Chapter Six
Whatever small and strange intimate moment had snuck between them shattered.
The feeling that something invisible bound them remained—but now it thrummed darkly in the spaces between their bodies, with a hint of menace.
There was a hardness in his face, and to the shift in the energy in the cabin.
Even the sound of the waves at the hull was more forceful, as if it too wanted mysteries solved, secrets shared.
But whatever Ethan wanted, she would not be able to provide.
Because what he wanted was her sister.
This situation was not new. Oh, the trappings of it were different: an Iron Crow, a ship, a secret. But in the end, she was not her sister.
She was not beautiful like a siren, and she did not sing like an angel. More often than not she had dirt on her hands. And she liked it that way.
And she loved her sister. She had made peace with living in the shadows a long time ago and, in fact, preferred it. It was soft and cool and quiet. She knew Petal envied that the way other people envied her beauty.
But this time, oh, this time, Briar wished, just a little, to be unforgettable. To lodge herself under Ethan’s skin. Like a thorn, if nothing else.
He loomed behind her, voice rough as it touched her ear. “Did you just sigh?”
“N…no?”
“Am I boring you?” he asked, hard as flint. One spark and the whole ship would burn. A dare. A promise.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t scared. Of course she was. But she’d never tell him that. He already held all the advantages. And she’d never tell him she wished she was more than she was, sometimes. Just sometimes.
Nor would she mention the gold fork she had managed to slide into her stays, lodged carefully between her breasts.
“Move.”
She moved. What other choice did she have? Better to be out in the open than trapped in a cabin. And the thought of fighting him and winning was laughable. He was twice her size, and if her hip decided to give out, she’d be sprawled on the ground at his feet. No, thank you.
He marched her back out into the windy darkness of the deck, sailors turning to watch them as they passed.
There were dozens of them, from countries all over the world.
She saw tattoos, charms of holed stones such as visitors hunted the beaches for, rowanberries strung around the rails.
White sigils were painted on barrels and the wooden boards under her feet.
Feathers strung with crystals dangled from hooks.
Magic thrummed next to muskets and cannons and the promise of a bloody death.
It was lovely, in its own way. She wondered what that said about her.
And then it didn’t matter anymore. Whatever story she’d been weaving inside her own head to convince herself that she wasn’t in mortal peril unraveled.
The threads loosened, the loom snapped.
It made no difference if she was struggling between acting scared and acting brave and not knowing which was more likely to save her sister. It was too late for that. She knew it in her bones. Her trembling, anxious bones.
The warning twisted through every sailor on deck, the way they looked at her, but more in the way they watched the Dragon.
With deference, respect, fear. There would be no help from any of them, not even Anais, who claimed to like her.
And she still didn’t know why she was here, what taking Petal to this ship would have accomplished, were it really Petal here keeping her balance on the rolling deck and not Briar.
Was it just because she was beautiful? Was that why they wanted to steal her sister away?
Like hell.
“Where is the moon charm?” Ethan asked.
A moon charm? Had Petal stolen a piece of magic? To what purpose? And from whom? The Dragon? That seemed mad, even for Briar’s impulsive sister. “I…don’t have it.”
Ethan turned with the kind of lethal grace only gained by knowing you could keep your feet even as the waves pitched you about. He crowded her, walking her backward until she hit the mast. “Don’t you?”
“N-no.” She swallowed, inching to the side.
“Ah, ah.” He blocked her with his body, slowly, inexorably.
He reached around, pressing himself against her until her hands were wrapped around the mast, rope tightening around her wrists.
Her breath stuttered in her chest. She pulled but already knew it was useless.
“Am I going to have to search you, Miss Foxglove?”
Briar did not know what to say to that. No? Yes, please? Somebody help me?
Her swan stayed firmly behind her ribcage, waiting. It would be safer there than out where it might be captured. Did Iron Crows steal a witch’s familiar the way the Order of the Iron Nail did as punishment for the practice of baneful magics?
And despite those fears, her body strained toward him. Unacceptable. Her body was not in charge—she also had a brain in her head.
But it also was inappropriately curious.
Blast.
She did not acquiesce. But she could imagine it all too easily.
The way he would crowd even closer, closing that tiny fraction of space between them.
