A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe #1)

CHAPTER 15

M aebh looked up and spotted Briar. “Get Rowan,” she said.

Briar, glad to look away from the horror of the woman’s arm, ran into the night.

The high street through the center of town was the fastest route to Rowan’s cottage, but Briar didn’t have to go that far to find him.

He stood speaking to Sorcha outside her shop with a paper bag in his hand.

Sorcha saw Briar first, waving to him. Rowan turned and started to smile, but he must have seen the fear in Briar’s face because the smile extinguished.

“What happened?”

“The forest. I think it attacked someone.”

Back at the Swan and Cygnet, the patrons had dispersed. Linden’s conjured curtains had vanished, leaving the pub cavernous and empty except for Maebh and the other woman, seated together. The woman had her arm across the table, the vine still carving its way through the gray limb, more alive than the flesh from which it had sprung. Rowan beheld it and went pale.

Maebh pushed a glass of brandy into the woman’s uninjured hand. “All right, Orla. Help is here.”

Sorcha said, “I’ll call Connor. He’s still at the clinic.”

“This will need a different sort of care.”

Briar thought she meant magic, but Maebh’s eyes flicked, not to Briar as the only witch in the room, but to Rowan. Worry shone in her stern gaze. Rowan’s answering stare might have appeared cold to the casual observer, but Briar could see the ashen fear plainly.

Comprehension dawned. To sustain itself, the forest started taking things from us. Limbs, mostly .

Whatever had afflicted the people of Coill Darragh ten years ago, it had returned.

Only now, éibhear was dead, his responsibilities passed down to Rowan. This attack was within his domain to fix. Rowan took a step toward Orla, but she shied away from him. Maebh’s expression hardened.

“Don’t be a tit, Orla. Let him see it.”

Maebh ushered Rowan closer. Shivers walked up Briar’s spine as Rowan set a hand gingerly upon the thorny branch, another upon the desiccated arm. The wild magic of the wood reared up at his touch, making the air in the pub smell like ozone.

To Orla, Maebh said, “Have another sip of brandy.” To Rowan, she said, “You saw what your da did when this happened last. You’ll have to do the same to break the forest’s hold.”

Orla gulped the brandy. “Do it.”

Rowan snapped the branch.

It didn’t splinter like wood, it snapped like bone. Orla let out an ear-splitting howl. Something dark that could have been blood or sap spurted from the branch’s broken end. Briar’s stomach twisted, everything he’d drunk threatening to reappear. With the branch broken, the remains of it crumbled, sloughing apart like dead skin.

Rowan murmured “I’m sorry,” but the screams drowned it out.

Though the threat of being sick persisted, Briar stepped forward. “I can cast something to ease the pain.”

He hadn’t brought his pouches or tithe belt, but Rowan knew what he meant and inclined his head. “If you’re sure.”

Everyone under this roof would have known éibhear, who used flesh tithes liberally. Briar felt less wary pulling charcoal out to draw arrowheads on his outstretched arm. Orla whimpered, bowed over by waves of agony. She shuddered at the touch of Briar’s fingers, but slowly the tension loosened in her bunched shoulders as the magic seeped through him into her. It took its time, slow to answer his call, dredged up from the bottom of his waning well. His pounding head reached a splitting ache, but he imagined it did not compare with what Orla had just endured.

While they waited for Connor to arrive, Maebh pulled Rowan aside to speak. Sorcha took one look at Briar and told him to get some air. Gratefully, he went, and as he left, Orla called out a thank-you.

The cold air helped relieve Briar’s nausea, but he could still hear an echo of the branch breaking. It rang out in his head, along with Orla’s awful scream. He didn’t have long to contemplate it. Sorcha stepped out to join him, crossing her arms against the December night.

“Feeling better?”

He sidestepped the question. “What was that?”

Like her family, Sorcha had something of the forest in her manner. Strong and unwavering, but at this question she looked weary. “Someone took something from the forest. So it took something back.”

Briar remembered the sickened tree extending an olive branch, only it was a branch of lichen polyps. He had given something back, hadn’t he? It had been months ago. If he’d taken more than his due, the forest would have lashed out then, not now. Still, the fear that he shared the blame stuck. “Who took something? What did they take?”

