A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe #1)

CHAPTER 24

F riend. Briar kicked himself.

He shouldn’t accept. Vatii’s talons squeezed his shoulder. She sensed the tumultuous emotions Briar harbored and knew the danger in them. He was impulsive, driven by feeling. And Rowan made him feel a lot .

But Rowan looked so hopeful, and he’d already brought the drinks.

Briar said, “Of course.”

Rowan asked about Finola, and Briar explained the importance of her gala. When he shared the news that she’d invited him, Rowan beamed. There was a shard of glass in his smile. There always was, lately. That glass twisted in Briar, too. Pentawynn, a runway of models wearing his clothes, proving his teachers and peers wrong—he’d grabbed it all while wearing stilettos and taboo magic and a dress made from the twisted yarn of his life.

But then there was this. A pub full of people he knew by name. Aisling at the bar. Diarmuid teasing her. Orla, her arm still in a sling, playing a hand of cards at her corner table. He might have only had passing conversations with them, but it felt convivial in a way he’d never known.

And there was Rowan. Making him laugh. Celebrating, gamely, Briar’s success, even if it could take him far away from here.

Abigail came into the pub, too—her ginger hair made her stand out in the crowd—and Briar noticed her making eyes across the room. But if Rowan saw, he had yet to return those looks. A more selfless friend would encourage Rowan to talk to her. Briar couldn’t fault her interest. Rowan was a rarity, soft in all the places the world should have made him jagged, pillar-strong even after relentless isolation. That scar carved a moat around him, and instead of crumbling, he just kept building bridges in the hopes someone might cross.

Briar made himself say, “You know, Abigail’s been batting her eyes at you this whole time.”

“Mm.” Rowan glanced aside.

“You should go talk to her. She seems kind.”

Rowan said, “I know what you’re trying to do, Briar, and I appreciate it. But we both know it wouldn’t be fair to her.”

And if that didn’t turn Briar’s insides to pudding…

“How are you?” Rowan asked.

“Good. Great. Busy,” Briar answered.

“You know what I mean.”

Briar scratched a fingernail down his glass. “I guzzle about two liters of revolting potion a day just to stay standing. Takes me ages just to get out of bed. Other than that, all right.” Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe the gentle look on Rowan’s face, but the rest came out. “Actually, not really. I’m tired. Then I get angry that I’m tired and push myself to work, which only makes me more tired. Sometimes I think—”

He swallowed the rest. He couldn’t tell Rowan how, sometimes, he thought about putting it all aside to live out what little time he had left here. In Coill Darragh. By Rowan’s side. He sometimes questioned if his dreams had been the right ones, or if it was all a waste of precious time. Despite Niamh’s prophecies, his faith that a cure could be found faltered daily.

That option felt a lot like surrender, though, and it would still hurt to die, even in the comfort of Rowan’s arms. Gretchen had pretended her death didn’t matter, but that night on the roof, he’d seen her grief, her regret.

He changed the subject. “What about you?”

“Surviving. Helping Sorcha best I can while she recovers. Sometimes still get…” He shook his head. “Ah, we’ll be grand, won’t we? No need to bring down your celebrations.”

“You mean a countdown to calamity isn’t lifting your spirits? Where’s your medieval humor?”

Rowan snorted. “That would call for more drink or more games.”

Inspired, Briar shoved his glass so that it slid to the other end of the table. He fished in the pocket of his skirt for a coin.

Rowan chuckled. “It has pockets?”

“Yes, I’m not an animal.”

Briar put the coin in Rowan’s hand. “For every one you get in the cup, you’ll add a year to my life, and for every one you miss, you shave off a week—”

Rowan scowled playfully. “Games are meant to be fun.”

“You wanted medieval games. I made one up. Give it a go, at least.”

Rowan humored him and flicked the coin. It spun end over end, flashing. The sloppy clink of it hitting the dregs of Briar’s cider announced his success. Briar cheered and pulled out another coin so he could try. He’d had more to drink and found it difficult to look away from Rowan smiling brightly at him. He tossed the coin.

