Chapter Thirty-One #2
She was throwing chicken bones to a hungry kelpie, her apron filled with rowanberries and dandelions and seashells.
The light glittered on the waves and the snap of white teeth.
After the tracking spell, moonlight made her feel a little odd, exposed somehow, even though it did not seek her out any more than it sought out the rocks or the white tower.
The curse was well and truly broken. Even the white roses did not grow in Holdfast anymore.
And so she attributed the frisson of awareness only to that.
Until the kelpie shrieked and Briar turned to glance behind her.
Ethan stood silently on the edge of the stone wall, silhouetted against the lanterns of Holdfast swinging in the wind like fireflies.
Briar froze. She stopped breathing altogether.
Had she missed him so much that she was imagining him now?
He wore the customary leather cross-belt across his chest, crow claw and hagstone around his neck. But there was a new scar on the side of his throat, angry and red. And a tattoo of a rose tangled with thorns on the back of his left hand.
“Did you forget me already, sweetheart?” he asked, that Irish accent, that deep, smooth voice, curling around every bruise inside her ribcage, every spot that ached with the memory of him.
“Are you really here?” she asked as he closed the distance between them. Her pulse ricocheted all over her body.
“I’m really here.” He wiped a tear from her cheekbone before she’d realized it was there. “You little liar. You were so brave and so stoic when I left.”
“So were you.” She clutched his arms, needing to feel him. Wanting to kiss him. Punch him. “What are you doing here?”
She could not let herself hope. Iron Crows had dozens of reasons to be in Lyonesse.
He could be here for the Iron Witches, for all she knew.
A tendril of hope did not want to think so, but she did not whisper it to grow.
She couldn’t. Ethan would leave her again and she would be right back where she started.
She had to be smart. Practical. She had seen her mother work too many love spells, and the results were never quite what you expected. Love never was.
“The real question is, what are you doing here?” Ethan asked. “In Holdfast?”
“I like it here.”
“And they like you. I had to run the gauntlet of Iron Witches, three fishermen with cudgels, and a feral child who threatened to turn me into fish stew before anyone would tell me where to find you.”
Briar smiled. “That was Simon. He’s afraid I’ll stop growing peas for him to steal.”
“I wouldn’t want to cross him.”
“No.”
“Your pink cottage in Haven has been painted white, and the gardens are…not the same.” His hands tightened on her. His eyes were a little wild. “I thought something happened to you.”
“Just Mrs. Aster,” she said wryly. “And my mother. Some debts can’t be paid.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
She lifted her chin. “It would have made no difference. And you were already helping Petal. That’s what really mattered.”
“You are infuriating, woman.”
She blinked. “As are you, Dragon.”
He grunted. “Aye.”
“Ethan?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“What are you doing here?” she blurted out, not the least bit romantic or coy. “Are you selling spells to the Iron Witches?” They always needed ingredients, some unavailable on the island. Some unsavory.
Ethan looked at her for a long moment. “I’m here for you.”
That tendril of hope strengthened without her permission, clinging like ivy.
“I took Petal to the mainland, as you asked. And I also dropped Aster somewhere in the Outer Hebrides. I hope he can swim.”
“What? You know he can’t.”
“Pity for him, then.” Ethan shrugged one shoulder.
“You didn’t want me to kill him. I had to get creative.
After that, I had one last job I was hired to finish, the kind that would bring pain on the people around me if I didn’t follow through,” he explained.
“And then there were the three bounties on my head I had to deal with. It all took longer than it bloody well should have.”
Briar swallowed, her throat dry, her nose stinging.
“Nothing to say?” he pressed, sounding fond and demanding and…uncertain?
Could the infamous Ethan Swansea be nervous? About her?
“You didn’t think I’d come back to you with that kind of danger at my back?
” His jaw clenched, reading her expression.
“You didn’t think I’d come back for you at all.
” He shook his head. “Of course you didn’t.
You’re always setting things free, aren’t you?
Bees in your kitchen, weeds, sparrows. But I don’t want you to let me go, little thorn.
I never did. Because I’m sure as hell not letting you go. ”
“But…you hate Lyonesse,” she said even as elation made her voice tremble.
“I may hate Haven, but I love you.”
The words bloomed inside her body. She was made of dandelion wishes and strawberries and red, red roses.
“And Holdfast is already growing on me,” he continued. “I like them for threatening me on your behalf. It’s a comfort.” It would be, for him. “And I’d bloody well live in Mayfair if you wanted me to. Because I love you, Briar Foxglove.”
“I love you too,” she whispered.
He tilted her chin up, focusing on her with the stillness of a predator. “Say it again.”
“I love you.”
He kissed her so fiercely, so deeply, that it left no room for doubts, no room for anything but the magic between them.
“But you’re a captain,” she pointed out when they paused to catch their breath. Why was she pulling at the threads like an idiot? Why wasn’t she still kissing him? Breathing was overrated. “And an Iron Crow.”
“I can be that with you.”
“Living in a pink house on Lyonesse? Even if it’s in Holdfast?” she asked, doubtfully. “No sailor has ever chosen anything but the sea.”
“The sea is right here,” he said, not even bothering to look at it. He was too busy looking at her. “And as it happens, the coast needs patrolling. The war with the French isn’t likely to end quickly.”
“Oh.” Could this work? Was he really here, choosing her?
“And I’m not a sailor or a captain or an Iron Crow, Briar. I am just yours.”
He was.
He was hers.
And she was his.
It was glorious. Perfect.
One small detail remained.
“The next time you make all of these big plans and decisions?” She poked him hard in the chest. “Let me know about it first, you cabbagehead.”
He caught her fingers in his, keeping them pressed to him. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She was not entirely mollified, mostly because she enjoyed the fire in his eyes, the determination in the set of his shoulders.
The way his gaze drifted down to her mouth, and the way her body instantly responded.
She swayed toward him like a peony grown too full for its stalk.
Like a sunflower, a vine of morning glories, seeking, seeking.
But she did not let herself fully close the inches between them.
“Still not convinced?” Ethan’s smile was devious and not the least bit charming.
He was every bit the dragon and never the knight in shining armor.
“Then it will be my pleasure to convince you, little thorn.”