“Because she loves you.”
“Ye gads, what absolute rot,” Acair spluttered. He gathered Léirsinn a bit closer to him because he was afraid he would drop her, not because he was unsettled.
If he clutched her to him with a desperation that frightened him, well, who was to know? He wasn’t altogether certain she didn’t squeak, but that could have been that damned spell he couldn’t seem to shake, leaning over his shoulder and peering down into her face. He flicked it away, looked at the woman in his arms that he lo—er, was fond of, rather—and watched her eyelids flutter.
That could have been from his tears dripping onto her face, but he wasn’t going to investigate that any further.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “You’re shouting,” she said hoarsely.
“’Tis better than weeping,” he muttered. He glared at Soilléir just so the man wouldn’t forget where his doom was sitting, then looked at Léirsinn. “I’m angry.”
“Why?”
Where to start? He looked at her seriously. “Let’s discuss it when I’m less angry and the focus of my ire has flapped away to seek safety behind the walls of the schools of wizardry.” Not that he couldn’t have tracked Soilléir down there and slain him on his way to the buttery, but that was perhaps not a useful thing to say at the moment.
Léirsinn sat up with more of his help than he supposed would be polite to mention. He situated her next to him on his perch, but kept his arm around her just in case. If she looked at Soilléir with a mixture of awe and horror, she was justified.
All he knew was that he wasn’t at all ready to have the conversation with her he would need to about magic and magery of any stripe, so he continued to keep her close and turned back tohis own business of wondering how best to put that damned prince across the fire from him to death.
“How has your journey been so far?” Soilléir asked politely.
Acair swore at him. It was the very least of all the things he wanted to do, so limiting himself to calling the crown prince of Cothromaiche’s son names seemed like it could possibly qualify for his good deed for the day.
“Perhaps it would be more interesting to discuss insteadwhereyou’ve been so far,” Soilléir suggested.
“Haven’t you been watching?” Acair asked shortly.
“I try to leave people their privacy.”
Acair gaped at him. “How do you say those kinds of things without your tongue catching on fire?”
Soilléir smiled. “Centuries of practice, my friend.”
Acair realized Léirsinn was shivering. He would have given her his cloak, but he remembered having left it behind in his grandmother’s gates. He jumped a little as a lovely thing came flying his way, but it had been that sort of day so far. It was a gentleman’s garment, but it would certainly serve Léirsinn well enough. He grunted a thanks in the direction of its maker, then wrapped the damned thing around his lady.
He sighed. There was no point in trying to call her anything else any longer.
He put his arm back around her, settled her as comfortably as he could, then looked at his primary tormentor. He supposed there would come a time when he would have to examine what the bastard had used to heal him, but for the moment, he would leave the prancing Cothromaichian stuff dancing a set with the Fadaire already trapped inside his poor chest alone. There would be time enough later to see if both could be rooted out of him.
He looked at Soilléir. “After I saw you in Neroche where Ipromised you a lingering death—something that keeps coming up, it seems—we decamped south for the library in Eòlas, where I thought I would see what sort of trouble looking for a book stirred up.”
“It seems you managed that well enough,” Soilléir said.
Acair sent the man his most murderous look simply because he was fairly certain there wasn’t a damned thing in the whole of the Nine Kingdoms that Soilléir of Cothromaiche hadn’t foreseen to some extent. Why he didn’t lend a hand more often was a mystery.
“I’m beginning to wonder if I just met what’s hunting me,” Acair said pointedly. “I don’t suppose you would have an opinion on that.”
Silence fell. As always, Acair didn’t care for that sort of thing because he knew what it generally indicated, which was something coming his way he absolutely wasn’t going to like. Léirsinn was still breathing raggedly, but she had put her hand on his knee in perhaps a good-hearted attempt to keep him from kicking the life from the man across from them.
Soilléir, that preening do-gooder, was only apparently sifting through an enormous pile of words in an effort to choose the ones that would inflict the most pain.
“I might be able to offer that, at least,” he said finally.
Léirsinn snorted. Acair was surprised enough by the sound that he looked at her. She smiled apologetically, but he shook his head. What a sterling gel she was and obviously possessing a superior ability to judge character. He patted her shoulder, then looked at the man he would happily crush like a bug under his boot the first chance he had.
“Do tell,” he drawled, feeling slightly more like his old self than he had but a moment ago.
“I will tell you, but I need your help.”
