Chapter Sixty-Two
Sixty-two
Saoirse
“Come back!”
My throat rips raw as I scream Faolan’s own words into the water, wind whipping my hair into my eyes. One by one the others come for me: Aidan, Aisling, Kiara, Callen, Brona, Lorcan, Tavin—everyone left alive. But the absence of Nessa and Faolan is enough to strangle me.
This is not freedom.
This is not what he promised.
Anger bites down on my grief and I jam my boot into the notches between railings, hoisting myself up—ready to fling my body over the edge when a pair of thick arms wraps around me from behind, swinging me fully onto the deck.
“Lorcan—put me down.”
“No. Not if you’re going to throw yourself over.”
“I will!” It’s more snarl than anything as I shove at my friend’s wrists, twisting and bucking to get free. “I’ll swim to the bottom of the sea if I have to. I’ll—Tavin, let go!”
Tavin has hold of my hands now, jaw clenched tight though his eyes are a dark blur as tears slip past their corners. “He’s gone. Faolan is gone, and he wouldn’t want—”
“I don’t give a feck what he wants, I won’t lose him. I can’t—” My throat closes up, all the fight leaving my body in a rush as that truth rings through my ears over and over again.
He’s gone.
He’s gone.
Faolan is gone.
I thought I’d understood grief before this moment. When I lost my brother Conal. When Nessa died in the woods, alone. My entire life has been built on loss, but I’d thought for just one moment…I could be free of it.
We could be free.
My stomach spasms as something builds and builds in my chest, consuming my whole body before it releases in an ugly wail that splits the air in two. Lorcan’s hold falters, even Tavin stepping away, as I collapse under the ferocious weight of it.
The weight of a world in which Faolan no longer exists.
“Saoirse.” Brona’s knees hit the wood beside me as I begin to weep, my entire frame shuddering with the force of it. “I’m so sorry. So feckin’ sorry.”
“He promised me!”
She doesn’t respond, only grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me roughly into her arms as I sob in wild, wretched heaves.
Thoughts form and scatter with every harsh intake of breath: I want to smash the boards beneath us and drop into the sea below.
I want to tear apart the very heart of magic that first gave me Faolan, then dared take him away.
I want to yell at my husband—fling his own words back into his face.
Martyr.
I want to scream at him.
I want to hold him.
“I want him back.”
The words are garbled, but somehow Brona must hear them, because she cups my face in her hands, thumbs scraping the dampness from my lashes so I can see tears clinging to hers as well.
“I know.” Her voice croaks as she talks. “I know, Saoirse, but he’s—”
“Haven’t any of you been paying attention?”
Brona’s arms go slack around mine, the entire wall of people falling away to reveal—
The Wolf of the Wild.
Faolan.
Standing on the deck, dripping with salt water, a roguish grin on his face.
“Legends don’t d—”
I nearly tackle him back into the sea.
Faolan wraps his arms around me, clearing my feet off the ground as my chest caves in on another sob—a desperate breath, searching for the smell of him beneath the sea’s brine: whiskey and salt.
But before I can do that, he sets me down again, holding me at arm’s length to look me over as my heart turns itself over, temper replacing my regret.
“You bastard!”
“Well, isn’t that a lovely way to speak of the recently un-deceased?”
“I can’t believe you would do that!”
“Trickster, remember?”
I slap him—then kiss him, relishing the scrape of his beard against my cheeks.
The soft slide of his lips beneath mine until footsteps pound the deck and we break as the others rush in.
Lorcan’s the first to scoop Faolan up, hugging him so tight I swear I can hear Faolan’s back pop.
Tavin grips him by the neck then, dragging Faolan’s forehead to his as Brona punches Faolan twice in the arm before giving into a rare sob of her own.
But it’s Kiara who hangs back, staring like he’s a ghost.
Faolan rubs the back of his head, sheepish now, one hand still in mine. “Didn’t mean to scare you, cousin.”
Shaking her head, Kiara stumbles forward and then grabs Faolan like she might a child: one hand cradling the back of his head, the other scooped over his back. Her eyes are shut, moisture gathering at their corners, shoulders trembling just a touch.
“If you ever pull shite like that again—” she starts, voice trembling with her anger.
“You’ll know everything’s back to normal.”
Kiara shoves him away, rubbing at her eyes before she turns to catch Aisling close, their lips colliding as Aisling flings her arms around Kiara, relief visible in every bone.
Across the deck, Callen helps Aidan untangle himself from a clump of rope as my brother looks from them to me with warmth in his eyes.
Faolan pushes his hair back, eyeing the mess of the deck—the mountain of a corpse bleeding on it. I turn my head before I can see the extent of what I did to Maccus, right into the waiting cradle of Faolan’s palm. He strokes my cheek once, touch cool against the swollen heat of it from crying.
“It’s all right, Saoirse. You don’t have to feel guilty.”
“I’m not, I just…” I meet Faolan’s eyes then: as inky blue as the Knowing Sea, winking with starlight just the same. And to my shock, a shaky laugh bubbles up my throat, growing fuller at the quirk in his brow. “I really am a pirate now, aren’t I?”
His grin could make the sun shrivel with envy.
“So you are, love.”
He leans down to kiss me again—but I step back, gripping his arm tight as I look over his expression, his body, then down at his palm, where the soul-bargain mark flares in the dim light. “Faolan, what happened?”
He blinks. Glances around to where the rest of the crew and our friends—our family—have gathered, the same question in their eyes.
“Right. Ah…”
Pressing his lips to my temple, the corner of my eye, my throat, Faolan wraps his arms around me and faces the others as wind kicks up off the sea.
“It all started the night the Magpie kissed the Wolf.”