripping from my nose. Or maybe it’s tears. “Sorry. That was—probably unhelpful.”
His eyes crinkle as he squeezes them shut, then fumbles for my hand.
Again, nothing comes from the touch. No flicker of emotion.
Just the ordinary pain that comes from watching another human suffer.
“Keep breathing,” I murmur, but his shoulders have stopped their urgent hiking.
They fall even as I push his hair back to see the cut on his forehead, my thumb swiping more of the blood away.
A pulse passes through me then—a flash of Conal’s face in the water, his jaw falling slack to one side—but it’s faint. There and gone again in seconds.
I bury the loss of it with a curl of my fist, letting my hand drop to the side as my brother slumps back, staring up at me like he’s never seen me before.
“…You stopped them.”
I stay quiet, and his eyes take my measure. “You stopped the monsters. I…Saoirse, what did you…how did you—”
“Róisín’s relic.”
Callen appears at my elbow. Their face is unreadable, eyes locked on Aidan though they extend a trembling hand to me. I dip my own into my trouser pocket, flinching as the tip almost pierces my skin—then almost drop Roísín’s talon altogether when I hold it up to the light.
The ancient talon’s crystalline surface has gone opaque.
Callen takes it before I can examine it more closely, wrapping the chain around it before stuffing it into their own pocket. “Next time, warn me.”
“I—” My jaw snaps shut as I take their measure, frowning.
I can’t…feel them. Their anger or indignation.
As the voices and cries of those on deck press in, it’s disconcerting to hear them only as that: voices. Not souls with tangible emotions clawing their way into my chest. Rubbing my arms as gooseflesh breaks out across them, I turn back to Callen. “I’m sorry.”
Their mouth shrinks, then smooths out as they look over Aidan, then the rest of the deck with a hard, heavy breath. “I had no idea this is what wayfaring was like.”
“People rarely do.” Faolan steps around their other side, offering a hand to me that I take without a second’s thought, my head swirling with the lack of other voices. Only my own low-humming fear and exhaustion are left. “Is Rí Aidan injured?”
Callen crouches at his side, their face softening further. “Are you?”
My brother, still staring at me, shakes his head.
Callen frowns, seeing a fresh trickle of blood course down his cheek. “Liar.”
“It’s fine. I just got cut when Kiara shoved me in.” A bit of annoyance colors Aidan’s voice. “So much for the peace accords.”
“We’re well past that now.” Kiara approaches on unsteady legs, Aisling holding her arm, though whether it’s to support her lover or be supported, it’s impossible to say.
I myself lean heavily into Faolan’s chest, allowing his breaths to calm my growing alarm at the empty itch spreading beneath my skin.
Not quite apathy—not like the caipín baís’s ink spread from my tattoo—but something worse.
A strained sort of reluctance, bordering on revulsion.
The same feeling that swept through the soul pool when Maccus stepped inside.
Kiara raises her chin as I shy back from my own twisted feelings, her eyes burning a path down the deck. When another one of Etain’s sailors crosses her path, his dark yellow tunic turned a mottled, muddy red, she stops him. “How many are dead?”
The man glances our way, then drops his gaze to the ground. “Twelve.”
“Injured?”
“…A lot more than that, Your Majesty.”
Kiara releases a small breath. “Right. Shroud the dead and lay them back in the water. Then take the injured into the crew’s cabin, and—”
“No.” Aisling squeezes Kiara’s arm once, then straightens up, some of the shock leaving her eyes as she turns her focus on the sailor. “Take them to my cabin. Mine and Etain’s. We’ll make them as comfortable as we can while the healers see to them.”
Kiara’s face relaxes, the green in her eyes shifting to a softer shade. “You heard your princess.”
The sailor bows, then makes himself scarce.
Faolan’s arm tenses over my stomach as he looks from Kiara to Callen and Aidan, to the wolves scattered just past them. Standing this close, at last a bit of his emotion bleeds through: guilt. Worry.
