Chapter Fifty-Three
Fifty-three
Saoirse
I’m watching the stars swirl overhead when Faolan twitches against me, jerking in his sleep.
Tangling my fingers in his hair, I stroke my nails along his scalp.
Soothe the worry lines on his brow. When he startles awake seconds later, panting, I press a finger to his lips.
The others are sleeping, fitfully, while they can.
“You were having that dream again, weren’t you?”
Faolan searches my eyes, then nods in the dark, spreading out my fingers so he can press his lips to the soul stain over my palm. “Drowning, and…being watched.”
A frown plays over his features. I brush them with my fingertip.
“That’s not unusual—”
“It is when it’s the same one.”
I glance around the deck to see if any others are still awake, then curl up beside Faolan, letting my head fall to his chest. “That other place? With the gold sand and blue waters?”
Faolan hesitates, thumb stroking the back of my hand, then nods. “I keep looking for you there, and—”
“I can’t come. I know.” I press my face into his shirt, breathing in lightly the whiskey-salt smell, though it’s almost completely covered over by smoke. “But something else is there waiting for you?”
Faolan’s jaw works as he thinks it over, hand tracing light patterns down my spine now. “A wolf.”
I blink. Raise my head just enough to meet his eyes. “You’re being hunted by…a wolf?”
“Aye.” His expression eases. “And before you point it out, yes, I’m aware of the irony.”
A soft laugh bubbles out of me but is quelled within seconds. “Are you…scared of it?”
“No.” He answers too quickly, then makes a face and throws an arm over his head. “Yes—but only because it’s feckin’ massive and made of all these wee lights.”
“Has it attacked you?”
This time, Faolan pauses, fingers bunching in my skirt. “No…but it certainly could!”
“Hmm.”
Faolan squeezes my middle, and I squirm. As I look from Faolan’s chest to the stars again, something stirs in my stomach. Knots and relaxes, then tangles up again. “You believe me about the Knowing Sea, right? You saw the vision as well?”
“Of course, love. I’ve never doubted you for a second.”
“Then do you have any idea where—”
“Not a one.”
I groan softly, flinging a hand over my eyes. “I’ve just been thinking about it. How the gold sand reminded me of—”
“The Scath-Díol.”
My fingers part, eyes peering out at him as he stares up at the sky. “…Aye.”
Faolan takes a deep breath, shifting my whole body with the movement. “It would make sense. The place is hidden most of the year, central to the Crescent, harboring a secret godly council beneath its shore.”
I snort, just a touch, though after a moment my smile drops. “But it’s only summoned during an eclipse.”
“Unless that’s the place Muireal cut her finger off for the sea.”
“…Will I have to cut my finger if I tried to—”
“No. Feck’s sake, Saoirse.”
“I’m kidding.” I catch his hand to play with it, considering the sooty red coat sleeve. And then I give it a proper tug. “Take this off, would you?”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
“Stripping me down naked, woman?” Faolan winces as he tries to shrug the coat off with minimal effort, his body stiffer than I’ve ever known it to be. “You’ll want to take care, lest we make our friends jealous.”
I ignore his fooling, rifling through my bag instead. I feel a warm breath skate over my jaw—feel Faolan’s arm drape around my waist, fingertips trailing over my ribs.
“Let me guess. It’s a…scarf. Like the one you knit me when I was sick.”
“No.”
“A rope so we can practice our knot tying?” He waggles his brow, and I laugh.
“No.”
“Then, what—”
I pull out the beautiful blue wool coat, gold embroidery glinting even in the dark of night. Holding it up against the moon’s glow, I study Faolan’s face, biting my lip all the while.
It’s gone blank. Lips parted, eyes wide, nothing much breaking through.
“It’s okay if you don’t like it.”
He’s still silent. Hand half-outstretched, not quite touching the fabric.
My own arm tires, starting to dip. “I just—I know how much you loved the green, and how upset you were when it got ruined. And now I wear the green, so I wanted you to have something—”
He stops my rambling with a kiss, hand cupped over my jawline, fingers spread wide.
I start to drop the coat between us but feel his hand scoop underneath it, catching it against his chest. Faolan doesn’t break the kiss, though, dragging me closer, drawing it out until we’re both trembling, my hand caught in his hair.
“I love it.” He searches my eyes, his own fairly sparkling. “It matches my eyes.”
“I know how important that is to you.”
“My gods, I love you.”
I reach for another kiss, but he stops me, sitting up (flinching as he does) to look around. “Where’s my bag? I have something as well, just—couldn’t find the right time for it.”
“It’s just there.”
“Well, fetch it, would you? There’s a good girl.”
