She looked at Acair, but he was only studying his grandmother’s house thoughtfully. He reached for her hand, but said nothing. He was wearing gloves his mother had gifted him, supple black leather ones that Léirsinn wasn’t sure his mother hadn’t laced with some sort of spell to aid him whilst he went about his nefarious deeds. The pair she was wearing was equally well made—and no doubt equally enspelled—but she hadn’t looked at them past putting them on.
At the moment, all she knew was that Acair’s hand was far steadier than hers, but perhaps she shouldn’t have expected anything less. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t climbed over walls in the dead of night before.
“I’m not sure I asked you what you saw,” he said absently. He looked at her then. “When was it?”
“Yesterday morning,” she said faintly, “at that mage’s house, and do you think this is the proper time to discuss it?”
He shrugged. “A bit of distraction before battle.”
She’d heard of worse ideas, she supposed, but not many. “I can’t remember,” she lied. “What about you?”
He smiled grimly. “I saw the mage I stole that spell from.”
“Did you?” she asked in surprise. “And?”
“Nothing more interesting than that,” he said, “and fortunately for us all, I’ve decided it was simply my imagination fueled by my mother’s profoundly undrinkable coffee.”
“You must have a good imagination, then.”
“Either that, or she’s a terrible cook,” he said solemnly. He paused, then shook his head. “The man I imagined I saw looked damned familiar, I’ll admit, but I still can’t place him.” He paused. “’Tis possible but highly unlikely that I was too busy being startled to take a proper note of his features.”
She wasn’t sure ifstartledquite described his reaction, but she thought it might be better to move right past that. “I thought you were just putting on a show to throw Mansourah off.”
He shot her a brief smile. “Of course. It wouldn’t do to have him see my softer, less murderous side. One must keep up appearances, you know.”
“Must one?”
He sighed deeply. “In my business, darling, I fear ’tis all too true. Black magery is a ruthless trade. A terrible reputation is sometimes all that lets me sleep peacefully at night.”
She was beginning to wonder if he ever had a peaceful night’s sleep, but she decided that it wasn’t a useful thing to wonder aloud. She didn’t protest when he pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. If he trembled, he didn’t say anything about it and she didn’t point it out to him. She was too busy trying to smother her own unease.
That’s all it was, of course. She was never afraid. She had faced feisty stallions and come away the victor. She had bested the demons that flanked her uncle—metaphorically, of course—and learned to ignore them. When she had realized that Fearwas stalking her, she hadn’t run away from him or demanded that he leave her be. She’d told him to take a leaning position against the nearest horse fence and keep his bloody mouth shut.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t dealing with her fear at the moment. She was facing things utterly beyond her normal challenges with not a spell to hand nor any magic to use.
She refused to think about how far she’d fallen that she was even considering the like.
“Are you—” Her voice cracked and she had to clear her throat. “Are you ever afraid? In truth?”
“Never,” Acair said seriously.
“Not even now?”
He snorted lightly. “This is akin to a bit of bother over having a fine dining establishment reserve the wrong table for me.”
“You are a disgusting man.”
He laughed a little, something she was fairly certain she’d never heard him do before. He sighed and rested his cheek against her hair.
“And so I am. Clever you for seeing it.” He paused. “Would this be an inappropriate place to offer a maudlin sentiment about your own charming self?”
“Completely,” she said. “Besides, you’ll just make an ill-advised comment about the color of my hair, I’ll be forced to blacken your eye for it, and then where will we be?”
“I’ll claim I was in a brawl with a dragon. It will add to my rakish air, I assure you.”
She imagined it would. She sighed deeply, then stood, warm and relatively safe wrapped in both his cloak and his embrace, until she grew too restless to simply stand about any longer. She pulled away and looked at him seriously.
“What will your grandmother do if she catches us?”
