Chapter Eleven
Ethan’s eyes seared through her. He looked the same as he had the night before, wind-worn and ready for a fight.
It was there in the way he stood, in the alert sharpness of him.
She had half convinced herself she had conjured him up.
He was entirely too primal for a place like Lyonesse. Certainly for the garden of a tearoom.
Something inside her calmed even as her heart picked up its pace. He was a very confusing man.
Charles did not look confused. He looked suspicious and nervous. Mrs. Aster set her cup down with a snap. “Who is this?”
“A friend,” Ethan replied before Briar could answer. What would she have said? Iron Crow? The notorious Dragon? Too handsome for his own good? For her own good? She would never have considered something as mild as friend.
After all, did a friend tie you to the mast of his ship?
Never mind that now, Briar Foxglove, she told herself sternly when her imagination presented her with several improper suggestions as to how and why a friend might tie one down.
She had not realized she had such a good imagination, truth be told.
But it had not stopped providing her with tantalizing images since Ethan had offered to search her for the moon charm.
Her cheeks flushed. Her stays were too tight. Sweaty. Was she sweating?
“Miss Foxglove is busy,” Mrs. Aster said. “I require cream for my tea.”
No one added cream to rose-chamomile tea. It bordered on criminal.
“I have cream right here,” Sorcha announced cheerfully, sailing out of the cottage holding the hedgehog-shaped creamer aloft like a war banner. She plunked it down with the same care and courtesy as one might give to some muddy, trampled bloody war banner.
Then she stepped back and smiled at Ethan, who was too tall and too rugged and too sure of himself for the garden.
The wisteria plant did not seem to think so.
It was curling embarrassingly close to him.
If he noticed, Briar would be mortified.
It suddenly smelled like a hundred different flowers.
The peonies were embarrassing themselves, drooping lazily as they grew too fat and ruffled for their stems in his shadow.
“You don’t look the sort to drink tea,” Sorcha told Ethan. “Rum, definitely. Gin, maybe. Brine? Mermaid tears?”
Ethan only looked amused. Sorcha usually provoked amusement or irritation and not much in between. “I drink tea.”
“Oh good, Briar will make you some. She makes the best.”
“Briar is taking tea with Charles,” Mrs. Aster snapped.
“She is not,” Sorcha retorted.
“They are affianced.”
Sorcha only snorted. Elderberry cawed mockingly. She smiled pointedly at Briar. “Go on and make the tea, and I’ll make sure the Asters have everything they need.” It was most definitely a threat and could not be interpreted otherwise.
Briar returned to the back door, Ethan stalking silently behind her, the grass pressing against his boots. “You’re not marrying that bloody tosspot.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Of course not.” But she said it with more confidence than she actually felt. Please the Moon Mother, let it not be the only option that saved her cottage and her sister.
“He’s not good enough for you.”
Something warm bloomed inside her chest. Her swan threatened to lift its feathers in a preen. Don’t you dare. “You don’t know him,” Briar pointed out. “You don’t know me.”
“I know enough.”
“What are you doing here?” Briar asked, because she did not know what to say to that.
Or why that heated awareness of him burned even brighter than it had last night.
Or why she felt the urge to pat her hair to make sure it had not slipped from its pins.
She was worried about her sister and the shields and the moon charm.
Not about the state of her hair. That would be absurd.
“What did the Keepers have to say for themselves last night?” he asked in that hard, but somehow lazy way of his, as though nothing could ruffle him. As though shields and the threat of a Keeper’s iron collar were just idle threats, flies to be swatted away.
She led him into the kitchen, where he leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed, watching her fill the kettle. “How did you know they were here?” she asked.
“Of course they were here. Meddling is what they do best.”
“But when you stomp through my house, it’s not meddling, I suppose?” she said archly.
He nearly smiled. Not quite, but it was close. “I go where I like.”
When she rolled her eyes at him, he did smile, however briefly.
“You don’t really want tea, do you?” she asked.
“I can want more than one thing at the same time.”
She wasn’t sure why that sounded like a threat. A promise. Complicated.
Did he know Petal was upstairs even now, vulnerable and helpless? Was that why he was here? It must be. Would he demand to look around? She did not know exactly how strong Bramble’s rabbit-magic shields were. They wouldn’t turn Petal entirely invisible, that much she knew.
Briar hung the kettle on its hook and swung it back over the fire, to stop herself from looking toward the stairs.
She was not entirely sure how good she was at keeping secrets.
She did not have much practice. She felt his gaze on her back.
She was all nerves and exposed skin. She had never realized how vulnerable the back of one’s neck could feel.
And how it might not always be an unpleasant thing.
She clearly needed a proper night’s sleep. And a plate of cheese. Petal was convinced cheese solved most of life’s problems.
The wind blew in through the window, heavy with salt water and roses and approaching rain. She heard Ethan take a step closer to her. Goosebumps lifted along her nape, shivered down her spine.
And then one of the bottles of moonwater cracked.
Abruptly. Loudly.
The sound made her jump. She turned toward it just as another bottle exploded, sending shards ricocheting through the warm kitchen.
Ethan pressed her against the wall, brows drawn low as he shielded her with his body, hard and hot against hers.
Every single bottle of moonwater, every bowl holding moonstones, every jar of dried moonflowers burst, shooting glass every which way.
It sounded like the peppering fire of musket shot.
Ethan did not move an inch. He stayed exactly where he was, arms on either side of her, tucking her head under his chin.
She had stabbed him with a fork just last night and now he was protecting her.
Behind him his familiar unfurled giant, burning wings, his scaled neck extending in another kind of armor, woven with glittering light. Briar had never seen a dragon familiar, nor any familiar as grand and majestic and severe. It would have taken her breath away if she’d had any left in her lungs.
