Page 13 of A Lady’s Guide to Witchcraft

“I have green magic,” she said as his crew began to move around them. She didn’t know what they were doing exactly, but ropes were loosened, shouts were traded. Were they casting off? “I grow things,” she explained frantically. Even Petal did not have magic to power a ship, moon charm or no moon charm. “Herbs, flowers. Berries. I can’t get you home!”

“But you can,” he said. “When you came back here with your little stolen trinket—which on any other day I would congratulate you for, by the by—you triggered the shields on the island. No one goes in or out. Not by portal, not by sea.” And those were the only two ways on or off Lyonesse. There was no bridge, and no magical dirigible or even hot air balloon that would not be caught by the shield’s power.

Was that what she had felt on her cliff walk? That odd shudder passing through her?

That was…not good. It was spectacularly bad, in fact. The last time the shields of Lyonesse had locked in such a way was when her grandmother was a girl. They had taken weeks to open and three witches had drowned; another had burned inside the portal when he decided he was strong enough to get through. They had nearly hanged a woman on the suspicion that she was involved.

“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” she said, not because she thought he was, but mostly because she wanted him to be.

“Set sail.” Everyone scrambled to obey. “Prove me wrong,” he added to Briar in that lilt of his.

“How am I supposed to do that?” she nearly wailed.

“Easy,” Ethan said, even though there was nothing easy about him. “You dropped the shields; you should be able to lift them.”

“How?” Shield magic was beyond her ken. It was the providence of the Iron Witches in Holdfast. The mast was hard at her back, but at least it held her up. Her hip ached. “Am I to throw rose petals at them? Grow them strawberries?” She’d had no idea until that moment that sarcasm was a perfectly reasonable reaction to panic.

“The shields will react to your presence,” he told her. “It should be enough. Moon charm or no.”

Which might well have been true, were she Petal.

“And then what? I swim to shore?”

“If you like.”

Her hip would never take her that far. She’d worry about that later if she wasn’t dead.

Right now, sparks of pale-blue light shimmered above the waves, hanging like a curtain. A warning. The power of it lifted the goosebumps on the back of her neck. Sailors shifted from foot to foot. A witch ball shattered.

The ship pressed on.

The sparks intensified. The smell of water was tinged with fennel seeds and salt, a mark of strong magic. Her witch knot burned in her palm, as if she were holding a hot coal. She wasn’t the only one, judging by the way the others rubbed their hands and cursed.

The waves moved against the hull and the wood creaked, straining, like some great beast on an invisible leash.

But the ship did not advance.

The prow was bathed in that eerie blue light, hoarfrost clinging to the rails and the floorboards and the anchor. The dragon figurehead wavered like a mirage and then snarled. The sound shivered around them, rattled their bones.

But the shields held.

Of course they did. She was Briar Foxglove. She made flower crowns and nettle tea and rosehip tonics for broken hearts.

Something snapped. Loudly, violently. Briar couldn’t see what it was, rope or board or sail.

“Fall back!”

The shields had formed a kind of bubble around the island, one made of magic and ice and a power that could not be reckoned with. It would take more than Briar’s presence to break them. More than Petal’s as well, she imagined.

There was a collective silence for a moment, wrapping around them like the Order’s iron chains, the ones that trapped a witch’s magic.

“Bleed her dry, cap’n,” one of the sailors shouted suddenly. “Feed the shields until they break!”

Briar went cold.

But not as cold as Ethan.

His entire body might well be a sword. He turned slowly, all sharpness and threat and blood on the floorboards. The sailor was already advancing, dagger in his hand. He didn’t make it more than three feet. Ethan laid him out with a single, savage punch to the throat. He landed on his arse, gagging. “You’ll treat her with respect, Erasmus, or I’ll feed you the kraken. In pieces. Balls first.”