A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe #1)

CHAPTER 12

T he last week of November, Briar did little more than work.

Many of the additions to Linden’s project were things he’d never done before. He practiced applying piping with fabric scraps and tried not to blow a blood vessel when it came to doing the garment itself. By virtue of online tutorials and prayers, he managed. He’d never been able to afford formal classes, so he subsisted on self-teaching for every new technique.

It needed taking in, which meant Linden had to try it on.

Briar went next door, but Linden wasn’t in, so he left a note and returned to fuss over the outfit. Though not a stray thread needed trimming, though he’d hemmed it perfectly, nervousness overtook him. He’d sunk all his time and resources into this in the hope it promised the best return, but if Linden disapproved…

He had no other way to make money. He’d go bankrupt. He wouldn’t be able to create anything new, his business would fold, and in the end, he would die having accomplished nothing.

After downing a supper he barely tasted, he decided the best thing would be a distraction and a pint. Plus, he still needed to ask Maebh about the invaders. He donned his cloak and headed out the door, nearly colliding with Linden standing just outside it.

“Briar! I hoped I hadn’t missed you. I received your message.” Linden held a broomstick of white poplar and looked resplendent in a stormy gray traveling cloak. Atticus wasn’t with him.

“I was on my way to the pub, but if you wanted to come in?”

“That would be lovely.”

Briar stepped aside. Delight at seeing Linden gave way to indecision. It would only be polite to offer tea, and his flat was a state. Moreover, he worried the dinginess of his home might have a sobering effect on the clothes. His designs seemed far more likely to succeed in the splendor of Linden’s enchanted rooms.

“I finished our project. I could make us some tea while you try it on, or—?”

“I’m very excited to see it. Lead the way.”

No luck that he would offer to host. So Briar took him up the wobbly staircase and into the kitchen, kept serviceably tidy. The rest looked as though a fabric bomb had exploded. Colorful off-cuts lay shredded around the feet of the table. Half-constructed garments hung over the backs of chairs. Briar hastily cleared a space on one for Linden, piling it all on his unmade bed. As he turned, he caught the unsettled look Linden cast around the room before smothering it with a placid smile.

“I’m sorry it’s such a mess. I’ve been so busy—”

“It’s not a problem, I assure you. I called on you unexpectedly.”

Briar felt out of his depth, wading chest deep into a world of etiquette to which he’d never been privy. He made tea, hoping his mother’s methods weren’t gauche in Linden’s land of crystal decanters and bone china.

Linden didn’t sit. Instead, he strode to the mirror, where the outfit hung.

Briar steeled himself. “Do you like it?”

“It’s stunning. May I try it on?”

Briar thought about the mushrooms growing in his bathroom. He hadn’t found an effective way to combat the damp, and they made good tithes, so he’d sort of… let them propagate. “I’ll leave to let you dress. Just let me know when you’re done.”

While the kettle boiled, Briar closed himself in the stairwell. Vatii waited with him.

“Well. This is less than ideal,” she grumbled.

“He said it was stunning. That’s encouraging.”

Another thought occurred to him. Linden might remove the talisman to change. Would he put it back on, or would Briar finally see a hint of the man behind it?

Linden summoned him back. He looked in the mirror, smoothing his hands over the fabric of the vest, fingers tracing the filigree, the gold embroidery of the collar. Briar held his breath. Linden looked beautiful, his dark hair in a knot at his nape, loose strands framing his face. Even without taking in, the garments fit him well, the billowing white sleeves a stark contrast to the crisp lines of the vest. But as Briar got closer, no whiff of an aura greeted him. Beneath the vest, he could just make out the lump of the talisman.

Trying not to let his disappointment show, Briar said, “Hopefully this doesn’t come across as sucking my own dick, but you look incredible.”

Linden coughed a laugh. “Quite a colorful way to put it. Thank you, though. I must say, you have a unique talent for this.”

“I had a good teacher,” Briar said. At Linden’s quirked brow, he elaborated. “My mum taught me the basics. I picked up the rest from your tutorial videos. If you trust me with pins, I’d like to take the vest in a bit?”

Linden put it on inside out while Briar pinned the waist. This close, he should have drowned in Linden’s aura. Instead, he only felt the tickle of the enchantment he’d imbued the clothes with. A simple fragrance to enhance Linden’s charisma. Briar undid the zip, and the vest cracked apart like beetle wings, the thinner fabric of the white shirt beneath sheer enough to see the talisman. It should have felt intimate, but his lack of aura unsettled Briar.

He left again so Linden could change. Upon his return, Linden had crossed the room to the window and stood with a finger along the branch of Briar’s broom. It still sat in its pot, though the elixir had long since gone stale, magic drained. Linden held his own broom in hand, its bark a pearly white.

“I didn’t know you flew.”