In retrospect, Briar’s first mistake had been accepting the drink. Drinking more after he’d already had whiskey was the second.

The third mistake was sitting in a semicircle booth. They sat, at first, a small distance apart, but Briar swayed against the curved back as he launched his coin. He lost balance and slid, coming to rest against Rowan’s shoulder, whose aura swaddled Briar in a feeling whiskey could not match. His arm, once along the back of the booth, settled over Briar’s shoulder instead. His hand dangled, loose and relaxed, but it tensed when Briar reached up to thread his fingers with Rowan’s own.

The final mistake was to look up. Rowan’s gaze was steady, curious, assessing. Possibly wondering if Briar had drunk too much. Fuzzy as he felt, Briar knew it was nothing to do with alcohol. He wanted this. He wanted it so badly he ached just looking at Rowan’s soft eyes. Stubble grew on his jaw, but it was far from the magnificent scruff Briar had once loved running his fingers through while kissing.

He hadn’t checked to see if his coin had made it.

“I miss your beard,” Briar said. The ache worsened. “I miss you.”

“I’m here,” said Rowan.

Briar sucked his lips between his teeth. He was so caught in memory, he almost thought he could taste Rowan on them. The gesture affected Rowan. Briar could feel the corded tension in the muscles cushioning his head. If he didn’t sit up now, he was going to reach up and drag Rowan by his unbearded face into a kiss and suffer all the guilt and regret that would cause.

Vatii flicked her tail and said, low in warning, “Briar…”

With arduous willpower, he sat forward. By some miracle, his coin was in the cup alongside Rowan’s. “I’ll get the next round,” he said.

Rowan took a while to speak. “Ah, sure you shouldn’t be heading home?”

“You bought the last. Just one. I’ll be back.” Really, he just needed space. He walked a remarkably straight line to the bar, proving to himself that his actions were his own stupidity and not a result of impairment.

Aisling smiled tightly, still not entirely herself after all the terrible news of Kenneth, though she put on a brave front. “Sure look who it is. What can I get you, Briar?”

“Stout and a cider?”

As she went to fetch glasses, Briar scanned the rows of drinks behind the bar, éibhear’s old potions still lining the topmost shelf. His eyes caught on the one he’d noticed when he first came to the Swan and Cygnet—a steely brew in a twisted bottle. Liquid courage. Only when he’d last seen it, it had been full.

He remembered Rowan, snow in his hair, standing on Briar’s doorstep, breathlessly come to tell him something important.

He looked over to the booth. Rowan was already looking his way. When Briar met his gaze, a shy smile lit his features, a secret shared between them. Briar, helplessly, smiled back.

Two drinks slammed down next to him. He jolted, looking up to find not Aisling, but Maebh standing over him.

“Stop looking at him like that,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Like you love the bones of him.”

He couldn’t answer her fury with anything honest. Vatii’s discomfort manifested in a ruffle of feathers.

Maebh held the drinks still, so when he reached for them he had to wait for her to release the handles. She did and said, “He’s told me to wind my neck in. God knows, I’ve tried. But you hear me right, I cannot watch you play him. He’s not a ride you can hop on and off.”

Briar said, “It’s not—I’m not—” Playing him. He couldn’t say that either.

She glanced toward the booth, where Rowan started to stand. “He’ll give out to me for this. Just know, if you hurt him again, I’ll have your head. And I don’t mean that figuratively. I’ll feed you to the feckin’ woods.”

Briar nodded and took the drinks back.

Rowan grumbled, “I told her not to give you a hard time.”

“No. I deserved it.”

They finished their drinks and headed out. Rowan helped Briar search for Linden, but the distinctive black and white of his ensemble was nowhere to be seen, so Rowan escorted him home. He made an admirable attempt to cheer Briar, but Maebh’s words stuck like slivers under his skin. She was right. He had to do something to rectify the situation, and he knew—prophecies be damned—what the truest, most honest, fairest thing would be.

Tell Linden how he felt. Leave him. Live out the rest of his remaining time with Rowan and hope that, if Linden found a cure, he was benevolent enough to share it. Even with his earnings from the press release, Briar doubted he could afford it.

