Page 11 of Soulgazer

“Bandia Eabha, spill your moon over my soul. Dia Odhrán, raze my impurities with your sun.”

The air inside my cabin is thick. Stale. Built into the belly of my father’s ship, it offers only the smallest window and holds onto a damp, earthen smell marked by rings along the ground where barrels of mushrooms used to stand.

I drop to my knees in the center of one.

“Bandia Clodagh, bind this sickness with your dawn.”

Charms form a familiar tangle around my wrists as I whisper to the six fallen gods, holding the amulet tight between my hands. The magic does not fade. I press harder, until the amulet’s freshly carved swirls bite into my palm, the small spike at their center drawing blood—but still it’s not enough. There is no reassuring rush of ice through my veins. No quiet or calm.

Only a raw, violent sense of yearning that echoes across a thousand living souls on that shore—as though they are infection and I an open wound.

I stifle a whimper with my teeth.

“Please help me.”

It’s been months since I prayed to the gods in earnest—whocould scream endlessly into an apathetic void? For twenty-two years, no matter what I’ve sacrificed, or promised, or pled,noone has ever answered. And how could they, when they’re all dead?

But the amuletswork. They have since Da’s apothecary first carved their surface with an inverted triskele: the reverse pattern of a soulstone. Three waves curl over themselves, drinking my blood to swallow the magic back—but it’s only ever taken a drop.

I squeeze my fist until pain forces me to let go, blood lacing across my palm in a dozen rivulets. The amulet is a slippery, vibrant red.

It isn’t working. The magic willnotbe tamed.

“Bandia Róisín, hear me—releaseme. Save me from the soulstone’s curse!”

I swear I can hear the coy goddess laugh.

There is a price for those who tamper with the gods’ greatest gift, after all. Did I truly think I could avoid it? Spiraled shells of moon and sky that form on the tongues of those who’ve died, the soulstones were made to protect our fragile human spirits from corruption even as our bodies decayed on earth. It was said that long ago, at the quarter year’s turn, emissaries from every island would gather the stones of their dead into gleaming baskets, releasing them into the waters of the Isle of Lost Souls. Only there could they be purified, freeing the spirits to the realm beyond.

Now the soulstones crack in their growing piles, a reminder of our greatest mistake.

We are a people who cannot mourn, for the dead cannot pass on—trapped in crumbling stones that curse any who dare touch them with the fate of madness or death. I was a child of three when I crossed paths with one, washed up along the beach. Mam says it was an accident. Da tells me I knew not to go near.

But no one stopped me until I’d already invited the magic in.

I drop the charms. Rake my fingers through my hair as tears carve molten paths down my cheeks.

Mam promised me we would find it someday, the Isle of Lost Souls. She swore the island’s blessed waters could wash away the rot inside me, painting me as pure as the world was before we all entered into it. Every year, another wayfarer would set out with the kings’ and queens’ blessings, and every year, they would return, claiming the Isle of Lost Souls no longer exists. Over time, Mam’s conviction faded into halfhearted hopes, then increasingly frantic prayers, and finally silence. Defeat.

Still, I wanted to find that land more than anything—would payanyprice for my redemption.

But the searches continued to fail. The curse only grew stronger.

And then my brother died.

I push the amulet into my palm until blood trickles down my wrist.

“Just take it. Take it,please—or take me so I cannot feel it any longer.Plea—”

Heavy boots pound across the planks overhead, and I nearly swallow my tongue as they stop outside the open door.

“Saoirse.”

The lines of Da’s face are deep. Severe. I remember a time when they would appear only at the corners of his eyes when my brothers were caught in mischief and he had to fight a smile at their nerve. When his hands were gentle things that ruffled their hair and occasionally passed through my childish curls as well.

They form fists at his sides now. My throat runs dry.

“You didn’t come after the announcement. You made a fool of Rí Maccus. A fool ofme.”