Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Because Ethan had also come for her. As he lay over her, bearing the brunt of the attack, he continued to pull water into the tower until he filled the air with rain, sending every drop like bolts. Weighing down the wind, tearing through the roses. The sea lapped at the doorway.
The wind stuttered.
The amulet fell into the fire.
It rolled down a rowan log, perilously close to rolling clear out of the embers.
The ashes turned silver. Briar could not breathe, not until the amulet teetered, but was eventually swallowed by the flames.
The pearls melted. It took longer for the moonstone to crack, but when it did, the vines around Briar’s ankles loosened.
Her eyelids did not weigh as much as a castle.
The rose petals froze in the air for a moment and then dropped, all at once, all of a sudden. The silence was nearly painful, swelling in the ears. Her heart beat too hard. She felt it inside every cut and pinprick.
She lowered her head with a thump, exhausted and exhilarated. Ethan’s breath was ragged on the back of her neck.
The rain receded. The moonlight did not find her inside the tower.
The roses became roses once more.
Briar rolled over onto her back and Ethan pressed up on his hands, still looming over her, soaked through, sleeve torn, jaw hard.
His gaze roamed, cataloguing her wounds, narrowing over the collar.
But before he could say anything, the Iron Witch rose to her feet.
She sliced a cut over her witch knot and then slapped her palm to the wall, over the triple spiral of Lyonesse carved deep into one of the damp stones.
The shields, invisible but palpable all the same, lifted.
It was the sound of a rusty iron portcullis being raised. Creaking, groaning, and then, finally, opened.
Briar sat up, hardly daring to believe it was over.
The island shields were lifted; the roses had stopped growing. Her sister was safe.
Ethan reached out to touch her cheek, pulling free the hair stuck there. “Briar, your hair.”
She followed his gaze. A streak of her brown hair had turned white—white as salt, white as bone.
White as the moon.
He searched her expression. She shrugged.
But when she spoke, her voice was smaller than she would have liked.
Would this be the last evidence of her magic?
That she had witchcraft in her blood once?
That flowers knew her name? “Do you think the Keepers will take this collar off now that the shields have been mended?”
The empty space where her green magic should be was even more exhausting than the battles and the curse breaking.
There should be a hundred little conversations to take for granted, a whisper from the rowan-twig crown, the dried mint in her apron, the roses everywhere.
The seaweed just outside the door, the soft green moss, the sacred rowan trees on the cliff.
But there was nothing. Not just silence, which could be gentle. This was raw and jagged and wrong.
“Bah, Keepers,” the Iron Witch said with disdain while Briar fought back tears. Petal was safe. Sorcha and Ethan and the witches of Lyonesse were safe. It should be enough.
It would have to be enough, if the Order chose to punish her by leaving the iron to trap her swan. Was Snapdragon scared? Or asleep? She had no way of knowing.
Her nails cut little half-moons into her palm.
“I’ll make them take it off,” Ethan swore, low and rough. “Or I’ll find a warlock who will.”
The Iron Witch snorted. “All of that will take too long. The Order does like to make a fuss. Come here, girl.”
Briar crossed the uneven stones littered with roses and rowanberries and broken glass.
The Iron Witch clicked her tongue at the collar, drawing her fingertips over the patterns hammered into it.
“You are a beast, aren’t you?” she murmured, as if it had spoken to her.
Perhaps it had. Iron Witch magic was a bit of a mystery to everyone else.
The collar silvered with frost when she touched the clasp, as if fighting back.
“That’s enough of that,” the Iron Witch snapped, her eyes flaring. “You may be Order-bound, but I am Iron-bound.”
The clasp opened and the collar dropped to the stones with a clang.
The rush of power was like a dry riverbed flooding after a drought. It prickled painfully, perfectly. Briar tasted mint and tea and lavender. Snapdragon burst from her chest with a cry of relief and, it had to be said, vengeance. Swans were not pretty, gentle creatures.
And neither was she.
This time it was a relief to think it.
The Iron Witch studied the irate swan, the rose leaves fluttering even though the air was still. “You’d make a decent Iron Witch,” she said.
“I’m not banished from Holdfast?” Briar asked, leaning back into the comfort of Ethan’s chest because she wanted to and did not know how many chances were left to her. She had expected the Holdfast witches to hold a grudge. She had messed with their shields, after all.
But the Iron Witch only shrugged. “It’s not our mistakes, usually, but what we do with them. But I’m keeping the collar.”
And that was that. Iron Witches were a pragmatic lot, it seemed.
She strode out of the tower into the graying pre-morning light.
Briar gathered rose petals and rowanberries and tucked them into one of her apron pockets before following.
Just in case. A green witch was a green witch, after all.
And the whispers were a balm, little stories of roots and branches and blossoms.
They stepped out of the tower, the sea tossing whitecaps around them. There was a tiny glint of fire in the distance. The dawn bonfire at the stone circle at the old hillfort. It was solstice morning.
Briar made a face. “I don’t relish having to ride another kelpie.”
The Iron Witch raised her eyebrows. “You rode a kelpie?”
“Isn’t that how you cross?”
She snorted and pointed around the back of the island where a rowboat was tied to the rocks.
“We take the boat. Only a lunatic would ride a bloody kelpie.”