Page 57 of Soulgazer

It’s all I can do to stay upright, head swimming with the loss of consciousness and all their words. If I didn’t know better, I’d think…

Nessa peels my hands from my face, inspecting it with a frown. “Look at the state of you.”

“Proper roughed up, isn’t she?” Lorcan asks, holding out a skin of freshwater. I try to take it, but my hand trembles too much.

“Still better off than my first dive.” Brona appears with a sigh, grabbing the leather skin and holding it to my mouth until I drink. Beyond her, Faolan stands alone, mouth parted as he watches his crew surround me. “I told you that you weren’t ready. What were you thinking, taking off into a kelp forest alone?”

I drink until my throat feels less raw. “I was turned around. Couldn’t tell which way to swim.”

“You would’ve drowned if not forthat,” Lorcan says, casting an uneasy look over his shoulder to where a scrap of cloth lies open several paces away from anyone else. The soulstone rests at its center, glimmering like a fallen star. “It was caught in your shirt. You’re damned lucky it didn’t touch your skin or mine—where did you even find it?”

I shy back until my whole weight lands on my elbows, jostling Oona in the process. “I-it’s my grandmother’s.”

Lorcan frowns, the expression so unfamiliar on his face. “How do you—”

“The family crest on her necklace. It was beside her bones.” The lie comes too easily. I’m learning fast. “She…”

She was cursed. Her spirit trapped in the water, just as I feared. My mouth falls open to tell them how she dragged me into the depths, or the way I felt her mind split down the middle a dozen times over—leaving her reeling, and painful, andalone.

So terribly alone.

The world tilts again, and my head threatens to burst as another memory from the vision surfaces. One of a smiling lad with teeth too sharp and eyes too cunning.

A lad who’s grown into the man crouching at my feet.

I stare at Faolan where he leans back against the railing, emotions weaving a complicated web at the center of my chest. His face is unrecognizable—flushed and hard-edged, without any of the usual charm. He is the man who kissed my nose earlier because he was proud I’d used the magic at last—the one whose conviction reached my bones when he touched me.

The same one who sounded utterly nonchalant when I was coughing up the sea just moments ago.

She’s alive. That’s something.

Tears slake my raw throat and settle in a sharp sting behind my eyes.

I’m a fool. A fanciful fool.

“She died here.” The words tumble past my lips, rough and far too small. “I thought she might have left me something.”

Nessa tucks my blanket tighter, and Brona stares at the soulstone by my side.

I could tell them the truth. That my grandmother was mad when she directed Faolan toward the Isle of Lost Souls because she’d held my grandfather’s soulstone when he died. That this entire journey was sparked by a song neither of us remembers. I could tell them about the visions—how Gráinne’s soulstone swept me into the past and returned me here, dazed but alive.

I could tell them about the magic.

But then I’d also have to tell them why I kept it a secret in the first place. About Conal, the baby before him, and the tattoo that restrains my power, keeping us all safe but possibly keeping us from the Isle of Lost Souls as well. And then there’s the song.

Daughter of the knowing sea…

Frustration shivers down my spine. I don’t know what I’m meant to feel now, after holding my grandmother’s soul in my hand. I don’t know what the song means—or how in shade’s realmmyeyes are meant to guide us to the isle when I don’t understand how it all works. I don’t know what to think of Faolan’s attention or dismissal, or the crew’s sudden kindness and concern.

But I do know where I can find answers. And at least one of them should lie within my husband’s nest.

“Faolan?” My voice is sharp when it comes. “I need to see your hands.”

He stiffens. “Why?”

I sit up, pushing the heavy strands of black hair from my eyes as Brona and the others shift away. “I almost drowned. Do I need a better reason?”

His laugh is a hollow version of its usual sound. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”