Page 36 of A Lady’s Guide to Witchcraft

Oak tree, flowers.

Ethan.

She locked the door, grateful she had brought down her trunk of circlets the day before in the wagon. She would have had the devil’s own luck managing it today.

“Where are you off to?” Ethan asked.

“The square. We tie the wish ribbons at noon on the first day of the festival.”

“I’ll go with you,” he said, falling into step with her.

She tilted her head knowingly. “Keen on making wishes, are you?” He did not seem the type. Of course, he had not seemed the type to mend her broken door unbidden, either.

He snorted. “Haven traditions are not high on my list of entertainment, no.”

She imagined not. What did he find entertaining? Fighting? Drinking rum down at the tavern? Bar fights? Mermaids? Seducing women by the bonfires, as so many did?

She’d bite her tongue off before asking.

“I’m not letting Keepers and Iron Crows snatch you away for the moon charm. Gods know what they’d do with it, and then I’d never get the hell off this island.”

Ah.

Of course.

“We’ll find it first,” he added, and she was glad that whatever absurd twinge of disappointment she might have felt was not obvious in her expression. She was a green witch. He was a notorious sailor and Iron Crow. He stole magic and traded with warlocks. She grew daffodils.

In a village with its very own soothsayer.

Just thinking of Ollamh earlier during her tea leaf reading had apparently summoned him. He was walking toward them, pale eyes glinting in that kind, faraway, and slightly mad way.

And he was singing.

That was never a good thing.

He might have a beautiful voice, but he tended to sing about everyone’s secrets without even meaning to. People tended to avoid him. Briar had never bothered before because there was never any need. But between her sister and the Crow at her side—and the song Ollamh sang as he caught her glance, quite by accident—she suddenly understood why George had once climbed right up the side of a house to avoid his attention.

“My heart is pierced by Cupid; I disdain all glittering gold…”

That wasn’t so bad.

Maybe he had looked at her by accident. Nothing about her sister, or stolen charms.

But then he continued to sing.

“There is nothing can console me, but my jolly sailor bold.”

Briar flatly refused to glance at Ethan even out of the corner of her eye.

“His hair, it hangs in ringlets, his eyes as black as coal. My happiness attend him wherever he may go… My jolly sailor bold.”

She was entirely too tired to deal with soothsayers and murky predictions with just enough clarity to be potentially mortifying.

Absolutely not.

Next he would start singing about Ethan’s muscular arms, his scarred jaw. His Irish lilt.

Briar leapt into a decorative yew without so much as a warning to the poor thing. A traveling acrobat had trimmed it into the likeness of a hare, after she saw Petal and her familiar for approximately three minutes. At least the yew was welcoming despite her rude intrusion. The starling near her head was not so forgiving. He exploded into a flurry of feathers and scolding squawks.