Chapter Forty-Six
Forty-six
Saoirse
“I want to come with you.”
The words stumble off my lips like a fledgling dropped from its nest. Uncertain and halting, they have no power to persuade anyone, let alone the silver-tongued Wolf of the Wild, who’s currently kneeling by my bedside.
Faolan adjusts the quilt over my legs, pressing it down into a mattress that’s softer than any I’ve slept in since my father’s keep.
I barely remember what happened last night outside of disordered flashes: a horse bolting beneath me as Nessa caught my arm, Faolan’s hand cradling my head.
Blood trickling from the cut in my cheek where I must have hit a rock as I fell.
It was dark when the horses pulled up, voices and torches surrounding me and Faolan as he spoke to someone and carried me inside.
As light drifts in from the window, I focus on Faolan’s movements and try to remember the rest.
I was holding Odhrán’s antler. Talking to Aisling about what she knew of it, and of her grandmother, Etain. I’d felt so bad for her worrying, clutching the pipe in my hand, I’d forgotten I’d cut myself that morning to test what we thought was Clodagh’s vessel.
Forgot until the skin broke back open and a vision stole my breath.
I had a vision. I know that. But as though someone took an iron rod to a window, the scene shatters every time I reach for it.
Odhrán is present in every fragment: long black braids coiled on top of his head.
In some, his hands are open, vines reaching up to curl around his wrists.
In others, blood drips between his fingers, pooling at the roots of his teeth.
And in all of them, he speaks, though I don’t know what he’s said once he’s done.
I’ve tried to piece them together, but every time I reach for the vision, my head throbs with pain, radiating down my spine and across my skull as though it weighs a thousand pounds. And that’s to say nothing of the fever it brings on.
Faolan checks my forehead for the third time since I woke, lips cool against my flushed skin.
“I feel better now. Really, I could—”
“Not this time, Trouble.”
Propping my elbow against a cushion, I try not to wince as I sit up. “I’ve had headaches before.”
“Not like this one. Now, lie back and I’ll—dammit, Saoirse, don’t give me those eyes.”
“What eyes?”
“The ones I still have to say no to, no matter how much willpower it takes.”
He catches my arm with such gentleness, it’s like he thinks I might shatter if he holds me too hard, his gaze soft and worried.
Faolan looks every inch the famous pirate that he is: knives belted to his waist, a sword at the other side, a borrowed coat of crimson-dyed wool slung over his shoulder since I’ve yet to give him the blue one.
Anger coils around my panic as Faolan starts to his feet. I grab for his hand, but my hold is weak. “Why do you have to say no, then?”
He meets my eyes, and again that look enters them: not wonder or even irritation, but worry.
“Because I saw you drop headfirst toward the ground last night.” Faolan passes his thumb over my knuckles. “And you’re fighting an enemy I can’t feckin’ see. This is the only way I can help.”
“But I could help you too. My magic—”
“It’s faltering, Saoirse.”
I frown. “It’s still well enough to know a relic from a dented old pot.”
His lips curl then, twitching higher at the corners, before he glances down at my arm and all that humor slides away. “Aye, which is why you’ll stay here recovering so that when I bring Maira’s to you, you can confirm it.”
“But—”
“He’s making sense, for once.” Aidan leans into the doorway of our room, sunlight bleeding in past him. I can’t help a slight wince at its glare.
Faolan turns toward my brother with a tight smile. “Thanks for that.”
“I mean it.” Aidan pushes off the frame and walks over, arms folded and shirt hanging loose. “You look half dead, Saoirse.”
“You try having your mind taken over and see how well you look.”
“Fair point.” Aidan’s eyes skate over my face. “How’s your head?”
“Better.”
“Right.” He grunts, then goes to the window and fusses with the cloth hanging there, until it folds over itself enough that only a weak haze of light makes it through.
Faolan watches me keenly, hand relaxed under the vise of my own, and even though the pain in my head’s begun to ebb, I recognize defeat well enough.
With effort, I pry my fingers open. Let him go.
“Do you promise this isn’t a punishment?” I can’t help asking as he starts to his feet. “For sending you away?”
Faolan stops, glancing once at Aidan before bending over the bed, fists pressed into the mattress. I fall back into the pillows, tearing my gaze from his. Heat burns up my throat, pooling in my cheeks.
“Saoirse? Look at me, love.”
Reluctantly, fingers clenched in the quilt, I look into Faolan’s eyes.
