A flush claws up my neck as Faolan snorts, rolling his shoulders back. “Get on with it, would you? We’ve a long voyage ahead.”
Kiara levels a gaze at him, then reaches into her pocket, extracting a vibrant length of costly silk I recognize from her phoenix gown last night. As she weaves the three items into a singlecord, my stomach ties into similar knots—ones I’m not sure will ever be undone.
Still, I tell myself this isn’t permanent. It’s only until we find the Isle of Lost Souls. This ismychoice.
Isn’t it?
“Give me your hand.”
“What?”
Kiara extends her hand, and foolishly I lay mine upon it. A glint of metal is my only warning before she slices into the meaty flesh just below my thumb.
Gasping, I jerk instinctively back, but she catches my wrist and layers my hand over Faolan’s until our wounds align. Blood carves rivulets across our skin to drip onto the deck, their paths broken only by the silk and leather bindings.
“I call upon the stars as witness, the wind and raging sea,” Kiara says, her voice deepening by a measure from the teasing it held before. She guides the cords slowly through one another so that when we pull our hands apart, a knot will appear. “Guide these two souls together in a bond not easily undone.”
Her words are unfamiliar to my ears, and I realize only now that I’ve never witnessed a handfasting. But I used to wonder over them as a child. The poetic language made it seem sacred—but if that’s true, who safeguards it now the gods are dead?
“As their blood flows as one, so their bodies soon will follow. May their path be struck always together, neither forcing the other nor leaving them behind. May good fortune follow their journeys, and their enemies cease all pursuit. May they hold fast to their vows as they exchange them above the tides, below the moon.”
Silence follows and I look at Faolan, whose jaw is tight, though his smile remains fixed for the audience lingering in the shadows.But it falters when he glances at our bound hands and the flecks of blood now blooming like flowers upon the silk.
Magic swells where our lifeblood mingles. Fades beneath the tattoo’s blanket of ice.
Guilt floods me straight after. “Faolan, I—”
“Listen close, Saoirse, daughter of Rí Dermot and Leannon. You’ll only be hearing this once.”
Faolan catches my eyes with a look heavy enough to drown.
“I pledge myself to you for as long as we both desire. Should a dagger strike toward your heart, let it be my body that meets it first. Should another cast slander or cruelty your way, let it be my words that are a balm to your spirit, my fists that enact your revenge.”
He steps closer, gaze dropping to my lips, and it’s only then I realize they’ve parted. Like they remember that brief, stunning press of his own.
“Should your body cry out of loneliness, let it be mine that offers relief sweet as honeycomb.”
A whistle does break out then, low murmurs chasing across the deck. But my gaze is fixed on his. They are just words—beautiful, aching words that pour from his lips with the ease of water from the sky. Soft and meaningless.
Sweet as honeycomb.
My throat runs dry.
“All this I vow to you, Saoirse. I ask only that you honor my freedom to explore the seas now, and for the rest of our days.”
The emotions swelling inside me rupture at once, leaving me reeling. How could he offer all these promises and demand the opposite? Isn’t bondage to me in marriage a loss of his freedom? Won’t it be the loss of mine?
Or is it all a show, put on for the sake of his cousin and crew?
Faolan’s fingers tighten on mine, and I swallow. The wordsdon’t flow easily when they come—a fumbled version of my mother’s chiding over the years on what a wife should be. “I vow to you Faolan, son of…”
His eyes flicker as a string of longing curls from his hands to mine. “Barden and Iona.”
“Barden and Iona.” I lean closer until pain jolts across the tattoo, severing our connection. The rest of my words tumble out on a series of gasps. “My honor and—respect as I follow the path you lay. I p-promise to guard your name from slander and your body from sickness, warm only your bed, keep your faith, a-and honor your freedom. All of this I vow, for as long as we both should choose.”
There is no talk or laughter now as Kiara and Faolan cast me strange looks, Kiara’s faintly disgusted. Finally, the queen shakes her head and tucks the ends of our bindings into the loops so they form a seemingly endless chain of cloth between us.
I’m tempted to lean back and test if it will hold.
