Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Her mouth went dry. She nodded again. She wasn’t sure what else to do.
There were no plants nearby to appeal to for help, and the rowanberries on the ceiling were already charged with a magical purpose not easily altered.
There was the tea in the canister, a jar of rosemary on the far table. Nothing that could get her out of this.
Bear approached her. “If you could stand, please?”
She stood, thoughts racing. She consoled herself that every moment they spent interrogating her was one fewer moment with Petal in their sights.
Yes, she had stolen from the museum, and yes, it had triggered unfortunate and unforeseen events, but it did not warrant the things they would do to her.
Trap her familiar, bleed her dry at the portal.
Any number of spells with no guarantee of success.
Bear had a charm made of two crossed iron nails wrapped in red thread and piercing two rowanberries.
A standard charm to either amplify or break witchcraft.
It was secured to a small bottle in which a wasp buzzed against the glass.
It would track any magic on Briar’s person and neutralize it, bound to the Keeper’s charm.
She had heard of such a spell, but had never seen one.
Or been the subject of one. Her legs tensed with the instinct to run.
She noticed her chair sat in a circle of iron nails driven into the floorboards.
Bear pressed the charm over her witch knot.
There was an immediate jolt of power, the smell of fennel, the taste of salt.
Bear released the wasp. It buzzed around her head in an angry halo before widening its circle, bumping into a daisy still tangled in her hair, infused with the magic of the firefly wishes by the pond.
The pink quartz stone in her ring, spelled by her mother for general beauty and very common to Haven.
The strawberry vines she had embroidered on her sleeves for sweetness and abundance.
The wasp crawled along her neckline, and she held her breath. What did it do when it found something it did not like? Would it sting her? She had an understanding with the wasps in her garden. This one did not seem amenable to conversation.
When its wings tickled her skin above her stays, it took a great deal of effort to remain still.
The wasp buzzed again, waving its stinger. Briar flinched.
And then the wasp merely returned to the bottle she still held in her palm.
Because the moon charm was not tucked into her stays where it should be.
Ethan had nicked it again.
Thank all the spirits.
There was nothing to find on her person, no wayward magic, no moon charm. Briar exhaled slowly.
Bear nodded, reclaiming the charm bottle. “Thank you.”
“She’s hidden it somewhere,” Oliver snapped.
“Possibly,” Bear said.
“Sir, she’s been consorting with Crows.”
“Just the one,” Briar said. “And what does that have to do with anything?” Everything. Everything. “He’s very handsome.” Hardly the point. “You’ve already searched my house. Twice.”
“And we will keep searching until we find what we are looking for.”
“We really do need to stop the roses,” Bear said quietly. “They are overtaking the village.”
Briar frowned. “I have not spelled anyone’s roses. For Midsummer, people prefer to focus on sunflowers and marigolds. Or St. John’s wort for luck. I convinced a rosebush to abandon someone’s pea plants and cut them back from the well, but that’s it.”
“This is a different kind of witchery. It’s hungry.”
The door swung open and yet another Keeper appeared, hair wet with rain. “Some bloody idiots are trying to use a battering ram on the portal.”
“I’ll see to it.” Bear sighed. “Before they trigger another counterspell. That’s all we need.”
“I knocked one on his ass, but they’re gathering a crowd.”
“Barnaby, with me,” Bear said. The Keeper with the pendulum followed them out.
Briar was left alone with Oliver and one other Keeper. “Ambrose, get the truth spell,” he said, smiling an oily kind of smile at her.
She tried to take a step back, but there was nowhere to go. The chair blocked her; the circle of iron nails flared molten hot. Ambrose returned with the charm of herbs and ashes from solstice bonfires. She did not know what other ingredients went into the spell. Only that it was not gentle.
“I saw Petal Foxglove once. She’s a beauty. A true pocket Venus,” Ambrose said. “If we save her from the Order and the Museum, do you think she’d be grateful? How grateful?”
“Never mind that,” Oliver snapped. “We have the island to protect.”
“We can do both.”
“Just hurry up before Bear comes back.”
Briar, not knowing what else to do, shoved the chair at Ambrose. He staggered back, grunting with surprise.
But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly.
Oliver was already moving. He grabbed her and clapped the spell bundle over her mouth, nearly smothering her in the process. Her tooth cut into her bottom lip. She choked on the taste of blood and witchcraft.
The truth spell crawled through her brain, scraping like thorns, needles, lightning.
She screamed.
“Shut her up,” Ambrose said.
Oliver gripped her face, fingers digging into her jaw. His eyes bored into hers. Her swan hissed but she refused to release it. The danger that it might get trapped was too great.
She gasped as Oliver clawed through her memories, as careless and violent as a housebreaker after heirloom jewels. Paintings crashed to the floor; drawers were upended, clothing pulled from trunks. Teacups smashed, again and again. Moonlight pierced her skull.
Briar screamed again.
At Briar’s first scream of pain, Ethan’s blood ran cold.
Fury gripped him in a way that ought to have cracked the entire island like an egg. He’d never felt its like before. The sea rose against the beach, the bonfires, past the walls, lapping at the houses. The water in the fountain froze.
Ethan lit the first fire.
At her second cry, he dove through the back window of the Order headquarters, smashing through glass and barking at Matthias as he shot past him. “Now, goddamn it.”
Matthias closed his eyes.
“What the hell?” someone yelped. “I can’t see.”
“Me either!”
Matthias, young and kind and obsessed with the proper consistency of coddled eggs, wielded magic that blinded those around him.
Literally. Ethan’s hagstone kept his eyes clear.
But it wouldn’t have mattered—he would have found Briar without his eyes, his ears, his very hands.
The blinding spell had the added benefit of fogging her vision, cutting the connection Oliver was relying on. Amateur. Thank the Kraken.
Ethan took note of the layout of the room, the chains, the sigils, the ropes of rowanberries, but all he truly saw was Briar.
Oliver had his hands on her face.
Ethan broke his left wrist, tossing him aside like a bucket of kitchen slop. Oliver howled, also blinded by Matthias’s magic. Ethan tossed the other Keeper into the wall and he crumpled, unconscious.
When Ethan slipped a hagstone into Briar’s palm, she blinked at him. “Ethan.” Her voice was strangled, hoarse.
It made the Dragon in him want to burn the world.
He ushered her toward the window, pausing only to knock an oil lamp onto the floor. The oil spilled, the flames spreading.
“You can’t murder two Keepers,” Briar protested when she paused and he nudged her to keep going.
“You really have to stop saying that to me.” He did not have the time for murder, at any rate.
But he’d be coming back for those two bastards.
If they survived the night, they wouldn’t survive him.
But first, he needed to get Briar the hell away from this place and this magic. “Someone will come get them.”
He helped her out of the window, still protesting, but weakly. She looked tired, scared. He almost went back right then and there. But the need to get her away was stronger.
“Run, little thorn.”
He whistled once, a warning to Matthias. Fire ate at the hay he had stolen from the inn’s stables and bundled at the side of the headquarters. Flames were already licking out of the window. When the fires met, the headquarters would burn. Someone rang the alarm bell. But it was too late.
They had taken Briar, tried to hurt her. There wasn’t a water drop on the island that would put out that fire until Ethan decided it was time.
Briar’s eyes were wide, the fire reflected in her pupils. “You have fire magic too?”
He grunted. “I have matchsticks.”