“I lied!” With every ounce of suppressed feeling, he said, “It’s you I love, Rowan. It always was.”
Until he said it, Briar wasn’t sure it would work. Was it really a secret at all? It felt so obvious.
But for Rowan, who was hearing it for the first time, and who up until then had believed the lie, it was the most powerful secret ever told.
The vines slackened and fell away in looping coils around their feet. The forest blurred and spun around them. It snarled, a wheezing cough of impotent rage. Briar felt a wave like dizzy vertigo as the wood that had sought to lock them away was prized open, and the magic of the spell spat them out.
No!screeched the forest.Ours! Promised!
Briar and Rowan were freed of its grasp, magic transporting them.
They landed in a heap on the grass just bordering the woods. Briar rose to his knees. The aches and pains Niamh had temporarily relieved returned, but he hardly cared because Rowan was alive, whole, and looking at him with barely restrained hope.
“I love you,” Briar said again. “I’m so sorry for everything I said. I know I hurt you. I was trying to save us both, and I thought Linden had the cure, but he was a liar and a cheat just like you thought, amurderer. And he killed Gretchen and might as well have done in my mum and your da, and I don’t know if you can ever forgive me, but I will do anything to make it right. If I have to spend every day I have left making it ri—”
By then Rowan had risen, crossed the space between them, drawn Briar into his arms, and kissed him into silence.
Shock froze Briar only temporarily. Then he was grasping Rowan’s shoulders, climbing into his arms. And kissing back. Furiously, desperately kissing back. Relief washed over him. Rowan clutched him close, breathing raggedly between their parted lips. His aura was as soothing as stepping into a warm bath. Briar ached, his body barely held together by hope and dogged willpower, but he felt safe in Rowan’s arms.
“Just like that?” There was barely any space between them for Briar to speak. “You can forgive me just like that? I thought you’d be angry.”
“I’m feckin’ fuming.” One of Rowan’s big hands carded through Briar’s hair, and his brown eyes were anything but furious. “I’ll give out to you something fierce later.”
He tilted, fitting his mouth over Briar’s, and nothing was perfectly fixed, there was still so much they had to do, but for a second Briar could let his muscles go lax and slump into arms that held him steadfast. Briar might have marveled at Rowan’s willingness to forgive if there was anything surprising about it, but Rowan was not like the trees whose shadow he’d lived in. He was the sort you could sit under when you needed rest, the sort to shade you from the sun, to bear fruit when you were hungry.
Briar had rejected his help for fear of the day none was forthcoming. He thought he’d needed to achieve everything on his own to make his mother proud, but she’d never have wanted him to feel ashamed of asking for help when he needed it, like he was too burdensome.
She’d have wanted this: a man who saw his heavy heart, his scars, his dreams, his mistakes and could carry it all. Strong and brave enough to make all that baggage lighter.
Reluctantly, Rowan pulled back. A look of confusion crossed his features.
“What did you mean, Linden might as well have done in your mum and my da?”
A thunderous crack of splintering timber and the toppling of a tree sent them skipping back. The forest groaned in lament.
Briar took Rowan’s hand. “I’ll explain on the way.”
CHAPTER 30
They walked, navigating cowpats, as Briar told Rowan what he’d learned in Pentawynn.
Rowan listened with a darkening scowl. If he had disliked Linden before, he loathed him now. When Briar finished, he remained silent, eyes stormy.
“You can say I told you so. You knew Linden was no good. I should have listened.”
Rowan shook his head. “I thought he was a pompous toad, I thought he was taking advantage of you, but I never thought he’d done—all I’ll say is he best not show his face here again.”
Briar didn’t think it was the last they’d seen of Linden, though.
It had only been twenty-four hours since Briar left Coill Darragh. Many of the townsfolk were still sheltered from the forest’s wrath in the church. Rowan and Briar burst inside, interrupting the pastor mid-sermon. Rowan didn’t need to raise his voice; his baritone carried to the high ceiling.
“I’m sorry, Father, but we’ve an emergency.”
From the pews, Maebh and Sorcha stood. No doubt they’d come to pray for Rowan. There was one other who stood too, near the front.
Niamh regarded them overtop her spectacles. “The time has come, I take it.”
Briar conveyed, quickly as he could, everything he’d just told Rowan.
