Page 90 of A Lady’s Guide to Witchcraft

Ethan lit the first fire.

At her second cry, he dove through the back window of the Order headquarters, smashing through glass and barking at Matthias as he shot past him. “Now, goddamn it.”

Matthias closed his eyes.

“What the hell?” someone yelped. “I can’t see.”

“Me either!”

Matthias, young and kind and obsessed with the proper consistency of coddled eggs, wielded magic that blinded those around him. Literally. Ethan’s hagstone kept his eyes clear. But it wouldn’t have mattered—he would have found Briar without his eyes, his ears, his very hands. The blinding spell had the added benefit of fogging her vision, cutting the connection Oliver was relying on. Amateur. Thank the Kraken.

Ethan took note of the layout of the room, the chains, the sigils, the ropes of rowanberries, but all he truly saw was Briar.

Oliver had his hands on her face.

Ethan broke his left wrist, tossing him aside like a bucket of kitchen slop. Oliver howled, also blinded by Matthias’s magic. Ethan tossed the other Keeper into the wall and he crumpled, unconscious.

When Ethan slipped a hagstone into Briar’s palm, she blinked at him. “Ethan.” Her voice was strangled, hoarse.

It made the Dragon in him want to burn the world.

He ushered her toward the window, pausing only to knock an oil lamp onto the floor. The oil spilled, the flames spreading.

“You can’t murder two Keepers,” Briar protested when she paused and he nudged her to keep going.

“You really have to stop saying that to me.” He did not have the time for murder, at any rate. But he’d be coming back for those two bastards. If they survived the night, they wouldn’t survive him. But first, he needed to get Briar the hell away from this place and this magic. “Someone will come get them.”

He helped her out of the window, still protesting, but weakly. She looked tired, scared. He almost went back right then and there. But the need to get her away was stronger.

“Run, little thorn.”

He whistled once, a warning to Matthias. Fire ate at the hay he had stolen from the inn’s stables and bundled at the side of the headquarters. Flames were already licking out of the window. When the fires met, the headquarters would burn. Someone rang the alarm bell. But it was too late.

They had taken Briar, tried to hurt her. There wasn’t a water drop on the island that would put out that fire until Ethan decided it was time.

Briar’s eyes were wide, the fire reflected in her pupils. “You have fire magic too?”

He grunted. “I have matchsticks.”