A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe #1)

CHAPTER 10

S oaked to the bone and head stuffed with grim images, Briar returned to his creaky flat. He hung all his sodden clothes next to the wood stove and got a fire going to chase out the chill. He made himself chamomile tea to warm his frozen fingers and bundled up in pajamas.

Normally, Vatii would opt to dry herself by the fire. Instead, she stayed close, slick feathers pressed against Briar’s neck while he steeped his tea. Mug in hand, he dragged a chair to the stove and sat there until sensation burned back into his numb fingers. Gretchen had vanished to replenish her energy and give him space, but his thoughts blurred together. With an idle hand, he rubbed at the swirl on his wrist left by the tree, its image shivering in the flickering light of the fire.

He couldn’t comprehend the conflict which had precipitated the creation of the wards, nor the strange collusion of man and forest that had been its architects.

“What have we stepped in, Vatii?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. One evening, when he was twelve, she’d appeared at his window, pecking until he let her in. Familiars were a strange part of being a witch. His magic called her into being, and she’d been harassing him ever since.

But she was quiet now.

Saor ó Eagla commemorated éibhear and the creation of the wards. It seemed sadistic in hindsight. Why would anyone celebrate that grisly event? Was the celebration a mix of fear and respect, like the town’s feelings about the woods? Or maybe, Briar thought with rueful sarcasm, he’d fallen in with a cult.

Harder still to absorb was Rowan’s relation to éibhear. Generous, soft-hearted Rowan—he was nothing like the ruthless man in those visions. Yet the whole town feared him. Perhaps that wasn’t a tragic side effect of his scar, but of his father’s deeds.

Perhaps Briar should fear him, too.

There was one thing Briar needn’t wonder about any longer: Rowan and Sorcha’s solemnity on the night of the festival. It had been the anniversary of their father’s death.

He took a sip of tea, its heat a soothing thaw.

He had to speak to Rowan, and for the first time, that notion unnerved him.

In the morning, a small group had gathered outside his shop and was waiting as Briar woke up. Composed mostly of teens wearing wardstone bracelets, they peered in the window and stared into the void of their phones.

“You’re Briar,” one girl said as he opened the shop. “From Linden’s Alakagram?”

Still in shock from the visions he had seen with Gretchen yesterday, Briar nodded. The girl bounced, looking between her friends. “We were wondering if we could have a look through your store.”

He recovered his senses. “Of course!”

In minutes, they cleared out the majority of his stock. On top of the cost of the garments themselves, most agreed to pay extra for fittings, thrilled that Briar accommodated for their different shapes. One girl liked a design in Briar’s sketchbook so much, she asked to commission it for an upcoming Christmas party.

They left, chatting animatedly about their purchases. Briar felt a swell of pride. He’d just made more money in a day than he’d ever made in all his years at Wishbrooke covering shifts.

For the rest of the morning, Briar tried to push aside all thoughts of éibhear and the wards to focus on work, but the memory prickled like a sliver he couldn’t tweeze out from under his skin. He scribbled designs, but nothing felt worthy of Linden. Accomplishing so little left him agitated by day’s end.

As he dumped his dishes in the sudsy sink to wash, Gretchen materialized in the kitchenette, her head bowed, chewing her lip in contemplation.

“There you are,” Briar said. “You know, you could have warned me you were taking me on the serial killer tour of town. I can’t clear my head of it. I keep seeing those horrible visions, and I know you think death is no big deal, but I’m sensitive! I have work to do! I can’t be distracted, and I haven’t gotten a single good sketch out.”

Gretchen barely looked up. “Oh. Sorry.”

That gave him pause. He’d expected her to retaliate or banter along with him. “You all right?”

She folded her arms across her stomach. “I’ve been thinking. What if the wards—what if they killed me, too?”

Briar hadn’t considered that. For all her protests that death meant little when you’d already died, her face told another story. “What makes you think that?” he asked.

“I’m not Coill Darraghn. Seemed like the wards killed anyone who wasn’t. I don’t have any memory of it, but this is where I would have been when it happened.”

