A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe #1)

CHAPTER 25

L inden insisted they could discuss everything further in the morning after rest. He helped Briar back to his flat and undid the rest of the buttons on Briar’s dress; Rowan’s presence was a physical thing between them when Linden’s fingers encountered the three pearls already loosed.

Then Linden pulled a shining slip of something from his pocket. A ferry ticket, its location stamped in gold-embossed lettering: Pentawynn.

“The city is quite spectacular to see from the water,” he said.

Briar’s throat constricted.

After Linden left, Briar collapsed into his own bed, Vatii crooning softly in his ear. He drifted into restless half-sleep, in and out of dreams. In them, he thought he heard a bell.

Pain like a brand snapped him awake. He sat up, clutching his chest, the tithe over his heart burning.

The tithe he’d used to charm Rowan’s necklace.

But they’d found the culprit behind the forest’s wounds—he was dead. There shouldn’t be any more reason for the wood to call upon Rowan. Yet the tithe burned, calling Briar like a whisper from a dream.

He bolted out of bed and remembered too late how weak he was, stumbling, catching himself on the dresser. He needed help. If Gretchen had been there, she’d have a quippy remark or emergency potion recipe to help. But she was gone.

The forest has Rowan, the forest has Rowan.

First, get dressed. Find supplies.

He staggered his way to the dresser and changed. He fetched his tithe belt and stocked it with the most powerful ingredients he owned. Remembering the vines lashing him to the earth, he went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, tucking it into his belt. He looted the cupboards next, drinking a vial of potion and stashing several more in a pouch. All this, yet he still felt underprepared. It would have to do.

Grateful Linden had given him a key, he let himself into the shop next door and hurried up the stairs, only to find an empty flat. Panic gripped him. Movement, and Atticus lifted his pale head off the comforter, staring bleary-eyed at the intruders. Vatii chattered at him, no doubt demanding where Linden was. Atticus gave his own chittering reply.

“He’s gone to Pentawynn,” Vatii said. “To prepare for your arrival. Atticus says he’ll return by morning.”

Morning would be too late.

Driven by impulse, Briar raided Linden’s desk for bone powder. He measured out a portion for himself, saying to Atticus, “I’ll replace it later, I promise.” If he survived.

Then he was off into the night. A one-man rescue, and a severely hobbled one at that.

The mark on his chest tugged him in a specific direction, as the crow flew, but he had to navigate the twisting streets. Despite the cool air, his skin beaded with feverish sweat. He considered rousing Sorcha and Maebh, telling them Rowan was in danger, but their houses lay in the opposite direction from where the charm led, and he didn’t know how much time he had. Regardless, neither Sorcha nor Maebh were witches.

He resisted the urge to run, instead walking at a steady clip. There would likely be a time he needed to run, and he had to save his energy. His health would not hold otherwise; it protested even this small abuse of walking quickly. The slow race to the woods was a torment, but he reserved his dwindling magic and the bone powder for when he’d most need it.

They went out into the fields, and as the forest drew closer, as they neared the edge of it, Vatii whispered in his ear.

“I feel like I should tell you not to go, but I know you won’t listen, so I’ll only say this… I’m quite proud to be the familiar of someone so willing to dive in to help those he loves.”

“I’ve got to help him, Vatii. After all the ways he’s helped me.”

“You can admit you care for him.”

He couldn’t. He’d made a choice.

The forest loomed. Briar plunged in.

When he’d first entered, the forest had been intimidating and alive. The second time, eerily quiet, guiding them toward Kenneth’s corpse with a trail of bones.

Now, the sway of the trees and the lurching of the mossy ground seemed more like the death throes of a limping animal than of something vivid and powerful. Tree bark sloughed like rotten skin. Rocks jutted up, white as broken bones. No vines lashed for his arms and legs, no whispers filtered through his mind. He passed like a ghost between the trees and wondered if they even knew he was there.

Vatii hunkered down on his shoulder, wings hitting him when she extended them for balance. The way was treacherous, the ground sinking and uneven, but he followed the pull of the mark on his chest like a compass.

His body twitched in warning. He drank a potion and kept going.

When he found the wound that had so injured the forest, it set his arms out in gooseflesh. The trees thinned, and he emerged into a blackened crater like the one that had contained Kenneth’s body. Every inch of life was sucked from it. No trees or shrubs, just ashen earth and a halo of moonlight cascading through the hole in the canopy. Nothing lay at the center, no corpse and no siphon. Perhaps it was an old scar from Kenneth’s earlier activities. But it didn’t feel old.

