He charmed a few of the jewelry pieces Sorcha left with him, too. One necklace would help dispel a person’s shyness at parties. The engagement rings would prolong the emotional heights brought on by a proposal. Though subtle magic, it was the sort Briar liked best. It did not so much change the wearer as make their lives a little happier. His mother had made him smile, and that left its mark on him. He hoped his clothes could make the wearer smile, too, and leave their own marks.
He precariously balanced hangers against the edges of structural beams in the shop walls to display what he’d managed to make. A wool jacketfor winter, lined with indigo silk and hand embroidered with enchanted thread to keep the wind from slipping under sleeves and down collars. A boatneck silver dress enchanted to sit just perfectly without need for fidgety adjustments.
None of this fixed a growing issue: nobody came inside his shop.
Closing time neared in the beginning of his second week, and not a solitary customer ventured inside. His eagerness to get a display together became unbearable. He’d lost hope that anyone would come through today, but at ten minutes to closing, the door chime jingled.
Rowan towered in the doorway. Briar shot up. Though he should have felt disappointed it wasn’t a potential customer, a pit of warmth opened in him instead.
Vatii said uncharitably, “Dammit, we need business!”
Briar ignored her. “Busy week?”
Rowan nodded on a huffed breath. As Coill Darragh flooded with tourists, Briar could only assume he spent a good deal of time doling out wardstone bracelets. He looked around at the few things Briar had on display and approached the jacket. If he’d wanted to buy anything, the only thing that would fit was the scarf Briar hadn’t finished. Though normally quiet, Rowan’s silence was particularly poignant today. He kept half turning to Briar then looking away.
Briar suddenly remembered. “The soup!” He sprinted upstairs and returned moments later with the empty, cleaned container to return. “Thank you again. It was really good. Really, really good. Did you make it yourself?”
“Mm.” Rowan looked at the clothes hanging up on the wall.
“You’d look ravishing in the silver one,” Briar joked, pointing at the dress.
With a rumbling chuckle, Rowan reached out to touch the fabric. Unsurprisingly, the hanger teetered off the edge it clung to and fell to the ground in a glittering puddle.
“Sorry.” He picked it up and tried to put it back but couldn’t work out how Briar had balanced it.
“It was inevitable. Don’t worry, let me.” Briar took the hanger and began the circus act of balancing it again. “Just haven’t had the chance to get the stuff together for charms, but I’ll have them on floating, invisible mannequins soon.”
“They look good.”
Briar smiled. “Thanks. Sorry there’s nothing in your size off the hanger, but I can make anything you like to measure. I’ve got a scarf on the go too. Not sure it’s your color, but…”
He trailed off. It wasn’t often he was lost for words, but Rowan’s quiet was stuffed full of something unsaid. He hadn’t stepped out of Briar’s space, still close enough that his aura brushed up like a cat arching under Briar’s chin. It beckoned him closer. He couldn’t understand how Rowan had the opposite effect on everyone else.
Rowan’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he nodded towards something behind Briar. “Is that the one for Ciara?”
Briar didn’t have to look back. He held Rowan’s gaze for the second it took before Rowan lowered his. “Did you come to tell me something?”
“Ehm.” Rowan’s aura fizzled like a carbonated drink shaken too vigorously. The words burst out of him. “It’s Saor ó Eagla in a week’s time.”
“What’s that?”
“A festival.”
Briar’s mouth formed around an “oh” of understanding. This was the festival around which Linden would launch his store, later in October.
It then occurred to him that Rowan was trying to ask him on a date.
At least, it seemed that way until Rowan cleared his throat and took several steps away from Briar. “Just thought to tell you. In case you wanted to go.”
“Will you be there?” Briar prompted.
Rowan nodded stiffly. “Probably.”
“Then I’ll see you there.”
Rowan muttered something unintelligible, perhaps a “see you” or “okay goodbye,” then turned and ducked out the door. Briar found it left his heart hammering. If Rowan had just asked him on a date, he hadn’t said whether he’d come by to pick him up, meet him there, or what time. Had he mistaken Rowan’s intent altogether?
“He,” Vatii declared, looking pompous from her spot puffed up on the cash register, “is a very strange man.”