Briar didn’t know what he could possibly say. He understood how discomfiting the visions were. History hoarding the locked parts of her past, the mysteries surrounding her death. His curse could be linked, too.

He couldn’t hug or comfort her. She looked more transparent now than she had last night.

“I’m sorry.”

“What? Why?”

“For what I said earlier. And, I don’t know, you seem down about it.”

“I’m not—I mean, I am, but it isn’t your fault, and anyway, I’m just—”

She scrambled for the words. “Pissed off! I remember things in bits and pieces, and I knew éibhear. He mentored me. He saw how good I was with potions and encouraged me to make my own. It doesn’t make sense, what he did. Because if it’s all what we think, that means he murdered me . And countless other people besides.”

“And the whole town celebrates him for it,” Briar added.

“Right? If I could just remember what the conflict was about, where I was during the ward spell…”

Briar, unthinking, put a hand on her shoulder to quell her. His fingers passed through her, and a shot of embarrassment went through him in turn. She didn’t shy away, so he kept his hand there, even as her chilly influence numbed his fingers.

“We’ll figure it out. I’ll ask Rowan. Okay?”

She sagged with relief. “Thanks.”

Gretchen lingered while he finished washing dishes. He couldn’t tell if his chills came from her or the notion of speaking to Rowan about what they’d seen. Rowan had never mentioned the dark history behind the wards’ creation, nor anything about his father. His father, who tithed himself to the same forest that cursed Briar’s mother.

He needed to know more. Flipping open his phone, he tapped out a quick message to Rowan, asking if he could come by. It didn’t take long to hear back, his phone trilling like a wind chime.

You’re welcome anytime. I’m up Old Mill Road. Mine’s the cottage with the chickens.

Briar looked at his vision board, the colorful swatches like mermaid scales in the dark, and his focus zeroed in on his most pressing list of objectives. Some he’d accomplished already, but the fifth—making a gift for Rowan to thank him for his help—had not been. Perhaps that would help to smooth his jagged feelings around their upcoming interaction.

Or at least bribe his way into Rowan’s good graces in the event he was secretly a maniac.

A few more messages to arrange a time, and it was settled. He’d visit Rowan tomorrow, on Saturday.

So, up in the wee hours of the morning, Briar knitted a scarf. There was something meditative about the process. The gift needed to express Briar’s appreciation for Rowan’s help, and looping every individual stitch by hand felt appropriate.

“You know about the sweater curse?” Vatii said as he counted stitches.

“I don’t want to talk about curses, Vatii.” His hands had started shaking chronically of late, and he didn’t know if it was from overworking himself or Bowen’s Wane.

“It’s said that if you gift a hand-knit sweater to a lover, the lover will end the relationship. Or end it before the sweater is complete.”

He rolled his eyes. “Tragically, Rowan and I aren’t in a relationship.”

“Yet.”

“And this isn’t a sweater! Besides… I don’t know how I should feel about him now. Not after—all that business with éibhear is really ruining my beauty rest, let’s just put it that way.”

“Well, good. Fancying him was a recipe for disaster, if Linden is your prophetic lover.”

In the morning, after very little sleep, Briar set out with directions to Rowan’s house. Winter’s chill invaded autumn, some of the bright fire in Coill Darragh’s canopy had gone a sullen brown.

How to broach the topic of éibhear? Hi, Rowan. Lovely place you’ve got. Thanks so much for feeding me, rescuing me, just generally being a stellar human being. By the way, did you know your dad died in a horrific magical bargain with a forest to create the wards, which protect the town but also murdered every foreigner within its borders? The hell was that about? My poltergeist roommate is figuratively dying to know.

Bringing it up at all seemed about as tactful as a claw hammer to the face, but he needed to find out. For Gretchen’s sake and his own.