His palms closing around her shoulders, running down her bare arms, thumbs stroking under her breasts.
Moving up her leg, between her thighs. That twitch at the corner of his mouth, as if he might smile.
For her. While touching her. All while she was bound, with no choice but to let her body react and react and…
She bit her bottom lip when she was afraid she might gasp out loud.
Ethan’s eyes flared, before narrowing on her with deadly focus.
It did not dissuade her imagination. Or body. Her brain.
Not one bit.
Someone should remind her that she was kidnapped and tied to a bloody ship’s mast.
Clearly that sleeping spell had muddled her—possibly even caused irrevocable damage. She would have to seek out a doctor as soon as she was able to.
“You are a surprise,” Ethan murmured, low and deep. Still watching her, he motioned to Anais. “Check her.”
Anais was brisk and efficient and surprisingly respectful for an Iron Crow. More respectful than the very respectable Charles Bloody Aster, for one. She checked all of the pockets of Briar’s apron, as well as the heavy knot of her hair coming loose at her nape. Her shoes. Her petticoats.
She did not find the gold fork. It was lodged too firmly along the padded boning of Briar’s stays and clearly had no magical aura to give it away.
They weren’t worried that someone like her carried a weapon or that she might best them with it.
She wouldn’t have worried about it either, were she them.
Plus, they were looking for a charm. A weapon did very little when you were tied to a mast.
“What’s this?” Anais demanded, pulling a small glass vial from Briar’s pocket.
“Dandelion fluff.”
“It stinks of magic.”
“They’re for wishing.”
“Wishing,” Anais stated, shaking her head. After a few minutes of searching, she stepped back. “Nothing,” she confirmed. “Flowers and seeds. No moon charm.”
Ethan shook his head. “I can’t sense it either. Fucking hell.” The whip of his voice was soft and quiet, and it had every member of his crew standing at attention. Someone’s mouse familiar scurried into a nest of coiled ropes.
“Where is it?” Ethan asked Briar. He still did not raise his voice. His very presence was threat enough. “Eyes on me,” he demanded, gaze hardening when Snapdragon fluttered his wings, suddenly sharp as knives. “No spells.”
She didn’t need eye contact for her magic.
But she did need plants, flowers. A seed.
Moss. She did not think the felled and polished wood of the mast behind her would respond.
She pushed a little power into it, searching for a hint of acorn or ash leaf or pine needle.
She closed her eyes, trying to picture a tree that could hear her.
They weren’t as chatty as flowers or herbs, but they usually responded, if in their own time.
Ethan gripped her chin, forcing her head up. “I said, eyes on me.”
She felt his gaze all the way down her thighs.
The mast had been uninterested in having a conversation with her anyway. The wood had too long ago been cut, soaked in salt water and whatever else sailors used to seal the deck.
She struggled uselessly and only succeeded in chafing her skin. The rope was sturdy and scratchy and unlikely to give way. She already knew that. She pulled again anyway.
She was well and truly trapped.
“We want to go home and you’re going to help us,” Ethan said. “One way or another.”
She paused. “I don’t understand any of this.”
He studied her face. He was close enough that she could see the faint scar along his jaw, at the side of his throat, as though someone had tried to cut it.
Moonlight and torchlight gleamed over the knives strapped to his chest. “You might even be telling the truth,” he said finally, quietly, so only she could hear him.
“I am.”
“More’s the pity.” He released her. “It doesn’t matter if you understand it or not—magic is magic.”
“I have green magic,” she said as his crew began to move around them.
She didn’t know what they were doing exactly, but ropes were loosened, shouts were traded.
Were they casting off? “I grow things,” she explained frantically.
Even Petal did not have magic to power a ship, moon charm or no moon charm.
“Herbs, flowers. Berries. I can’t get you home! ”
“But you can,” he said. “When you came back here with your little stolen trinket—which on any other day I would congratulate you for, by the by—you triggered the shields on the island. No one goes in or out. Not by portal, not by sea.” And those were the only two ways on or off Lyonesse.
There was no bridge, and no magical dirigible or even hot air balloon that would not be caught by the shield’s power.
Was that what she had felt on her cliff walk? That odd shudder passing through her?