Page 68 of Soulgazer

“For everything. The scarf, the gills, the hint about the ring. Worrying whether I’ll make it, nursing me back to health.” His eyes darken, but this time, no butterflies flood my stomach.

It sours instead.

“That’s what this was. A thank-you.”

Not because he wanted me. Because he felt he owed me.

I slide free from his lap before he can stop me, gaze on the ground, my cheeks full of fire. I don’t dare meet his eyes again. I wouldn’t survive whatever is written there. “I’ll send someone with dinner. And Lorcan, to check on your wound.”

Gods, I never even looked beneath the bandage when he woke.

“Saoirse?”

I’ve slipped out the door before he’s finished saying my name.

Twenty-Five

The news of Faolan’s recovery sweeps the deck like a gust of fresh air. Tavin immediately slips below to check on him as Nessa claps me on the back and shoves a plate of food into my hands with a wink. Mercifully, she doesn’t mention my rumpled dress or swollen lips. In less than an hour, the atmosphere’s what it was before he was injured—all of them eating and swapping tales from home as the sky lightens above.

I can’t understand why it’s the stories that weigh heaviest in my stomach.

“You think your da was harsh? Mine had us up at the arsecrack of dawn, doing forms before sunrise. The man was obsessed.”

“Not so bad as mine. He made us swim the loch behind our house every bloody morning—even in winter. Had to break through chunks of ice just to get inside. Can you imagine?”

“I can, considering the size of your bits.”

Laughter ripples around me, but all I can do is stare at the fish bones on my plate and prod them into new patterns with a finger. Tavin sits across the deck, a fresh pile of coins cast between himself, Nessa, and Oona as they gamble with slats of carved bone. Lorcan rests against the railing nearest me, one foot kicked backto balance as he weaves intricate braids into Brona’s hair. Faolan would typically perch on the center barrel, a part of every conversation and yet always an island of his own.

I stare at the empty spot. Thumb the wolf ring where it glints beneath my knuckle.

“See, that’s where you lot all got it wrong,” Lorcan says, tipping a wink to me over Brona’s head as he threads one slender braid through another. “Having a father at all. Youshouldhave tried growing up in a brothel—I’m telling you, it’s the only way!”

Brona snorts as he bends a slim cap of metal around the pattern, locking it in place. “Right, we’ll just slip back in time and warn our younger selves, shall we?”

“Aye,” Lorcan says, fingertip lingering on the line of her jaw. I force a smile and tear my gaze away. “Only it’s best to warn them they’ll not get anything past the girls there. Mams, aunts, and nosy birds as far as the eye can see. Once, when I was small—”

“Were you ever small?” Nessa asks, kicking one leg over the other as she lounges back against Tavin’s side.

Lorcan groans. “When I was smaller…”

I don’t understand stories like theirs, where cheek is answered with a laugh instead of a strike. Tales where the parents tousle the daughter’s curls in a mock fight, guide the son’s bow arm higher until the target is just in line, grin with delight as their little hero charges into life without hesitation. Lorcan, Tavin, Nessa—there is a warmth to all their voices.

Like they’ve never questioned if they were loved.

I used to think being quiet and small was enough to earn my parents’ affection. That so long as I followed their rules, prayed to their gods, eventually they might love me. I thought it was my own fault Da looked through me any time I spoke—or worse, the times when he didn’t look at all.

A fresh wave of laughter breaks through until Lorcan throws his head back with a huge smile. “And don’t get me started on my mother!”

Mother. The word calls forth frantic swipes of a dry hand to my clothes until they hung looser, adjusting my hair so it covered my eyes. She was so hollow, even when I was young. Once, when I was a wee laughing creature performing some bizarre dance to Aidan’s practice on the lute, she shook her head at me and said I’d stolen half her joy the moment I left her womb.

Guilt still pulses through me at the memory.

But I was only a child. Wasn’t I?

So were Conal and Aidan.

An unfamiliar emotion bleeds into the usual pain—ugly, and unfair to feel alongside all my grief. Yet the name arises far too easily from the shadowed corners of my mind: resentment.