“There’s got to be something. Magic?”
“Curses like this either have to be lifted by the one who cast it, or they run their course. My mum had no idea who cursed her, but the forest here claimed it was behind it. And I don’t think it has any intention of letting me go.”
“Potions, medicine—”
“People are searching for a cure. Nobody’s found one. I take a potion to slow it down, but—”
“I will find something,” Rowan said. His surety startled Briar more than anything else.
“Rowan…”
“No.” His tone hardened. “We will find something. You’ve been helping me with my problem, now I’ll help you with yours. It can’t be coincidence we’re both connected to the woods.” He lifted Briar’s hand and pressed a kiss into the palm, then over the pulse of his wrist.
Vatii’s feather and the bell dangled against his chest, a reminder of everything Briar had done wrong to land himself here.
He’d been so incredibly stupid. So reckless. Casual fun, he’d told himself. Just something simple and uncomplicated that he could enjoy before destiny whisked him away. But there was nothing simple or uncomplicated in Rowan’s unbroken gaze. Nor in the tangle of real emotion threatening to ensnare him.
He should have ended it long ago. He should never have let it start.
Now he had to pay for his reckless stupidity.
He took his hand away. He folded it in his lap. “I think we need to stop this.”
Rowan froze. “This?”
It was cowardly, but he couldn’t look at Rowan when he said it. “Our relationship. It’s—I think it’s better—simpler—if we didn’t.”
Comprehension dawned. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no.”
“Just, there’s stuff I’m supposed to do, and I’m dragging you into my mess.”
“I understand.”
Briar looked at him finally. Rowan’s expression was unreadable. He looked at the floor as if it was very far away. If it tore at him as much as it did Briar, it didn’t show, and for a moment, Briar felt even more stupid. Perhaps the delicate feeling that had bloomed when Rowan kissed him in the snow had been one-sided. That, if anything, should make it easier.
Briar said hopefully, “We can still be friends, though, right?”
Still very far away, Rowan answered, “O’ course. O’ course.”
CHAPTER 18
With nothing more the hospital could do, Briar was discharged and sent home.
He climbed the stairs of his flat as if going to the gallows and only got halfway before he had to sit and rest, head between his knees, a bag of potion bottles set at his feet.
His new prescription came with further bad news. It cost more than five months’ worth of his previous supply. Connor kindly informed him the hospital in Coill Darragh had a loaning policy that would cover him. He hadn’t extrapolated on how Briar would go about repaying that loan, but it seemed clear he didn’t expect Briar would survive long enough to do so.
This debt, added to the loans he’d taken out for his mother’s funeral, was another stressor. He could hope Linden would brew him the new dosage, or continue digging himself a financial grave. All this, and he’d been told to relax.Don’t work so hard, it will worsen your symptoms. How could he afford to survive if he didn’t work?
And Rowan…
Briar squeezed his eyes shut. Rowan had stayed with him. He’d more or less carried Briar home. At the door, Briar insisted he would be fine the rest of the way. Rowan reluctantly left, though he clearly didn’t want to leave Briar alone on Christmas. He hadn’t spoken much the whole way, and Briar felt like he’d ruined something precious.
His legs trembled too much to hold him, so he crawled the rest of the way up the stairs and across the floor of his flat. Vatii hopped along besidehim. At the edge of his bed, he tried to pull himself up but found himself too weak. The seizure had taken everything out of him. He managed to sit up and lean against the bed.
