Chapter Fifty-Five
Fifty-five
Saoirse
Two days pass in a feverish blur, the pain in my head unrelenting.
I wake to the smells of chickweed and wood sorrel, blended in a bowl of steaming diancecht porridge, then drift away after forcing a few mouthfuls down.
There is pain. Strange dreams. Stony laughter.
Nothing I can remember clearly by the time I wake up.
But on the third day, I manage to speak to the healer, who gives me no name but Gan Ainm.
I watch as she makes a poultice to lay over my forehead, a vial of scents to breathe in when the dizziness strikes.
Faolan is gone, speaking to the elders, but Brona curls up by my side.
When the healer is through, Aisling enters the hut as well to take my other arm, guiding me to the natural spring where the Gan Ainm take their turns bathing, the water as clear and cold as the ice that used to cling to my cottage in winter.
Still, my mind doesn’t clear fully until I plunge in.
“Gods—dammit!”
“That’s what I said last night.” Brona perches on the riverbank with her skirts hiked up, legs in the water and a cord of soap in her hand. But her eyes are restless, studying the tree line and the path behind us as she hovers close by.
Aisling stands naked in the water with me, a sponge clutched in one delicate hand as she waits for me to turn my back to her.
It’s the sort of thing that would have me blushing and stammering once, curling over myself to hide my figure—make myself smaller in comparison.
But the urge has died off now, exhaustion and exposure numbing me to the old fear.
Slowly, I lower myself into the water, dipping my head back until my ears are filled with the quiet rush of the stream.
It’s like stripping off memories, feeling it pull the blood and sweat from my hair.
My legs begin to tremble, unused to movement, but I stay like that as long as I can while Aisling combs her fingers through the waves.
Finally, I straighten and have to settle both hands on the rocks for balance while Brona leans forward, running the bar of soap across my hair.
“Thanks,” I say, spluttering as she and Aisling work to lather the length of it, Ash using the sponge to clean my neck, my ears.
“Well, you’ve been burning up, so…figured you might as well get some special treatment.”
Brona’s smile is small, barely there.
Again, that pang rips through me as we wait for Nessa’s witty reply.
“The pitcher,” Aisling says, holding out a hand.
Brona passes it over, but I watch the heir of Bridled Stag’s face.
The…queen.
Aisling is silent as she rinses my hair out, her face placid, her movements swift. There’s no artistry to them, no kind smile or teasing squeeze of her hands. It’s like the life’s faded in her—all the spring blooms fallen, the leaves not quite formed.
“…Ash.”
She doesn’t stop her movements, only reaches for a comb next.
“Ash, what are you—” My hand brushes her skin, and a fractured image chases across my vision.
Kiara pushing her away, shouting at her to run.
Kiara, young and strong, kissing Aisling for the first time.
My cheeks heat as I stumble away, reaching for the ledge—but Aisling glares at me, hands raised like she wants to shove me back. “Don’t do that!”
“Do what?” Brona asks, leaning forward, a hand dropping to her knife.
“Look into my mind!”
“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.” I put a hand to my temple, shaking my head. “I just wanted to—”
“To what? See how broken my heart is? How stupid I feel?” Aisling lurches forward, stops herself, then lets out a hard, slow scream and strikes the water so it arcs through the air. “Etain is dead because of me!”
Her guilt slams into me in place of her fists—thick and suffocating.
As familiar as my own breath.
Aisling screams again, hitting the water, kicking, and finally laying her forearms on the rocky ledge as she buries a sob into her arms. Her shoulders shake with every hard release. Brona catches my eye but I shake my head, hands outstretched—hesitating, then lying gently on her back.
“Ash…it’s not your fault.”
“It is.”
“When my brother drowned—”
“Stop. This isn’t the same. You were a child.
I’m—” She lifts her head, angry tears burning down her cheeks.
“I knew better. I was raised better. Nana herself told me always to think of the many, never the few, but knowing she was in his hands, I-I couldn’t do it.
I needed to know she was safe. And now look at this. ”
Brona leans forward, then stops when she hears a noise down the path. Swears.
“I’ll be right back.”
She pushes to her feet and runs to intercept whoever heard Aisling’s screaming, but Ash herself can’t seem to stop. Her breathing comes quick and painful, fingers burying themselves in her skin.
I recognize it. Her panic. The inability to hear anything else.
So I stop trying to convince her and just lay a hand on her back.
Run it in slow, gentle circles until her breathing evens out, hands relaxing and then falling away, leaving vibrant red stripes behind that fade after another minute passes.
Eventually, Aisling’s shoulders slump and her head falls forward.
I stop my movements, and just…stay.
“I’m sorry,” she finally whispers, turning to meet my eyes. “About your brother.”
“I’m sorry about Kiara and Etain.” I smooth back a lock of her hair, as black as a raven’s wing.
Aisling shuts her eyes and lays her cheek on her arms, letting me tend to her for a minute.
Two. Brona picks her way back down the path, expression taut, and I give a small nod.
She sits back by the water on Aisling’s other side, turning her knife over once, twice, before sticking it into her sheath.