Or he could cut himself off from Rowan and devote himself wholly to Linden, but with the knowledge it wouldn’t be fair to anyone involved. He’d be doing it for selfish reasons. He had a choice, Niamh had told him, but did he really when his life depended upon the right one?

Briar shivered. His jitters came on partly from his need for another draft of potion, and partly because the night had gotten colder, and he hadn’t made a jacket to go with his dress. Rowan stopped to sweep his wool cloak off, wrapping it around Briar.

“You’ll get cold too. We’re almost home,” Briar said, teeth chattering.

Rowan rubbed his hands up and down Briar’s shoulders. It made all the thoughts Briar had been chewing on turn hooked and sharp, catching him up in memories of Rowan, cupping his hands and using his breath to warm them.

He forced himself to keep walking, but the sense of Rowan so near didn’t abate. Slowly, slowly, his mind turned, arriving at its inevitable destination as they stopped at his front door.

He started to take the cloak off. Rowan lay a hand over his. “Keep it.”

It didn’t feel like he was talking about the cloak.

Under Rowan’s hand, Briar’s began to shake violently. It was a combination of things. His racing heart. The cold. The way Rowan looked at him.

Mostly, though, it was the curse.

Rowan caught him when his legs gave out. His arms wound around Briar’s middle, stopping his fall backward, while Vatii startled off his shoulder and flapped up to the roof’s eave. The world swam, and Briar groaned as he tried to stave off an incoming episode.

Rowan held him with one arm, the other finding his keys in the pocket of his dress among the coins and empty vials of potion. In a fumbling rush through the door, he got them up the stairs, setting Briar on the bed.

“In the right cabinet.” Briar gripped the headboard, squeezing his eyes shut against the bright lights in his periphery. Rowan pressed an uncorked vial into his hand. He hardly tasted it going down. Gradually, the light speckling his vision faded. The splitting pain in his head didn’t, like someone had put a wedge in the crack of his skull and taken a hammer to it.

Rowan hovered near him. “Tell me what to do.”

“I don’t know,” Briar gasped. It took an effort to speak.

The bed sank next to him. “Please, Briar. Stay with me.”

His broken voice cracked through everything. Briar couldn’t do this. Much as he cared about Linden and didn’t want to hurt him, that felt inevitable. His impending death felt inevitable. The only good in all of this sat next to him.

He had to tell Linden how he truly felt. End it.

Beyond this, he didn’t really think. Just reached out and found Rowan’s hand gripping his. Tethering him as the last of his jitters and aches faded in the wake of the potion.

“I should call Linden,” he whispered. He only realized how that sounded when Rowan stiffened next to him.

“You should rest.”

“Yes, but I should tell him about this.” His declining health, and this .

“Can I get you anything?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine.”

“Briar.” There was an edge to Rowan’s smooth baritone. “I wish you’d let me care for you. Even if just as your friend.”

Briar was no expert on withholding feelings, but he thought he’d done an admirable job of keeping it together. At the desperate concern in Rowan’s voice, he broke.

“I’m twenty-five.” He sucked in a breath that did nothing to calm him. “I’m twenty-five, and I’m dying. Rowan, I don’t want to—I’m scared.”

The dam shattered. Tears turned the world a blur, and each subsequent breath he tried to take failed to fill his lungs all the way. Without hesitation, Rowan dragged him into his arms, wrapping him up, holding him together while he fell apart. With anyone else, Briar might have been embarrassed. His words came through hyperventilating sobs.

“I—just—wanted—to—do something—important.”

“You did.”

“I’m—scared—I’m gonna—die and—nothing I’ve done will have—mattered.”

“It mattered. Trust me on that.”

“I thought—if I can’t live a long life, at least—at least, I wanted a memorable one.”

“Oh, Briar.” Rowan drew back enough to look at him. He must have been a snotty, blotchy mess. “Briar, you’re mad if you think anyone could ever forget you.”