It was not the only one. Briar picked up his pace and passed two more. The trees just on the fringes of each pocked scar bent backward, recoiling from the magic. Whoever had caused the destruction had already retrieved their prizes. None of the craters held a shining sphere.

The tithe on his chest burned more fiercely the closer he got to Rowan. He thought he knew where it was leading him. As if to confirm it, a reedy voice filtered through his mind.

You.

Angry, he spoke back. “Why are you doing this? I thought you already got rid of the problem.”

More.

“More what? Why can’t you just tell me what you need?”

Ours.

It was no use. The forest either couldn’t communicate its needs, or it refused to.

Panting hard, three vials of potion depleted from his pack, Briar finally reached the tree.

It was the same, and yet nothing like how he’d left it. The stink of rot was an eye-watering punch. At first, Briar thought that the tree sang in a droning hum, but that was the flies. They hovered in clouds around its branches like buzzing foliage.

At its roots, Rowan lay. He stared, sightless, into the canopy with milky eyes. The forest crept over him in seeping mosses and curling vines, shredding his shirt apart, but the necklace remained miraculously intact. These were the least alarming things.

Briar crashed to his knees next to him. On Rowan’s chest, a branch had sunk into the skin. Or sprouted from it—it was difficult to tell where it began and Rowan ended. It arced up, the other end buried in the loam a few feet away. Briar seized his shoulders.

“Rowan, wake up!”

Rowan did not wake, but his chest rose, even with the branch through it. The vines crept faster to thwart Briar’s rescue. Panic set his hands shaking, or maybe that was the curse. Briar took another draft of potion—his last—and flung the empty bottle away. He scraped away the moss on Rowan’s body with his fingers, shuddering at the squelching noise it made as it lifted. Underneath, it left angry, red wheals on Rowan’s skin.

“Briar, hurry.” Vatii darted around his knees, pecking at the moss attempting to creep over him too.

Stop .

Briar drew out the knife and started cutting the vines. They shrank from the slice of the blade. Not the large branch, not yet.

Stop. Ours.

“He’s not yours,” Briar said. He tried to wake Rowan again, to no avail. The knife trembled in his grasp, and he clenched it tighter. The big branch stuck through Rowan’s chest was last, and he feared it the way he feared turning on a light when he’d heard a noise in the dark. He gritted his teeth, took the knife to it and sawed. It bit through the bark but sank no farther. He drew it back and, with all his limited strength, brought it down like an axe. A sickening burst of ichor seeped from the tiny wound, but the branch did not sever. Rowan twitched but didn’t wake.

Panic grasped Briar. He sawed at the branch but couldn’t get farther than a scant centimeter of bark, at which point it felt like trying to break through concrete. Vatii squawked in alarm as a vine tied her leg. Briar seized her, cutting the vine away, and she clawed his cloak to hang onto his back, away from the devouring forest floor.

“You have to wake him up,” she said. “Remember Orla!”

Briar remembered. He’d just hoped this would be different. If this was like Orla, then only one person could break the forest’s hold, and he was not responding no matter how hard Briar shook him. Briar could think of only one recourse. He had no tithe to bring someone back from the edge of consciousness or death, or whatever gripped Rowan now. The only thing he had on hand was his body. His weak, aching body.

He retrieved his charcoal and drew a rune on his bare wrist, cursing the shakes that made his lines wobble. He had to spit, wipe them clean and redraw them. Finally, he had a serviceable rune, and he reached into his magic well to the sense of his fingers trailing the sodden bottom. He pulled and pulled, dredged the scraps of a spell together. It drained his energy enough to make his vision spotty, but it worked.

Rowan’s lashes fluttered. When he opened his eyes, they were brown, not white. Confusion took hold as he saw Briar swaying beside him.

“Briar?” The confusion quickly slid sideways into horror when he saw what protruded from his chest. Rowan didn’t scream, but he tried to sit up, scramble away. He couldn’t. The root had him pinned. With mounting panic, “Briar?”

“Rowan.” Briar rushed to calm him, putting both hands on his cheeks and leaning in to block his view of the vine.