The directions led him up country lanes, fields of sheep watching his passage with baleful baaaah s. He knew Rowan’s house when it came into view. In the shade of a poplar tree stood a thatched cottage with its door and shutters painted blue. A few chickens clucked around the dirt path. One such chicken, butterscotch colored and alarmingly large, took one look at Briar and decided it didn’t like him. It charged. Briar had only a few seconds to backstep before the chicken was upon him. It leapt and flapped its wings in such a furor it rose to eye level.

Vatii, the coward, took flight. “Watch out! I think it’s hungry.”

Briar did what any sensible man would and screamed. He tried to run but tripped on his fashionable-but-not-functional boot laces. He landed in the dirt. When he raised his arms to defend himself, the chicken seized its opportunity and landed on his elbow, clucking furiously.

Rowan emerged from the cottage, drawn by the noise, to find Briar curled up in the fetal position, his poultry nemesis stalking around him in furtive circles.

To Briar’s shame, Rowan laughed. “Ah, Maude won’t hurt you.”

He picked her up and tucked her under his arm. She regarded Briar in a manner he deemed unfriendly. Rowan helped him up with one hand, the other keeping Maude at bay.

“You all right there?” Rowan asked.

“Great! Fabulous. Just a little grimy. And wondering why nature has it out for me.”

“Maude’ll only cluck round you like that if she likes you.” Rowan gave her a pat, set her down, and gently shooed her away nonetheless.

Briar’s nerves returned. To dispel them, he held his gift bag out at arm’s length. “I made you something. As a thank-you for all the help.”

Rowan’s face was inscrutable as he opened the bag and unfurled the scarf within. It was cable-knit and burnt orange, like the autumn leaves, and long enough it could wrap twice around Rowan’s broad shoulders.

He looked at a loss for words.

“If it’s not your thing, I won’t be offended.”

“No, it’s—thank you.”

Rowan looped the scarf around his neck, the ends trailing to his knees. Briar’s breath caught as he stepped in to help. He arranged the scarf snugly so the ends didn’t hang too long. He had to stand on tiptoes to do it. It brought them very close, and despite all Briar’s fears, he didn’t want to step away. Something about Rowan drew him in. A fire to warm his hands by. Or to burn him.

Rowan raised a hand. Visions reared in Briar’s head too: éibhear raising his hand just like that to strike a witch through the heart. éibhear’s arms dangling limp as the forest claimed him. Briar startled back like a spooked horse.

“S-sorry.” Rowan’s hand fell back to his side. A look of muddled hurt and confusion crossed his features. He cleared his throat. “I mean, thank you.”

“No worries. No problem. Just wanted to return the kindness.”

An awkward silence fell. An internal war of rebuke waged in Briar’s head. Logically, he understood Rowan was not éibhear, but the images that had played out in the shadow of the woods hadn’t been hauntings; they’d been real.

Rowan broke the silence first. “The gardens. I’ll show you round?”

The cottage backed onto acres of farmland, with a paddock for two horses, a greenhouse, and neat rows of outdoor crops. Rowan took him through the gate behind his cottage and into an altogether different variety of garden.

Densely packed flower beds sprouted all manner of rare potion ingredients. From sea holly—whose growing conditions were better suited to tropical climates—to a variety of belladonna Briar had only seen in text-books. A plant he didn’t recognize sprouted in a firework from an old cracked pot. A wisteria-covered trellis shaded half the garden. Without the summer blooms, its vines were reminiscent of the ones that devoured éibhear. More reminiscent still was the purple aura hanging over it, uncomfortable as socked feet soaked in a puddle.

“Rowan, how are you even growing some of these things?”

“Ehm, I haven’t. Was my da’s. Still grew after he died.”

Before he could suppress it, Briar shuddered. He hoped Rowan wouldn’t notice, but of course he did. “If it isn’t what you need, we can check the greenhouse—”

“No, honestly, it’s perfect, Rowan. Do you know how rare some of these plants are?”

Rowan offered a shrug, which hid many unsaid things. “I’ve no idea what to do with ’em. Fill your boots.”

