Page 66 of Held

Wick frowned. “I thought I was your friend.”

Briar hesitated. For a second, he thought she would stop hissing at him and have a conversation. Then her expression closed off, her scent getting duller in the way it always did when she was forcing herself not to feel something.

She turned and stormed back to the riverbank.

“Briar,” Wick repeated. “Your curse.”

“It’s not even dark yet,” Briar spat as she pulled her clothes over her damp legs. “Stay there. I’m just— I’m gonna?—”

She looked back at the cottage, her face hardening.

“You’re wrong,” she told him. “I’ll prove it.”

“It’s not safe,” Wick argued.

Briar shot him an angry look. “It’sMarigold! I’m safe with her. If I’m safe withanyone, I’m safe with her. Stay there.”

She marched off. Wick watched her go, every part of him wanting to follow. He had only gone to the waterfall because he knew he would hear Briar if she was in trouble.

He took a step toward the bank.

A voice in his mind stopped him, cold and rocky. It was the voice that had been haunting him and several other Skullstalkers for their whole lives. It was brief, barely lasting a heartbeat. But it was surprisingly loud, like it was on the mountain, loud enough to make him stumble against the river rocks.

Soon, it whispered.

Nineteen

Briar marched into the cottage, her mind reeling.

It couldn’t be true, she told herself as she headed through the cluttered rooms. It had to be a mistake. Maybe Marigold was finally trying something other than Forest Girl Fashion, which she wore even as a street urchin. Maybe shediduse the oil for spells. Therehadto be a reason Wick smelled it on her that didn’t have anything to do with her brutally betraying her oldest friend.

Briar came to a stop in the hallway, heart pounding. She could hear Marigold in the kitchen, humming and occasionally swearing as she puttered about.

Briar could go in and confront her. Get this mess smoothed out. But there was a suspicion itching in the back of her head. Why did Wick hear that strange, cold voice when Marigold was inside his head? How could Renault havepossiblyknown they would be in Yedzeva? And Marigold seemed even more scatterbrained than usual. Oddly strained. Briar had chalked it down to hosting a Skullstalker, but what if it was more than that?

Briar gritted her teeth. She always told herself that if she could trust anyone, it was Marigold. Was she really about to let some Skullstalker—amonster—make her doubt that, just because they had been journeying together for a few weeks?

Marigold’s humming grew louder. It was a tune they had made up together in the orphanage, just before Marigold left to be trained as a witch.

Briar looked toward the kitchen. Then she turned away and headed toward Marigold’s bedroom.

The door was sealed. Magically, so Briar couldn’t even pick the lock.

Luckily, she knew Marigold well enough to know she would have forgotten a key insight: thieves also climbed through windows.

Briar snuck around the cottage and climbed through the window, landing softly on her damp feet. She grimaced at the footprints—she would have to erase those before she left—and then looked around the messy room.

Marigold was many things, but a criminal mastermind was not one of them. Even when they were on the streets and scouring for food after the orphanage ran out, she left it up to Briar to come up with plans.Andto save them when the plan inevitably went awry. If she locked the door, she would assume that she didn’t need to hide many of her secrets. That was just the sort of life she had led.

Briar looked through the nightstand. Then the dresser. Then her desk, strewn with notes spilling over from her study, orders from clients, and half-finished letters. An ornate hairpin that she had let Marigold borrow and then never gotten back.

She was reaching for the hairpin when a certain envelope caught her eye.

It was freshly sliced open. The seal was ordinary, no crest to give it away. But she recognized the handwriting in the letter that had been pulled out of it.

Heart sinking, Briar picked it up.

I am glad we have come to an understanding,the letter said in Renault’s stupid, swoopy handwriting.You will receive your money as soon as the Briar girl is secured.

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