“It’s okay, Rowan. It’s going to be—you have to break that vine. We have to get out of here.”

Rowan made a sound somewhere between a groan and a sob. It rent Briar’s heart in two. He’d never seen Rowan look so afraid. He could do little to help, his reserves of magic so dwindled he doubted he could cast a pain relief spell without blacking out. He had enough to escape, nothing more.

“You can do this,” he said. “I’ll be right here to portal us home, you just have to break its hold.”

Rowan looked into his eyes. He was ashen-faced, clammy, shivering as if submerged in ice, but he nodded. As Briar drew away, he wrapped both hands around the bend in the branch, where he’d have the most leverage to twist and snap. The muscles in his arms flexed, testing. He looked to Briar, perhaps for confirmation or encouragement, which Briar gave by squeezing Rowan’s shoulder.

No! the forest shrieked.

The snap fractured through the air like a thunderclap. On the heels of it, Rowan’s harrowing scream.

Liquid from the severed end striped hot as blood over Briar’s arm. Black in the dark of the forest, but in flashes of dappled moonlight, it shone crimson. It was blood. The stump of the vine melted and congealed, molting away. Rowan’s howl was ear-splitting. Briar did his best to hold him and draw him back to the present.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, you did good. We’ve got to go, Rowan. Can you stand?”

Rowan tried. He rose up on his elbows before vines lashed around his throat to snap him back. The forest, desperate, was not going to let them go easily. Briar reached for the knife and found it gone, swallowed by the earth.

Rowan didn’t need it. In a burst of movement, he lunged forward and tore through the vines. He stood, lifting Briar, moss falling away from them. Vatii clung to the hood of Briar’s cloak, flapping as he rushed to pull out a handful of stolen bone powder.

The forest said, He’s ours. Promised. We will have him. We need him.

Briar had never made a portal before, but in the grips of fear and the drive to survive, he did not lack the intent needed to find his last drops of magic.

“Take me home,” he shouted as he flung the powder.

The portal opened, and they fell through.

All the quiet noises of the forest had coalesced to deafening—the hiss of wind, the drone of flies, the rustle of foliage. The portal closed, and it was silent.

It took a moment for Briar to realize where they were. In the dark, he struggled to make out the hand-painted wooden furniture. Rowan’s cottage.

They made their way to the sofa, no longer sure who held up who. Briar shrugged his shoulders until Rowan collapsed onto it, clutching his chest where the root had sprouted. It left no deep, gory wound, only a red mark on the spot where his scar began, but it pained him. His eyes closed, face drawn.

Though Briar badly wanted to collapse too, neither he nor Rowan had the energy to withstand another encounter like that one. He went through the back door into éibhear’s garden. Vatii helped him collect the plants he needed. He found clean cloths in the kitchen and wet them. He boiled water and made tea using some of the plants, adding cold water to the brew so they could drink it right away. When he brought these back, Rowan opened his eyes.

“C’mere and rest,” he croaked.

“I will now in a minute,” Briar said, not realizing until the flicker of a smile on Rowan’s face what he had said. It was a phrase he’d picked up in Coill Darragh. He knelt on the floor and pressed one of the cool cloths to Rowan’s forehead; the other he used to mop the wheals and specks of blood. In the back of his throat, Rowan made a tiny noise of relief.

Against his better judgment, Briar reached up and carded a hand through Rowan’s sweaty hair, combing out dead leaves and twigs. Rowan leaned in to his touch and made that same, small noise again.

Briar said, “That was really close.”

“Bit too close,” Rowan said. “Thank you. For coming to my rescue.”

“Didn’t make this just to look pretty.” He flicked the necklace.

“Hm. Rather not go through that again.” He looked ashamed. “Was feckin’ terrified.”

“You were brave,” Briar told him.

“You make me brave.” He gazed at Briar steadily as he said it. Briar’s heart could have burst. There was no mistaking the swell of affection burgeoning within him. In hindsight, the idea that leaving Coill Darragh would mean leaving these feelings behind seemed asinine. They felt as intrinsically a part of him as Vatii, or his tithes, or his own name.

He said, “Can you sit up?”

Wincing, Rowan managed to, accepting the mug of tea and taking a sip. Briar drank his too. It soaked into his bones, both vigorous and soothing. It would help them sleep and restore some of their drained energy, but it was no substitute for the milk thistle elixir. He’d have to pick some up from the apothecary, since Linden was away.