Cradling Briar against him with one arm, he leaned to grab a box of tissues with the other. Briar accepted them and, once finished mopping his face, turned his forehead into Rowan’s chest and wept. Vatii settled on Rowan’s shoulder to nuzzle Briar’s hair.

It took some time to compose himself. Rowan didn’t rush him, but as the seconds ticked by, Briar had to return to reality.

“I should really get some sleep. My head is pounding.”

“Can I get you anything?”

What Briar said next didn’t sound even a little flirtatious, a testament to how tired he felt. “You could undo the back of my dress, or else I’ll have to sleep in it.”

Rowan helped him stand. The back of the dress had pearl drop buttons that hooked through eyes in a line down his spine. Briar gave instructions on how they worked. Rowan’s fingers were gentle unlooping the first, his knuckles warm where they brushed bare skin.

He’d undone a third of the buttons when a portal opened by the door.

The sounds of merriment from the other side snuffed out as the portal shut, and Linden stood looking at them, an awful expression on his face. They all stood in silence, the situation too large for any singular exclamation to encapsulate it.

Linden broke the quiet first. “Of course. Shameless. In the bed that I made for you.” His voice shook with betrayal, and Briar’s guilt went sharp enough to cut.

“It isn’t how it looks,” Briar said. Only, it was, and it wasn’t. His feelings existed, but he’d had no intent to act upon them now.

“Then tell me how it is.”

Rowan spoke up this time. “Briar was ill. I was helping him so he could get some rest.”

“I’m expected to believe that?” Linden said.

“It’s the truth,” Rowan said.

“Then, please, by all means. You say it isn’t how it looks? Tell me.” Linden pulled out his phone and flipped the screen to face them.

The photo on Linden’s phone was a post on a gossip channel. Briar knew instantly where and when the picture had been taken. In it, he sat in a booth, leaning against Rowan’s shoulder. He and Rowan gazed at each other like there was no one else in the room. The fall of Rowan’s lashes, the brightness in Briar’s eyes, they looked like a painting. It could have been a photo taken before a kiss or after. There’d been no kiss, but the look was intimate enough to be one.

Briar’s heart clenched. “We were just having a drink—”

A blaze of hot pain sent him reeling.

The sound of Linden’s backhand rang loud in the room. Briar caught himself against the sideboard, gripping it hard, more pain lancing up his elbow where it impacted. Blood speckled the wall. Distantly, he recalled that Linden wore a ring, and thought it might have cut him. Even more distantly, movement to his left.

Rowan grabbed Linden by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the door.

It didn’t even shudder or reverberate on impact. Rowan was immovable, furious. Atticus sprang back and swatted at Rowan’s ankles, hissing. Linden’s eyes snapped open, wind forced from his lungs, his lips frozen on a rebuttal that wouldn’t come. Genuine fear replaced the look of affront. Briar overcame his dizziness to move and put a placating hand against Rowan’s ribs. Linden had magic. Linden could take vengeance. Combative magic was uncommon because most of it required living tithes, but that didn’t mean the situation couldn’t spiral.

The fact that Linden had struck him still hadn’t sunk in.

Briar stood halfway between them. In that moment, he understood why the townsfolk were so afraid of Rowan. Under his hand, Rowan’s huge chest swelled with each labored breath. It was grievously clear what a flimsy barrier Briar’s arm made—if Rowan wanted to hurt Linden, there was no magic Briar knew that would be powerful enough to stop him.

And yet. Rowan’s gaze did not falter from Linden’s face. The rage written in every line of his brow did not unwinch. He lowered Linden until his feet touched the ground but didn’t let go of his shirt.

“If you lay hands on him again,” Rowan said.

He didn’t finish the threat. Linden hardly reacted, but his returning glare was calculated. Rowan stepped back, yielding to Briar’s hand like a draft horse bending its head to the yoke. For a brief second, the hand that had just pinned Linden to the door lifted to Briar’s cheek but did not touch. Briar felt the tickle of blood there.

He pushed Rowan’s hand away. “You should leave,” he said.

Rowan wouldn’t listen. “He hurt you.”

Softly, Briar said, “I hurt him.”