The kitchen went quiet again, but Ethan remained where he was, only inching back far enough to lift her chin toward him. It was intimate, his infamously lethal focus entirely on her. “Are you cut?”
She shook her head. Puddles of water gleamed on the stone floor behind him, broken glass sparkling. “But you must have been cut,” she said softly.
He ran his palm over the back of his neck, wiping away spots of blood. “Barely scratched. Nothing at all like being stabbed with a fork.”
She winced. He only grinned, fleeting and rare. She might have only just met him, but anyone could see his grins were rare—the ones that reflected in his shadowed eyes, at least. They must be guarded more fiercely than pirate’s gold.
“Mind telling me what the hell that was about?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you?” It was a quiet question, but no less powerful than a demand at sword point. His voice wrapped around her like a velvet ribbon, tightening. “Lying to an Iron Crow, little thorn? You are brave.”
She swallowed, confused by the sensations running rampant throughout her body like a herd of wild horses. “Are you suggesting I exploded my own kitchen?”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“All right.”
She blinked. “All right? That’s it?”
His gaze pierced her. “Did you want more?”
Yes. No.
“I could be lying.”
“Are you?”
“No.” She frowned. “This is a ridiculous conversation.”
“Is it?” He still had her pressed to the wall. “I didn’t realize we were having a conversation. I thought you were trying to throw me off the scent.” He leaned a little closer, dragging his nose up her throat. “Won’t work. I’ve caught it now.”
She swallowed, nervous, tingling in places she had no time to address. Heat kindled in her ribcage. “I’m not doing anything.”
His lips moved gently against her skin but his voice was hard again. “Aren’t you?”
He stepped back, and it was a struggle to breathe normally when it suddenly felt as though she had run a race. She wanted to blame it on the lingering effects of the sleeping spell, the anxiety of a visit from two Keepers, the shields dropping. Her sister.
But she already knew that wasn’t it.
Sometimes people were drawn to each other even when it made no sense.
It didn’t mean anything.
And it was Midsummer. Everything burned a little brighter at the solstice. It was always the ones you’d least expect who had to be fished out of the mermaid fountain in the square. Naked.
“I should make sure Sorcha has not murdered my customers,” Briar murmured.
He let her pass when she knew very well he could have kept her pinned to the wall.
A jug of water on the counter had cracked into pieces.
The moonstones embedded in the wooden windowsill had exploded, crushed to chalky dust on her floor, next to crescent-shaped sugar biscuits.
Even the clock, painted with the phases of the moon, had fallen off the wall.
All of it related to moon magic in some way.
That could not be a coincidence.
Was it only here at the cottage? Was it because Petal was upstairs, even if the moon charm was not? Were more Keepers on the way even now? How was she supposed to protect her sister?
“Your hands are shaking,” Ethan said.
She curled her fingers into her palm. “It’s nothing.”
“Hmm.”
She hurried out to the garden, suddenly wanting to feel the sun on her face, to smell the comforting lushness of earth and lilies and wild mint.
The statue of a woman in the center of the night-blooming moon garden had also been affected.
One arm had been shorn clean off, and her moon crown lay in a clump of night-blooming jasmine.
The Asters were on their feet, eyes wide. Charles was clearly shaken, his mother furious. The contents of the teapot stained his complicated cravat and Mrs. Aster’s silvery capelet. The Asters did not care to be disheveled.
“Is he still here?” Ethan asked evenly. Right before the sky cracked, full of rain and shaking thunder and the searing flash of lightning.
Mrs. Aster squeaked, pulling her bonnet lower over her head.
Charles instantly resembled nothing so much as a wet goat.
His toad familiar was perched on his toe, looking hopeful. Poor thing.
Sorcha grinned, rain dripping off her nose. “Have a currant roll,” she said to Ethan as the Asters hurried away. The rain followed them. “My treat.”
Briar leaned against the nearest chair. Ethan’s gaze sharpened on her and she straightened, aching hip be damned. A lamb did not limp in front of a wolf. “Mr. Swansea was just leaving.”
“Was I now?” He was amused again, though his eyes suggested he was taking her apart to seek out her weaknesses, her secrets. As though there was more to her than met the eye. No one had ever looked at her like that. He inclined his head. “Careful,” he said. “Weather is unpredictable today.”
And then he walked away as if nothing at all untoward had happened. Briar watched him because she could not help herself. Sorcha turned to her, eyebrows raised so high she was likely to strain a forehead muscle. “What was that, then?”
“What was what?”
“Briar Foxglove, you are not going to stand there and pretend that the air did not nearly catch on fire between the two of you.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Had it? Had it really? It wasn’t her imagination after all? “Oh, all right,” Briar relented before her friend launched herself bodily at her in frustration. “He has a…presence.”
“I have seen actual giant dire wolves on the moor with less presence. And he could not take his eyes off you.”
Well, that was simple enough to explain: he did not trust her. He was hunting her sister, like everyone else.
“And he scared Charles away, which I will cherish forever.”
That was harder to explain. Why should he have bothered?
For her? It must be part of his plans somehow.
It was obvious he wanted to be anywhere but on the island.
The Dragon sipping tea from porcelain cups painted with hedgehogs.
Eating pink petit fours shaped like swans and almonds rubbed with gold leaf.
Drinking champagne at the assembly rooms in polished boots. Absurd.
Briar scrubbed at her face, exhausted.
Sorcha slipped her arm through hers. “What can I do?”
“You can help, as it happens. I need to know that Petal is not in any physical, mortal danger before I figure out how to get her out of this mess.” Grow the plant, pick the plant, dry the plants, make the tea. Everything could be broken down into manageable steps.
Even saving her sister.