“Linden.” Briar’s voice was so hoarse, he didn’t know if it could be heard. “You need to leave here.”
“Do not presume to give me orders after—”
“You’ll die!” Briar shouted, his throat raw. “The wards are going to return, and if you’re caught in them, nothing will save you.”
“Don’t be foolish! You think your tiny tithes amount to anything approaching the grand sacrifice Éibhear made?”
“Ours was greater.”
“You know nothing of magic. You, who scraped for tithes and struggled through each spell.”
Briar didn’t let the petty jabs sink deep. “You need to gonow.”
Linden opened his mouth with a rebuttal but paused. Something in the air changed. Murmurs from the crowd of people. The wind ceased to blow. The trees no longer groaned. Even the pulse beneath their feet faded.
Everyone looked at the forest. In the dark of it, something moved.
It seeped from the trees and out of the ground. Its music started low like a drone, then undulated high like cicada song. From every pore of theforest, magic leaked out in a viscous violet tide, until it grew too large for the confines of the wood and, with frightening speed, rushed toward them.
Linden beheld the magic coming for them, getting faster, closer. It rose like a foggy wave, smelling like fungus and soil.
The people of Coill Darragh started to step back, but Briar said, “It won’t hurt anyone Coill Darraghn, but it will kill you, Linden! Portal out, now!”
Finally, Linden reached for the pouch at his belt. He worked open the ties, but in his haste he fumbled the bag. The fine dust poured out, spreading in the wind. Linden’s face went ashen, watching his only escape slip between his fingers. Normally he could cast spells without touching the tithes, but perhaps even the great Linden Fairchild had his limits. Perhaps, after everything, even he was tired. No portal opened.
Briar lurched forward and tried to snatch some of the powder from the air, but only caught a few granules. He tried using them to open a portal, but the window now shining in the air was too small to use.
The magic swept closer, only meters away. Linden could fly straight out to the border, but his broom wouldn’t outstrip what came for him. Briar took the vial of bone powder he’d pinched from Linden’s stores. Only a tiny increment remained in the bottom. He tossed what was left at the small portal he’d made, and hoped like mad it would expand.
He hated Linden. He wished to never see him again. But he couldn’t bring himself to wish him dead.
The powder evaporated, and the portal grew just wide enough.
“Go!” Briar screamed, and Linden did. There was only the briefest pause. A look of stricken disbelief. Gratitude clouded by mutual loathing.
Then Linden streaked through the portal, low to his broom to make himself small enough to pass. Briar spat, and the portal closed seconds before the magic tide collided with them.
It washed over him in pins and needles. Rowan shuddered. A few of the townsfolk gasped. The wards swept through like a cold current, picking up speed. They flooded the town and rose in walls of light that arced and came together in a dome, protective and bright, before fading into invisibility.
Briar let out a breath. He took a step and crumpled. Brightness invaded his vision, narrowing it into a tunnel. Grass beneath his head. Rowan fumbling through his vest in search of a potion vial. Under his cheek, the earth throbbed with the healthy, beating heart of the forest.
Rowan propped him up. A glass rim touched his lips. He nearly choked. Weakness made it difficult to swallow, but he managed. A secondvial followed the first. His vision came back, spotty to begin with, until he could see Rowan’s blurry, worried face. He used his sleeve to dab under Briar’s nose, which bled again.
Something about Rowan felt different. Briar reached, squinting, touching a hand to his face.
“Rowan, your scar.” The filigree white lines still furled up his cheek, but the uneasy aura had vanished. All that remained was the campfire of Rowan’s personal aura, the scent of cedar. “It’s gone. The curse is gone.”
Held in Rowan’s arms, Briar could feel his relief. It was short-lived.
“But yours…”
Rowan didn’t finish. One look at Briar was enough to see that he had one foot in the grave. Vatii crowded into their embrace. Rowan buried his face in Briar’s shoulder beside her, his cheeks damp. Briar’s vision rippled, and a cold crept through his limbs that Rowan’s aura couldn’t chase out.
It wasn’t fair. They’d lost and found one another. Wounded men whose jagged edges matched up so perfectly that, fit together, the cracks ceased to be there at all. Only to be ripped apart again. Briar felt cold, but the tears in his eyes burned hot.
Small gasps and whispers from the crowd. A ripple of shock. Rowan lifted his head. It took effort, but Briar turned to follow everyone’s gazes.
At first, he didn’t understand what he saw. The forest bled. A blanket of scarlet seeped out from the trees’ edge. Yet it looked… dappled and soft. Not liquid, not light, not magic.