“It will fall to Rowan to find out, and he isn’t prepared. Our father—” Sorcha bit down hard on her lip. Her chin dimpled like she barely held grief at bay.

“I’m sorry,” Briar said. “You must miss him.”

“No. It’s been a long time. It’s my brother I’m afraid for. If the forest is taking bits of us, piece by piece, like it did before… He’s marked by it, Rowan. If things get worse, it will call on him like it did Da, I know it. And it’s my fault, ’cause I wanted no part in it. Refused to take up Da’s mantle, so it fell to Rowan instead.”

Briar’s jaw ground so tightly he couldn’t open it to speak. The image of éibhear engulfed in tree roots played out in his mind with one nightmarish change: instead of éibhear, it was Rowan the forest devoured. The very thought made a muscle in his shoulder seize, and he twitched with it, Vatii hopping and hovering in the air as the movement startled her. She settled back down with a look of concern.

“I won’t let that happen,” Briar said.

With a watery smile, Sorcha elbowed him. “I’m glad he has you looking out for him.”

Briar wished he felt worthy of her words. Truthfully, he feared he’d played a part in all this. His evening with Linden had cost him savings he could have used to call on Niamh and ask for guidance. But he hadn’t known. At the time, he’d wanted to speak to her about events of the past, not present ones threatening Rowan’s life.

Rowan finally emerged, face wan and shaky. Briar volunteered to walk them both home. They stopped at Sorcha’s house first, where she gave her brother a hug and made him promise to call her tomorrow.

They walked in silence after. Some color returned to Rowan’s face, but his hands still shook. It was dark and the streets were deserted. Briar snuck his hand into Rowan’s and held it all the way to the cottage.

At the door, Rowan turned with a look of awkward trepidation on his face. “You can come in. Don’t know if I’ll be good company, but—”

Briar understood. “We’re friends first. I could make you a cup of tea.”

In the kitchen, he turned on the gas lantern and gathered mugs, putting two bags of chamomile in each. Though the kitchen wasn’t his, the motions felt as habitual and automated as they did at home.

Rowan hovered next to him, accepted his mug, and led them back to the living room, where he sank into the sofa. Briar curled up beside him, their knees just barely touching. Rowan’s hands dwarfed his mug, and Briar thought about the gentleness he knew the man for, how profane it seemed to ask those hands to do what they’d done tonight, even if it had been to help someone. Wordlessly, Rowan dropped one hand to his knee, palm up in invitation. It was a relief to be asked for comfort instead of guessing at what kind was welcome. Briar set his tea on the coffee table, shuffled closer, and twined his hand through Rowan’s. He dropped his head against Rowan’s shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

Rowan said, “I am now, yeah.”

“I have to tell you something.” Through his guilt, Briar recounted the events that had led him into the forest and the bargain he’d made with the tree. He showed Rowan the mark on his arm and asked the question that plagued him. “Do you think all this could be my fault?”

“No, Briar.” Rowan’s tone was resolute. Fond. “You’ve nothing to do with it. Though it wasn’t your brightest idea, making bargains with trees, you’d have to take more than a branch to anger the wood like that.”

Briar wasn’t so sure. If his presence by Rowan’s side subverted a preordained destiny, could that throw off the balance of magic in Coill Darragh? Though he couldn’t know for certain, something about the possibility niggled at his instincts. It felt true.

He needed to ask Niamh. He considered asking Rowan or his family for help with the cost of the orchid pollen, but it would be graceless to ask for money after everything they’d already done for him. No. He’d take on extra Christmas commissions to cover the cost. Besides, he’d promised Gretchen he’d look into this. He didn’t want to let her down.

“Should we go investigate it, then? See what’s hurting it?” he asked.

Rowan looked uneasy. He touched the spot on his chest where his scar started. “I’d prefer to leave that as a last resort, if you take my meaning.”

“You think it would hurt us?”

“If it had to.”

Briar looked up into Rowan’s worried eyes. “How do you know?”

Rowan’s gaze turned inward. “Just instinct, I suppose.”

Briar supposed he understood. A similar intuition was coalescing inside him, too. Telling him he really ought not be here.

Rowan yawned, tipping his head to lean against Briar’s.

Briar said, “I can stay the night or head home after—”

“Stay.”

So Briar, ignoring his instincts, stayed.

