Page 3 of Muddled Magic

“Welcome, Marten,” Grandmother said when the chant was over, her gaze holding mine, “to the Circle of Nine.”

CHAPTER TWO

On any other day, in a family as large as mine, it would have been easy to slip away unnoticed for hours at a time, but today I had chaperones.

“You can’t,” Rose hissed at me, locking long fingers around my arm in a talon-like grip similar to the hawks she trained. “Trust me, I want to rid myself of this farce too, but neither of us is disappearing today. Not on a Circle ceremony day. Now sit down.”

She practically forced me down beside her on the bench, my knees banging against the edge of the trestle table as I sat. Silverware and vases rattled, earning me a few assessing looks.

Lilac flowed into the empty spot next to me with much more grace, the silk of her dress whispering against her skin. Then she extended a lithe arm and lifted the decanter of peach wine to fill up our glasses. To the brim.

“I could use some help in the kitchen,” Aunt Peony said loudly as she passed by. “Those chickens won’t plate themselves, much less march out across the lawn.”

“Isn’t that why you have your little dandelion helpers, Auntie?” Otter asked, tuning his guitar.

Aunt Peony was rarely seen about the manor without two things on her person: a ruffled apron with massive pockets and a jar of fluffy dandelion seeds. Just a pinch of them, plus a magical breath, and the seeds would sprout into ambulatory, semi-sentient dandelion flowers that eagerly helped her with any kitchen chore she might require. While impressively strong for their size and absolutely fearless, they did have a tendency to catch fire quickly, and their knife skills weren’t that good.

“Boar,” Lilac said without looking up from her pouring, “go help Mom.”

“Me?” he blustered, right in the middle of squaring off against Uncle Stag for an arm wrestle, “Why don’t you and Rose—”

“Go help your mother,” Uncle Badger interrupted. His voice never rose above a conversational volume, but his blue eyes flashed. And when Uncle Badger chose to speak, it was in your best interest to listen. “Otter,” he then prompted his own son in the same tone.

“Right,” Otter said, immediately abandoning his guitar to tune at another time.

Uncle Badger winked one of those bright blue eyes at me then turned to keeping the rest of my uncles occupied by discussing the best way to tap into the fresh keg of beer he’d brought up from the cellar. It was something they always needed to hem and haw about, though they’d been tapping kegs every two weeks for as long as I’d been alive.

From the corner of my eye, I saw my mother start towards me, probably to explain. Explain what? I hadn’t been chosen, and nobody challenged Grandmother. What was there to say, anyway? I hadn’t been good enough, so I’d been passed over. For Marten.

I was spared that conversation when my father intercepted her, herding her after my male cousins hustling after Aunt Peony. He always understood when I needed time to process, but my mother, being the straightforward academic, always had to hash things out immediately, whether or not that’s what the other party wanted or needed.

As they diverted for the manor’s expansive kitchen, Cousin Dahlia settled herself in the spot across the table from me, propping her sketchbook against the edge of the table and extracting a bit of charcoal from the tin she always kept in her pocket. She’d been born with a stunted magical core, though none of us understood why, and it had affected her mental development. She always seemed lost in a daydream, rarely spoke, and what little magic she had was used to either rearrange the hedge maze—for she really enjoyed puzzles—or to make the flowers bloom. The better to use as the subjects of her watercolor paintings.

But her strongest talent was her empathy, her attunement to the emotional undercurrents of the family, which was why she sat across from me now, finishing the shield wall Lilac and Rose had started. They were encircling me, protecting me, allowing me to sort through the myriad thoughts that the shock of my brother’s promotion had spawned.

In theory.

“Wine?” Lilac prompted.

“By the Green Mother, yes.” Rose reached around me and plucked up a glass, downing half of it in one gulp.

Sucking in a breath, I reached for my own glass to follow suit, when an arm sleeved in emerald green velvet shot over my shoulder and plucked the flute from the table.

“Thanks, ladies,” a smug male voice said.

Lilac choked in surprise, hand lurching for one of the cloth napkins so she wouldn’t spew her wine over the table setting and decorations Aunt Hyacinth had spent all morning fussing over.

Rose slammed her own glass back on the table, snapping, “Marten, what the h—”

I twisted around on the bench to find my brother lifting my glass to his mouth for a long swallow, smacking his lips with a satisfied sigh. “Oh, that’s nice.”

Under the table, my hands tightened into fists.

“That was for Meadow,” Lilac said tersely, wiping her mouth. She had a very pretty face and figure, the kind eleven out of ten men found attractive—yes, you read that fraction right—but when she twisted it in disgust, as she was doing now, the coldness in her features could freeze the blood in your heart.

“Why? I’m the one who got the spot in the circle.” His sneer somehow didn’t diminish his handsomeness, which made my stomach churn that someone could be so pretty and yet so ugly inside. “This is my celebratory feast, not her condolences dinner.”

“This is the Hawthornes’ celebratory feast,” Grandmother corrected, her voice stinging like a hornet’s barb. She had appeared on the opposite side the of the table seemingly out of thin air. Perhaps she had.

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