Chapter Twelve
Briar left her swan at the back door and two nails crossed on the floor to bar entry while she was upstairs.
Bramble was waiting for them in Petal’s room, standing in front of the bed and snarling.
She held a brutal-looking pair of iron scissors in her hands.
Her eyes were tired, her teeth sharp. There was salt and rowanberries on the windowsill.
“Sorcha is a friend,” Briar reminded her quickly.
“I’m only here to help,” Sorcha added. “I’ve known Petal since we were children.”
Bramble did not look convinced. The air was heavy, blurry, as though filling with mist. It made Briar tired, fuzzy-headed. She was sure she had left something important downstairs. That she ought to leave this room and go check. Right now.
Rabbit magic.
“She can tell us if Petal is hurt,” Briar said, still fighting the urge to wander away. Did she need to go to the well for more water? Had she picked enough raspberry leaf for summer teas?
Bramble lowered her scissors and the mists cleared.
Briar forgot about wells and summer teas and being anywhere else. Sorcha rubbed the bridge of her nose as the pressure in the small room lifted. “I did not enjoy that.”
Bramble stepped aside but stayed tense, tracking Sorcha’s every movement. Petal did not look worse than she had earlier, but she did not look better either. Her hare familiar was curled up in the same spot, its light dim but steady.
Sorcha exhaled. “What happened to her?”
“We don’t know,” Briar said. “Something to do with the shields? The moon charm?”
“We might need Pippa. If it’s in a book, she can find it.”
“I have a feeling any messages I send out of Haven will be intercepted.”
Pippa Cavendish was a book witch who lived in Hallow, working at one of the libraries there.
She could find something in a book the way Briar could grow roses.
But Hallow was half a day’s walk on foot or several hours in a carriage.
Which Briar did not own. Finding one to rent during a festival would take some doing.
“You might be right.” Sorcha approached the bed cautiously. “Don’t bite me, Bramble. I bite back.”
“Why don’t you go to my room?” Briar suggested to Bramble softly. “You need to rest.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
Briar was relieved to hear it. Anything she might be able to do for Petal would only be done if she was safely watched over by someone Briar trusted. Bramble. Sorcha. Pippa. And that was the end of the list. “I’ll bring you a tray,” she said.
“Thank you. Someone was downstairs with sharp eyes.” Bramble sat on Petal’s chair, scissors still in hand. Her cheeks were pale. “I needed to use more magic than I thought.”
Sorcha stood at the foot of the bed, watching Petal sleep. There was a faint frown between her brows. Her crow appeared on her shoulder, head tilted, eyes glittering.
She had perfected a spell she used on the lost and wounded creatures she had been finding since they were girls.
Not one of the doctors and midwives, the healers and veterinarians, could replicate it half so well.
From injured horse to sick dog, from spell sickness to the fairy-led, Sorcha’s spell knew what it was searching for and would not be distracted.
She pulled out one of the many paper birds she kept tucked about her person.
Some were covered in writing, the words unknown even to Briar.
Sorcha stood the little bird on her witch knot and then blew it into the air.
It dipped, plummeting briefly before soaring up toward the ceiling.
It circled there, paper rustling. Once, twice, three times.
It finally returned to Sorcha’s palm. She unfolded it, studying the crinkled paper, then nodded.
“Petal’s not in any pain, and there’s nothing that leads me to believe she is not merely sleeping.
The spell is far more concerned with your hip and Bramble’s fatigue. And the state of your roof. Abysmal.”
“Don’t remind me,” Briar muttered, lightheaded with the release of the tension radiating through her. Her sister was not dying. Anything else might be fixed. Would be fixed. “Magic sleep.”
“Magic sleep, yes. She’ll probably wake up feeling more refreshed than either of us ever have, knowing Petal.”
“When?” Bramble demanded sharply, though her shoulders had lost some of their tension.
“I don’t know,” Sorcha replied. “But whatever this is, she’s remarkably well. Honestly, I would ignore her if I stumbled across her in the moors.”
Briar slumped against the doorjamb, relief stealing the last of her strength. “Thank the Mothers.”
“If you give the moon charm back, maybe the spell will lift?” Sorcha said.
“If we only knew where it was.”
“Bollocks.”
“Precisely.”
When Briar made it back downstairs, Ethan was still in the garden.
Not only that, but he appeared to be mending her broken door.