“I may be a petty bastard sometimes, but this isn’t a punishment. I promise.” Reaching up, he cups my uninjured cheek in his leather-clad palm and strokes it once, fingertip catching a lock of hair. “I can’t lose you again. Don’t ask me to risk that.”
There’s nothing I can say in response. His eyes darken, flitting down once and then back up as he begins to lean away. I grab his shirt collar before he can, pulling him close until our lips meet.
It’s quick. Warm. I’m keenly aware of Aidan’s presence, so I break it after only a second—but it’s enough.
“Come back to me?”
“Tonight.”
Faolan touches my face one more time, then nods to Aidan and leaves the room.
My brother breathes out hard, cheeks puffing before he sinks onto the mattress beside me and lets his head fall back against the headboard. “Gods. I understand now what the other wolves were on about. You two are insufferable.”
I want to hit him. And cry. Maybe both.
Because my brother is here beside me, not in a rage or panic, but my husband’s headed toward danger again.
Instead I curl up under the tatted quilt and wrap one arm around my knees. “The last time we were apart, Maccus tried to—”
“I know.” Dark curls fall into Aidan’s eyes as he leans closer. “I’m sorry, it was a bad joke. I…I’m just not used to it.”
“To what?”
“Seeing my baby sister in love.”
My laugh is as hazy as my words before, coming in fits and starts, then drizzling out.
Through the window, horses nicker to one another, hooves clopping on paving stone.
Morning light plays across Aidan’s shoulders, catching on a strip of reddish-purple skin peeking out from the top of his shirt.
I stare at it for a long second, then lift my gaze back to his eyes—more guarded than they were in Father’s castle, yet more open than they’ve been ever since.
They’re misty now, narrowed as he looks me over, eyes lingering on my wolf tattoo and the series of bruises banded over it.
“…I’m sorry Maccus did that to you.”
My throat works as I look down at the injury, then tug a blanket over the marks. “I’m sorry I had you kidnapped.”
Immediately, the tension leaves Aidan’s spine. “Yes. That. I’d nearly forgotten after everything else we’ve been through.”
“I suppose after battling sea monsters, kidnapping seems a bit dull.”
Aidan drops his head, grin hidden by loose black waves that are a near-perfect match to mine. But when he raises it, the smile’s faded into something different. More studied. A touch concerned.
“What happens if you find it?”
“Find what?”
He wrinkles his nose, glancing once toward the door before bowing closer. “The Knowing Sea.”
I curl back into the pillows with a soft laugh, though even I hear the hollow in it. “We sound like we’re kids again, making up stories.”
“Says the goddess, queen, and pirate in one?”
“Stars.” I cover my face, rubbing at the pressure building behind my eyelids.
“…In truth, I don’t know. The Isle of Lost Souls called to me.
There was Muireal’s relic guiding us, and by the end, I’d ruined Da’s tattoo so I could use my magic.
” I start to shake my head, then give up when it hurts too much. “It’s all different now.”
“That’s a fair point.” Aidan stares out the window, then looks sharply back at me. “What happens if you can’t find it?”
“What do you mean?”
“What happens to you if the Knowing Sea can’t be found and you have to destroy the relics.”
I hesitate. Frown. “I’d…lose my claim to the Isle of Lost Souls.”
Maybe control of my magic as well?
Aidan studies me with clear worry now folded in his brow. “Would it kill you, do you think?”
Some part of me tenses, deep inside. That broken tether to the island snapping like a rope in the wind. I wrap my arms tighter over my rib cage and remember what it was like to lie face down in our father’s ship, submitting to a needle that would lock me away.
Even then, though, something in me had unfurled. Quiet and fierce.
I feel that rebellion rise inside me now.
“I’ll fight it to the end,” I whisper.
“There’s the stubborn girl I grew up with.”
Aidan and I both jump as Callen stands in the doorway, their head tilted slightly to one side.
Cleaned up from the mess and gore of the ocean, wearing a fresh pair of trousers and sage-green coat, Cal looks as they did when they first arrived on the Isle of Lost Souls: curious, a touch arrogant.
Walking the line between handsome and beautiful with more than a little grace.
“I forgot how good you are at eavesdropping,” Aidan says, and when I glance at him, his chest has risen, shoulders drawn back.
“You should have closed the door.” Cal lifts one pale brow my way, taking a half step inside. “Permission to enter?”
“At this point, it’s hardly necessary.” I wave a hand, and they walk over to sit on the end of the bed, one leg folded over the other. Aidan watches them with his lips slightly parted, a curve to their ends.