He handed over some pruning shears. The garden had an unsettling effect on Briar as he knelt and snipped a few spiny leaves into a pouch. Part of him felt like he was reaching for a branch of lichen again, wondering what it would cost. He plucked a few flowers from the winter honeysuckle next. Despite the prickling aura of the garden, it gave him the perfect opportunity to broach the topic he’d feared touching.

“Your dad grew all this?”

“Mm. Cottage was his workshop. I converted it into a home after he passed.”

Passed. As if in a hospital, not the grips of a sentient wood. Briar’s head pounded. He didn’t know how to push for more or if Rowan deliberately withheld the rest. Briar stood to pick leaves from a fern. The plants’ combined perfume smelled thick and soupy, turning his thoughts in circles.

Vatii, perched on the retaining wall, pecked at his fingertips to snap him out of it. “You look peaky, maybe we should—”

Before she finished, Briar swayed on his feet. His head boiled like one of his potions. In his murky periphery, he registered movement.

Rowan caught him, but the garden’s aura, combined with a chaotic stew of memories, triggered the same instinct that had made Briar shy away from Rowan before. He recoiled, tripping, landing in the grass, back-pedaling into a garden wall. Rowan, usually so stoic, looked down at Briar and then at his own hands with undiluted pain and bewilderment.

Too late, Briar realized the cruelty of his reaction. How many others shied away from Rowan at the slightest glance, the barest brush in a crowd? A haunted look crossed Rowan’s face, and Briar was immediately sorry he’d been the one to put it there.

“Sorry, I’m just… I think the garden’s had a weird effect on me.”

Vatii said worriedly, “It could be the curse, not the garden.”

He flinched. He’d just lost too much sleep, or the memories from the town’s scars were affecting him oddly.

“You don’t look well,” Rowan murmured. “Can I get you anything? Tea?”

At Vatii’s urging, Briar agreed. Rowan ushered him through the back door into a kitchen. It was both tidy and cluttered, a pastiche of country crockery. A painted rooster decorated the bread box, and all the chairs were mismatching shades of weathered pastel.

Briar sat at the breakfast bar. “It’s nothing. Just my fainting-damsel routine. No need to—”

“It’s not a bother. Sit.”

Rowan didn’t ask how he liked his tea, just put the kettle on and fetched mugs. “Does that happen often?”

“What?”

“Fainting spells.”

Briar traced the wood-grain whorls on the breakfast bar. Vatii nudged his elbow. She’d always advised him to be forthright about his condition, but he found it easier to keep it secret. If he was honest with himself, he hoped Rowan looked at him and saw a sparkling future of possibilities. Difficult to do that when his future was terminal.

“Just lost one too many hours of sleep. Used to pull all-nighters during my apprenticeship no problem. Now I lose my senses if I don’t get eight hours and three square meals.”

The kettle boiled. They shared an awkward silence. Every encounter before this had felt like a rhythmic stitch drawing them closer together. Now, Briar had come looking for answers and was finding that all the questions created buckles and snags in the growing intimacy of their relationship.

Rowan frowned down at his hands, laced before him. “Ehm… Briar, I—” The words caught on the way out, his voice rougher than usual. “Have I done something wrong?”

Guilt clawed its way up Briar’s throat. “No, nothing.”

“Is it my scar? You said the aura—is it affecting you too, now?”

“It’s your dad,” Briar blurted. The rest tumbled out in a rush. “I see more than people’s auras, I see auras all around town. They show me memories of the past, and I saw your dad killing witches. Then he made a pact with the awful, freaky forest that tried to kill me, and the wards slaughtered people, and you didn’t tell me, and I didn’t know if you were involved or how to ask, but now I feel stupid for ever doubting you because you’ve been stupidly kind this entire time, so I don’t know what to do!” He took a heaving breath. “What happened ? Here? Why has he got a statue? I don’t understand.”

Rowan stared, shocked, and Briar thought, Tactful as a claw hammer to the face. He expected to be kicked out, told to go spin on it after dredging up a painful memory and unfairly conflating Rowan with the actions of his father.

The kettle whined. Rowan startled, glancing toward it. He ran a hand over his face and sighed. “Tea first.”

