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So she stayed when Scathach asked her to care for the rowan groves, which powered so many of the spells in Holdfast and on Lyonesse. Spells ran on rowanberries all throughout Britain.

It might not be exactly the life she had thought she would have, but in so many ways it was better.

She even received a letter, unsigned, with a sketch of a hare. Petal was thriving, utterly anonymous and unnoticed in the wild as she and her wife pushed further and further north. She sent seeds with the letter: bilberries, eyebright, along with pine needles and heather.

And then, two months after the solstice, the full moon found Briar standing on the beach, both lonely and content.

As did Ethan.

She was throwing chicken bones to a hungry kelpie, her apron filled with rowanberries and dandelions and seashells. The light glittered on the waves and the snap of white teeth. After the tracking spell, moonlight made her feel a little odd, exposed somehow, even though it did not seek her out any more than it sought out the rocks or the white tower. The curse was well and truly broken. Even the white roses did not grow in Holdfast anymore.

And so she attributed the frisson of awareness only to that.

Until the kelpie shrieked and Briar turned to glance behind her.

Ethan stood silently on the edge of the stone wall, silhouetted against the lanterns of Holdfast swinging in the wind like fireflies.

Briar froze. She stopped breathing altogether.

Had she missed him so much that she was imagining him now?

He wore the customary leather cross-belt across his chest, crow claw and hagstone around his neck. But there was a new scar on the side of his throat, angry and red. And a tattoo of a rose tangled with thorns on the back of his left hand.

“Did you forget me already, sweetheart?” he asked, that Irish accent, that deep, smooth voice, curling around every bruise inside her ribcage, every spot that ached with the memory of him.

“Are you really here?” she asked as he closed the distance between them. Her pulse ricocheted all over her body.

“I’m really here.” He wiped a tear from her cheekbone before she’d realized it was there. “You little liar. You were so brave and so stoic when I left.”

“So were you.” She clutched his arms, needing to feel him. Wanting to kiss him. Punch him. “What are you doing here?”

She could not let herself hope. Iron Crows had dozens of reasons to be in Lyonesse. He could be here for the Iron Witches, for all she knew. A tendril of hope did not want to think so, but she did not whisper it to grow. She couldn’t. Ethan would leave her again and she would be right back where she started. She had to be smart. Practical. She had seen her mother work too many love spells, and the results were never quite what you expected. Love never was.

“The real question is, what are you doing here?” Ethan asked. “In Holdfast?”

“I like it here.”

“And they like you. I had to run the gauntlet of Iron Witches, three fishermen with cudgels, and a feral child who threatened to turn me into fish stew before anyone would tell me where to find you.”

Briar smiled. “That was Simon. He’s afraid I’ll stop growing peas for him to steal.”

“I wouldn’t want to cross him.”

“No.”

“Your pink cottage in Haven has been painted white, and the gardens are…not the same.” His hands tightened on her. His eyes were a little wild. “I thought something happened to you.”

“Just Mrs. Aster,” she said wryly. “And my mother. Some debts can’t be paid.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

She lifted her chin. “It would have made no difference. And you were already helping Petal. That’s what really mattered.”

“You are infuriating, woman.”

She blinked. “As are you, Dragon.”

He grunted. “Aye.”