Chapter Forty-Four
Forty-four
Faolan
The room goes dead silent after Saoirse’s proclamation.
The sort of silent that crawls across your skin and below your fingernails, making you want to tear the wee feckers off. Saoirse does her best not to shrink beside me, but it’s a battle she’s losing—similar to the one playing across Kiara’s face.
I’ve pitched a fair number of ideas to my cousin over the years: bottling Stiff Wind, traveling in a circle outside the Crescent just to see what we might discover along the way, the Isle of Lost Souls and a dozen places between.
I’m used to seeing her stare off into space while she weighs information against her own pragmatism and doubts—and generally speaking, it’s a gamble whether she’ll go for it or I’ll have to bend the rules to get by.
But Saoirse has that rare thing I lack: sincerity.
When she tells them about the Knowing Sea, it’s with such earnestness, it would take someone having a heart of bloody stone not to believe her.
So it only takes a handful of seconds for Kiara to draw a tight breath and raise a weary gaze to my wife’s.
“Does Maccus know?”
Saoirse’s arm shudders against mine, her body finally giving up the fight to curl back into her seat as she nods.
“He saw my vision of the Knowing Sea, and how it granted the gods their power, and…” She grimaces like she’s tasted something bitter.
“And after, he claimed he wanted to find it. Confront it and take its magic for himself.”
Kiara’s jaw slides under her skin as she chews on the thought. “And how does he plan to do that?”
“He—” Saoirse balls her hand up against her stomach, and I do my damnedest not to pull her straight into my lap and hide her from the others.
Instead I just hold fast to the hand still in mine until she manages to speak again.
“He wanted to use me. Called me the gateway to magic—the key. Maccus thinks I could guide him to the Knowing Sea and summon it like I did the Isle of Lost Souls.”
Kiara’s brows shoot up, eyes darkening by a shade. “Can you?”
Saoirse stops her shifting.
Goes as still as a rabbit spying a hawk—but when I lean forward, it’s not fear in my wife’s face. It’s a cloud of uncertainty, eyes searching the air for answers and coming up short.
Finally, she lifts a shoulder and says, “I could try.”
Pride swells in my chest as Kiara narrows her eyes in reluctant approval, focus drifting back to the relics as she turns the bowl over and shifts the veil. “What about these?”
“What about them?”
“Could you connect with them as you did Eamon’s hammer? Tell us more about where they came from or—stars, I don’t know, if all the gods were drinking soulstones as Maccus was?”
Saoirse goes quiet, and I nearly curse.
“Saoirse?”
She rubs at her eyes, burying her knuckles against her cheek. I squeeze her other hand, leaning close. “You don’t have to tell them if you’re not ready, love.”
A pink spot appears on her cheek when Saoirse’s touch falls away, her eyes soft and scared when they catch mine. “Callen and Brona already know, anyway.”
Immediately, Kiara’s face falls to suspicion. “Know what?”
“In order to get me off the island, Maccus had to…alter something in my magic. The vow I’d made to bind myself to the Isle of Lost Souls? I’d promised to protect it, so he had to—break that promise. So he…”
Saoirse takes a short, sharp breath in.
“Maccus split open a soulstone and forced me to drink it down.”
The Ring of Stars couldn’t look more horrified if they feckin’ tried.
The whites flash in Kiara’s eyes as they widen, like a horse’s spooked on a trail. Aisling slaps a hand over her mouth while Callen sits back slowly, swallowing hard. And Aidan—
Aidan gapes at her, mouth opening and closing like a fish, hurt bleeding out of his eyes. “What does that mean exactly? Are you…are you going to die?”
“She’s not going to die,” I say too fast, words tripping over themselves as her hand convulses over mine. “It’s just a temporary setback.”
Tears well in Aisling’s voice as she blurts, “How do we know it’s temporary?”
“Do we know anything about this at all?”
When Kiara asks the question, I prepare myself to volley back until she looks me right in the eye. My response flounders, tongue shaping new words in its place. “I don’t know what it means for Saoirse’s magic.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.” Kiara pushes a hand back through her bushel of short red curls. “I’m asking if you know anything about splitting soulstones?”
My mouth snaps shut, even as that damned awful song chases round my head once more.
Drink the bones dry, oh, drink the bones dry
’Til the earth cries out in madness,
’Til the ceasing of the tide…
I know good and well what Kiara’s asking me.
Know it and will do feck all to answer it.
I’m just opening my mouth to tell her so when Saoirse blurts out, “Etain knew something.”
Both my and Kiara’s heads whip toward hers.
This time, Saoirse doesn’t balk or waver.
“I showed her the cracked stone on the island, and she reacted like I was holding a poison snake. Warned me against playing the gods’ games and packed up her court to leave that night.
” Saoirse glances at me, blue shifting to green in her eyes, and I smooth my thumb over the back of her hand though what I really want to do is kiss the life out of her.
I settle for a peck to her knuckles instead.
Saoirse swallows and turns back to the others—to Aisling, who’s sitting tall, fingers caged loosely around Odhrán’s antler.
“Ash, did your gran say anything after you left?”
The heir to Bridled Stag shakes her grand head, some of those tears spilling free. “No. She just warned me never to speak of it again, and said she needed to visit the seanchaí. To consult with them.”
Kiara’s sigh could wake a storm as she rubs at her temples. “And now she’s in the hands of Maccus, who’s convinced himself he can become a god. Feck’s sake.”
The table’s quiet for a minute, even Callen having nothing catty to say, until Saoirse leans forward.