Instead of handing it to him, Rowan set the mug on the breakfast bar. Possibly because Briar kept leaping away like his proximity caused electric shock. Heat wafted off the drink, carrying an herbal smell—some combination of peppermint, chamomile, lemon, and ginger. It seemed less a tea than a potion.

“Should help your dizziness,” Rowan said.

It was too hot to drink yet. Briar waited, watching Rowan gather himself to speak.

“All of what happened, I was told about it after. Still don’t understand the whole of it, but if you’ve questions, I’ll try and answer.”

Briar took a deep breath. “Why’d he do it?”

“Keep in mind, most of what I know’s secondhand. Seer Niamh told us about it. At the time? I hadn’t the faintest idea.”

Briar wasn’t a bit surprised to hear Niamh’s name come up. Of course the meddling biddy was involved.

Rowan continued, “My da wasn’t just the alderman—he was the forest’s Keeper. Charged with protecting Coill Darragh—the wood and its people. As I understand it, witches came looking to take the wild magic for themselves.”

“How do you just take wild magic?”

Rowan shook his head. “Don’t know. Only know that we Coill Darraghns are connected to it somehow. So when the invaders took it, the forest sickened, and so did we. To sustain itself, the forest started taking things from us.” A frown darkened his features. “Limbs, mostly.”

Briar shuddered. He remembered seeing a woman in one of the visions, her arm entombed in vines. It painted éibhear in a slightly more flattering light, although Briar couldn’t be sure the extent to which he’d gone was a measured response.

“Who were they? The invaders.”

“We don’t know. The wards left no bodies behind. Strange, because no one came looking.”

That was horrifying, as if the wards had erased those witches from existence. Something else about the story crept under Briar’s skin. Gretchen claimed the things happening in Coill Darragh—like the thorns ensnaring the hare—were not normal. As if the forest was lashing out again.

“He was meant to teach me all this.” Rowan pointed at the door into the garden, holding aloft his mug of tea-potion. “Sorcha’s the eldest. She didn’t want to be Keeper, so it fell to me, but he never taught me the ways.”

“Did you want the position?”

Very quietly, Rowan said, “I think I only wanted my da to pay me mind.”

Whatever clemency Briar might have granted éibhear before, he couldn’t now. From Gretchen’s telling, the alderman had been an attentive, encouraging mentor. To his own children, however…

The judgment must have been plain on Briar’s face. Rowan shrugged. “Sorcha and I weren’t witches.”

“That’s no reason. Now it’s your responsibility to protect Coill Darragh, but he never taught you how?”

Rowan’s forehead creased. Briar was no empath, but even he could see that a dam held back a well of pain in him. “Sometimes,” Rowan said slowly, “I don’t think I needed teaching. If the time comes when I’m needed, the woods’ll take me.”

The pain in Briar’s head hit a peak. The way Rowan said it, it sounded like éibhear had passed a curse down to his son, just as Briar had inherited his from his mother. His mind called up images. The unnatural bend of éibhear’s body. His blood watering the earth. Was Rowan implying the same fate awaited him? Briar drank deeply of his tea. It lessened the ache in his temples, but didn’t erase those images.

“Can I ask you something, Rowan?”

“Mm?”

“Your dad had an apprentice. Did you know her?”

“Not well. Kept to herself, like. Hardly left the house except to go on trips to the forest with my da. Why do you ask?”

Briar saw no reason to hide it. “She’s sort of haunting my flat, so I’m trying to find out why she’s trapped there. Her memory’s a bit spotty.”

Rowan’s bewildered expression revealed plainly that he hadn’t known. “She’s not dangerous, is she?”

“No. Well, she threw some knives, but we get on now. Do you know what happened to her?”

“I’ve no idea. The wards could have…” He trailed off. “Though I can’t imagine Da wouldn’t have warned her. He took a shine to her.”

To her, but not Rowan. The wound that had left was all over his normally impassive features. Briar could imagine him, at nineteen, just having lost his father, scarred and avoided by everyone. It broke his heart. He found he couldn’t blame that version of Rowan for being too confused and overwhelmed to wonder about the girl who went missing amongst the chaos. Briar took his last sip of tea, the throb of his head waning.

