Page 105 of Soulgazer

His fingers stiffen on my jaw, but it’s surprise I see when I pull back, not anger. “Why?” He searches my face, fingertip stroking my jaw. “I could make it all up to you. Banish those nasty thoughts of nothing from your head. Bring you so much pleasure, if you’d let me—”

“No.” The word is so foreign on my tongue, it takes effort to push it free. But its power is immediate, sending Faolan back on his heels, his touch sliding from my face. I grab his hand before it can drop fully away. “I want this, Faolan. Wantyou. But I can’t—not until I can trust you again.”

He flinches, and it nearly breaks my resolve.

“I’m sorr—”

“Don’t say it.” His laugh is as sudden and quick as a bird taking flight, fingers raking over the reddish-brown scruff at his jaw before he clears his throat. “You’re absolutely feckin’ right. Just…stars above, I wish—” He bites the words off and leans his elbows on his knees. “I’ll earn it back. I swear it to you now, all right?”

The final knot of anger in my heart unfurls, and with it an idea.

I glance toward the fire, then slowly reach into the small leather satchel, glass clinking as I extract the vial of grayish-white ink.

“You could start with this.”

Thirty-Nine

The bottle of ink looks innocent enough. Barely the length of my thumb, it swirls with shades of white not unlike the ones I’ve glimpsed in the sky right before a world-ending storm. But where even clouds contain specks of light, the ink absorbs any to be found.

Understanding flashes across his face as he looks from the bottle to me, his brows knitting together. “The inverted triskele on your back.”

“Aye.” I set the vial between us, then wrap an arm around my legs. “You were right when you guessed about the color. It’s made with caipín baís ink.”

“Feck.” Faolan goes to touch my shoulder, then thinks better of it. His fist falls hard to the ground between us. “The bastard poisoned you.”

I drop my face against my knees. “Mam said it was to help me.” But even then, in the midst of their plans, I remember how wrong those words had felt. “But I think—I think Da was afraid of me. And maybe he should’ve been, Faolan. I thought I killed my brother with this magic.”

A part of me still worries that I did.

The ground shifts, pebbles scraping one another as he moves beside me. I keep my eyes shut.

“I heard stories about Dermot’s daughter being sent away. But I never…” His sigh catches in my hair. “How did it happen?”

Every part of my body rebels against this story. The one I’ve concealed inside for seven long years.

But trust comes in parts, and how can I expect him to earn mine if I’m always terrified of losing his?

“We were playing on the beach. I was fifteen—isolated from most people by that point, because the amulets weren’t as effective since I started bleeding, and it was awful trying to be around them. But Aidan snuck Conal out of his lessons one day, and the both of them dragged me along.”

I remember it, the way their affection blazed across my loneliness like a comet.

“I always wore an amulet before—you remember the one? In the same pattern as the tattoo.”

“Aye, carved in white ink, just like this.”

I nod. “Da said it was blessed in our patron goddess Eabha’s well. And I believed it until he told me otherwise the night Rí Maccus claimed my hand.” My nose scrunches as I rock my head left, then right. “I never took it off, because he told me it would stop the magic—and in a way, it did. Like standing outside in the middle of winter, until everything goes a bit numb. It was better than feeling mad.”

Faolan shifts again, and I sense his hand before I feel it. But this time when it wraps over my knuckles, I don’t push him away.

“We were going to swim. Conal and Aidan were wrestling each other, tearing their clothes off, and I was a few steps behind. Dresses are harder to sort out.”

“I’m well aware.”

I laugh, the sound a touch wet. “The amulet caught on my laces when I was tugging it overhead, and broke on the stones below. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be without it, but Aidan and Conal were already swimming and I’d never felt the full consequences of the magic—only vague feelings, never visions. So I left it on the shore and went to take their hands. And the moment our skin touched…”

It still exists there, in my body. That gut-wrenching sensation, like an invisible hand had reached for my spine and tugged it straight out.

“I saw what would happen. Iknewthat if three of us went into the water, only two would come out again. When the vision ended, I tried to tell them. Fought them to get out of the water, and then stayed by myself onshore, because I thought if I stayed on the beach, then the vision couldn’t come true. But they took it as a game.”