Chapter Twenty-Nine
The crossing back to the main island was a far simpler affair.
There were still kelpies, but they were mostly waiting for Ethan to toss them chicken bones. Even the Iron Witch shook her head at that.
The keel dragged on the rocks as several villagers rushed forward to bring them the rest of the way in. They steadied the boat, helping the Iron Witch to her feet, then Briar, but Ethan was already knee-deep in the waves, lifting her out.
Holdfast was full of roses but did not look otherwise the worse for wear.
No one had choked on petals or been strangled to death by thorny vines.
Briar let out a breath of relief. Someone had lit a fire in the center of the small square and it popped cheerfully, sending sparks into the sky.
There would be bonfires all over the island this morning.
Oliver and Ambrose were where they had been left, tied up with rope, mostly being ignored by the villagers. Sorcha was nearby, tossing a large branch into the field behind the road. “Is she playing fetch with a Black Shuck?” Ethan asked.
Briar smiled fondly at her friend. “Yes, of course she is.”
“Of course. Stupid of me to ask, really.”
Sorcha spotted them and darted over to throw her arms around Briar. “You did it! Your hair! Your throat! Is that blood? Are you hurt?”
Briar shook her head. She was beyond tired, had passed to that glittering, liminal pace beyond it. Her hip ached like the devil. She wanted a pot of tea and a tower of Matthias’s madeleines. An entire chicken pie. A raspberry cake. Cheese. Three days of sleep.
But she was surprisingly…well.
“Happy Midsummer,” she said instead, because it was a less complicated answer and a soft pink touched the horizon, barely there.
“Happy Midsummer!” Sorcha returned, eyes sharp as she glanced at Ethan, then back at Briar.
Briar had no answers. The Black Shuck barreled toward them, the half of a toppled tree he had traded the branch for in his giant jaw.
“Happy Midsummer, Shadow,” Sorcha added.
“Give me that, you absolute monster. Don’t you dare drool on me. I’ll stink for a month.”
“You named him Shadow?” Briar groaned, the moment of ordinary such a balm it made her eyes sting. “You are the worst at naming things.”
“What? How can you say that? He’s dark, a bit scary. Shadow is perfect. I am very good at this,” she informed Ethan haughtily.
“You called your familiar Shiny Murder Bird until you were twelve,” Briar reminded her.
“And he is a shiny murder bird. I fail to see the problem. And then he wanted to be addressed as Sir Elderberry.”
Elderberry, the murder bird in question, was busy flying low circles over Shadow with a taunting cry.
“What about these two?” Ethan asked, looking rather like a shiny murder bird himself. Oliver squirmed to get out of reach. Sorcha had stuffed a piece of cloth in his mouth.
“He wouldn’t stop complaining,” she said, rolling her eyes. “‘My arm hurts, I’m a Keeper,’ demanding this, demanding that. So it was this or let Shadow eat his face.” She sniffed. “All options are still on the table.”
Ethan didn’t say a word, but he took a step closer, shirt bloodied, hair tangled and crusted with salt water. Oliver paled. Ambrose yelped.
Briar sighed. “Technically he was within his rights to make me wear the iron collar,” she pointed out.
“Like hell!” both Ethan and Sorcha bellowed together. Shadow growled once. Ethan’s dragon dove low, fire streaming from his nostrils.
It was rather nice.
“I’m not saying I’m going to bake him a cake,” Briar assured them. “But we can let Bear deal with him.”
Ethan studied her silently, iron dagger at the ready.
“I know you’re not staying on Lyonesse,” she said softly. “But if you murder a Keeper, you won’t ever be able to come back.”
Would he want to come back? Was she being presumptuous? Her cheeks warmed.
“Not that… I mean…”
Very articulate, Briar.
It had been a trying night. Allowances ought to be made.
Ethan’s expression was hard to read, but a muscle twitched in his jaw. He nodded once, eyes dark as the sea behind them. Then he crouched to whisper something in Oliver’s ear. Briar could not hear what he said. She exchanged a glance with Sorcha.
When Ethan straightened, Oliver was even paler and had broken out into a cold sweat. Ethan looked grimly satisfied.
“What do we do with them now?” Sorcha wondered aloud. “Do we just let them go?”
“I am sure the Order is on their way already,” Briar said.
Sorcha turned hastily to the Black Shuck. “Time to go! Don’t let them see you!”
Shadow panted at them, his breath eye-watering, before dashing into the fields. Swallows and starlings burst out of the grass, squawking as he passed.
