She lifted the dress over my head and tugged it on as I slipped my arms through the sleeves. “Oh my word.” She brought her hands to her cheeks. “You should see yourself.” She snapped her fingers. “There’s a mirror out in the main shop. Let me show you.”
“Wait,” I protested, but she was already pushing me out from behind the curtain and right in front of Wolfe.
He tapped his boot impatiently, looking at the ground. “Are we almost ready to...” He trailed off when his gaze landed on me, his mouth going ajar as his brown eyes sparked, traveling painfully slowly from my head all the way down my body, and I flushed at the heat of his gaze.
Oh, godwitches. I hadn’t even had a chance to look at myself yet. He was probably horrified or something.
“Like I said”—Ceri nudged me—“you look stunning.”
Wolfe cleared his throat and looked away, shifting back and forth. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes,” I said, suddenly needing to get out of here and break this weird tension filling the room. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 19
Niamh
“Okay, sunshine,” I said, wearing my new dress and feeling much better now that we were out of the shop and back on the main road. Wolfe must’ve just been shocked to see me in something other than my worn blue dress. “Now I’m starting to understand why you don’t have any friends.”
“Because I don’t want them?” he asked with an arched brow.
“Because you’re insufferable,” I countered. “I can’t believe you’re out here yelling and causing chaos.”
“I paid for all the damage to the mannequins and helped him clean up,” Wolfe said.
“That doesn’t negate that you did it.”
“Well, I didn’t know how much it affected him,” Wolfe mumbled.
“You would if you actually talked to any one of these people.” I paused at a shop painted a bright yellow, where the owner stood out front with a table covered in glittering jewelry. I nodded at the older woman, and she smiled at me, her face turning to stone when she looked at Wolfe.
I tsked, and Wolfe sighed. “I’m not the problem. Everyone isn’t normally like this.”
I very much doubted that, but I didn’t say so, not wanting to ruin the pleasant walk by getting into yet another argument with Wolfe.
“It’s all these attacks,” Wolfe continued. “We’ve had at least two a week the last three weeks. The attacks are amping up.”
An icy cold crept up my spine. “And you think it’s the brotherhood doing this?”
“Most likely, but we can’t confirm it. The brotherhood aren’t the only ones who steal magic, just the most well-known. There are kingdoms who attack others, who have gone to war just to possess some piece of magic.”
“Do you think they’re trying to take over all of Aubergn?” The thought of those monsters ruling over everyone, having all the control of magic, horrified me.
“Yes,” Wolfe said. “But they’re a long way from that happening. There are hundreds of kingdoms scattered across Aubergn, and at some point, we need to unite against them.”
That was going to be hard when Aubergn was so vast, so diverse, with different languages and customs and laws. I’d never been anywhere until Bergenay had been attacked and I’d been forced to flee to the tower. We’d just had the unfortunate reality of the brotherhood forming in the eastern corner of the continent, where Bergenay, Fairwitch Isle, and other kingdoms lay. Bergenay had fallen, and I didn’t want this wonderful kingdom to fall as well. I wanted to do whatever I could to help protect it.
“The godwitches really didn’t do us any favors,” I muttered. “I wish they’d never given up their magic, never put it into the world. Literally.”
“If people had magic, we’d still have wars over it. It would just be a different kind of war, fighting between the most powerful people instead of the people with the most powerful objects.”
He was right, and for some reason, it made me feel a little better to know there was no avoiding the evil in the world and that the best we could do was combat it with goodness and kindness.
“What is the solution?” I asked.
Wolfe shook his head. “I don’t know. My brother has a royal guard and a council for problems like that. But I do worry Cillian is focusing too much on this marriage.” He winced and shot me a look out of the side of his eye.
“It’s okay.” I patted his arm. “I get it, and I don’t particularly like the balance of this kingdom hanging on my shoulders.” My chest tightened just at the thought.