It was clear from the look on Rowan’s face that he did not think the hurts equal.

“I need to speak to him alone,” Briar said.

After a second that felt much longer, Rowan broke his gaze and turned to go. He paused in the doorway where Linden stood, disheveled and seething. Rowan’s size forced Linden to press against the wall, and Rowan used that to his advantage, looking down with open menace. Then he descended the stairs. The shop bell jingled after his departure.

Linden unfroze. Briar fought to think what he should say. An apology seemed insignificant. At the same time, the weakness in his limbs returned, his head pounded, and he had to hold on to the sideboard to keep from crumpling.

“I think it’s clear you should not see that brute any longer,” Linden said.

Briar had expected an outburst of jealousy, of hurt, demands for an explanation. Linden’s voice was cold.

His legs gave out. Ridiculously, he thought, No, I need to stand, I can’t make this about me.

His body didn’t care for the delicacies of his situation. His knees hit the floor.

Linden watched before grabbing him under the arms. He pulled him up. He took bone powder from his pocket and created a portal into his own bedroom. For some reason, this flagrant display of magic struck Briar harder than any other. A portal just to go next door.

Vatii swooped into the room, hovering nearby. Linden eased Briar onto a settee amongst the silken velvet and incense of his flat. He paced to a tower of shelves and pinched pink sand out of a jar. Sprinkling this along the front of his phone screen, the crack in it glowed and sealed. The phone must have gone flying, but Briar had been reeling too hard to notice.

Linden took a seat in an armchair, Atticus lying along the back of it, licking a paw and glowering. He set his phone on the coffee table between them, still on that photo from the pub.

“Are you even going to explain this humiliating indiscretion, or should I enumerate all the ways this has undermined our success tonight?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Did you even speak to Finola Cadwallader, or did you head straight into his arms the moment I left?”

Briar couldn’t defend himself or Rowan. “I spoke to Finola. She’s invited us to the gala.”

“Before or after you publicly sucked the alderman’s face off?”

“I didn’t kiss him.”

Viciously, Linden said, “But you wanted to.”

Briar couldn’t deny it. “Linden, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—Everything was meant to be casual with him, but I developed feelings, and I thought I cut things off early enough. We were just going to be friends, but these feelings won’t go . And there’s the pr—” Magic was a garrote around his throat, stopping the word “prophecy” before it got out. Impotent frustration boiled within him, but he pressed on. “I promise you, though, I didn’t act on anything with Rowan. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I think—” He held his face in his hands. The nearly dried blood on his cheek smeared on his palm. “I wish I’d figured it out sooner.”

Linden leaned forward, wringing his hands. “Figured out what?”

“My feelings. None of this is fair to you. I think, maybe—maybe we shouldn’t be together.”

Linden recoiled. Poise abandoned, he slumped back in the lounge. “You wish to end things? With me?”

“I don’t want to string you along. Or hurt you.”

“And this is your idea of sparing my feelings? Did you ever feel anything for me, or was it merely the usual fascination with celebrity?”

“No!”

“Shall I become accustomed to this alienation, even from you?”

Briar closed his eyes. What could he say? He couldn’t speak of the prophecy. He could walk Linden through every step of his thoughts and feelings, convoluted as they were, and it wouldn’t make a difference. “I didn’t mean for everything to be so messed up. It just spiraled and… I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have. I understand if this means you’re too—too upset with me. To find the cure.”

“But Briar,” Linden said, “I have already found the cure.”

Briar thought he’d misheard. “What?”

“I found the cure.”

White noise rang in Briar’s ears. He thought this must be what people felt like when a bomb exploded near enough to knock out hearing but not consciousness. Vatii let out a warbling noise of uncertainty. Shock and an assault of questions battled to the surface.

“H-how?”

“I’m still awaiting resources I’ll need.” Linden stood, pacing a few steps toward the window, his silhouette touched silver by moonlight. With his back to Briar, he was stiff and unreadable. “I have the answer to the curse cure, I only need the tools to enact it. I hoped to make use of my family’s facilities in Pentawynn to ensure its safety, but after that?” He swallowed audibly, choking down his emotions. “I intended to give you the cure as part of an engagement present.”