In the week that followed, Rowan got pulled into town meetings to discuss what could be done about the attack on Orla. These, he lamented, went nowhere, because it was a forest and could not be reasoned with. This much he conveyed when he could see Briar for lunch, which was less often than they liked. Briar pulled all-nighters, rushing through commissions and working on designs for Linden.

The first proper evening he had to relax was a Saturday. He went to Rowan’s cottage, intent on being wined, dined, and rolled into bed. Instead, it pissed rain on his walk so that he arrived half-drowned and shivering like a small dog.

At the sight of him, Rowan couldn’t contain his laughter. “C’mere to me and we’ll dry you off.” Rowan, in his pajama bottoms and oversized—even for him—jumper, could not have looked cozier.

So Briar stripped out of his clothes and exacted vengeance. Without warning, he crawled under Rowan’s jumper to leech his body heat. Vatii flicked off her wings, showering him in rainwater for good measure. Rowan didn’t so much as shudder at the touch of Briar’s cold hands, just gathered him up and went to the sofa, unzipping the hood of his jumper enough so that Briar could poke his head through.

“How’s your ghost been?” Rowan asked.

Briar hadn’t seen Gretchen very much, and she was often irritated with him when she did appear. But a fire in the hearth crackled and spat over a new log, giving off radiant heat, and Rowan himself was a campfire. It was difficult to worry about Gretchen. Briar’s shivers abated, but he didn’t extract himself from Rowan’s jumper. He couldn’t help but steep in it. The hearth’s smoky smell mixed with the shepherd’s pie baking in the oven, all warm, earthy herbs and braised meat. Rowan’s rich voice in his ear as they murmured in conversation about their days, their jobs. The silky comfort of Rowan’s hands wrapped around his lower back.

He’d never had anything like this. He warred with himself over how badly it scared him, and how much he didn’t want to let it go. Nothing so solid or comfortable had ever lasted in Briar’s life, and this was no different. Destiny called. A city across the channel sea awaited him. And his time kept slipping through his fingers, like the magic he struggled to call upon with every spell and enchantment cast.

“I’m going to make tea. Want any?”

Rowan smirked. “Shall I get you some clothes?”

“Please.”

In the kitchen, Briar put the kettle on. Vatii perched on the bread box, assessing his actions with beady scrutiny.

“This is all very domestic,” she said.

“I know.”

“You said it was just sex.”

Briar sighed. “I know.” He couldn’t carry on like this. Waiting for the kettle to boil, he held up his hand and found it trembling.

A whiskery kiss tickled the nape of his neck, and Rowan’s hand twined with his shaking one. “Still cold? I brought you a jumper. Won’t fit, but—”

Briar turned in the circle of Rowan’s arms. “I’ve got another idea to warm me up.”

Rowan blushed and looked askance at the magpie on his bread box. “Oh. Ehm, excuse us a minute, Vatii.”

The tea and the jumper they abandoned in the kitchen, but they didn’t make it to the bedroom, instead stretching out on the fur throw in front of the fireplace. Briar went from soaked in rain to soaked in sweat. To his horror, a beep went off from the kitchen, and Rowan—quite close to bringing Briar satisfaction so deep he got the bends—rudely stopped all activity to get up and take the pie out of the oven. Briar whined the whole time about the injustice of it all, sprawled on the fur rug, legs and arms akimbo. Evidently, this was a sight and sound so funny it had Rowan doubled over laughing upon his return. Then he doubled over Briar’s body, picking up exactly where they left off.

They showered together, ate dinner together, then fell soundly asleep together—though slumber didn’t last long.

Briar startled awake at an aborted shout from Rowan. Even in the dark, he could see Rowan’s eyes were closed, violent shivers wracking his body, his scar’s aura bleeding wild magic. Briar shook him by the shoulder and found his skin damp with cold sweat. Panic crept in when he didn’t wake. It took several tries, and when Rowan’s eyes did fly open, a milky cataract covered them. It faded as he beheld Briar.

“I think you were having a nightmare,” Briar said. He tried laying a placating hand on his shoulder, but Rowan recoiled and grabbed his chest where the scar started, a flinch of pain twisting his features. “Sorry, did that hurt?”

“It’s fine.” But he said it through clenched teeth.

