Page 110 of Soulgazer

Before my ancestors took it as their tomb.

“What about yourself?”

Faolan doesn’t answer. I glance at him and find his eyes have stopped hunting my body for injury. They linger now, where his fingers perch at the space between my ribs. Soaked fabric clings to the fullness of my thighs and draws tight across my breasts, leaving little doubt as to my shape. On instinct, I start to curl in on myself—arm about my waist, legs crossed. Anything to appear smaller.

But his eyes glint with something like hunger and my mouth goes dry.

Slowly, I straighten my shoulders. Lift my chin. Welcoming his gaze despite the fierce heat blooming across my skin.

Faolan rocks a small step back, brows shooting up, before he grins and meets my eyes again. With a slight shake of his head, he swipes a hand over his face and turns away. “Going to be the death of me, aren’t you?”

A drop of ice cuts through the heat as I remember that first touch. First vision.

“Something like that.”

He sets his pack down and, as we dress, I force my eyes from his body to the walls. The one behind him is littered with carefully hewn alcoves like honeycomb in a hive, each one bearing the body and soulstone of an ancestor. A network of algae runs along the strips of wall between hollows, illuminating bones and long-ruined cloth, tarnished jewelry and the untouched stones that shimmer like abalone.

Like Faolan’s scar.

I nearly reach for his hand as I glance at the collapsed old entrance—then look again. My jaw slackens at the sight of near a hundred caipín baís littering the mound of earth, their stalks as slender as a pointed finger, the domes ashen gray and speckled black. By these traits alone, they’d be easily missed, were it not for the pallid mourner’s veil caging each of them in an intricate web of lace.

“Those are meant to be rare,” I say, voice tilting as I take a step closer. “It’s why Father demands more caverns each year, in hopes more will grow. Why wouldn’t he just—”

“Don’t be so sure he isn’t. Look.”

Faolan jabs a finger at the nearest cluster growing in one of my ancestors’ graves. Half of them have been clipped, their stumps weeping pearly tears that turn my stomach. Twist it into knots.

I rub firmly at the spot. “This is where he got it, then. The death-cap ink? That one bottle must have taken dozens to produce. But why—”

“Why would he make his own people suffer trying to find the wee veiled ladies when all this time he’s had a hoard of his own?” Faolan snorts, turning his back on the sight. “How do you think gods become gods? Or the Daonnaí who slaughtered them, the rí and ríona now—they’re all the same feckless creatures, Trouble. Your da just took better advantage of the magical resources he had at his disposal. After all, it’s hard to be angry enough for revolution when you can’t remember your own name.”

Faolan’s words stick like a knife between my ribs so that my next breath comes painful and slow.

Or maybe it’s the caipín baís forcing ice into my lungs.

Maybe the restless dead?

I swallow my tears before they can rise, and walk the row of empty slots carved for my father and mother at the center of thecavern, the spaces for my siblings, the empty grave meant for me. Only the smallest is filled, a mound of bones covered in a tattered silk shroud for a child not even formed enough to produce a soulstone.

Conal’s remains in shadow.

I frown as rocks clatter behind me, Faolan swearing from where he must have stumbled near the stairs carved into the wall. But it’s late. Half of my father’s men will be at his side on the tour of the other isles, and the rest like to drink and play games late into the night, lulled by the summer breeze.

I take a step, then another, fingertips skating the edge of the hollow where Conal’s body should be.

“Come help me with the door, would you?” Faolan grunts.

My hand meets empty air.

That sick feeling in my gut explodes into dread as metal clicks against wood behind me, and the caipín baís leak poison below.Freshly clipped.

I whirl around, already running as the latch starts to give beneath the slide of Faolan’s blade.

“Wait, Faolan—don’t!”

The door swings open.

And my father, his apothecary, and a half dozen guards stand on the other side.

---