Niamh appeared at his elbow and wrapped a hand around it. “I’ll help,” she said.
Briar nodded. It would take a lot of magic, and he had so little. He didn’t know if he had it in him to tithe so much for a single enchantment, but he had to try.
Closing his eyes, gripping Rowan’s hand tight, he let the parched wellspring of magic spread from within. Niamh’s power bolstered his own. Not only hers, but the wills of all around him. It felt unlike any spell he’d ever cast. At first familiar, the mark burned its way up his throat to take his tithe, then spread. Echoes of that flame flared and caught from one person to the other, growing into a blaze. It expanded, a scorching swell. When all the tithes were collected, the power held within was so large Briar thought he’d burn up like a sun gone supernova. Niamh and he were the dam holding it at bay, and together they released the flood.
Magic rushed into the ground, finding the roots of the trees, the interconnected web of the forest. The tide of it swept through the woods and filled in all the rotting holes, mending what Linden had broken. A noise of growth replaced the explosions of Linden’s siphons. Saplings, sprouted from acorns, matured with miraculous speed.
The power filling Briar fled him, replaced with the agony of his curse like a pike through his chest. Dizzy vertigo. Wetness on his upper lip. It tasted coppery. His body trembled. Rowan had an arm all the way around his middle now. Someone caught Niamh before she fell.
Briar thought,Was that enough?
A thunderclap of a siphon, this time, was followed by a brooding silence. Not the crack and groan of trees, but an eerie quiet of preparation. Briar couldn’t see anymore, closing his eyes and trying not to scream at the encroaching pain. Rowan kept him from pitching over. He squinted up into the sky, where Linden’s figure still darted. He threw siphons into theforest only for it to immediately repair itself. The countless gifted tithes from the town had strengthened it. Now it watched, waited, and brewed its vengeance.
“I have to warn him.” Briar’s voice came out hoarse. He coughed into his hand. It came away speckled with blood.
“No.” Rowan held him tighter. “He’ll kill you.”
“Right now, the curse might beat him to the punch.”
“Don’t—” Rowan’s voice broke. “Don’t say things like that.”
“It’s true.”
“A cure—”
“Is out of our reach,” Briar finished.
He pulled Éibhear’s journal from within his vest. Beneath their feet, the ground pulsed a warning. Briar showed Rowan the page the journal fell open to naturally from its broken spine.
An Ambrosial Panacea—this brew revitalizes the sick and fatally ill. It reduces or outright erases the effects of curses. The red carnella is a key ingredient that has no substitute.
A flash of hope shone in Rowan’s eyes. Yes, they’d found the dried carnellas Gretchen had hid, but… Briar pointed to a single line. On the ingredients list, it read:
Three red carnella blooms.Written in parentheses beside it was(Fresh.)
Rowan’s face fell.
It was wretchedly, painfully unfair. The brewing instructions were otherwise simple. Steep everything in boiling water for two minutes, strain, and drink once temperate. Just a herbal tea. They were in the one place known to grow the plant, but it had long since gone extinct.
All the people of Coill Darragh still crowded the field. Rowan spoke so low that none could hear.
“But I only just got you back.”
There were tears in his eyes, and Briar couldn’t stand it. Rising on tiptoes, he swiped them away with his thumbs and kissed Rowan. It was meant as a comfort, or maybe a goodbye, but it only made Rowan hold him more tightly.
The ground gave a violent pulse again, and a cold voice broke them apart.
“How touching.” Linden hovered on his broom out of reach of anyone below. “It’s as though you’re wed already. You couldn’t even wait until the media circus around my humiliation was over?”
A burning fury kindled in Briar’s chest. He wanted to say,You used me. My mother died because of you. I’ll die because of you.All the guilt he’d felt for loving Rowan instead seemed insignificant by comparison. He could almost laugh. So much heartache over a man who couldn’t summon a single ounce of compassion for anything aside from his status.
Briar had already said his piece, and it was on camera.
Rowan’s embrace became protective. Once, Briar might have put his hands against Rowan’s chest and pushed. He might have thought he had to stand alone.
A dervish of foliage rose in eddies around Linden. His hair whipped in inky strings around him. Still poised, still impassive, like the cameras were watching. But his eyes… there was something empty about them now. His parents, gone. Everything he’d worked for, gone. It was his turn to be afraid. Magic seethed within the woods, underground, throbbing through the roots like blood through veins.
Briar didn’t want his last act to be just like Éibhear’s.
