Chapter Forty-Two
Forty-two
Faolan
Kiara’s words haunt me for hours—long after my anger’s fled, leaving only a vague sort of disgust behind.
They chase me through sorting the bodies of Kiara’s crew, checking on Tavin’s wounds, scrubbing the deck that’s never before seen bloodstains, and avoiding Saoirse, until at last, the hour grows late and she finds me in her gentle way.
A soft hand touching my forearm.
A whispered “come.”
She guides me past a handful of marigold-dyed tunics—sailors emerging to take their shift. Others climb through the hatch below to their quarters. We pass a window on our way in, our reflections warped and pale.
I see you, lad. But do you see yourself?
“Where are you taking me, love?”
Saoirse glances back, frowning. My numb lips must have fumbled the words.
“Sorry. I said where—”
“Just here.” Saoirse nudges me into a small room with a plain wooden door, and for the first time since the battle, my ears cease their ringing, skin smarting from the sudden lack of wind.
It’s dark inside, the porthole small and crusted over with salt and weeds from the storm.
Any light that filters in has a pale greenish glow, but even that will be gone soon with the rest of the sun.
A crack breaks the silence, and I turn around as Saoirse holds a broken Bruidin leaf to a lantern until the wick catches, bathing our bodies in gold—and revealing every ounce of blood and grime. It’s almost enough to make me laugh, the flame making gilded corpses of the both of us.
Almost.
My throat spasms instead.
“The wolves?”
“Lorcan and Tavin are sleeping in the queen’s quarters with the injured.
” Saoirse waits until the leaf is consumed by flame, then flicks the ashes from her fingertips onto the sparse floor.
A vague, honeyed smell lingers in the air after—not from the lantern but seeping from the walls, and a half dozen crates stacked nearby.
“What about the others?”
Saoirse sits on one of the crates, tugging at the laces of her shirt. “Brona’s refusing sleep until she gets us far enough into the Crescent so we’re not blown off course again. Nessa took a hammock in the crew’s cabin below.”
“Then we should join her.”
“We will.” Saoirse looks me over. “After a bath.”
A laugh punches out of me, but her expression stays serious. “Darling, that’s hardly a concern after today.”
“It is when I can’t tell what blood belongs to you, the oilliphéist, or…” Saoirse trails off, her eyes on the leather bag at my side.
Instinctively, I lay a hand over its top, but it’s pointless. I should know better than to try hiding things from her.
Saoirse’s eyes return to mine, shifting colors as usual, but the change is sharper now. Abrupt as a bird taking flight.
“Did you kill him?”
The certainty of it makes me flinch. But I don’t deny it either.
Saoirse studies me, then strips the leather vest and her shirt over her head.
Bruises mar her soft curves, marking the places our battle caught her: the gentle dip of her hip that dug into wood as we hovered over the oilliphéist, a violet-tinged stripe across her rib cage where I caught her hard around the waist to get away.
Dingy bandages wrap her left forearm, which she starts to peel until I stop her, taking the ragged end between my finger and thumb.
“He was pinned. A wall had collapsed over his legs.”
Saoirse doesn’t move as I unspool the bandages, then blow gently on the shallow red divots left in her skin.
The cuts she makes for bloodletting are small and precise, scabs forming at their edges.
But there’s a fresh nick to the side of her wrist where I cut into her.
Another, slender line down the center of her forearm, just over the soul pool scar.
“I could have tried harder to free him,” I admit, tracing that line before letting her go to take the leather bag off, setting it to the side. “But the ship was sinking fast. I had to get back to you.”
“Faolan.” My hand falls away, and Saoirse pushes off the crate. “Did you kill the apothecary?”
His skeletal face flashes across my eyes. Terrified and angry.
My own voice, justifying what I was about to do.
You’re no hero.
“Aye. I killed him.”
Saoirse’s quiet a moment, then hooks her fingers under the edge of my shirt.
It strains beneath my arms until I lift them, muscles jerking in protest, the cuts down my chest screaming at the drag of still-damp fabric until it’s done.