Briar couldn’t blame him for the tone of surprise. The broom was the most valuable thing he owned. “It’s been in the family a long time.”

Linden’s delicate brow arched. “What do you say to a flight around Coill Darragh with me?”

Briar’s head ached after the enchantments used on Linden’s clothes, but the offer gave him a jolt of energy. “Yes!”

He fastened his cloak and locked up the shop, fingers shaking a little from excitement. Vatii stayed in to nap. In the street, Linden swept a leg over his broom and floated a foot above the ground. A few people stopped to stare, one girl raising her phone to take a photo. She frowned at her screen.

So the talisman did affect recordings of Linden. Though, evidently not when he recorded himself.

“Ready?” Linden said.

Briar prayed his broom behaved. He got on, and the magic in the branch wove through him in a warm, airy current. Lifting their feet, they took off. The night sky bowed to meet them, a sea of stars and twilight. Linden flew with weightless grace, as if buoyed through the air not by his broom but by magic all his own.

“I will have to think of an appropriate event to wear your piece. It will no doubt attract attention,” he said.

Briar’s heart soared with them. Linden Fairchild, wearing something of his to a public event where cameras and other celebrities would ask, Who are you wearing?

“I’m glad you like it,” Briar said. “Is work going well with your new business?”

“It is… challenging,” Linden responded delicately.

“Oh.” Briar had a litany of questions he didn’t feel familiar enough with Linden to ask. Why he’d chosen to return to magical remedies, or if his healing abilities had made any reappearance. Selfishly, part of Briar wondered about the latter because his aching head reminded him that, short of a miracle, his time was running out.

At a loss, he asked, “Is there any way I can help?”

“Kind of you to offer, but this is a challenge I must undertake on my own.”

Briar understood that at least. He’d felt the same in coming to Coill Darragh with nothing. “Can I ask, why did you return to medicine?”

Linden shot him a cool, assessing look. “I… I’ll not find anything we speak of in a gossip column?”

“Is that why you’re always wearing that talisman? To keep paparazzi at bay?”

“It protects against more than unwanted photography, but yes.”

“More?”

“Curses,” Linden said. His eyes scanned the forest, its magic slithering in the air like a heat mirage. Though their flight path remained over fields and rooftops, Briar’s broom lilted toward the wood, as though yearning to return to its brethren.

Linden said, “You feel it too, don’t you? It’s only a forest, yet it hates us. I can’t comprehend that people spend their lifetime living in its shadow. Few witches, though. I think it would curse us all if it could.”

Did Linden know about Briar’s curse, or had the conversation turned by coincidence? “Why did you come here, then?”

“Ah, several reasons,” Linden said. “Something about the wood compels me. Wild magic is rare these days. Most natural places have been polluted by mankind, stripped for tithes by witches. Coill Darragh’s is one of the last remaining. Possibly the oldest. So much of its power remains mysterious. It’s why I’ve come—to study it. To see if, perhaps, there are healing secrets yet to be learned from the sources of magic themselves.”

Briar considered telling Linden that the forest had cursed him. Perhaps he would know more. Perhaps he could find a way to heal that . The possibilities spun in Briar’s head in dizzying circles.

“You know so much about these things. You must really love it.”

“I admit, I do it mostly to fulfill my parents’ wishes for me.” A wave of disappointment came over Briar that he barely disguised. Linden’s expression pinched. “I hope you won’t judge me too harshly. I admire the art of medicine. I always hoped I would develop a passion for it, but since my talents fled me, I…” Slender, long-fingered hands tightened around the handle of his broom. “Never mind.”

“Do you think you’ll go back to fashion after?”

“I don’t know. I believe my course was set long ago. My best hope is that I succeed at it and can perhaps pursue what I love as leisure instead.”

It didn’t sound so bad to Briar, whose leisure so far had involved a hike into woods that nearly killed him, and even that had been for work purposes. Aside from Saor ó Eagla, he’d had little time for himself. Linde looked serene, but beneath that, a little sad.

Briar tried to lighten the mood. “Well, I’m not going to complain. Let’s be honest, I’d probably have sunk if I’d been in direct competition with you.”

That sparked a genuine smile. “I do appreciate your candor with me. Most people only speak to me because they want something. It isn’t often I can speak freely. You’re quite… disarming.”

Briar’s feelings clashed. A flutter of flattery mixed with a sinking guilt. Had he done that? Approached Linden solely to establish his own success? He hadn’t meant to. He’d looked up to Linden for so long and appreciated his talent. Linden inspired him. He’d wanted to be his peer, his friend. Maybe more.

Had he only wanted that for personal gain? He didn’t think so, but Linden’s words worried him. “I’m sorry. That must be lonely.”

Linden waved it off. “The truth is, I often fly because I like being alone. Curiously, your company seems to be an exception.”