“I used to blame myself. For my sister.”
Aisling and I both look up.
Brona makes a face at our attention, turning her eyes skyward as she blows out a quick, hard breath. “I was mad at her for leaving. You know I can’t really curb my tongue. And I told her…I told her if she wanted to lie under a king so bad, she shouldn’t have ever picked up a map.”
The stream burbles softly. A rabbit runs through the brush.
Brona rubs at her shoulder. “I didn’t even know what it meant—I was too young, I’d just…heard it somewhere. But I knew it would hurt her. Hurt enough she might not bother coming back home.”
Aisling touches her ankle lightly, then looks down at the dirt.
“I tried running away from Nana. More than once. I didn’t want to be queen—wasn’t supposed to be—and if it wasn’t for my entire family dying, it never would have been me on the throne.”
My thighs ache from standing after too many days lying down.
Carefully, I reach for the towel Brona brought for me and wrap it around my middle as I push myself to sit by the stream. Aisling’s hip rests against my ankle, my hand brushing Brona’s too. Warmth spreads at my shoulder like Nessa’s leaning there, egging me on.
“I resented my brothers. Their carefree days, their…ease and laughter.” Chewing on my lip, I kick a stray leaf off my foot back into the stream. “Sometimes, I wondered if my parents would like me better, if I was the only child they had.”
Brona looks at me with her eyes squinted, lip curling as though she can’t quite believe what I just said.
I lift a shoulder, water streaming down from my hair.
“Gods, we’ve had grim fecking lives.”
I can’t help it. A laugh burbles out of me—quick and light, then as hard as a downpour, bending me over in the middle. A second later, Aisling joins me, turning her face into the crook of her arm as Brona cracks a smile, then drops back fully in the dirt and grass.
“You’re not wrong,” I say, laughing through the words. “But you’re not right either.”
“Curious, that.”
Brona takes a deep, hard breath and stares at the naked tree limbs stretched overhead. Lip quivering with remembrance, all over again. “…What happens to her, do you think? If we find the Knowing Sea and throw all the relics back in.”
My laughter fades. “I hope it means she’s free. To go wherever all the souls go.”
Brona rolls her head to the side, leaves tangling in her dark curls. “All these months, and you still don’t know anything about it?”
I shake my head. “Not for lack of trying. I could make guesses—after seeing my ancestors and Muireal in that place between. But I hope it’s somewhere better. Or just different.”
“I hope it has adventure,” Aisling says, her voice quiet but a touch more warm.
Brona chuffs. “I hope it has plenty of others to keep her company. And that they all have breasts.”
I nearly fall into the water, a cackle leaping from my lips. “Brona!”
“What? I don’t want to think about her being somewhere depressing—she liked plenty of men, but the Tit’s Tempest was her favorite for a reason.”
“Gods.” I flop back with her, and it feels good to lie down even as Aisling says something about my hair. But a second later, she joins us, curling up in a patch of sunlight that peeks through the quick-moving clouds. Winter is coming swiftly, but it’s still just warm enough to sit by.
After a while, though, Brona looks over at me, the brown of her irises gleaming like freshly oiled wood. “…Are you scared, Saoirse?”
I spread my fingers over my stomach. Feel the soft curve of it rise and fall.
“Always.” A smile quirks on her lips, then fades. With a grunt, I roll onto my side and face her fully. “I’m scared of…being trapped again. By Maccus, by myself, and magic I can’t control. Scared of becoming a martyr.”
Her brow quirks, and I reach over to give her arm a slight shove. “I’m serious.”
“I believe you, it’s just…”
“Old habits are hard to kill?” At her nod, I lay my cheek on the crook of my arm and sigh. “It would be easy to sacrifice myself. I was raised to, just like Maccus called me—an obedient little lamb. But I don’t want that anymore. I-I don’t want to die.”
Brona searches my eyes, my face, her fingers twitching over her rib cage before she balls them up tight.
“Then don’t.”
“I’ll try—”
“Don’t.” Sitting up, leaves and tiny rocks falling from her hair, Brona reaches across Aisling to grip my hand in hers. “I won’t lose another sister. I can’t.”
My vision blurs as she squeezes me hard, then abruptly lets go.
Aisling glances between us, sliding back into the water to rinse off the dirt.
Before Brona can move again, though, I take her hand back in mine and thread our fingers tight.
“You won’t. I promise.”
We scoop water into our hands then, washing ourselves until we’re clean.
The clothes we came in are hopelessly ruined, but when the Gan Ainm offered their gray tunics, Faolan had looked so horror-stricken, I shook my head.
So we pull on the old clothing, still damp from the wash, bloodstains and tears rent through all the fabric, and start back toward the village’s heart.
Faolan’s still not back, though.
“What did you say he’s doing?” I ask, as we search for Lorcan and Tavin, who are polishing off their bowls.
“Trying to persuade them to give up their secrets.”
Another smile leaps across my face, faint but familiar. “He shouldn’t have any trouble with that.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“Why?”
“Because the Wolf doesn’t matter much to people who care nothing about names.”