Briar leaned over the edge of the bed to root through his discarded clothes. He fished charcoal from the pockets and started drawing. He’d run out of room on his right arm. The runes covered his shoulder too. He drew one on his collarbone, craning his neck to see.

Rowan said something. It might have been “You don’t have to.”

“Shh.”

Briar completed the line of arrowheads and placed his hand over Rowan’s scar. Just as he had with Orla, he drew upon the tithe, letting the healing magic flow through them. Only “flow” was no longer the right word. It dripped and dredged as though sucked through a straw when there was little at the bottom to drink. He felt cold and hot at once. One day, he would reach into his magic well and find it empty, but it should not be so soon. He could think of a few reasons it might be exacerbated. His proximity to the wood, or his proximity to Rowan, who seemed less and less like the man from his prophecy by the day.

The spell worked its magic, Rowan relaxing a degree at a time. His breathing evened. Tithe spent, Briar felt woozy himself. He reclined next to Rowan, propped up on an elbow. This time, when he laid a hand over the scar, Rowan didn’t flinch. The deep furrow in his brow smoothed, and he gazed back at Briar.

“You do me a lot of good.”

There was such a deep affection in his eyes that Briar almost looked away. If he’d been present enough, he’d have known that moment for what it was. There was nothing casual about the way they looked at one another.

“Can I do anything to help?” Briar said.

Rowan squeezed his hand. “You already are.”

“Not enough. Not to be overdramatic, but I’d rather the forest didn’t eat you.” Briar leaned closer. Though dark, he could still make out the fine tracery of Rowan’s scar, like fronds of frost curling up one side of his face, thin and fractal. “Your dad didn’t warn you about this?” He traced the lace over Rowan’s cheek.

“No. Nothing.” He winced. “I tried to make magic. Spells. Tea was the best potion I could manage.”

“You make good tea.”

Rowan’s expression was pained. “Not to Da. It’s not enough. That’s what he’d say.”

Briar’s heart broke. He turned Rowan to face him, hands on his cheeks. “You, Rowan, are so much more than enough .”

Rowan’s eyes went bright in the dark before he closed them and leaned in to kiss Briar. Soft and grateful, opening his mouth to drink Briar in. Briar gave in to it, pressing close, crushed in the warm fold of Rowan’s arms. And he wished it didn’t scare him so much, how their kisses filled the empty places inside him. Knowing it couldn’t last.

Nothing like this ever did.

When they pulled apart, he traced the path of the scar where it turned Rowan’s chest hair white. “I wish your dad had given you anything else to go on. Or just been kinder. Did he even say goodbye?”

“In a way. Only, I didn’t know it was goodbye at the time.” While Rowan’s other scars seemed worn smooth with time, this one had jagged edges, roughening his tone. “He told me, ‘I’m sorry, but you won’t always be alone. Have courage.’ That’s all.”

Rowan looked raw, crushed, and Briar thought he knew why. You won’t always be alone. But for ten years, aside from his family, no one had worked past the barrier that scar left. It sounded like éibhear had known what would become of Rowan after his sacrifice, and he’d gone through with it anyway.

When Briar had been young and learning the ways of men, suppressing feelings and squashing them all into angry shapes, his mother had noticed. It had been his twelfth birthday, and he’d opened a card from his father. Only, it wasn’t actually from his father. He’d seen this card already in the grocery shopping, where his mum had forgotten she’d hidden it. He realized then she’d forged them all. Likely in the hope that if his father ever decided he wanted a part in Briar’s life, they would have some small connection to start.

Briar had tried to hide how angry he was, but she knew. She’d wrung the feelings from him like soiled water from a sponge. She hadn’t tried to tell him that, as his mother, she knew best; she admitted it was a mistake and held him through the wash of emotion he failed to tamp down.

Briar did the same with Rowan now, drawing him close. Rowan rolled willingly into the embrace, snuggled under Briar’s chin, their disparate sizes made inconsequential when lying down. Briar kissed his temple. He wanted to say, You’ll never be alone again. But like his mother’s ill-advised cards, it wasn’t something he could promise. His future, even foretold by a Seer, felt too cloudy.

Words whispered against his neck. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t have to accept.”

A snort. “You haven’t told me what it is yet.”

“Ehm. Christmas. Have you got plans?”