“Thought we found the reason the forest was acting the maggot,” Rowan muttered. “And here we are again.”

“There were more craters like the one Kenneth made,” Briar said. “They didn’t seem old.”

Rowan rubbed his head. “So we’re back to where we started.”

Briar didn’t think so. Something had shifted. They’d gone into the forest before, and it hadn’t attacked them. He sighed. “I’m taking the ferry to Pentawynn tomorrow. When I’m back, we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Rowan’s face fell. “You’re leaving?”

“Only for a little while, then—”

“He’s going to ask you to marry him. Isn’t he?”

Briar flinched. “Rowan…”

“Do you think he’ll let you come back that easy, like?”

“Let me?”

“I don’t trust him.” Rowan tried to sit up, voice trembling with something long repressed. “He holds your hand like it’s the end of a fecking leash.”

“It’s not like that. He’s trying to help lift my curse, and he’s been under a lot of stress because of me and his parents and—”

“He hit you!” The shout rang loud in the quiet of the cottage. Rowan held his chest like the pain of his injury worsened with his raised voice. “You were sick and hurting, and he hurt you worse , all because he was jealous . He’s used your talents to make himself a fortune, wears you like a badge of honor. And now he’s taking you off to Pentawynn, away from here.”

“Away from you , you mean?”

“You know that’s not how it is.”

“It’s not?” Briar’s head pounded. The tangle of emotion rising in him was too convoluted to parse; he felt trapped and it was somehow worse hearing Rowan say it out loud. So he retaliated in kind. “Fine, you don’t trust him, but what choice do I have? This is the only hope I’ve got. That we’ve got. Linden’s got money and endless resources. And you’d have me pass up this chance because you don’t like that it’s Linden offering? So which of you is jealous and hurting me because of it?”

Rowan looked gutted by his words. “I won’t pretend I’m not jealous. I’m trying, I am, but you—you made me feel—” He took a moment to collect himself. “It doesn’t matter. Just hear me on this, because I’m no liar. If I believed for a moment that fecker would cure you, I’d see you off on the damn boat myself.”

The words stung because they were true. Rowan’s motives didn’t require deeper interrogation. He’d see his own heart broken before he saw Briar’s stop beating.

Briar could tell him Linden had the cure. He withheld it because saying so felt tantamount to admitting the cure was his only reason for pursuing a relationship with Linden in the first place. Once, Briar had believed loving Linden was inevitable, fate. Only now he realized the prophecy said nothing at all about him loving Linden back.

Weakly, Briar said, “We’re exhausted. We should sleep.”

Whatever energy Rowan had in reserve to argue fled him. Neither of them could even climb the ladder into the loft. Rowan tried to coax Briar into taking the sofa, but since he was much larger, it made no sense. Briar insisted he was comfortable in the armchair and curled up there. Rowan relented and started softly snoring moments later.

Briar couldn’t sleep. He watched Rowan’s back rise and fall, haunted by the idea that tonight he could have stopped breathing altogether.

Tomorrow morning, he would take the ferry to Pentawynn. Linden would cure him of his curse, and then he would set all of his ardor into convincing Linden to cure Rowan, too. He would give Linden whatever he wanted. As he contemplated that, he found he didn’t really know what Linden wanted. He’d thought it had been all the same things Briar longed for. Love, success, recognition, a partner. Now, he wasn’t sure.

It chilled him. It was the only plan he had.

He drifted off for a handful of hours. When he woke, Rowan still slept. Briar got up, joints stiff but serviceable. He knelt and put a hand on Rowan’s chest to wake him, but he didn’t stir. His lashes were dark fans against his cheeks, gilded gold in sunlight. For a moment, Briar allowed himself the fantasy of leaning over and kissing him awake. Like he’d done countless times in those bright few weeks mostly spent here at the cottage. He imagined Rowan coming slowly awake to the warmth of Briar’s lips on his. He’d make that soft sound of relief again, cup the back of Briar’s head.

Briar gently shook him. When Rowan saw who woke him, he smiled so sweetly—like their entire argument the night before was forgotten—Briar nearly kissed him anyway.

“I have to go into town and get more potion. I wanted to see if you needed anything first.”

“I’ll come with you.” He started to get up but gasped at the pain of moving. Briar pushed to ease him down.