“Is it helping?” Rowan asked.

“Yeah.” Briar smiled to himself. “My mum used to always say that the best potion is tea.”

“Used to?”

Briar didn’t talk about her with anyone but Vatii. Yet Rowan had shared so much about his father, so…

“She died of a curse two years ago.” He could say that much. Curses didn’t always pass through generations.

“Ah, Briar. I’m sorry.” He looked it. A soft bowing of his brow. “What sort of curse?”

“The unfair, totally random, inexplicable kind.” Briar bit his lip. “Actually, Coill Darragh—the forest—it kind of… spoke to me? And said, or heavily implied, that it cast the curse on my mum. It said she belonged to it.”

Out loud, it sounded ridiculous. But Rowan had grown up in the shadow of that wood, and he took it seriously. “So it took your mum and my da.”

Briar breathed a mirthless laugh. “Aren’t we a tragic pair?” He had no concrete answers after this conversation, but at least he had more information.

Rowan sat next to him at the breakfast bar. “What was she like? Your mum.”

A wistful smile crossed Briar’s face. “Brilliant. She was an empath, so she kind of knew my feelings before I did.”

“She sounds like quite the woman.”

“She was.”

“You miss her?”

Briar did. Now they’d made the topic comfortable, he found himself telling Rowan stories about her. The elaborate scavenger hunts for birthdays to compensate for having so little money for gifts. How she taught him to walk in heels. How she’d given a homophobic priest what-for when he’d alienated Briar from the church.

Though he didn’t say these out loud, he found himself drifting into memories about her last moments, too. Wasting away in a hospice bed and telling him she had no regrets because, even if her life was short, it was good because of him. Briar hadn’t been a believer—not since the homophobic priest—but in that moment, he clung to faith because his mother spoke about graduations, weddings, the joy in his future that she was sorry she’d miss. He’d needed to believe in an afterlife from which she could watch. If there were ghosts, why not this small mercy?

They hadn’t known the curse would pass on to him. That part he didn’t speak of.

Rowan listened, and Briar found that the weight of loss lifted a little when shared between them. With the backs of his knuckles, Rowan reached to touch Briar’s cheek, then hesitated. Twice today, Briar had shrunk away as if Rowan might hit him. He’d harbored unkind thoughts for the townsfolk who’d left Rowan estranged, and now he contributed to that alienation. Unfairly. Rowan was nothing like his father.

Briar leaned into Rowan’s touch, and it still felt dangerous, but not for the same reasons. If Niamh was to be believed, the tender feeling unfurling in his chest was destined for another man. He shouldn’t entertain his fluttering heart.

But at the blooming relief on Rowan’s face, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.

Rowan’s hand opened, tentatively cupping Briar’s cheek in his palm. It sent a lance of heat through Briar’s chest. Not just the touch—gentle in spite of Rowan’s size—but the way Rowan looked at him. Like Briar could tell him every dark secret he possessed, and Rowan would carry on looking at him just like that.

“You’d be welcome at our church. If you wanted to come.”

“I…” The prophecy loomed over him. This had not been part of it. Rowan was not a cold-hearted masked man. Attending church with him toed a line Briar was afraid to cross. “I’ll think about it.”

Rowan dropped his hand. “Of course.”

Briar finished his tea. He should get going, but the longer he stayed, the less he wanted to leave. “Thank you for letting me at your garden. If you want, I could pay for—”

“Go ’way, you’re grand.”

Something tightened in Briar’s chest. There was a lot more he wished he could give Rowan. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Rowan touched the scarf around his neck. “You already have.”

“You know that’s not worth half as much.”

Rowan considered. Reaching up, he flicked Briar’s hair. “You can teach me how to plait. Ciara wants one like yours.”

Briar’s heart trilled. He knew this, too, toed a line, but he couldn’t bring himself to deny Rowan this small thing. He hoisted himself onto the breakfast bar and shuffled closer. He ran a finger through the longer hair along Rowan’s parting, white at the temple where his scar touched. Rowan froze.

