Page 112 of Soulgazer

“Kiara has the proof of it, right enough,” Faolan says. “What,you think I’d sign on to a marriage andnottake my rights? What sort of man wouldn’t?”

“Whatever cords she carries or trick of bloodstained sheets means nothing to me. The truth is bare in front of us.”

Heat stains my face, rushes down my throat to my chest, burns in every limb, as I watch satisfaction settle onto my father’s face. I don’t see it when a hand clamps over my upper arm, nor when Faolan swears and his touch is ripped away. I only look when he shouts my name, driving his elbow into one guard’s throat, wrenching against the grip of a second.

“Get your fecking hands off her,” Faolan snarls. “You want money? I can buy you stonemasons—Kiara can as well. You have no idea what I’m capable of finding and the coin I can make you. Dermot—”

“This goes far beyond coin, lad. There’s no need for dramatics.” Da’s voice carries across the vaulted stone ceiling. “Your cousin will be summoned to account for your actions, and I’d suggest you change your story by the time that day comes if you want to taste freedom again. The rest of you?” He raises his voice, gaze sweeping the hall. “Out.”

Faolan’s face is wild as two guards bind his arms; he bares his teeth as they drag him bodily through a doorway behind the rest of the court. “Dermot, I swear on the stars, the Slaughtered Ones, and every feckin’ stone on this island,if you hurt her—”

The door slams shut, cloaking the room in a sickening silence. The quiet of a wood when hunters are near.

I don’t dare speak, or beg, or breathe.

Not until Da releases a soft laugh, his attention fixed on an object nestled between his fingers.

“The audacity of children.” He rolls the thing slowly across his palm. “Tell me, Saoirse, did you truly think I wouldn’t know themoment that fool pup of yours crossed into my waters? Let alone my home?”

My chest aches as I try to force a smile. Fail. “It was my home, too, once, Father. Or have you forgotten?”

The dismissive flick of his eyes is a dagger meeting its mark. “I forget nothing.” He tilts his head. “The ink you stole. Do you have any idea how long it took to create? The cost of it?”

I bite down until my teeth nearly crack.

He glowers and then catches my shirt collar before I can react. Exposes the bandages beneath, the scent of herbs drifting free from the salve. His lip curls when he sees the wolf tattoo on my wrist as well. “You’ve mutilated yourself. And it’ll take months to complete another vial. Useless girl.”

I scramble back, but it’s then the object he’s toyed with catches the light.

The sight drains my face of blood.

“My mother never took this off, as long as she was alive.” Da slides the bone ring onto his smallest finger, where it balances so poorly above the knuckle, I hold my breath as though that could keep it from falling. “Told me it was made of a god’s bone and the ocean’s tears. Just like she swore it wasn’t madness in her eyes, but dreams.” His smirk becomes a grimace as he spins it once, then closes his hand into a fist, hiding the ring from view. “Swore it up to the day she held your head under the waves, because she said the damned sea told her to.”

I flinch. Shut my eyes so I don’t have to see the rigid line of his shoulders or set to his jaw, the marks of a man in pain. Da regrets saving me that night. He regrets my very birth—told me so in words I bear on my flesh, clear as any other scar. He cannot hurt over a memory he’s longed to be true.

Can he?

“Mam said…you cried the day I was born.” I regret the words as soon as they’re out, wrapping my arms across my chest like that might shield me. “Was that a lie?”

“No.” The word startles me enough to look again, but Da’s not watching me.

He’s studying the tapestries behind his throne now, filled with our ancestors. For a moment in the quiet, my heart turns traitor, twisting violently with its need to be held by my father’s hands.

I start to reach for them, a child again. “Da—”

“I wept because I knew the cost of sparing your life, and still I was too weak to end it.”

I am a fool.

My hands clutch at my stomach as I fight for breath that does not come, and when he faces me again there is contempt laced in the brutal mask he’s worn all my life. “I paid the price with my son.” He turns his hand over, and we both watch the ring slip through the air. “A mistake I’ll not make again.”

I drop to my knees a second too late. His boot shatters the bone ring into pieces, cleaving its gleaming blue stone neatly in two.

A dam breaks inside me with it, the walls split by an unholy scream that tears my throat raw as I lurch forward and meet an arm as unbending as iron, lifting me to my feet. Da tightens his hold so severely, I start to choke—and it’s only then that he takes my face in hand, jerking my head against his shoulder so I have no choice but to meet his eyes.

His cold, dismissive, hateful eyes.

“You’ll thank me for it one day, lass. Maybe not until my deathbed. But you’ll thank me.” His lips curl just before he presses them to my tear-slicked cheek. The same one he meant to strike.