Page 108 of Soulgazer

The answer catches me off guard. I twist to look at him, but his hand rests at my shoulder, keeping me straight. He reaches past me for the other pot and roll of bandages.

“They were my mother’s favorite bird—something she used to tease me with given my habit of collecting bits and bobs. She’d tell me if I were ever to build a proper nest, I’d need another magpie along. And then there you came, when I least expected you.” Faolan lays the poultice of moss and herbs I crafted this morning over my damaged skin, then gently unwinds the bandage. I hardly dare breathe. “I could tell you were a collector, just from the way you exist in the world—flinching when it draws too near, but wide-eyed the rest of the time. You line your feathers with stories, and hoard the things people say to you like treasures, even when they’re pure bullshite. You can’t let anything go.”

He guides my arm up, wrapping the bandage across my ribs and between my breasts. Again, twice more.

“And your offer was so damn clever, I was tempted to see it through.”

My husband tucks the end of the bandage just over my heart, and I pray he can’t feel how hard it’s beating.

Until he speaks, and breaks it all over again.

“It’s a good story, anyway, isn’t it? The Magpie and the Wolf.”

Faolan helps me back into my shirt, and I turn my face away so he can’t see my frown.

Legends may not die, but stories always end.

Forty

Seven years and three months have passed since my brother died, yet still I expect his ghost to thrash among the waves. The night before my banishment, I saw him from my window in the castle above, but as we climb the narrow path down the cliffside, there is no glint of silvery blue against a sea turned black by the pebbles below. I search for the figure, throat straining with the need to call out.

But Conal is gone.

A rock slides beneath my foot, and I start to slip until Faolan catches me below the arm. He doesn’t let go, and it’s only then I realize I’m shaking.

“All right?”

My nod is a weak thing. Still, I can’t seem to walk on until I’ve found Faolan’s hand with mine. Not for the first time, I glance at the top of the cliffs, where my father’s home splits the evening fog. Black stone that glints green in daylight, torn from the land along with so much else. He’s always been so proud of replacing the rotting walls his ancestors built of wood, thinking himself clever.

But how many backs broke to haul it up that cliffside and secure it in place? How much weaker is the ground we stand on,matching the wide bogs in the center of the isle and spreading round its edges?

How many years until the entire island sinks?

I force my gaze to the ground ahead, taking one step after another in the night until our feet meet the narrow beach that holds nearly every good memory I have of my childhood, as well as the very worst. It takes effort to block them without the tattoo’s forceful shield. Yet as Faolan squeezes my hand, guiding me until my back is to the waves and we’re both facing the cliffs, it grows easier. Our damaged souls seem aligned.

“That’s it, then?” he asks.

“The oldest entrance, aye.” It gapes open halfway to the cliff’s bottom, formations clinging to the top like fangs. With every low tide, it breathes out the rot of the isle. “It looks open from here, but when you make it inside you’ll see. The interior collapsed the day my brother…”

His fingers tighten on mine and I’m grateful I don’t have to finish that thought. I clear my throat instead. “You’re sure you can get your message to the ship if something goes wrong?”

IfIam wrong. If my father is here and not away like he’d planned. If the gills don’t work though we’ve tested them twice.

“Aye. It’s a sand dollar from off the coast of the Isle of Ashen Flame. Dried out; all you have to do is crack it open and tell the wee doves where to fly. Nessa said they could have the ship here in a matter of hours, hang the consequences if we’re spotted.”

“All right.” Glancing at the old entrance one more time, I tug Faolan past the mouth and its crumbled interior toward the outer lip, where deep water meets the cliffs. “The ferrier’s tunnel should be just round this way. If the rocks haven’t collapsed, we’ll see the top of the entrance as the tide drops.”

“And if they have collapsed?” Faolan is smiling as he asks,waiting for my list of worries he only half paid attention to this morning. Something in me shifts as I study the constellation of freckles on his cheek, tugging my lips up to match.

“Think of the reward, never the risk?”

His eyes widen, then dance with light, and it’s all I can do to turn away and force my feet along until we’re both balanced on the barest edge of rock, slick with sea spray. It’s a good distraction, forcing my heart to race for other reasons, though I have my own goat-hide bands knotted round my ankles now, ensuring it’ll take a damned strong wind or wave to get me off this rock.

My mind grasps the truth of it well enough, but my body is still shaking like a leaf by the time we reach the ferrier’s path, marked only with a deeply etched pattern we find by sweeping our fingertips along the cliffside. A triskele, the same as those three-spiraled marks on a soulstone.

Faolan cracks his neck and shakes his hands off before crouching to shuffle through his bag. He hands over the gills and I grimace as I fix them to my throat, the mist awakening the magic so they fuse to my skin. But any discomfort passes quickly as Faolan tugs his shirt over his head. “Well?”

Right. This part.