“But he could, Kiara.”
Kiara raises her gaze to my wife. “You really believe it?”
“I’ve seen it.” Saoirse lets go of my hand. “If he actually found the Knowing Sea, he could claim its power—”
“If he had you to summon it, Soulgazer.” Kiara straightens up. “And that’s not happening.”
“Couldn’t agree more, cousin.”
“Because we’re putting you into hiding, effective immediately.”
“What?”
Our voices overlap as Saoirse bolts upright and I grab the edge of the table, sending Clodagh’s bowl careening toward us. Saoirse catches it before it hits the floor.
“Kiara, you can’t just hide her—”
“Where would I even go?!”
Kiara’s having none of it. She glowers at us, lips flattened in a tight line as Saoirse clutches Clodagh’s vessel to her chest. “Maccus has threatened invasion. He has Ríona Etain, whom you claim is the only source of information on splitting soulstones.” She casts me a hard look at that.
“Which means we need to get her back—without handing him Saoirse in the process, and if you think he’d arrive to negotiations without taking her off, you’re a bloody fool. ”
Sweat gathers beneath my collar.
“Kiara, we can find a way out of this. Trick him—”
“You mean use your wife as bait?”
“No. Gods, no, but—I could come up with something else! We could come up with something else. Maccus has to have violated twenty codes the Daonnaí laid out by now.”
“Even if he has, there’s the unmitigable fact that Rí Callen poisoned him and his men while Saoirse gouged his throat with a rock.”
“After he threatened to kill her!”
“Which is exactly why we have to send her away!”
“I don’t want to be safe!”
I’m halfway out of my chair, Kiara leaning hard over the table toward me, both of us red in the face, when that shout interrupts us.
Saoirse is standing now, looking between us with wide, furious eyes as she clutches Clodagh’s bowl like it’s the only thing keeping her from throwing fists.
“I don’t want to go hide somewhere. I don’t want to spend days or weeks or months wringing my hands while you figure out the politics of it all with a power-hungry shell of a person—I won’t do it! All right?”
Her hands are shaking, but there’s not a sliver of remorse in Saoirse’s eyes—not even when Kiara takes a full step back, teeth snapping as she has to force her jaw shut.
“Saoirse,” Kiara tries after fighting for her composure. “Be reasonable—”
“Absolutely feckin’ not.” Saoirse’s grip on the bowl tightens, her eyes shifting color in a brittle pattern: like the sea where two currents meet in the middle. When I look closer, a bit of blood’s been smeared across the bowl’s rim. “You need my magic—corrupted or not.”
Irritation trickles back into Kiara’s voice. “And if it’s not reliable?”
“I found the Isle of Lost Souls with caipín baís ink tattooed in my flesh.” Saoirse’s glare couldn’t be sharper if she tried. “Courtesy of my da. It made it a burden, aye, but I did it. I can find a way through this too.”
“You can’t know—”
“I can. Do you want to know how?”
“Ach, please.” Kiara throws a hand up. “Go on and show us how well your magic—”
Saoirse lifts the bowl over her head and smashes it into the ground.
It’s like a damn lightning bolt’s struck the earth, the way everyone flies away from the clay shards, swearing or screaming, Kiara going white as a sheet.
I lean back in my chair and cover my mouth with a curled finger to hide the smile there, watching Saoirse glare at my cousin, dark hair flying every which way—eyes as bright as stars.
Gods, but I love this wild woman.
Saoirse waits until the ruckus has calmed down and then, calm as you please, sinks into the chair beside me, folding her arms on the table, all her fidgeting done.
“That wasn’t Clodagh’s vessel.”
“I should hope not!” Kiara’s voice has a fair bit of snap to it, but some of the anger’s faded, respect taking its place. “How did you—”
Saoirse holds up a hand, a wee cut made just across her thumb. I glance down and notice for the first time that my wolf’s-head dagger is missing, lying beside her arm.
Clever wee magpie.
“It didn’t feel like the others,” Saoirse says, some of her feathers losing their ruffle as she settles back in her seat. “Rí Tadgh must have already given the true one to Maccus. That, or he’s paranoid and left a false one behind.”
“Lot of effort to go to for a fake,” Callen grumbles.
“Fine. Point made.” Kiara ducks her head and presses her fists into the table again, staring down at the remaining objects: an antler-carved pipe, a tarnished silver veil, a blacksmith’s hammer, an iridescent talon, a ring made of bone. “…The rest of these are real?”
Saoirse nods, and Kiara releases a hard breath.
“So we have Maira’s shield and Clodagh’s vessel to look for—which is likely with Maccus, Tadgh, and Etain.” Under her breath, she adds a soft “godsdammit.”
“You can damn the gods out loud if you want,” I say, then raise my hands when she glares my way.
“All right, easy, now. This just puts us back where we started—well, one step behind where we started. The best thing we can do now is get to your keep, find Maira’s shield, and figure things out from there. ”
“ ‘Figure things out’ as in responding to Maccus and agreeing to a negotiation?” Aisling frowns. “My grandmother is his hostage.”
“He won’t hurt her, Ash.” Kiara’s voice immediately softens, her hand grazing Aisling’s shoulder as she stands.
“But, yes, that seems to be the way. And in the meantime.” She glances toward Saoirse.
“We’ll see if the Soulgazer can’t find something out by looking over those relics. How to find the Knowing Sea, or…”
Saoirse looks over the pile, lip caught between her teeth.
“Or how to destroy them.”