“You can’t just let a Black Shuck—”
“Shut up, Ambrose,” Sorcha snapped. “You tried to stab me. You do not get an opinion.”
“Best not tarry,” said the Iron Witch from the tower—who, they had discovered, was also the daughter of a selkie from the Orkneys and a sailor from Samoa. Her name was Scathach. “The Order is bad enough when they don’t feel the need to posture on top of everything. Today they will be unbearable.”
“Thank you,” Briar said. They had been more understanding than she could have ever expected.
Scathach waved that away. “Go on with you. But come back and talk to our rowan trees soon, would you? We don’t have a green witch here anymore, and between the stone and the iron, they do have a time of it.”
“I will,” Briar promised. It would be a pleasure. She had never worked with a grove of sacred trees before. And Holdfast was lovely in its own way: harsh, wind-worn, unassuming.
“What about Petal? And the others?” Briar asked as she and Ethan and Sorcha followed the Black Shuck’s example and chose the fields over the road. “We need to make sure they weren’t hurt or captured.”
“They’re fine,” Ethan said.
“How can you know that?”
He nodded to the shimmering albatross flying toward them. “That’s my boatswain’s familiar. Three flicks of his tail feathers mean everyone is accounted for.”
“Even Petal?”
He grunted. “Do you think my crew would leave her out now? You saw them.”
Relief felt strange after everything. It made her lightheaded.
She swallowed a giggle. Too much had happened, was still happening.
Her swan flew in the dragon’s fiery wake but did not stray far, for which she was glad.
They had only been separated by the iron collar for a short time, but the shock of it lingered under her skin.
It was like having a limb removed. An organ.
The sky turned to a lighter gray with swirls of pink and a thin, thin line of orange on the eastern horizon.
There was the flicker of firelight from several small bonfires.
The main solstice fire would be at the Crown, the circle of standing stone at the top of the highest hill overlooking the hillfort remains.
“Is that Goliath?” Sorcha asked, spotting the horse picking through the grass for dandelions. “What’s he doing out here?”
“Ethan stole him,” Briar said.
“Later you’ll tell me how we all ended up in Holdfast. And about the roses. You know I hate roses.” She waggled her brows at Briar, angling away so Ethan would not see her face. “I’ll get Goliath home and meet you at the Crown?”
Briar nodded, feeling oddly nervous. She had fought off Iron Crows, a grimsong, a truth spell, an iron collar. She could have this conversation.
“I know you are leaving as soon as may be,” she said to Ethan, watching her friend charge through the fields singing a song to the puzzled horse. She couldn’t quite look at him. “But it’s tradition to light the main bonfire at dawn for the solstice.”
“Like swimming at midnight and counting fireflies.”
She nodded. He paused. She heard the shift when he stepped closer. He tipped her face up toward his, smiling faintly.
“I suppose I had better. Whenever you go off for a bit of good luck, you come up against kelpies and Keepers.”
She smiled back shyly. “That’s true.”
“But I do have to leave, little thorn.”
Her smile did not waver. “I know.”
Haven might be the social jewel of Lyonesse, all propriety and luxury, but even they bent the rules for summer festival days.
There was a wildness and a rawness to the celebrations, white dresses stained with strawberry wine, folks wearing daisies with their pearls, bare toes in the grass.
Music swelled as the fire burned higher, drums and flutes and fiddles reaching to the rising sun.
Familiars glowed everywhere: toads and cats, badgers, hedgehogs and hawks.
A giant whale made of sparkling light swam through the sky as if it were the sea.
A Pegasus’s hooves flashed gold as it landed down in the valley.
“Miss Foxglove!” The wheelwright’s son stumbled to a stop when he recognized Briar. He was flushed with wine. “Is your sister here?”
She shook her head, smiling. “I’m afraid not.”
He looked devastated. “Do you know that she is prettier than the sun?”
Ethan grunted. Briar nodded. “I do know that.” If the villagers were asking after her sister in that lovesick manner, it was better than demanding she be brought to the Order to pay for her crimes.
The shields had lifted; solstice was here.
They would forgive her everything. Maybe not the Order, but most of Lyonesse would.
Three more villagers stopped to inquire about Petal. They all wore crowns of white roses. Trust Haven to turn a threat into a new fashion. Briar had picked dandelions and buttercups and pink mallows and woven them into a circlet instead. The smell of the roses made her nose itch.
Ethan was clearly bristling, standing big and mean behind her.
