She cuts her eyes to me, a brow quirked. “Better than husband.”
My own laugh surprises me, shaky though it is with the tears still gathered in my throat. I bite my lip after, and sweep a small pile into one hand as she holds the sack and leans back on her heels.
“So why’d you choose him and not the Stone King?”
The question draws me up short. “What?”
Brona rolls her eyes and turns my hands with hers, tipping the bones into the sack. “We’re all wondering about it. Nessa said you evaded her questions, and Faolan won’t admit a damn thing. So I’m asking you. Why would a princess be so damn eager to trade a whole island for life on a ship?”
“I…” Ice and flame trickle across my skin, leached from the tattoo. “I wanted to find the Isle of Lost Souls. I always have.”
“So you fancy yourself a hero, then?”
I can’t help but laugh, rubbing at the spot on my throat where the torc dug in. “No—not exactly.” Her lips quirk down, and my stomach lurches. I force words past the wall of nerves. “There are so many dead on the Isle of Reborn Stalk. Aren’t there? Spirits walk the waters and land, whisper in the night. They’re so…restless, and because of my—” I wave a hand toward my eyes. Swallow. Uncertain of what’s safe to tell her, or if there’s a lie Faolan’s already spun. “I see their emptiness more than most. Feel their longing and pain. I’ve always wanted it to stop.”
Even if that’s only one of the reasons—thesmallestof reasons—to seek the Isle of Lost Souls, I hope that it’s enough. But when I glimpse Brona’s face, it’s clear I was wrong.
Whatever kinship had just settled between us snaps. Her brows drop and her lips turn down as she slowly releases my hand, crossing her arms. “You just want it to stop. All those bothersome ghosts wandering the earth. How inconvenient for you.”
No. It wasn’t enough. I scramble for something else—something clever like Faolan might say—anythingbut the truth of my soulstone curse or Conal’s death. She speaks before I can manage another tangled word.
“Where do you think all those spirits come from on yourprecious island? Or are you too selfish to care?” Her lip curls back in disgust. “Do you have any idea what your father’s done?”
“I don’t—”
She drops the sack of bones. “So we’re sailing to the Teeth—the one scrap of land notorious for sinking the most ships in the feckin’ Crescent—and pissed off not one but two kings in the process, for a girl who doesn’t even know what that decision cost?” Brona knots her braid around her fist. “Can you at least tell mehowyou plan on guiding us to the Isle of Lost Souls? I’d like to know what makes you so bloody special it’s worth risking all our necks.”
My silence damns me.
Brona’s laugh is harsh, landing like a slap. “Forget it. Just like Rí Dermot, aren’t you? Careless with any life but your own.”
Da’s name jars me back to life. “And how would you know?”
The question is not a defense of my father—far from it—but before I can blink, Brona’s jerked my sleeve up to reveal a pale arm marked by the four long, dark bruises. Mam left them there, but only on his orders. “I know what kind of man your father is. Don’t think for a second I didn’t see these soon as you walked on board.”
I nearly lose my lunch in my attempt to pull my arm free, but she’s already let go. I fumble the sleeve, tugging it down as Brona walks to the door, her braid falling loose to flick between her shoulder blades. I want to ask what she knows about him—why shehateshim. To understand what I’m supposed to feel for him when everything I thought I knew has changed in a matter of days.
She reaches the doorway before I can get another word out.
“Storm’ll hit in three hours. Brace yourself.”
Sixteen
I’m told to stay below, though the wood groans like a starving creature. In the darkness of the cabin, clinging hard to the blankets, I watch as a patch of moonlight flits across the floor and back again with each heavy rock of the ship. It’s worse than that last night on my father’s ship—at least then I could track the passing hours by the steady creep of its silver light. Here, I can do nothing.
Useless.
The moonlight suddenly shoots past the floor and straight to the wall—my only warning before I tumble from the bed in a tangle of legs and blankets as the ship tilts sharply on its side.
“Gods!” I roll until something hard catches me around the middle, knocking my wind free.
Smooth wood leads up to hard corners. Faolan’s desk. He’s bolted it to the floor—which has now become the wall—and I cling to its edges as I kick the blankets free, trinkets clattering past my feet.
The door. I need to get to the door.
Twisting, I reach for the handle as my muscles burn with the effort to hold on. It takes barely a tug on the latch for the door to fly open with a crack against the wall. Then it’s all I can do not to fall straight through into the hallway.
Stars, we’re going to sink!
