Chapter Twenty-Eight
Briar knew she could not swim through those dark and churning waters. She would be pulled under within moments. She considered making a rope of rose vines, hoping it would reach the tower. All she could see were kelpies, with their burning eyes and impossibly muscular jaws.
“Have you ever ridden a kelpie?” she asked Ethan.
“Yes,” he replied grimly.
“I don’t see any other way across.”
He cursed.
“I can do it alone,” Briar added hastily. He had done so much already. No need to ride a murder-horse with a poisoned wound still healing on his arm.
“The hell you are,” he answered, low and dangerous.
“You’ve risked enough.”
He gripped her chin. “Look at me.” His eyes were so intense that she swallowed. “We do this together or not at all.” He kissed her hard and then waded into the frothing ocean, whistling.
Kelpies rushed toward them, shrieking.
Briar stumbled back a step before she could stop herself. She wondered if this was like wild dogs or unicorns, where one wasn’t supposed to show fear.
Too late.
Far, far too late.
Ethan calmed the waves around them, his dragon snapping at the kelpies he decided were too rambunctious.
The water became a dark glass, reflecting the moon, the white tower.
A kelpie snapped at her, far too close for comfort.
Ethan turned the water to icicles. The kelpie nickered and swam away, seaweed clinging to his mane, pinpricks of blood on his side.
The next kelpie had better manners. It was also the size of two large horses. Briar tried not to look at its teeth too closely. “You’re very handsome,” she said, gulping.
Kelpies could sometimes be controlled with ropes of ivy-wrapped widdershins around iron chains. Briar had white roses and rowanberries.
Ethan had fish bones wrapped in gold thread.
“They like them.” He shrugged when she stared at him. Other men fed horses and dogs and kittens. Ethan kept treats for murder-horses among his magical tools.
He gripped her waist and placed her on the kelpie’s back. She held on to the mane, knuckles going red, then pale. It was softer than she would have guessed, and thick as a fisherman’s rope. The salt water stung in her multitude of cuts.
“If you drop her, try to drown her, so much as turn your head for a nibble, I will boil the sea around you,” Ethan promised savagely. “Are we clear?”
He stared the kelpie in the eye for a long moment before turning to mount his own steed.
Briar Foxglove, the witch in the pink cottage, was riding a kelpie.
And riding a kelpie was invigorating. Bracing. Unique.
Also terrifying.
She clung to its wide neck, her thighs tightening. His torso and back went from draft horse to sea serpent. Holding on was tricky business. So was not panicking. Not choking on saltwater spray as it went up her nose.
Ethan charged through the sea beside her, looking as though he was born to it, his dark hair tangled with salt, the muscles of his forearms contracting, silver rings glinting.
The waves around him churned and frothed, but they gentled to a lap around Briar’s knees.
It must have taken an enormous amount of magic.
Behind them, the roses continued to eat the island. They covered the beach and chased them into the sea.
The tower loomed ahead with its jagged, rocky coast.
Ethan finally helped her off the kelpie’s back, steadying her when her hip shot pain all the way down her leg. “Thank you,” she told the water horse politely. “But I don’t ever want to do that again.”
Ethan’s teeth flashed in a grin. The kelpies dove under the waves, slapping their tails on the surface before disappearing.
The climb to the tower did not take long.
The stones were slippery, but the steps were gritty with salt and mussel shells.
Iron Witches were powerful enough that Briar could still see the glimmer of magic in the air but could no longer feel it.
The iron pressed against her collarbones.
Someone’s familiar in the shape of a crane perched on the crenelations.
The wind howled through the arched doorway, pushing them inside.
Rowanberries were scattered on the ground.
Red ribbons and witch glass dangled in the windows, tinkling as the globes swung together.
Lanterns lined the edges of the space in a circle of warm flickering light.
In the center was a brazier with a fire of rowan wood burning hot.
The last Iron Witch also waited inside. She was slumped on the stones, her plaid wrapped around her shoulders.
She wore a crown of rowan over her white hair and the silver torc of her office.
Her fingers were tattooed, joined by dots high on her brow and the triple spiral of Lyonesse at the base of her neck.
They were sworn to the island and its protection.
“You’ve come at last,” she struggled to say, blood on her lips.
“I have the amulet,” Briar said softly. “Tell me what to do.”
“Take that shell there and fill it with salt and rowanberries.”