That sounded flirtatious, and yet Briar couldn’t find the words to flirt back. Perhaps because Linden still felt distant and untouchable. Because he was rich and Briar was poor. Because, if this was “speaking freely,” he wondered what Linden was like completely closed off. And mostly because his lack of aura made Briar edgy. Like he’d never truly know the man.

“I try my best to be exceptional.”

Linden said, “By any measure, I’d say you are that and more, Briar Wyngrave.”

The Swan and Cygnet smelled of cider and mince pies. After his evening with Linden, Briar had decided there was still time to talk to Maebh.

A number of people crowded around tables, but few lingered at the bar, where Aisling washed an already-clean glass, moving in a perfunctory trance. From her puffy red eyes and despondent expression, she appeared to have been crying.

Maebh caught Briar’s eye and came to greet him. “Briar, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? How’re you getting on?” Powdered sugar dusted her fingers and mince smeared her apron. The first occasion they’d met, she’d been cross with him. The second, far warmer. On this third, it was as if he were an old family member.

“Good, good. And you?”

“Ah sure, I can’t complain. Can I get you a mince pie?”

“If there’s one going.”

She disappeared and reappeared with a tray and jug. Briar was used to shoveling cold mince pies into his cheeks like a squirrel without bothering to warm them. Maebh presented him with a plate of fresh pies and a dollop of custard. The last time Briar enjoyed them like this, it had been with his mother at Christmas dinner. The recollection felt a touch bittersweet.

Maebh asked after his shop and how it was doing. Even mentioned she’d been meaning to ask for a scarf like Rowan’s, now it had gotten colder. The fresh mince pies tasted so good, he burned his tongue in his eagerness to eat them.

He asked what had Aisling so down. Maebh cast a furtive glance toward her barmaid and sighed. “Her man Kenneth’s done a runner, hasn’t he? Got cold feet, I imagine. Bless her. I told her to take time off, but she insisted on the distraction.”

Shocked, Briar looked over Maebh’s shoulder at Aisling. Upon closer inspection, she no longer wore the engagement ring. With a pang of sympathy, he made a mental note to prepare a heartbreak tonic for her.

It seemed a shame to bring down the mood with his prying questions, but he couldn’t put it off longer.

“Maebh, I have a question for you. It’s about a witch who lived in my flat.”

He explained about Gretchen. Maebh took the news that he lived with a ghost in stride. That it was the ghost of her late husband’s apprentice didn’t faze her either.

“She disappeared, didn’t she?” Maebh said. “I remember her. Dark hair, glasses. Didn’t leave the house much. I contacted her relatives back then, to see if she’d gone home. Terrible thing. Seemed she was quite estranged from most. Very work focused.”

Briar didn’t want to accuse her late husband of murder, but he had to point it out. “You don’t think she might have died when the wards went up?” Maebh raised her eyebrows. “I see you’ve been learning our local history.

No, éibhear could be an eejit. God knows I had words with him countless times about how he treated our own. Rowan in particular. But he’d never let that girl come to harm. Matter of fact, I remember him making her a wardstone bracelet like the ones Niamh makes for tourist folk. Made it the day before he died, after effing and blinding that he’d misplaced his journal and accusing me of rearranging his office, as if I’d touch it!”

Briar grasped at the threads of information. “Do you remember anything else? Who were the invaders?”

Maebh frowned. Usually unflappable, she looked quite flapped. “Never found out, did we? Died when the wards went up, thanks be to God. Nothing left of them after.”

“Nothing? No idea even where they came from?”

“I’m sorry, Briar. The woods, the wards, and my husband all took those secrets and buried ’em.” Seeing his disappointment, she said, “I’ll get you another mince pie.”

“Let me at least pay for this one.”

“You’re grand.” She fixed him with a serious look. “I owe you the kindness, anyhow.”

He snorted. “How do you figure?”

“My Rowan,” she said. “He hides it well, sure, but what my fool husband did to him… left him scarred more ways than one, it did. A good husband, éibhear was, but a dreadful father. So obsessed with work and magic. Not a word I said mattered. I says to him, I says, it’s not that you love that girl, Gretchen, but that you show no love to your own children.”

A hollow spot in Briar’s heart hurt. Her words mirrored a grief he knew well, though it took a different form. His mother’s passing had left a void in his life, but for Rowan that void had simply sat empty. Waiting. Even when his father was alive.

“I don’t regret marrying him, you understand,” Maebh said. “Wouldn’t have my Sorcha and Rowan otherwise. But I regret that I left it so long thinking he’d turn a new leaf, only for what happened to happen and, well…” She glanced up at the potion bottles behind the bar, a terrible, weighty melancholy in the taut pull of her mouth.

When she turned back to Briar, her eyes shone with something like relief.

“You see the heart of him, and I’m grateful he has a friend in you. That’s all.”