Briar thought about his mother saving up for a turkey and how, for two years, he had missed those turkeys. And her. “Not unless you count sewing and cold sandwiches with my dead flatmate.”

“Then you’re invited to dinner with me and mine.”

Briar said, “I wouldn’t want to impose—”

“Could feed the town with what we cook. It’s no imposition.”

“It wouldn’t be weird?”

Taking his meaning, Rowan said, “I’d tell them we’re only friends.” He tucked a strand of hair behind Briar’s ear. “I’d love for you to come.”

It felt dangerously intimate, sharing a holiday meal with Rowan’s entire family. Especially with the way Briar’s heart fluttered. Especially with the way Rowan looked at him now. He could see the courage it had taken to ask wrought in the deep quotation mark between Rowan’s brows. The hope, too. Open longing thrummed like a thread of tangible magic between them, and Briar knew it was tempting fate to give in to it.

He said, “Yes.”

Ill-advised decisions aside, it gave Briar something to look forward to while the holiday season left him inundated with orders. He scraped hours out of mealtimes and sleep with the most ancient of enchanted potions: coffee. He used up his charmed candles for enhancing mental acuity and began using flesh tithes when desperate, but he oftentimes wondered if this only exchanged one type of exhaustion for another.

Rowan’s visits were his only respite. He came, sometimes only for five minutes, but always bearing food. On one such afternoon, Briar had been working behind the counter on a gift for Rowan and, in a fatigued melt-down, told him he was spoiling Christmas.

“You’re knackered,” Rowan said. “I don’t want you to make me anything.”

“Too late,” said Briar. “You’ve ruined the surprise.”

“I didn’t see a thing.” A lie.

“You’d better act surprised.”

A few days before Christmas Eve, Briar hadn’t slept in two days aside from an hour-long nap when a tremor started in his left hand. He stopped sewing and flexed his fingers. He told himself the trembling was from the coffee, but as he began pushing linen through the machine, his arm gave a sudden jerk. Pencils and a case of beads spilled off the edge of the desk. The motion tugged the fabric askew, the stitch bunching into a messy clog in the machine.

Vatii squawked, “Are you all right?”

“I’m—”

He gagged on the words. His shoulder jerked. Electric white light crowded his vision and blotted out the world one shock at a time, and then he fell from his chair. He felt the impact of his head on wood, the ringing afterward like a television set to a vacant channel. He was vaguely aware of Vatii flapping above him, begging him to come around.

He lost consciousness to her shrieks of alarm.

When he came to, the acrid taste of milk thistle elixir soured his tongue. Vatii perched on his chest, chattering low in her throat. Looking to his left, he nearly jumped. Huge blue moons peered down at him. Atticus, his white fur aglow in the lamplight, got up and bounded off the bed, giving Briar full view of his room. The floor was a chaotic sprawl of things Briar had torn down with him when he fell. Beads glittered like tiny jewels, trapped in the cracks of the floorboards, winking from under the dresser.

In the desk chair, hands steepled before him, face a wan mask, was Linden. His expression held a confusing glut of emotion. Troubled, disturbed, guilty, concerned. On the desk beside him, a vial of Briar’s regular potions sat empty except for a few drops at the bottom.

Vatii said, “I screamed until Atticus heard me. They were the closest ones who could help. Gretchen tried, but she couldn’t pick anything up.”

Briar had the most ungrateful thought. He wished it had been Rowan he’d awoken to.

“You never told me you’ve been cursed,” Linden said.

Briar tried for levity. “Don’t take it personally. I don’t tell anyone.”

“I told you I was working on a curse cure, and you didn’t think to mention your own? Did you know about my work prior to our meeting?”

Even foggy as he was, Briar recognized the barbed accusation. “You think I’ve been spying on you.”

“Are you insinuating it’s only a coincidence? My work was prompted by the emergence of Bowen’s Wane specifically, and you so happen to have it.”

Briar swallowed, head still reeling. “I didn’t know. Linden, I promise you, I had no idea.”

Linden stood up. He paced, heedless of the beads sent skittering away. With a hand, he rubbed at his temples. Briar had never seen him so agitated. After a moment, he stopped and said, “Yes, of course. You must forgive me for finding it all suspect. It’s just that my life has often been dogged by—it doesn’t matter. Perhaps I’m paranoid, flinging such a baseless accusation. What matters most is your health. Are you all right? How far along is it?”

