“Sorry, I’m just… I think the garden’s had a weird effect on me.”
Vatii said worriedly, “It could be the curse, not the garden.”
He flinched. He’d just lost too much sleep, or the memories from the town’s scars were affecting him oddly.
“You don’t look well,” Rowan murmured. “Can I get you anything? Tea?”
At Vatii’s urging, Briar agreed. Rowan ushered him through the back door into a kitchen. It was both tidy and cluttered, a pastiche of country crockery. A painted rooster decorated the bread box, and all the chairs were mismatching shades of weathered pastel.
Briar sat at the breakfast bar. “It’s nothing. Just my fainting-damsel routine. No need to—”
“It’s not a bother. Sit.”
Rowan didn’t ask how he liked his tea, just put the kettle on and fetched mugs. “Does that happen often?”
“What?”
“Fainting spells.”
Briar traced the wood-grain whorls on the breakfast bar. Vatii nudged his elbow. She’d always advised him to be forthright about his condition, but he found it easier to keep it secret. If he was honest with himself, he hoped Rowan looked at him and saw a sparkling future of possibilities. Difficult to do that when his future was terminal.
“Just lost one too many hours of sleep. Used to pull all-nighters during my apprenticeship no problem. Now I lose my senses if I don’t get eight hours and three square meals.”
The kettle boiled. They shared an awkward silence. Every encounter before this had felt like a rhythmic stitch drawing them closer together. Now, Briar had come looking for answers and was finding that all the questions created buckles and snags in the growing intimacy of their relationship.
Rowan frowned down at his hands, laced before him. “Ehm… Briar, I—” The words caught on the way out, his voice rougher than usual. “Have I done something wrong?”
Guilt clawed its way up Briar’s throat. “No, nothing.”
“Is it my scar? You said the aura—is it affecting you too, now?”
“It’s your dad,” Briar blurted. The rest tumbled out in a rush. “I see more than people’s auras, I see auras all around town. They show me memories of the past, and I saw your dad killing witches. Then he made a pact with the awful, freaky forest that tried to kill me, and the wards slaughtered people, and you didn’t tell me, and I didn’t know if you were involved or how to ask, but now I feel stupid for ever doubting you because you’ve been stupidly kind this entire time, so I don’t know what to do!” He took a heaving breath. “Whathappened? Here? Why has he got a statue? I don’t understand.”
Rowan stared, shocked, and Briar thought,Tactful as a claw hammer to the face.He expected to be kicked out, told to go spin on it after dredging up a painful memory and unfairly conflating Rowan with the actions of his father.
The kettle whined. Rowan startled, glancing toward it. He ran a hand over his face and sighed. “Tea first.”
Instead of handing it to him, Rowan set the mug on the breakfast bar. Possibly because Briar kept leaping away like his proximity caused electric shock. Heat wafted off the drink, carrying an herbal smell—some combination of peppermint, chamomile, lemon, and ginger. It seemed less a tea than a potion.
“Should help your dizziness,” Rowan said.
It was too hot to drink yet. Briar waited, watching Rowan gather himself to speak.
“All of what happened, I was told about it after. Still don’t understand the whole of it, but if you’ve questions, I’ll try and answer.”
Briar took a deep breath. “Why’d he do it?”
“Keep in mind, most of what I know’s secondhand. Seer Niamh told us about it. At the time? I hadn’t the faintest idea.”
Briar wasn’t a bit surprised to hear Niamh’s name come up. Of course the meddling biddy was involved.
Rowan continued, “My da wasn’t just the alderman—he was the forest’s Keeper. Charged with protecting Coill Darragh—the wood and its people. As I understand it, witches came looking to take the wild magic for themselves.”
“How do you just take wild magic?”
Rowan shook his head. “Don’t know. Only know that we Coill Darraghns are connected to it somehow. So when the invaders took it, the forest sickened, and so did we. To sustain itself, the forest started taking things from us.” A frown darkened his features. “Limbs, mostly.”
Briar shuddered. He remembered seeing a woman in one of the visions, her arm entombed in vines. It painted Éibhear in a slightly more flattering light, although Briar couldn’t be sure the extent to which he’d gone was a measured response.