Callen ignores him, touching my leg lightly. “All right?”
“I’ve been better.”
“Figured so.” Glancing over their shoulder, Cal draws a hand to their mouth and whistles once.
Footsteps suddenly sound down the hall, and Brona, Lorcan, Tavin, and Nessa appear, all of us beaten like we’ve been through a bloody war—and in some ways we have.
Aisling comes a few seconds after, looking more demure than I’ve ever seen her, in a plain linen dress with her hair drawn back by a single comb.
Brona nudges Aidan out of the way with her good elbow, sinking to the bed beside me. “Glad to see you’re not moaning anymore.”
I frown. “When was I moaning?”
“Let’s see.” Nessa flops down beside us, lips tilted in a tempered version of her old, wide grin. “There was the ride to the keep, the ride on Etain’s ship—”
“That’s my sister you’re talking about,” Aidan protests.
Nessa ignores him. “And the ride you were arguing with Faolan about.”
“An argument I could have won if someone had spoken up for me.” I look at Nessa pointedly, and she throws her hands up.
“Sorry, Saoirse. I’ve a rule against interfering in lovers’ quarrels, unless they’re over who gets to take me from which side.”
A laugh wracks my body, followed by a hiss of pain as it gathers behind my eyes. “Right. As much as I adore you, I don’t think I’m ready for that.”
“Ach, be still my weeping heart.” Nessa’s smile fades a bit as she looks me over, reddish-gold hair curved over one round cheek. “You’re going to be all right?”
“She will be.” Brona grabs my hand, squeezing it once, then takes Nessa’s as well. “And so will you, aye?”
“What, you think a load of trees is going to be what does me in?” Nessa rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t fight Brona’s hold, only slings an arm around my shoulders to pull me into a too-tight embrace.
It’s a familiar crush by now—one I lean into even as something hums up my spine, then fades into the cloud of pain. “I’ll be grand.”
“You’d better.” Brona lets go, then falls back into the pillows as Nessa stands once more, looking over the lot of us, bandaged and bruised, not much fight left. Faolan dips back inside, clutching the doorframe with a tight smile.
“It’s time to go, Ness.”
“Aye, Captain. I was just…” Sucking her tooth, Nessa glances from Faolan to the wolves, tapping her thumb along the waist of her trousers.
There’s something in her face I haven’t seen before, fine lines gathered between her brow.
A heaviness in the cheerful blue of her eyes.
But instead of giving some grand speech, Nessa pulls the fabric down with a cheeky grin, revealing a slip of pale, freckled skin and the woad tattoo of a wolf dancing across the round curve of her hip. “Boosting morale.”
Brona snorts as Faolan’s smile twitches wider for a second, eyes jumping around his crew before landing on me.
“Once a wolf, always a wolf—even laid up in bed.”
“Exactly my point.” Nessa lets go of her trousers and claps Lorcan once on the back, knocking foreheads with Tavin before she gives a vague wave to the others in the room. “Get some rest, you lot, and don’t go having too many wet dreams about me while I’m gone. Especially you, Wolf Tamer!”
“Oi, have some respect for your queen!” Faolan calls after her, but Nessa’s already slipped past him down the hall. Shaking his head, Faolan gives me one last, lingering look before tapping the doorframe and following her out.
“Stars’ sake—I’m not…” I blink, frowning at the ceiling. “…Am I still queen?”
“As far as we’re concerned,” Brona says, picking at a strand of my hair. “Speaking of, you’re not exactly in a regal state, are you?”
“I’m sick.” I mean it as a joke, a laugh bubbling up my throat, but their looks of concern stifle it before it can come free. Aisling glances up then, like she’s hearing us through a fog.
“I could fix it.”
“No, you don’t have to—”
“I want to.” Glancing around the room, Aisling makes her way to the trunk that was brought hastily in this morning, fishing through it until she finds a simple comb and a strip of cloth.
There are no fancy oils this time, no pomp and circumstance, as she sinks onto the mattress on my opposite side and gently takes my hair into her hands.
I sit up, shoulders tense in case the room spins again, but it’s still now.
And as Aisling combs my hair and Brona chatters with the other wolves—as Aidan jokes with Callen, and Callen lifts an amused brow—a tiny piece of that broken part of me fixes itself back into place.
The Isle of Lost Souls was never my home. No more than Reborn Stalk was, once upon a time.
My home is here. With the wolves. With Faolan.
This is where I belong.