She tosses it into a filthy heap by the door alongside her own, then bends to pull a bucket of water out from beside the crates, a sponge tied with soap floating at its center.
“Trousers.”
Numbly, I obey. My boots are sodden from the swim to Etain’s ship, difficult to strip off. Once they’re gone, I shuck the trousers as well.
She pauses, then reaches for my hand. “Glove.”
I’ve never wanted to hide myself—not from Saoirse.
Not from anyone. In fact, most of my life has been dedicated to the opposite, expanding myself until there was no room to look anywhere else.
But for the first time in thirteen years, since I watched my mother disappear under the waves, I want to vanish.
Or at least, to pull on my old cloak of wolfskin and hide behind its charm.
The only trouble is, Saoirse’s always seen past it. Stars save me, from that first moment we met, her eyes kept dropping to my damn tail—the pitiful bit of fabric I’d pinned to my belt at the last minute, ready to laugh it off if anyone said a word.
But not her. Never her.
I unlace the leather glove and peel it away, then slump over as Saoirse lathers the sponge.
“Feck.” Water drips into the bucket, the only sound aside from my own trembling breaths. “Feck, Saoirse, I—”
“I wanted you to kill him.”
She rises to her feet, laying the sponge over my shoulder so that cool, soapy water trickles down my chest. I can barely feel it, my eyes locked on hers, fingers gripping my thighs as I lean back against a crate.
She meets my gaze for just a second, then turns it back to my chest, pressing the sponge gently over every bloody wound.
“The rest of my life could go by, and I’ll still never forget the look on Sionn’s face.
The glee he held when Mam and Da pinned me down.
I…I wanted him to die.” Saoirse bites her lip, then paints a slick line over my collarbone.
“Maccus too. I wanted to kill him—tried to tear out his throat with a rock.”
Saoirse bathes my shoulders, my arms, with methodical presses of the sponge until I catch it from her.
Take her hand and spin her around until it’s me washing her back, sliding all that dark hair over one shoulder to reveal the band of pinkish-white flesh lain like an arrowhead between her shoulder blades.
She shivers when I press the sponge there, water trickling down her spine.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you that,” I murmur, and her shoulders go stiff.
“Not properly. I—I’ve fecked it all up. I shouldn’t have been down below with him while there was a storm outside.
Shouldn’t have made that stupid call on Painted Claw, or provoked Maccus in the first place. Shouldn’t have—”
“Taken me at all?”
Her voice is small, nearly swallowed by the spit of the lantern flame.
“No—that’s not what I meant.”
She turns in my arms so the sponge drags across her shoulders, over the tops of her breasts. “That’s where it lands us, though. With you, regretting me.”
“Saoirse, I—”
“Do you?”
I nearly drop the sponge. “Never.”
Saoirse takes it back, rinsing it again before dragging it down my arms until the dried blood and flecks of green scales slide off onto the floor. “Then stop acting like it.”
“Acting like what?” I stare, stupidly, as she maneuvers herself around me to wash my back, my hips—grabbing her wrist only when she reaches the front. “Saoirse—”
“Stop acting like the legend is all you have.”
I let her go, and Saoirse drops the sponge into the bucket, water splashing both our legs. “I don’t know what you think I need from you, Faolan, or what any of us needs, but it’s not stories. Not anymore.”
If she ran me through with a dagger, the wound would bleed less.
But Saoirse doesn’t shy away from the pain. She never has.
She steps closer, pressing a hand over my heart like it belongs there.
“The Wolf is fierce, clever, wild—but you are so much more than just that. Your heart’s gentler than I could have ever dreamed.
You care for your crew, your cousin, with so much passion it’s stifling at times.
And, aye, you can be ridiculous and maddening, but—” Saoirse’s eyes well up, the blue fairly leaping with light.
“You’re worth staying for. You, Faolan. Not just the idea you’ve built, but the whole of you. ”
A laugh builds and dies in my throat, my fingers closing over her hips.
Do you even believe in yourself anymore?
“Lass—”
“Listen to me, Faolan.” Saoirse takes my jaw in her fingers. Holds me so I have nowhere to look but her eyes. “I loved the Wolf. I still do.”