“You’re staying here to recover. You should take pain killers or an elixir. Do you have any?”

“In my bedside cabinet.”

Briar managed to climb the ladder. Rowan’s bedroom looked untouched, the quilted bed still made. Rowan hadn’t even slept in it before the forest’s call took him.

Briar opened the bedside cabinet and found a brown paper bag that looked like it contained medicine. At first, he thought it was empty, but then he saw something glint, and his heart fell into his stomach.

Rings. Two of them. One, a gold plaited band with a crowned heart at its center.

The second was simple and delicate, a diamond set with four smaller blue stones at the corners like a star. It was beautiful, custom made to fit with the claddagh, and was unmistakably an engagement ring.

He cast for the most far-fetched conclusions in order to avoid what he already knew. Rowan had relationships from before his curse, maybe he’d bought this for a past lover and then, when they’d left him, kept it for whomever came along and stole his heart. But he knew it wasn’t true.

A wave of emotion swept over him, so strong he felt sick.

He’d known in his heart the reason Rowan had come to speak to him that snowy night. But not the depth of feeling. Not the certainty.

Underneath the bag was a sachet of ibuprofen. He left the rings in the bedside cabinet. Pretended he hadn’t seen them. He made his careful way down the ladder and repeated his plan to himself. Tomorrow, he’d leave on a ferry for Pentawynn. He’d see the city. Linden would give him the cure. He’d come back with it for Rowan. And after that… ?

Why did he get the sense Linden’s engagement was not the sort he’d be able to call off?

He handed Rowan the ibuprofen, hoping nothing of the emotional war within showed on his face. He must have failed. Something dawned in the slackened expression on Rowan’s face.

“Will you come see me off tomorrow?” Briar asked.

“Please don’t ask that,” Rowan said. “I can’t say goodbye to you.”

“It wouldn’t be forever.”

Rowan just gave him a heartsick look that said he knew different.

Deprived of its sacrifice, the forest lashed out at the people of Coill Darragh.

Briar saw it on his way home. People collapsed in the street, branches clawing up their bodies. Maebh appeared outside the Swan and Cygnet and herded people toward the church. It was safe there, she said. Just until they got everything sorted, she said.

Briar offered to help, but Maebh said not to bother. From people’s faces, he could tell he looked like no help at all. When he got home, the mirror confirmed it. He’d always been vain about his appearance. He liked to dress nicely, to spend hours getting ready for a fancy party. Now, sallow-skinned and hollow-eyed, he looked near death. With leaden fear, he realized he was.

His ticket to Pentawynn lay in an envelope on the kitchen table. He sat and traced the edges with his fingertips. Vatii perched on his shoulder and nibbled his earlobe to console him. The anxiety between them was a pill swallowed with a parched throat and no water.

“You could leave Linden after,” Vatii said.

Briar thought he’d misheard. “Pardon?”

“If Linden won’t give you the cure out of the goodness of his heart, why give him your heart when someone else would treat it better? Why not take his cure and leave?”

Because it was cruel. Because it would make him the sort of person Linden had always feared. Because Briar could kiss his career prospects goodbye if the press sniffed out what he’d done. In his darker moments, he’d thought of it, and it disgusted him. Besides, he didn’t need the cure for himself alone. He needed it for Rowan, too. Niamh’s tarot reading had been unambiguous about what lay in wait for him if he pursued a relationship with Rowan.

Frustration boiled. “I don’t understand. You’ve been pushing me to heed the prophecy this entire time. We might die if I don’t.”

“I push and question because whether I think your decision is the right or wrong one, I want you to be certain of it.”

“Linden has the cure. I’d rather be worthy of him than a backstabbing—”

“But Rowan loves you.”

“What does it matter?” Briar shouted. It burst out of him with such vehemence that Vatii danced away, talons clicking across the table. “If I stay here, we’re as good as dead, and if I go and marry Linden, I break Rowan’s heart. If I leave Linden after getting the cure, I’m a no-good user, just like he feared. I’d hate myself for it. You’re my guide. You’re the one who told me not to tempt fate with Rowan. You said all along it was a mistake. Well, you were right. Gloat if you like! You should! You were right.” He put his head in his hands. “You were right.”

Vatii hopped over to him and ducked under the cavern made by his bowed head and arms. She snuggled under his chin, her feathery head soft.

She said, “I wish I’d been wrong.”