A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe #1)

by Alistair Reeves

“Everyone could see this man’s heart beat slow when he was calm, fast when he was scared, and skip when he was in love. He tried to build over the hole in his chest, but his heart was too full of feeling, and every material he used melted.”

“Until an idiot showed up and was too stupid to be scared of the mask. With much time and patience, the man took off his mask and gave his heart to the stupid one—”

That is how you’ll meet your destiny,” Seer Niamh finished. Just as Briar demanded with all the weight of righteous indignation, “Am I the stupid one?”

Vatii landed beside him. “This would be a good place to take up hiking.” “Absolutely not,” Briar said. “I’m delicate and not too proud to admit it.”

Then he went back inside, where he caught and gently relocated all the squatters from Briar’s residence one by one.

“You, Rowan, are so much more than enough.”

Rowan’s heart was a hearth, the circle of his arms a home, and Briar felt sick with the longing to stay there forever. He realized, with a drop in his stomach, that he was falling in love.

This wasn’t casual. He wasn’t sure it ever had been.

Vatii nudged his arm. “If Rowan found the cure, he wouldn’t hold your heart ransom for it.”

You’ve been a good friend to me, and I’d not ruin that for anything, but I had to tell you the whole of it. That I’m mad about you. You’re bold and brave, and you’ve made me braver, too. Brave enough to say this. That I love you. I love you something fierce.”

It wasn’t fair. They’d lost and found one another. Wounded men whose jagged edges matched up so perfectly that, fit together, the cracks ceased to be there at all.

“Anyone who makes my son so blisteringly happy can’t be all bad, even if you are an absolute cabbage and a diva.”