Briar did as she was bidden, scooping salt from a large glass jar and rowanberries from a willow basket.
“Now the amulet.” The Iron Witch coughed and it sounded painful. Her eyelids were only half open.
Briar did not even check her stays for the amulet. She merely held out her hand until Ethan dropped it in her palm, on top of her dead, faded witch knot, without a word. “I don’t have magic anymore,” she told the other woman. “They took my craft.”
“We don’t need your magic—we have mine. We need your blood.”
Ethan hissed out a warning breath.
The Iron Witch chuckled weakly. “Easy, Dragon.”
“What’s the price?” Ethan demanded.
Briar frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“There’s always a price.” He kept his glare on the Iron Witch.
“He’s right,” she agreed hoarsely.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll pay it,” Briar said. “This is my fault.”
Ethan clapped a hand over her mouth, silencing her. “No.” He tucked her up against his chest protectively. “That was no oath, witch.”
Briar had to pull on his arm with her full strength to get him to lower it. “We don’t have time for this. I made this mess, however unintentionally. So I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“Your sister ought to pay the price.”
“She’s not here. I am.” She stepped toward the Iron Witch, holding the bowl of salt and rowanberries. The moonstone of the amulet drank in the moonlight, pulling it through the windows and the doorway and from Briar herself. “Now what do I do?”
“We need your blood, as well as mine, delivered by a rose thorn.”
That was easy enough to fulfill. The roses were already rushing up the stone steps and her scrapes were still bleeding. One of the vines had tangled in her hair and stuck there, so she pulled it loose for the Iron Witch. She used it to draw blood from her fingertip, as well as her own.
Their blood dripped over the amulet.
“And now?” Briar asked as a storm of rose petals blew inside the tower and caught in a whirlwind. One of the witch globes crashed to the ground and splintered. The sound was like a thousand bird wings, a thousand trees cracked by lightning, a thousand earthquakes underfoot.
“Burn it.”
Aidan was going to be incensed over the burning of an ancient artifact.
Were the Foxgloves a fine family from the peerage, they might have offered donations to assuage the museum over the loss.
Briar could only offer him a nice, soothing tea.
A recipe against slugs in the cabbages. Rose-petal honey.
A broken curse.
When she approached the fire, the wind intensified.
Petals and dirt and debris bit at exposed skin.
The fire flickered wildly but did not go out.
The rowan wood sparked. A keening sounded in her ears.
The iron collar grew colder, stinging her skin.
Icicles formed like dangling silver spikes.
Her teeth chattered. She tried to ignore the mounting pain, stumbled—but she did not fall.
Her hip throbbed, and the cuts all over her hands and arms burned. The collar tightened.
But she did not fall.
“Briar, let me.” Ethan was nearly horizontal as he pushed against the wind.
“It has to be her.” The Iron Witch tried to sit up, but could not.
“It’s hurting her.”
“What did you expect?” spat the Iron Witch. “Curses don’t die easy.”
“Neither do Foxgloves,” Briar forced out even as the wind tried to steal her breath and the petals tried to choke her and her blood dripped on the cold stones.
The roses had reached the tower, and now they were at the windows, snaking through the arched doorway. Seeking, claiming, strangling. Another witch globe popped, showering them with glass dust. A lantern toppled, candlelight extinguished.
Briar tried to ignore it all. There was only the amulet in her hand, the fire in the center of the tower, sparks glowing with the power of the Iron Witches. The taste of salt and fennel seeds and blood. The drag of her shoes on the stones as she fought for purchase.
The bite of vines snapping around her, quick as a snakebite.
Briar did fall that time, taken off balance and unable to steady herself. Her wrist and shoulder took the brunt, and her hip. The force of it jarred into her teeth. Thorns bound her ankles, biting. Merciless. She had no magic to fight them.
Ethan hacked at the roses with an iron dagger to get to her, and covered her with his body to shield her. He pressed over her, grim-faced and determined. She squinted into the petal-choked wind. The fire flared. She was close enough.
Maybe.
The sea churned out of sight, a constant thundering. The iron collar was made of ice and thorns. More blood dripped down her collarbones.
Gasping with pain, Briar tossed the amulet at the fire.
The wind roared and caught it.
Her eyelids felt too heavy even as desperation and frustration coursed through her. Her fingers shook. She coughed on a rose petal. The curse had come for her.
And then the wind changed.
Just a little.
Just enough.