Rowan returned. “Tea’s ready.”
“Right. Let’s sit and have a proper chat,” Briar said.
He started to rise, hands and knees trembling until he took up the cane leaning against the door. They made their way to the sitting room.
“Thank you for inviting us—me,” I said. “I don’t know how much Kessian told you.”
“He said you’ve been in a bit of trouble with wild magic. The Shearwater strid, was it? He didn’t mention how it affects you in particular. Magical drainage? Headaches? Muscle weakness?”
“A wraith follows me everywhere and drowns the people I love in the strid.”
Rowan’s teacup clattered as he set it down too heavily in surprise.
Briar looked genuinely aggrieved. “I’m so sorry. That’s awful.”
“It’s fine. Up until now, I got around it by moving around a lot. If I’m never in one place too long, and don’t form any close connections, it can’t quite find me.”
“But you must have lost someone, to know what the wraith does,” Briar said.
I swallowed. “Laurelie. My twin.”
Kessian was sat next to me on the sofa. Wordlessly, he pressed his knee into mine. The sofa wasn’t overly large, and there were three of us on it, so the contact was inevitable due to how squished up we were, but the pressure was an unmistakable show of support. It was comforting and uncomfortable. I wanted it, but I didn’t think I could have it.
Gruffly, Rowan said, “I’ll make something stronger,” and reached into a liquor cabinet by the sofa for a bottle of whiskey.
Briar said, “Tell me everything. Start from the beginning.”
I recounted it all. The night a song had lured me into the strid, alongside several other residents of Shearwater. How I alone emerged, alive but changed. How the wraith began appearing immediately, and no matter what the healers or sages tried, nothing worked. The first time I saw the wraith, how it took Laurelie, then tried to take Uncle Marlowe, how I then left home for good.
Up until yesterday, when I’d returned for a funeral.
Briar listened intently while Rowan whisked together some hot concoction of potion ingredients and whiskey—the red flowers turning the drink a blushing color. He said in his gruff voice, “And your family let you go?”
“They didn’t have much choice,” I said.
“Your man Kessian’s alive and well. So you’ve found some way to avoid it, like.”
“Oh, we’re not—”
“You have an amulet, don’t you?” Kessian said. He touched the coin hanging from my ear, all my focus on the brush of his knuckles against my neck and the weight of him against my side. “I saw you reach for it a couple times when the wraith nearly got us.”
“It only has a single charge,” I explained. “I try to save it for a scenario where I have no other option.”
Briar leaned across the coffee table to get a better look. “How was it made?”
“I don’t know,” I said, embarrassed by how flustered I sounded. “My uncle Marlowe gave it to me when I left home. He’s good at tracking down old magical artifacts.”
“If it’s one of a kind, it makes sense not to use it until absolutely necessary.” Briar leaned back in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck.
Rowan slid the drinks he’d been brewing in front of us. While Kessian’s was the usual amber color, mine was tinged red.
Briar said, “If what you suffer from is a curse, then this will cure you. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but it sounds like no curse I’ve ever heard of. I have to ask: Is there no one in Shearwater who safeguards the strid? Its Keeper?”
Keeper. I’d heard that term before. Warwick had mentioned something about it at the wake. “Er … not that I know of, but then I don’t know what a Keeper is. Generally, we try to safeguard everyone from the strid, not the other way around. Anyone who’s lived in Shearwater knows not to go near the banks.”
“Mm-hm. Sounds familiar,” Briar said, glancing up at Rowan, who’d come to stand at his shoulder and massage his neck. “I defer to my husband on this subject, though I have a hunch we’re of one mind.”
Rowan said, “I’m the Keeper of the forest in Coill Darragh. Means I’m tasked with safeguarding the wild magic from those who’d do it harm. I sensed something when you both arrived here.” He tilted his head and closed his eyes as if listening to a distant song play in another room. “The forest and your strid, they’re like brothers. If you’re its Keeper—and you could be; it tends to pass down in families—and your grandfather passing away so recently, well … Wild magic has a way of drawing us back home.”
