Page 24 of Soulgazer

There’s something in Faolan’s eyes, growing dark and wild as they hunt my own. “And you believe them?”

“I—of course. Why…” Humor quirks his brow. My hands curl in response. “Did you know her?”

“I met her once.”

I stagger back. “How?”

His lips pull into a sideways smile. “Where do you think I heard the song? ‘Daughter of the knowing sea, gaze sworn long ago to me…’??”

My body goes slack.

“Unfortunately,” Faolan goes on, scooping the flask from the ground, “I didn’t know she was your grandmother until just now.Would’ve saved me months of sailing round the Crescent if I’d known where to look—but this just proves my point further.” He straightens, and whatever shadows lingered in his expression are gone. “You, my wee clever magpie, are meant to find this island. In fact, I daresay you’re the only one who can.”

The absurd urge to laugh rattles through my shock. I rake my hands through my hair, dislodging the veil entirely so that it slides into a silken heap on the ground—a spider’s web of lace and lies.

I cannot quell the childish impulse to kick it away. “This is not a game to me, Faolan—this is my freedom.”

“So take it.”

“What?”

Faolan taps the iron torc hanging round my throat. “You want freedom—from marriage to the Stone King, and from your old man.”

From the magic.

From myself.

My heart constricts as Faolan opens his hand between us, emerald and opal rings casting prisms across his palm. “Join me, Saoirse. Help me find the Isle of Lost Souls, and I swear that freedom will be yours.”

The wind stops. Birdsong stifles.

There is a faint ringing in my ears as I contemplate Faolan’s hand.

It would be easy—soeasy—to believe him. I’ve heard stories of the Wolf of the Wild since I was twelve and he a lad of sixteen, first carving a place for himself on the violent sea. During my banishment to the cottage, when I would wake in the nights alone and raw with grief, it was the Wolf I imagined coming to my door, ready to whisk me off on one of his wild adventures.

I tear my hand away, cradling it close to my chest, where itbrushes the heavy torc resting on my collarbone. “Rí Maccus would be furious. He’d never forgive the slight.”

“Aye.” Faolan sounds far too pleased about it. “Your da too—but it won’t matter once we’ve found the isle of the lost, now will it?”

My laugh is too bitter for the sunshine streaming around us, the clover at our feet. “If.”

“You doubt me?”

I doubt myself. “I don’t even know you.”

His eyes have no right to look so wounded. He stuffs his hand into his pocket, kicking his boot back against the tree and sending a shudder through the leaves. “So what’s the alternative? Stay here, become a Stone Bride, die young, and be forgotten?”

I wince with every word, ice slaking down my spine to coat the panic until it’s slippery—present but impossible to grasp or wield. And that is what terrifies me most. Being trapped in my body, feeling all the horror of it, yet completely unable to react or break free.

“There is no guarantee we’ll find it.” The words sound small, even to me. “What happens if we don’t?”

“Then I drop you off in a lovely, small cove to hide, and make things up to Kiara.”

I stare at the pendant hanging around Faolan’s neck. His family’s sigil. One he’s altered to suit him because the original belonging to Ríona Kiara has a trio of horses, not wolves.

Kiara. His queen.

Stars above.