A hungry, loathsome, bottomless shame.
As though she can sense it, Kiara turns her gaze on him, green leaves sharpening to emerald fire in her eyes.
“Tell me you got what you needed.”
“Needed from what?” Aisling asks.
“The apothecary.” Kiara looks Faolan over, and as he shifts, I feel the press of his bag against my hip. “Faolan was down belowdecks, interrogating him when we—”
“That’s where you were?” Brona approaches from Kiara’s other side, one hand fastened around Nessa’s, the other curled in Lorcan’s shirt.
Tavin hovers unsteadily at Nessa’s other side, tawny face blanched of most of its color, red-stained bandages bound around his thigh.
“Faolan, tell me you didn’t entrust my maps to someone else. ”
“I did.” Faolan’s voice is a hard rumble against my spine. “I had to.”
“Godsdammit—”
“It wasn’t the navigator’s fault. He was just…following orders,” Faolan says, an edge cutting into his voice. “I pushed him to take us through the Teeth.”
“You did what?”
“I…” Faolan’s shoulders start to bunch, his arm tensing against me. And then they fall slack. “I pressed the lad to take the fastest route to the Isle of Lost Souls. I thought—”
“He thought Saoirse had died.” Tavin’s voice is weak from where he stands, already threatening to slide back down to the deck. “That connection they told us about. It broke.”
Brona lurches forward, only stopped by Lorcan’s thumb stroking her flushed, angry cheek. “Well, you were right. We nearly did die. But how could you risk the Teeth without me? If we hadn’t seen your signal—”
“I know. And I’m sorry that people died because of it, but don’t ask me to regret it because I won’t. I’d have made the same choices again—taken the same chances—if it was for Saoirse, or Tavin, Nessa, Lorcan, you.” Faolan shakes his head. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t risk.”
Brona stares at him for a long moment, then rubs at her face, letting go of her companions to step forward. “Noble bastard. I guess it doesn’t matter now—not when we’ve got to get out of here. Who do I need permission from to take over navigation?”
“No one.” Faolan steps around me, fingertips dragging over my ribs. “You’re a feckin’ wolf.”
Aisling’s frown is instant. “She does need permission on board my ship. But she already has it.”
“Well, thank the stars for that.”
Aisling starts forward. “Faolan, you—”
“It’s been a long night.” Kiara stops Aisling with a gentle hand on her arm, lashes scraping her cheek as she looks Aisling over and then faces down the rest of us.
“We’ve all made mistakes today, but we’re not the ones paying the price for them.
Have some respect for that.” She jerks her chin at Lorcan.
“You, take Tavin and go find somewhere to rest up.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re decidedly not. Nessa—”
“These are my crew, Kiara,” Faolan says, his arm dropping entirely from my skin. “You can’t just order them about.”
Her eyes narrow, shoulders rolled back. “Nessa, Callen, Aidan. So long as you’re uninjured, you can tend to those who are. Every able body is needed. Brona, to the wheel.”
Kiara waits until they all leave on her orders, the wolves casting cautious glances at Faolan, whose body grows firmer by the second. Finally, when it’s just us, she steps closer and lowers her voice.
“Your call on the route resulted in twelve men dead and twice that number injured. Two days ago, it nearly got your bosun killed. I won’t fault you for mistakes, Faolan—I won’t. But if you’re stupid enough to keep repeating them without learning, I will put an end to it.”
Faolan recoils, hand dropping to that leather bag. “If I just had my own ship—my full crew—none of it would have happened.”
“But you don’t, cousin.” Kiara grasps his shoulder, squeezing once. “That’s my point. You keep acting like the Wolf of the Wild, but—”
“But what? He’s not needed anymore? Dead?” Faolan’s voice is raw, leather creaking under his grip. “Stars, Kiara, he’s right here—I’m right fecking here!”
She’s quiet for a long, long moment. Then she releases his shoulder and steps away.
“I see you, lad. But do you see yourself?”