“I can start with yours.”

“It’s a bit short”

“It’s long enough for a small one.”

The height of the bar allowed Briar to comb his fingers through Rowan’s hair without reaching or standing on tiptoe. At first, Rowan sat stiffly. Back straight, shoulders set. Briar separated out three sections at his hairline. A barely perceptible lean backward, and Rowan brushed Briar’s knees. He tipped his head. His chest slowly deflated as if after a long-held breath.

Briar took his time, plaiting from temple to crown. This wasn’t teaching; Rowan couldn’t see what he was doing, much less replicate it. Briar’s fingers tingled where they touched the scar. For over a decade, for most of Rowan’s adult life, he’d borne that mark. Aside from his family, no one went near him. He barely moved, made hardly a sound, but he seemed to Briar like a flower turning toward the sun one tiny, trivial measure at a time. Starved for contact and unable to fully disguise it.

Long after he’d finished the plait, Briar let his hands linger. When he could delay no longer, he touched Rowan’s shoulder and said, “Done.”

Rowan turned on the stool, looking up at Briar. It was a change from their usual height disparity. “Does it look all right?”

“Very dashing.” Briar tucked in a bit of hair that stuck up out of it. As he did, he trailed his fingers behind the shell of Rowan’s ear, watching his skin break out in goose bumps. The coffee brown of Rowan’s eyes darkened. His pulse fluttered in his throat, visible and touchable under Briar’s palm as he did what he’d told himself he wouldn’t. He pulled Rowan closer, bent down like he was irresistibly falling, and touched their lips together.

Rowan stayed statuesque and shocked. Then he came alive. He tilted his head to kiss harder, his beard pleasantly tickling Briar’s chin, his lips a soft contrast. Blood sang in Briar’s ears. His skin tingled. Rowan paused to breathe, a silent question in the press of his forehead against Briar’s. Is this still allowed?

And Briar couldn’t deny him. Didn’t want to.

Big hands wrapped around Briar’s calves and slid up to the hinge of his knee, tugging him until he sat on the very edge of the breakfast bar. Then the rest of the way off it. Briar let himself fall, weight sinking into Rowan’s lap. He glimpsed ruddy cheeks and the huffed breath of impatient yearning before Rowan kissed him again. Tongue parting Briar’s lips to taste him. Shyness seeping away to leave room for bold hands grasping Briar’s hips. Rowan only stopped kissing him for the brief seconds it took to drag in a lungful of air. Breathless, starving, hot-blooded.

And that did things to Briar. Turned his limbs soft and his cock hard at once. Not just the kiss, but the way Rowan held him like he and all his baggage weighed nothing. His thoughts spiraled, but he latched on to one.

“We shouldn’t.” The words broke the kiss, spoken into Rowan’s lips.

Rowan’s eyelashes fluttered. “Shouldn’t?”

His thumbs, hiked under the hem of Briar’s shirt, stamped two burning marks into Briar’s hips. Quotation marks bracketing the scream of his growing arousal. With the pulse of those thumbs pounding through Briar’s skin, it was difficult to say what he had to.

“No.” Awkwardly, he slid out of Rowan’s lap. It was only a kiss, but at the same time…

No kiss was like that one.

Rowan looked just as flustered, blinking to catch up with Briar. “Did I—?”

“No, that was—good. Great. I just can’t because—” Magic bound his tongue. It choked him, robbed his voice of words. It had all happened so quickly. Vatii had said nothing, but she now fixed him with a chastising look. How was he meant to explain? The prophecy couldn’t be spoken out loud.

“I’m only here for a year,” Briar settled on. “Then I’m going to Pentawynn. To be a fashion designer. It’s been my dream since I was little, and my mum wanted it for me, and I don’t want to string you along or—”

“It’s all right, Briar.” Rowan’s tongue traced his lower lip. “I understand.”

And it sounded like he did.

But he also sounded stung.