The hatmaker opened his mouth to ask Briar a question, no doubt about Petal, and then changed his mind.
The sun rose higher and higher in a bed of pinks and oranges.
The chain of dancers around the giant bonfire went faster, and faster. Magic sparkled, sweetening the air.
The sun finally rose completely, beams piercing between two of the standing stones. A cheer erupted. More strawberry wine was poured, baskets of blackcurrant cakes passed from hand to hand. There would be lazy walks back down to the village, breakfasts taken on the beach.
And Ethan sailing away.
The thought of it pulsed like a bruise, one Briar could not stop pressing.
He would leave. And she would stay.
She slipped her hand into his. She would keep him for a little while longer.
And then she would let him go.
If one more person glanced at Briar vaguely before immediately inquiring about her sister, Ethan might flood the moors.
Hilltop to valley. Let them all swim home.
Or drown. It was beyond intolerable that he had agreed not to kill Oliver.
Not because of logic or what was morally right, but only because Briar asked him not to.
That Keeper had hurt her. The man deserved nothing less than annihilation.
Instead Ethan was watching villagers dance. It was flower crowns and firelight and songs being sung to the sun. It was lovely, in its own way.
But not nearly good enough for Briar. It was an ill-fitting dress. One of those damned driftwood canes that were not the right size or shape for her. And it infuriated him.
Rain pattered suddenly, sizzling when it hit the flames. Briar nudged him. “Stop that.”
“Not me.”
“Ha.”
It ate at him, the way their eyes drifted over her. Worse, when two Keepers, ones he did not recognize, paused. Lingered. “Had enough of this?” he murmured, not taking his sharp gaze from them. The sun was bright on their iron-nail pendants.
Briar’s nod was all he needed.
He gave in to the need to claim her, impossible as it might be.
She deserved better. But her giggle when he scooped her over his shoulder made him feel like a king, even if it was of a kingdom he could not claim.
It might be Midsummer, but this was still Haven, still Lyonesse.
The scandal of the Dragon carting away the flower witch from the pink cottage whispered through the crowd.
“What are you doing?” Briar asked, still trying not to giggle. He had been listening to sirens singing since he was a lad, and nothing, nothing compared to her surprised little laugh.
“You said you’d had enough,” he replied.
“Not of walking,” she corrected him. Her hair swung, smelling of roses and mint. The soft roundedness of her arse under his palm was a threat to his sanity. It made him want to bare his teeth.
The murmurs continued, the sidelong glances.
Let them remember him. Perhaps he would not always be here, but he could come back at any time, the Iron Crow with blood on his hands. His reputation could protect her, even as it demolished hers.
Someone clapped. He’d bet his ship it was Sorcha. The flash of a crow familiar confirmed it. He kept walking. He wasn’t sure where he was taking Briar, as long as it was away.
Someone stepped out of the crowd, familiar, proper all the way down to his museum shoes, even now. Ethan sighed, annoyed at the interruption.
“Lord Coventry,” Briar greeted him pleasantly, propping herself up on Ethan’s shoulder.
“Miss Foxglove.”
At least Aidan had always shown her respect. Ethan might not eviscerate him after all. As long as he got out of the bloody way. He did not have long with Briar, and like hell was he going to spend any of it making conversation with an earl.
“You got the amulet to Holdfast. Well done.”
“We did, thank you,” she said.
“Did you leave it with the Iron Witches?”
Briar winced. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing left of it.”
Aidan closed his eyes briefly. “I was afraid of that.”
“It’s not Petal’s fault.”
“Pardon me, but it is.”
At least on that, he and Ethan agreed.
“Will you arrest her?” Briar’s sweet, throaty voice went hard. And then Ethan went hard. Immediately.
Aidan ran a hand over his face. “I do not command the Order, despite what Swansea here might think. I work for the museum. No artifact, no need for me to follow.”
“Oh, good.” Briar beamed at him. Ethan could feel it. “Then I won’t have to poison you.”
Aidan blinked.
This was interminable.
“Coventry?” Ethan snapped.
“Yes?”
“Bit busy,” he said. “Sod off.”
Aidan stepped back, lips twitching as he fully realized he had been conversing with an upside-down Briar. A curator’s focus could not be faulted, if nothing else.
As Ethan stalked away, Briar still over his shoulder, he heard Sorcha. “Are you smiling, Lord Coventry? Careful, you might hurt your pretty face. And I believe that’s my job.”