Page 81 of Soulgazer

I wrap my arms hard over my stomach, trying to ignore the magic pulling like strings tied to my back.

“It’s no trick; it’s a mark of the sea’s touch on your life. A gods’ blessing—”

“The gods are dead!”

A dozen eyes land on us at my outburst and I crumple.

It’s too many people. Too much attention.

I step closer, hunch my shoulders, and lower my voice to a scrape of a sound. “They’re dead and gone, all right? And if—if—they ever gave someone sight like that, it would be a curse. Not a blessing.”

She doesn’t scowl or pull away in fright. Instead, she smiles until her face is as lined as crumpled linen.

“So long as a Soulgazer lives, the gods, once more, will rise.”

Thirty

Golden dust clings to my bootheels as I walk the shoreline, pushing myself as far from the clink of coins and overlapping voices as I can get. My fist clenches around the aisling de na sióga I didn’t mean to take, squeezing the tiny wool bear until it wriggles against my fingers and goes still. Guilt wars with fury as I stuff it deep in my pocket. Patches of dry ground stretch between shallow pools, forcing my steps to slow as the dirt forms a viscous, shimmering sort of muck. It’s only when my foot sticks deep in the earth and I stumble into a jagged pillar of rock sticking up that I realize these are not mere puddles.

The land is sinking again.

Gods.

I drop my forehead to the boulder and bite my lip until the turmoil eases inside my belly, unwinding from my heart. It doesn’t stop pricking at my arms, though, raising gooseflesh across my skin.

You’ve got the ocean in your blood.

I give my arm a vicious swipe.

The old woman had no idea what she was saying. That or she’s never witnessed the destructive power of the knowing sea. Withoutall his clever tricks, the goat hide and quartz for balance, Faolan’s ship would crumple beneath the might of those waves during a storm. Aye, there is beauty in its savagery—and awe when the waters go as still as glass.

But there is danger in loving the sea.

Danger in lovingme.

A soulgazer.

I release a harsh laugh as one by one, my fingers ease their white-knuckled grip on my skirts to flatten against the stone before me. An ache at the base of my skull creeps lower, humming as though a hive of bees has nested in my spine. My eyes are half-shut as the vibrations shift into words, then muted conversations, as shadowed figures flit behind my lids.

My hands curl into fists against the rock.

It’s the bloody magic again.

I push back from the boulder and swear when pain lances between my shoulder blades. Unlike my wolf, the spiraled tattoo refuses to heal, burning my flesh anew every time the magic wants to surface. And that old woman called it a blessing?

The golden rock stretches like an arrow’s tip turned to the sky, its surface shimmering in the light of the eclipse, scarred with deep ridges and spirals that almost seem purposeful. As though…a hand forged their path.

I stumble back—and then double over, gasping at the twin stabs of the magic’s call and the tattoo’s refusal to respond. Impulses war within my body, a battle of fire and ice, as I glare at the golden rock.

“You want me to touch it, don’t you?”

It feels stupid to speak aloud. I’ve prayed most of my life, and not once has anyone answered.

But I am sick with the silence—sick of cowering belowdecks,hiding beneath veils, and mourning this world when I’ve just barely begun to explore it. This magic is a hungry creature, yes, butIam the one who’s spent my life half-starved.

Useless.

I raise my hand and press a fingertip over the carved lines.

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