Page 128 of Soulgazer

“Have a bit of faith…”

“…waste of time.”

Useless.

I curl my fingers tighter to keep from hurling the shards into the sea.

“Chew this for a spell.” Brona’s voice draws me sharply up just before she shoves a small bundle of herbs into my hand. “You look ready to lose your lunch.”

“What is it?”

“Dried butterbur we used to grow on the cliffs by the lighthouse. It’ll cure your head all right. I get a mean ache before every storm myself.”

She drops to a crouch before me and frowns at the broken ring that’s caused us all such trouble. “You still can’t get it to do whatever it’s meant for?”

I shake my head, wince, and then bite down on the herbs, pressing the bundle against my cheek with my tongue after. “No. It’s not…alive anymore.” I don’t know how else to explain the draw a soul has on me. But try though I might, there is nothing within the pieces I’m able to coax out.

“Right.” Brona glances over her shoulder as the tension between Kiara and Faolan breaks into full-on shouts. I push to my feet and lean over the nearest rail to spit the bundle of herbs into the water, the ache dulled to barely a nudge at the base of my skull. “And we can’t just stick it together with sap?”

Her words are so dry, I can’t help but laugh. “Even if we tried, the blue stone at its center is split. See?” I press a fingertip along one half, the brilliant color dulled to a pitiful imitation now, and gasp when the ragged edge nearly breaks my skin.

It’s sharp, aye, but the memories it recalls are razor-edged.

Blood smeared across a door made of gold, giving entry to the hall of gods. And again on my brother’s soulstone before Da touched my skin. Every god requires a sacrifice…and every great vision has required a piece ofmein return.

I stare at the angry red mark on my skin and slowly press it back against that same edge. My flesh protests, bending withoutbreaking around the point, until I force it through and a crimson pearl emerges in its place.

“What are you doing?”

I hesitate for only a second before smearing my fingertip along the outer curve, painting the cloudy stone red.

“Saoirse…” Brona’s words trail off into a gasp, then a curse, as we watch the blood trickle between the two halves until the stone snaps together, whole once more.

I drop to the deck, shoving all the pieces of the ring together—marking each with my blood—until they fuse together one after another. Pores in the bone draw close together, the surface gone from aged yellow to a gleaming white. Cracks dissolve into seams, then nothing, as the ring knits itself into being. With one final drop, the opalesque stone throws brilliant colors across my palm and the deck between us.

“Holy feckin’ stars,” Brona says on a mad sort of laugh. “Faolan, get over here!”

I shake my head and bring my split finger to my lips as footsteps pound the deck, others responding to Brona’s call. One of them kneels before me—Faolan—and he starts to reach for the ring, but I drop it to my lap and catch his hands, shaking my head instead. Da’s madness is fresh on my mind.

“Don’t touch it. I don’t know what it can do.”

“It better dosomething,” Kiara said, but even her hard voice holds a sliver of awe, respect. Something I never could’ve hoped to command from such a figure before. “Will it show you the island?”

I don’t know. I’m afraid to know. But when I look to Faolan again, I think of the days we’ve wasted, how few we have left, and any lingering doubts turn to vapor easily banished with a flick of the wrist.

“I hope so.” I cast one final look at my husband, then close my eyes and slip the ring onto my finger.

“This way, little Soulgazer. Come along.”

A weathered face peers down at me as I walk across shifting pebbles and watch the ocean roar. That’s what it does when it storms—Aidan says so. Her skin runs deep with wrinkles, her silver hair escaping its braid in five places, and her eyes—

Her eyes are a weakened version of my own, their colors shifting in fractured rhythms with no reason or rest.

Maybe it should scare me, but her smile is so warm that I feel a matching one stretch across my lips. I know this woman who sneaks into my room in the dark and sings to me every now and then. Even here in the grayish dawn, as she glances furtively over her shoulder before lifting me into bony arms, I don’t fight as she walks directly into the foaming waves.

My feet strike a delighted rhythm against her hips as salty wind rushes over us, tearing at my nightgown and dark curls—as fine as duck’s down, Mam said with a tut on my third birthday.

“Are we going to swim?” My voice is high, more air than anything, as she sets me into the water with a tight hold on my wrists. I shriek when the next wave merely laps at her knees and soaks me to my shoulders.