Cheeks heating slightly, I bend to grab the leather satchel and bring it back to Faolan, who immediately starts pulling things out of it: vials and clothing and a bulging silk pouch. My suspicions grow as he palms the thing but then reaches in one final time, pulling out—
A familiar deep blue vial.
“Stars.”
“It’s the last of it.” Faolan turns the caipín baís ink over in his hands, watching it swirl behind the glass. “Thought I’d give you the honors. Figured you could pour it out while I curse its existence, or bury it ceremonially once we’re back on land, or—”
I take it in my hand and hurl it over the side of the boat, both of us staring at each other when the heavy plip sounds.
Faolan’s grin spreads fast before he buries a snort of laughter in my hair. “Or you could do that.”
“What else did you have?”
“Patience, now.”
“You’re lecturing me on patience?”
“I’ve matured in our time apart.”
“Right.” I nudge Faolan’s arm, studying the odd shape of the bag. He weighs it one more time, lips quirked to one side, then nods once and cups my hand in his, turning the bag over to spill a chain of pearls into my palm.
Only it’s not a usual strand: straight and long, and looped once around.
The piece is intricate, fashioned of four intersecting strands with a long, oval-shaped jewel hanging between where they cross.
In the moon’s light, the pearls gleam with a darker version of our soul marks’ colors: violet, indigo, vermillion.
As I lift it, turning it slowly side to side, Faolan gently eases it from my fingers and places it on my head.
“A crown.”
He adjusts it carefully, lips disappearing in the line of his beard as he quirks them in concentration, laying that long pearl at the center of my forehead.
“This is what I was doing all those mornings, swimming to those ugly pink shells? I’d wanted to make you a crown before the autumn solstice council, but the pearls weren’t ready ’til that morning. Then Maccus showed up, and…”
I remember now, though it’s a little faint, how eager Faolan had been to find me, dripping wet and holding a sack of shells.
How I’d been frustrated by him—dismissed him—and then accepted a crown of beryl instead.
“I’m sorry. I—I had no idea.”
“You wouldn’t have. It’s all right—I would’ve been shite at stringing it anyways.
But thankfully for us, there’s a girl in the Tit’s Tempest on Painted Claw—” He looks sheepish as I blink, hard.
“A lovely brothel where I bedded down alone. I’ll take you there sometime—anyway, she’s a master at her craft—jewelry making, that is—and spun it into something I could never have dreamed of.
” Faolan makes one more adjustment, catching a tendril of hair with his finger as he does. “Do you like it?”
“I—you know I love it.” I reach up to touch the strands, closing my eyes as I try to feel a connection with the Isle of Lost Souls again. With the people we’d been there. But…“I don’t know that I’ll have a chance to wear it again.”
“Sure you will.”
“I mean, the Ring of Stars is nothing now. There won’t be more ceremonies—”
“Lass, you could wear that even if all you were doing was rummaging around the healer’s stores on our ship, fully naked, all the day long. I wouldn’t care so long as it made you happy.”
Another laugh bubbles out of me, then quiets as I feel that old pang of longing for the life we’ve been denied. The one that…might be possible again?
Taking the pearls in hand, I gently ease them off my head, running them through my fingers like prayer charms instead. “What if…what if we could do that?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if we could find the Knowing Sea. Give it all back. Do you think…” I hesitate again. Swallow. “Do you think we could have it? The life we wanted to build?”
Faolan searches my face as though looking for the answer, then slips the blue coat over his shoulders, leaning into its hold. “The rules have all changed, love.”
“Then I want to try something.”
I hand back the pearls, watching as he pours them back into the silk pouch, and then I ease myself to lie down beside him, laying my head in his lap.
Faolan grins at once. “Er, I don’t know how to tell you this, Trouble, but we’ve already tried this. A fair few times, if you’ll recall.”
“We’re not—I want to try summoning it again.”
Instantly, his whole face falls. “Summoning what?”
“The Knowing Sea.”
“With your magic as it is?”
A bolt of reluctance passes through me, but it’s easy enough to shrug off. “Tell me another way, and I’ll do it.”
“You know I can’t—”
“Then let me try.” I press my hands over my stomach, starting to play with Muireal’s ring again, just as I did the last time. “The worst that will happen is—”
“A fever. Debilitating headache. Visions that come on like a storm at sea.” Faolan smooths a curl back from my face, tucking it carefully into the dark mass. “I just don’t want you to drown, love.”
I catch that hand, pressing a kiss to his fingertips. “If I start to, you’ll pull me out.”
His whole face falls. “Trouble.”
“I can do this. Let me—let me at least try?”
Faolan traces my jawline. The delicate skin beneath my eyes. The full curve of my bottom lip. Pressing there once, he leans down and kisses it gently, then sighs.
“All right. But if it’s too much, hear me when I say you fight like hell to get out.”