Page 13

Chapter 13

Broken

HANS

T he sweat on my brow drips into my eyes, and I relish the burn that is the evidence of a hard day’s work.

The three of us worked through the night to set up for our escape, but when the sun rose, and Briar could not be outside any longer, Gerrit and I were on our own. Now it’s sunset, and Briar is exiting the house with our bags on her shoulder and a small one of her own. It couldn’t possibly hold much, but I imagine I wouldn’t want to take a lot with me from my prison either.

Flint is pacing nonstop, stressing me out with his nonstop rattling about the Banisher’s closeness. It appears the forest animals are keeping him regularly updated, which is helpful but also ramps up the urgency I feel, making it hard to focus.

I want nothing more than to free Briar from this awful prison she’s been confined to. At this point, I wouldn’t even care if she left us as soon as she got out and didn’t help us with Father. As much as that would hurt, she is a butterfly about to spread her wings, and I will not fault her for the result.

As I’m scratching sigils in the dirt, she approaches me and peers over my shoulder. Her hair is vibrant in the sunset, like lavender blossoms in the wind. Her skin looks red and tight, but she warned us that it happens in the sun.

“I’m drawing sigils to channel magic.”

She chews on her lower lip, scratching at the skin on her arms softly. “Never seen one of those before. My magic is just in me, I guess. It runs out if I don’t feed, obviously, but when it’s there, it’s just there.”

My laugh feels intrusive in the quiet woods. “You are a magical creature, butterfly. I am a human. I have to pull from the earth.” Her face warms and a sad smile flashes across her face momentarily before she turns away.

What was that?

I sit back on my heels and wipe my hands on my pants. “There. Ready as we’ll ever be.” Like my words summon him, Gerrit appears, arms full of useful things he’s pilfered from the house and surrounding areas. He slides the bags from Briar’s shoulders and proceeds to stuff them full of candles, knives, a small pot, and what looks like a bundle of fabric.

“Can I help?” Briar asks. The sadness from earlier is gone now, replaced by a steely resolve.

Scratching the back of my head, I turn towards Flint. “Could she push some magic into the sigils? Would that work?”

“In theory, yes. But her magic is relatively untested.”

“Hey! That’s not my fault!” she interjects, startling me. I’m still getting used to someone else being able to hear Flint.

“I never said it was, witch. It is the truth.”

She huffs and crosses her arms across her chest, the pouty look on her face driving me insane. “You ever going to use my name?”

Gerrit chuckles despite not hearing Flint’s side of the conversation. “Doubtful. I’ve been Big Boy since he came around.”

Briar grumbles under her breath but still moves to my side. “Then let’s give this a shot,” she says, eyes on the sigils.

Standing beside her, I chant low, the spell pouring off my tongue and into the ground. The sigil glows green underneath my hands. She looks at me, her rust-colored eyes now a rich, healthy red, proud and wide. My heart aches a bit looking at her, at how her skin has filled out, and the bags under her eyes have receded. Just a handful of regular feedings has changed her physically.

I can’t imagine what it’s done to her magically.

As the dirt begins to rise, burying the rocks of the fairy circle, Briar stares at the sigil with confusion. She reaches down, hand extended, only to be pulled back by Gerrit as my chanting continues. “If you break the sigil, you break the spell,” he says, holding her to his chest.

She struggles and breaks free, “No, I won’t. I don’t know how, but I know what I’m doing.” She crouches at the sigil again, holding her hand over it. I try to watch her as my chanting continues, but I only catch flashes of it. One moment, her hand is over the sigil; the next, it’s beside it on the ground.

When she breaches the circle surrounding the sigil and places her hand in the middle, I feel a rush through my body that is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Magic explodes from me, throwing me back on the ground as a mountain of dirt encircles the home, burying the fairy circle under six feet of solid soil.

Panting, I sit up, weaving my fingers into Flint’s fur so he knows to speak just to me. “Flint, what was that?”

“Unsure, Master. She appeared to alter your sigil to receive her magic.”

“Are you saying what I felt was… her? That was Briar’s magic?”

“Yes, Master. I believe you just experienced a fraction of what she is capable of.”

I look to Briar, my sweet butterfly, sitting on the ground by the sigil and smiling at me with pride.

And yet, I cannot stop the fear surrounding me when I look at her.

