Page 1 of Soulgazer

One

I am the lone magpie in a sea of silver-winged swans. Lithe, artless girls who flick their bone-white skirts to the beat of a bodhrán, heedless of the waves lapping at their ankles. As they revel in their costumes, lit like jewels by the fading sun, I shrink deeper into my feathers and pray the light does not seek me out.

There are dark-eyed, starving things waiting onshore.

Sweat beads across my palms, dots my spine, until the gown clings to my skin, as a man stalks the edge of the water, head bent low like he’s scenting blood. A bear’s pelt cloaks his shoulders, fur lashed to his wrists with strips of tanned hide. Behind him, a woman arches her back so that braids of kelp stretch taut across her stomach, thousands of shells clattering into a single song. They watch us enter the waves without flinching—two beasts among hundreds, waiting to devour us whole.

A touch dramatic, my brothers would say.

I fight the urge to search for their faces, blink until the beasts become human.

Blink until the sting fades to a distant throb.

Aidan and Conal are not here.

I’ve waited years to attend the Damhsa Babhdóir, our onetradition to outlive the gods. Six clans gather at the birth of every summer, abandoning their old bloodlust for a chance to strike bargains of marriage instead. For three days we live under a truce, dancing among feasts and finery to form fragile bonds that our noble families can pick apart like crows seeking the choicest bits of carrion. It is a challenge to our bloodlines, a feat meant to be undertaken alone.

But my brothers always swore they’d find a way to guide me. Conal would wait onshore to collect me after the first ritual was done—Aidan smothering his laughter as I trembled among the waves. Beneath the eyes of our sovereigns, they told me I would invite the sun to set upon my youth and would emerge from the water fully grown, ready to wed at last. Or, more likely, resembling a half-drowned rat.

I’ve never felt their absence more keenly than I do now. It is a snarled knot in my stomach, tangled tighter every time I pull at the threads.

Neither of my brothers will ever see me wed.

A girl wearing an otter’s pelt brushes against my skirts. I twist my hands into the limp fabric of my dress and shy away before her skin can touch mine.

It took three months to create this gown. Black and white linen straining against my needle until a thousand wee pleats formed into feathers. I pricked my thumb on nettle, crushing woad to stain the bottom layers that same unearthly shade of blue witnessed every time a magpie takes flight. If I were to spread my arms, wings would fall from the delicate bronze cuffs at my wrists and elbows, ready to catch the wind.

Such a foolish notion, wanting the sea or the open sky. A pitiful grasp at hope.

Cursed things belong in cages, after all.

“Children of the Crescent!”

The voice is the snap of a twig in winter’s flame, cutting through the wind without effort. It sails across sea-foam and sand to where we stand among the waves, drawing our attention to the eldest queen—a weathered dagger sheathed in silk. “Descendants of the Daonnaí, those six who sculpted our world anew. Who comes to claim their birthright?”

“I!” Hundreds of voices lift at once. Mine is the barest hum.

“And who among you would dare to slaughter a god?”

No one utters a sound.

Wind tears at Ríona Etain’s braid, silver strands splitting her wrinkled face like lightning as she rakes her gaze over our forms. Finds them wanting. “Our ancestors were cunning. Strong. Beautiful. Wise. As reckless gods rotted on their gilded thrones, it wastheywho plotted the destruction of the divine. Together, the Daonnaí drove the gods down from their mountains and dragged them shrieking out of their golden coves. Together, they brought time to its knees.”

These are not the stories I grew up with. My mother speaks of the gods with reverence—beseeching them night and day to forgive our ancestors’ actions. To rid me of the curse they left behind.

But the Slaughtered Ones never respond.

“Bound by a strange darkness, the sun a solitary ring of gold, our ancestors held the gods at their mercy until one after another, they slit their throats. And what did the Daonnaí discover as the gods bled into our starving lands?”

The answer pricks my neck like the stroke of a blade.

“Magic.”

I resist the urge to step back, slipping my fingertips over the pulse rushing at my throat instead. Down the golden chain nestled against it, leading to an amulet and its promise of relief—sickeningand sweet. Three slender spirals mark the surface in a chalky white, connected by their middles and all rotating left. I hesitate, my finger poised just above a sharp point directly at the center.

Better to be numb than dangerous. To forget rather than mourn.

I press down in a single firm touch as another person jostles my side until the point breaks skin, flooding my veins with ice.