Sorcha grinned. “I’ll leave that in your capable hands.”
“He’s after the moon charm,” Briar said.
“That’s not all he’s after.”
“Don’t be daft.”
Sorcha snorted. “One of us is being daft, and it’s not me.”
“He tied me to the mast of his ship!”
“Oh, well now, things are getting interesting. Do tell.”
Briar laughed. It was nice to know she had not forgotten how to in the last twenty-four hours. “Oh, go on.”
Sorcha waggled her eyebrows suggestively before darting out the front door.
“Wait,” Briar called after her. “Aren’t you going to the oak tree? For solstice?”
“I’ve had more than enough of the village for one day. Send word if you need me!” Sorcha waved and vanished into the fields, her red hair bright as copper pennies.
Briar noticed more than a few neighbors gathering on the road and casting glances in her direction.
She smiled her shopkeeper smile and locked the door.
Firmly. She added a sigil for privacy for good measure.
Her mother had created it for her customers who bought love spells for someone who they had not married, or should not be seen with.
Briar would also wash the windows with salt water as soon as possible.
But first, she needed to get Ethan away from the cottage.
Unfortunately.
Fortunately.
Snapdragon, normally peevish by nature, looked smitten. If a swan could look smitten. Not a good sign. Especially when she pecked at Briar’s feet to hurry her along outside. “Not you too,” she muttered.
Ethan had fixed the warped hinges. The sun glinted on his silver rings, his sun-browned forearms. His sleeves were rolled up, which made perfect sense on a ship, but was rarely seen in Haven. If it wasn’t the thing in Mayfair, it wasn’t the thing in Haven.
Mayfair was missing out.
“One of the hinge pins was bent,” he said. There was a stamped tin ship’s anchor votive pinned to his shirt, the same tattooed on his right forearm. “Easy enough to fix. Looked worse than it was.”
She could only stare as he lifted the door off the ground and fit it into place, before working the screws through the doorjamb.
He made it look easy, muscles flexing in the sun.
The grass was warm as it tickled her ankles, growing a little faster than was natural.
The hollyhocks swayed on their tall stalks, as though reaching for Ethan.
He did not notice, thankfully. Snapdragon extended her long neck, magical light sparking like sun on water.
Briar just shook her head. This was getting embarrassing.
Wasn’t it bad enough that her sister was a thief and now the whole island would be hunting for her?
Did Briar also have to have some kind of magical physical manifestation every time Ethan glanced her way?
“Thank you,” she said, softly, trying not to sound featherbrained. No one had ever done anything like this for her before. For some reason she had to clear her throat. “That was kind of you.”
Ethan did not smile but his eyes were not unkind, only wry. “I’m not kind.”
She wondered about that. He made it sound like a warning, and there was a definite flutter in her chest at his stern, uncompromising tone, but she was not entirely convinced.
He was here for her sister, for the moon charm.
She wasn’t a fool. But there was something else to him, something beneath the surface.
“Well, thank you all the same,” she said.
“Keepers will be back,” he said. “I don’t fancy making things easy for them.”
“Nor I.” And now she could walk down to the village square.
It was tradition to gather at the oak tree and tie ribbons and small flower wreaths for good luck.
By the end of the week, there would also be ashes from the solstice bonfires in little glass vials for sale, as well as seawater gathered under the noon sun, Pegasus feathers, and hagstones from the beach. Painted gold, naturally.
If Briar did not attend, it would be noticed, and she could not afford to be noticed.
It wouldn’t be long now before Petal’s name began to be whispered.
Briar imagined it had only been quiet this long because the Keepers wanted the advantage.
And the Iron Crows, like Ethan. And since Briar always tied ribbons to the oak tree at Midsummer and she always sold wreaths and circlets of flowers, she would do so today.
Even if the idea of leaving Petal made her break out in hives.
Her sister was as safe as she could be for the moment.
And the moment was all Briar had, all she could focus on.
Oak tree, flowers.
Ethan.
She locked the door, grateful she had brought down her trunk of circlets the day before in the wagon. She would have had the devil’s own luck managing it today.
“Where are you off to?” Ethan asked.
“The square. We tie the wish ribbons at noon on the first day of the festival.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said, falling into step with her.
She tilted her head knowingly. “Keen on making wishes, are you?” He did not seem the type. Of course, he had not seemed the type to mend her broken door unbidden, either.