Page 64 of A Lady’s Guide to Witchcraft

It did not take away from her beauty. Nor from the dangerous allure of the song wrapping around Briar like seaweed. She would have drowned already, were they any closer to the sea. And she would not have minded.

“Who is she?” Briar whispered, awed.

“A siren,” Ethan ground out. “Sent by a warlock or an Iron Crow. See the threads?”

Briar could, now that she knew to look for them. She had to squint, but the shimmer of threads floated from the siren. She continued to sing, clear and bright. A sparrow dropped from the plum tree.

Briar frowned, but it was hard to move. The gossamer threads of the song pulled at her, wrapped around her ankles and her knees. The siren shone like starlight. Even Snapdragon was utterly mesmerized, frozen in the grass. Briar’s witch knot burned, but she barely noticed. Everything was the siren and her song. A grimsong was the wrong thing to call it. It was too perfect, too angelic.

But she was very near Ethan now. His jaw clenched. A vein on his temple throbbed. He was fighting some invisible battle.

And if she drew any nearer to him, he might lose.

Rain fell harder, muffling the song. But Briar did not know if it was enough. She was barely outside the tearoom, had only taken a few steps outside, and she already felt like she would drop to her knees, if asked. She would bleed into the grass. Give her last breath. Anything.

Ethan set a large chunk of jet down between them. It siphoned some of the magic, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

Thunder cracked, along with the jet. The siren paused, eyes glowing acidic with ire.

Ethan had an iron dagger in his hand. His dragon circled above them. He looked like a nightmare one would never want to face.

But he was still stepping closer to the siren, closer and closer.

As was Briar. The song called to her, urged her to follow, follow, follow.

The siren drifted backward, over the garden wall, into the fields that led to the cliff’s edge. The moon touched the water, a dark, vast expanse below them. Briar tripped over a clump of twisted grass, her hip jolting with pain.

It cleared her mind, if only briefly. Very briefly.

But long enough to realize that walking off a cliff was a very, very bad idea.

When Briar fought the pull, the siren opened her mouth and the soft chains of her song tightened. The longer she stood still, the more painful the song felt. Invisible barbs latched on to Briar’s skin. But she was used to moving through pain, used to thorns and brambles biting at her, used to her hip joint refusing to cooperate. A few threads of magic, however sharp and sticky, would not stop her. She crouched slowly, gathering moss from a boulder by the cliff’s edge, then rolled it into little balls and stuffed them into her ears.

Ethan had stopped when she stopped, and now a gale of otherworldly wind pushed at his back. The siren’s song was turning hungry, impatient, insistent. There was blood coming from his ears. His boots dragged in the dirt, struggling to find purchase. Charms tumbled from his pockets, daggers, iron nails, a small glass vial filled with teeth.

Briar slipped closer, the moss and the steady beat of the rain shredding some of the gossamer threads that tangled her up. Her limbs still felt heavy, her head light. But the siren was locked in a battle of wills with Ethan and had stopped paying attention to her.

Briar was beginning to think that being underestimated was a very useful weapon indeed.

She lowered to her knees, as if in awe. It was not entirely pretense. The siren was even more formidable up close. Her song reached into Briar’s chest. She could smell roses and hot tea and baking bread. Earth. Pine sap. Mint leaves. All the things she loved.

Her swan shuddered in pain.

A boggart cackled from the shadows.

An animal cried out from the distant moors.

Briar dug her fingers into the grass and the dandelions and the blossoms of sea pinks and down into the earth. She urged it all to grow, the weeds, the flowers. She tasted mint and salt on her tongue. The grass grew thick, snaring Ethan’s boots, slowing his drag toward the siren.

He glanced down at Briar. “Run,” he ordered her, pain and resolve so visceral, even through the moss in her ears muffling sounds, that she could almost see it wrap around his words. His dragon struggled to stay aloft. “Run, now.”

She shook her head. A drop of blood fell from his earlobe. Briar whispered to the grass until it parted, revealing the iron nails that had fallen from Ethan’s pocket as he struggled. She found one and crawled forward, stabbing it down through the siren’s ghostly foot.

The siren choked on her song.

The silence was cool as water on a hot day. Soothing.

Too brief.

Briar jabbed another iron nail through her other foot, the icy jolt scalding her fingertips. Her nails turned blue, aching. It was not enough to banish the siren entirely but it was enough to distract her, to weaken her.

Just long enough for Ethan to sever the connection to the Iron Crow who had sent her. He had a dagger inlaid with abalone shell, reflecting all the pastel hues of a sunrise over the ocean. He slashed it down through the gossamer threads that clung to him, and to Briar, from the siren, who had more threads trailing off to link her to the one who had sent her. The shell dagger came down again and again, severing the magic that compelled and connected them.

The last note of her song hung on the breeze, a piercing lament.

The siren, though not quite corporeal, shattered. The force of it flattened the fields under an unnatural wind. One of the last charms hanging from Ethan’s pockets burst. He curled around Briar, taking the brunt of the explosion. Feathers burned; the very air sharpened.

And then the siren was gone.

Silence stretched, finally punctured by the call of a nightingale, the trill of crickets. The rain stopped.

“Fucking Iron Crows,” Ethan grunted.