My heart clenches. Drops.
“But as much as I’ve loved the Wolf, I love you more.”
It’s like I’m drowning all over again, only this time, the water’s sweet. Soft. And dying by its touch feels so godsdamn desirable, all I want is to breathe it in.
So I do.
Saoirse falls limp into my arms as I wrap them around her waist, dragging her onto the tips of her toes—nuzzling my mouth against the gentle crook of her throat. And there, beneath the lingering brine, I can finally smell her.
Oats and sea aster.
I stifle my groan against her skin, kissing a path over her light, quick pulse. She starts to push me away, murmuring something about bathing, and I drop my forehead to her shoulder on a hard laugh.
“Saoirse. You just told me you love me, and you think I’m worried about a bit of sweat?”
“It’s more than sweat, it’s—”
“All right.” I kiss her again. Then once more, parting her lips with mine before I break away to take up the sponge and nod to her hair. “Hold all that up, would you?”
She does, coiling it into a long, dark rope on top of her head as I make quick work of bathing all that moonlight skin—taking care around the bruises, the cuts, the scars.
Her fingers fumble at her trousers, and I help her peel them off, lifting her by the waist once they’re gone to set her on that crate again.
Saoirse shivers under the cool scrape of the sponge between her thighs.
I stop when her breath hitches. Go slower.
“Faolan.”
“Ach, but you said it yourself, love.” The whisper drops into my stomach, crackling there as I trail the soft edge of that sponge over her belly. Down the crease of flesh folded over her hip. “We need to be thorough.”
Her eyes flick to mine, blue shifting to green, to the purest bolt of silver.
“Trickster.”
“Martyr.”
“Gods.”
I let the backs of my fingers stroke between her legs, and Saoirse releases her hair, all those silk-black waves tumbling down to hide her chest. A protest leaves my mouth as I drag it across her skin, abandoning the sponge in favor of gripping her thighs—pulling her to the edge of the crate.
Her knees hit my shoulders, then fall open, legs spreading wide as I kneel between them, whispering “That’s a good girl” against her swollen, sweet flesh.
I taste her, and she trembles, hips tilting higher to chase my tongue.
There’s no magic between us—not in our palms, or the cry of my broken soul out to her.
There’s only us. The humanity of us.
The love of us.
I break my kisses until she looks at me, lips parted, bottom one dented from where she’s kept it tucked between her teeth.
The sight of it wrecks me, until I’m crawling up her body, bathing her skin a second time with my mouth.
Saoirse slides off the crate, and I palm the glorious round curve of her arse, hitching her against me—both of us gasping when our bodies press flush.
“Tell me, again, that you love me.” I kiss her, lapping at that darling divot with my tongue. “Say it, Saoirse.”
She touches my lips with a fingertip. Slips it between them, so that I taste her again.
“I love you.”
I bite down—gentle at first. But when she pulls back her hand, I catch it in mine and turn my mouth to her throat. Spin our bodies so that she’s bent over the crate, both our hands splayed on the sweet-smelling wood, my teeth dragging over her shoulder.
“Again.”
Saoirse swallows a groan, her face hidden by all that hair.
I release her hands to drag the tangled mass of it back, wrapping her curls gently around my fist. Her cheek is flushed when I reveal it, pink and gold—a temptation not even the gods would be able to resist. Pressing another kiss there, I let my free hand slide down her body, dipping between her hips.
“Say it again, Trouble.”
She twists in my arms—enough that her hair tugs at the roots, drawing a gasp from her parted lips. But it’s her eyes that ruin me, stifling that selfish, hungry creature in my chest until it’s all but gone.
“I love you, Faolan.”
My body jerks forward, and Saoirse lifts onto her toes, rolling—pressing herself—deliberately against me. My laugh is a weak thing, powerless to last against her lips. I was a feckin’ fool, once. Thinking this feeling would be another cage.
As I press into Saoirse—hear those precious three words tangled on her breath—I feel it take me over. Like sun glinting through rain and wind thrown through my hair—that thing I’ve spent half my life hunting down.
Freedom.