“Engagement.”

Voice quiet, Linden said, “Yes.”

Briar could hardly believe his words. Their relationship felt stiff, distant. Or was that merely by comparison to the easy intimacy he had with Rowan? He and Linden had hardly done more than kiss.

Linden turned enough for Briar to see a sliver of profile. “Since my affections are not reciprocated, I suppose I will have to return the ring.”

Briar felt wrung out and twisted. “It’s not that I don’t care about you, just…”

The weight of that sentence’s conclusion hung in the air between them.

“Just not as you care for him,” Linden finished tightly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you love him?”

Briar didn’t dare put that language to what he felt. “I don’t know.”

Linden walked back toward Briar, his expression rigid. Briar wished he would lash out again. It would be easier to deal with everything out in the open, not guarded within the fortress of Linden’s mind. Linden sat on the settee, his knees straight and parallel, his hands laid upon them, sphinx-like. Only the bob of his Adam’s apple betrayed how difficult it was for him to ask the next question.

“Do you believe you could ever love me?”

He didn’t look at Briar as he said it. Briar struggled to read him. Now that he’d met Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild, he understood why their young prodigy might guard his feelings, why public mockery might trigger fight or flight. A deified pillar of the people, stripped of humanity in the eyes of those who love him from afar. Wasn’t that how Niamh had described him? Briar wondered if Linden had ever known what it was to be loved up close. The curse of celebrity.

In all this mess, Briar found himself caught between two lonely men locked away from the world—by completely different circumstances, but the results were the same.

Linden’s expression bowed under the weight of Briar’s silence. In a crushed voice he said, “I see.”

Remembering the prophecy, Briar said, “I could love you. I think I could. In time—I don’t know. It’s been hard to get to know you.”

A brittle look. “I do not let anyone in with ease, it’s true, but I have been incautious with you. Perhaps too incautious. I moved too quickly.”

“I’m the one that screwed up.”

“It hardly matters now. What will you choose to do?”

The words felt thick. “I can’t string you along. I’d rather pay for the cure than use you for it. Whatever it costs.”

Linden told him how much it would cost, in clearly enunciated digits, the syllables of which seemed to echo and carry on for a long time. It was far more than Briar had. Far more than he’d made from his work on the fashion line, far more than they’d make even if they scraped home every award at the gala, more than he could make in a lifetime.

“It will require an excruciating amount of power,” Linden explained.

Something about the words prickled, but exhaustion both physical and emotional made it hard for Briar to parse. It was all too much to absorb. There was a cure. He couldn’t afford it. He waited, knowing an olive branch was coming, and not understanding why he feared taking it.

Delicately, Linden picked Briar’s hand up in his. “I would forgive you all of it,” he said. “I can take you to Pentawynn, away from this ghastly place. Cure you of this affliction and spend the time we bought together where prying eyes can’t meddle. Tell me, if it were a simple choice, would you give me your heart?”

Briar wanted to be true to his feelings. Now, it seemed selfish.

Beyond that, Linden had the cure.

He had the cure.

A chance at survival, and not just his own. A cure could free Rowan from the forest’s hold, too. The effects of his scar nulled. Still, none of it felt right. If Fate held his hand and guided him down a path to prosperity and good fortune, why did he feel as though death awaited and sharpened its scythe?

Vatii nudged his arm. “If Rowan found the cure, he wouldn’t hold your heart ransom for it.”

And there it was. It had niggled, but he’d been too distraught to put a finger on it. Or perhaps too sick and ailing. Linden would charge him if he didn’t agree to this elopement, and he knew Briar couldn’t afford it. Echoes of the painful slap to his cheek throbbed in dim reminder.

The hairline fractures in Briar’s esteem for Linden cracked. His hopes that their relationship might prosper foundered.

It was no choice at all. A heart with three swords stabbed through or a skeletal rider to take him beyond the veil. Heartbreak or death?

“Of course. Of course I’ll come with you,” he said.

Linden’s smile was relieved.

And a tiny bit triumphant.