Someone locked her up, but the question remains: Why? Or rather, what will they do to get her back?

She is powerful. More powerful than any magic user I’ve ever met before.

What will this Banisher do to get her back?

I stagger to my feet, and Briar is there, hands on my elbow, tears in her eyes that I didn’t notice before. “I’m so sorry, Hans. Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to. You told me to help, and I thought I was helping. I am so, so sorry.” Her rambling makes my heart ache, and I grasp her hands and pull them to my chest.

“You did not hurt me, Briar. I am just not used to channeling that level of magic.” She wraps her arms around my middle, resting her head under my chin.

I can hear her sniffles and feel her body move with quiet tears against me. “When you were talking to Flint, the way you looked at me… I thought you were upset with me.”

Sometimes, I forget that while the words said between Flint and me can be private, that doesn’t mean my facial expressions are. “I was not upset with you. I was upset, though.”

Gerrit, who, until this point, was sitting silently on the porch, stomped over. “How could you be upset? She helped, like you asked!”

“I said I’m not upset with her! I’m upset because the power she channeled through me is unlike any I’ve felt before. If she was locked up because of it, whoever did that is going to fight like hell to get her back. I’m scared for her, not upset at her!”

Briar stumbles back at my words, her eyes wide with shock and her body crumpling to the ground. Both of us are on our knees next to her in a second, but she has her knees pulled to her chest as she sobs heavily, blocking her face from view.

“Witchy, what’s wrong?” Gerrit asks, snaking his hands around her shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Briar. I didn’t mean to upset you.” I kneel in front of her as she raises her head to look at me, tears tracking down her cheeks and converging in the hollow at the base of her neck.

Her hand, nails dirty from the spell, reaches out to me, and I grasp it within both of mine. “You care.” Her voice is small, a quiet squeak that I have to strain to hear. “You care about me,” she says again, her voice stronger.

I look at Gerrit, and his face is scrunched with confusion. I meet Briar’s eyes again, watery with tears. “Of course, I care. We both care.” She shakes her head, and the tears fall again, hitting the dirt beneath her. Flint comes up and rubs his head against her arm, and she moves it around him, touching his head with hers.

“She is not upset with you, Master.”

His words echo in my head, and I know Briar can hear them, too. She shakes her head as Flint speaks again.

“Her emotions are too strong, so she cannot speak. But she has permitted me to share.”

I wave Gerrit over to whisper the words to him, removing the embarrassment Briar may have by hearing me shout them.

“Miss Briar has never had anyone care about her before. She has been alone her entire life, with her only contact being with someone who sought to break her. When she did find a human, years of starvation caused her to kill that companion, which broke her even more. The cycle was long and brutal, leaving a lasting effect on her.”

Her sobs are loud now, shaking her whole body, but she holds onto Flint, and he lets her, soaking up her tears with his dappled fur.

“She thought you were just kind because you needed her magic. She didn’t imagine you would care about her. She never imagined anyone would.”

The words get caught in my throat as I relay them to Gerrit, whose fists clench in anger at a world that allowed someone as special as Briar to be so broken.

Briar shakes her head rapidly, pulling on Flint’s fur as he looks at me again.

“I’m sorry, Miss Briar, but I must.”

“Do not tell me anything she doesn’t want me to hear, Flint.” Rarely do I give my familiar commands like this, but this feels important. Still, he pushes her body into a sitting position with his nose, and she buries her face in her hands.

My stubborn familiar paws her hands down to look at Gerrit and me. When she does, her eyes are rimmed with red, snot drips from her nose, and her skin is mottled and red. Despite all of it, she is still such a beautiful creature.

“Miss Briar’s spirit is broken, but you are healing it, Master. Big Boy is, too.”

The words hit me square in the chest and I move towards her, wrapping her up in my arms. Gerrit lowers himself beside us and rests his hand on the small of her back, rubbing smooth circles in her skin as he hums lowly to calm her.

After some time, her tears stop, and she composes herself enough to look up at Gerrit and me. When she speaks, though, it isn’t to us.

“You called me by my name, Flint.”

Wolves can’t shrug, but this one may as well have, and the sight of it gets us tentatively smiling. I grab her face and kiss her, pulling away momentarily to say, “If you ever doubt again that you are worthy of care and affection, we’ll be here to remind you.”