Briar winced. The last time he’d had a blood test, the results came back fine. Less than ideal, but not bad. Yet, what he’d just experienced—a fit, loss of consciousness, violent muscle spasms. These were symptoms his mother had in her last year alive. The thought winched around his throat like a wire. On his chest, Vatii blanketed him with her wings for comfort.

“Not far? I inherited it recently.”

“Inherited.”

A deep breath. “My mother.”

Linden’s face fell further, distraught. Briar might have felt touched if he didn’t feel so sick.

“She died two years ago.”

“And how long have you been performing flesh tithes?”

With a spasm of horror, Briar looked down at himself. In his dazed state, he hadn’t noticed. His shirt, its ties undone, had slipped over one shoulder to reveal the scrawl of tithes creeping across his skin. He startled Vatii off him in his haste to cover it, though it was too late. He held his shirt collar together like a maid protecting her virtue.

Linden huffed and sat on the edge of the bed. He brushed Briar’s hand aside and swept his shirt down enough to expose the marks. If Briar had been smart, he might have started using his legs. Easier to cover those. His sleeve of them, like a tattoo, and a band around his thigh, meant never wearing T-shirts or going to the beach. But he lived in a cold, rainy country with two weeks of decent weather. He’d deemed it a reasonable exchange. Most witch’s clothes involved long sleeves anyway.

He prepared himself for judgment, but Linden’s gaze softened. With a thumb, he touched the arrowheads on Briar’s collar. The ones he’d used to soothe Rowan’s pain.

“You wound me by presuming my question comes from a place of judgment. I ask out of concern for your health. These tithes could be exacerbating the curse.”

To Briar’s embarrassment, tears pricked at his eyes. His doctor had said there was no evidence flesh tithes had negative effects, but then, so little was known about his condition. Linden’s family likely knew all sorts of things he didn’t, with their knowledge of magical medicine. He should never have tithed so much in the past week to keep working. “I didn’t know.”

Linden moved his hand to Briar’s forehead, smoothing back his hair. “How do you feel now?”

“I feel like an idiot.”

Linden gave a surprised laugh. “You are very strange.”

“You aren’t the first to say so.”

“If you’re well enough to joke, then that’s a relief.” Linden stood, straightening his clothes. “I’m going to mix you some more milk thistle elixir. The ones you’ve got aren’t potent enough.”

“You don’t have t—”

“You should also see your doctor.”

Alarm shot through him. “I have too much work. And I have a blood test after Christmas anyway.”

Linden looked at the state of the flat, and Briar’s cheeks heated. After a beat, Linden dispensed a handful of berries from a pouch at his belt. He closed his fist around them, and a flare of magic lit the room. Beads rolled and floated back into their trays. Fabric scraps put themselves in the bin. Dirty mugs flew to the sink, which filled with water and soap. Even the skewed fabric unstitched and righted itself in the machine. As all this happened, Linden went around the room and folded a few half-finished garments over an arm.

An objection rose on Briar’s tongue. Every muscle in his chest clenched, rebelled against the charity. He wanted to prove he deserved a place at Linden’s side as his equal, but looking at all the other half-finished projects, now neatly arranged on the table, he had to admit he couldn’t do it. Not all of it. Ridiculously, he thought of Celyn strutting into his flat to boast about his placement in Pentawynn. Briar had said he would succeed without help. On his own.

Watching Linden gather his work up felt like leaning upon a crutch too tenuous to hold him.

Vatii said, “You need the rest. Let him help.”

Briar knew she was right and hated it. He couldn’t place where this ingrained sense of independence had come from, why it felt so dangerous to need someone else, but it all bruised worse than the phantom pains of his fall.

Linden sat on the edge of the bed again, his blue eyes downcast. Haltingly meeting Briar’s gaze, Linden took his hand and squeezed. “I told you it was a miracle, what my parents asked of me. That it was impossible. I want you to know that I’ve changed my mind.”

Briar couldn’t be sure whether it was the silky touch or the crushed velvet of Linden’s voice, or simply what he was saying, but he froze.

“I promise you,” Linden said, “I will find the formula that rids you of this curse.”