“He said you didn’t get along.”
She looked affronted. “No, we were the best of friends. Isthatwhat he told you? Oh, that’s rich.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I don’t know, but around the time of their Miracle Tour, his parents cut all contact. Refused to speak to me. This was before I had much to my name, you understand. Suddenly, they were too good to answer my calls. Over a decade we’d known each other. I kept their secrets. I changed Linden’s nappies, a fact we’re both keen to forget.”
Briar said, “They dropped you because you weren’t… famous enough?”
Finola ran her tongue along her teeth. Her iron gaze turned inward, contemplative. “I like you, Briar. Consider yourself invited to my gala,buton the condition that I see at least half the garments on that runway look as fresh as the thing you’re wearing right now. Don’t let the Fairchilds use you as their doormat.”
Briar adopted her posture and, with a flourish, kicked up a heeled foot onto the table. It was his leg bared by the slit in his skirt so he had to be delicate about the arrangement of fabric, but it proved his point. “Do I look like a doormat?”
Finola laughed. She sucked back the last of her whiskey, slammed the glass down on the table like a judge’s gavel, then rose, smoothing her hands down her coat. “That’s what I like to hear.”
Her headstrong posture reminded Briar fiercely of Gretchen, whose absence burned like an ember in his heart.
Finola left him sitting at the table with the last sip of whiskey in his glass and success fizzling dully in his veins. He’d done it. Reluctant as she’d been, he’d won her over. Linden’s fears that Briar would blunder into a public controversy could be laid to rest.
He took the last sip of his whiskey. A spasm in his hand made him nearly drop the glass, but he caught it, setting it down with a heavy thunk. Like a thorn in his foot, his curse reminded him with every stabbing step of progress that he’d have to survive long enough to see Finola’s gala.
Fatigue setting in, he slid out of the booth but found his way blocked by Rowan.
The alderman held two drinks. A stout and a cider, like they’d had on Saor ó Eagla.
“Room to celebrate with a friend?”
CHAPTER 24
Friend.Briar kicked himself.
He shouldn’t accept. Vatii’s talons squeezed his shoulder. She sensed the tumultuous emotions Briar harbored and knew the danger in them. He was impulsive, driven by feeling. And Rowan made him feela lot.
But Rowan looked so hopeful, and he’d already brought the drinks.
Briar said, “Of course.”
Rowan asked about Finola, and Briar explained the importance of her gala. When he shared the news that she’d invited him, Rowan beamed. There was a shard of glass in his smile. There always was, lately. That glass twisted in Briar, too. Pentawynn, a runway of models wearing his clothes, proving his teachers and peers wrong—he’d grabbed it all while wearing stilettos and taboo magic and a dress made from the twisted yarn of his life.
But then there was this. A pub full of people he knew by name. Aisling at the bar. Diarmuid teasing her. Orla, her arm still in a sling, playing a hand of cards at her corner table. He might have only had passing conversations with them, but it felt convivial in a way he’d never known.
And there was Rowan. Making him laugh. Celebrating, gamely, Briar’s success, even if it could take him far away from here.
Abigail came into the pub, too—her ginger hair made her stand out in the crowd—and Briar noticed her making eyes across the room. But if Rowan saw, he had yet to return those looks. A more selfless friend would encourage Rowan to talk to her. Briar couldn’t fault her interest. Rowan was a rarity, soft in all the places the world should have made him jagged,pillar-strong even after relentless isolation. That scar carved a moat around him, and instead of crumbling, he just kept building bridges in the hopes someone might cross.
Briar made himself say, “You know, Abigail’s been batting her eyes at you this whole time.”
“Mm.” Rowan glanced aside.
“You should go talk to her. She seems kind.”
Rowan said, “I know what you’re trying to do, Briar, and I appreciate it. But we both know it wouldn’t be fair to her.”
And if that didn’t turn Briar’s insides to pudding…
“How are you?” Rowan asked.
“Good. Great. Busy,” Briar answered.
