Miach looked at her from under his unreasonably long eyelashes, laughed again, and dug about in his pack for cards.
Morgan rubbed her arms and moved to sit closer to the fire. She waited until Miach had dealt out their hands before she looked at him.
"Thank you," she said seriously.
"For what?"
She considered her cards for some time before she looked at him over them. "I don't sleep well. Somehow, every time I wake, you are not sleeping either. Instead, you are either sitting next to me, or watching me." She paused. "I appreciate the company."
"It is the very least I can do, Morgan," he said. He glanced down at his cards, then smiled. "I daresay you'll owe me an hour of training for this hand."
"Do youwantto win?" she asked.
"Not really," he said, and he laughed again. "I think I would very much like to lose, that you might have the prize of that very useful spell for speeding the growing of a nasty herb or two."
Morgan smiled as well. In truth, she wanted no more of magic and spells, but the thought of a little something to give Adhémar a rash to concentrate on was welcome indeed.
Besides, Miach's mirth kept the darkness at bay yet a little longer.
She was very grateful for it.
Chapter Twenty-one
Miach stood in the pale morning sunlight and watched Adhémar train with Morgan. That did not trouble him. Morgan could have cut Adhémar to ribbons without an effort, but she seemed to be humoring him. Sadly enough, Adhémar had no idea. Miach enjoyed that. He shouldn't have, but he did.
It wasn't even what his brother was saying that troubled him. It would appear that Adhémar had finally become convinced, by some unfathomable leap of logic that Miach had been certain his brother could never make, that Morgan was indeed the wielder. Miach had warned him repeatedly not to overwhelm her with too many spells or she would bolt. Besides, how was he to explain to Morgan that a mere landholder such as Adhémar was purported to be should know so much about magic?
Adhémar ignored him.
Adhémar was also, predictably, suffering from a rather nasty rash. Nettles would do that to a body. Morgan had won the first hand of cards and proved to be quite adept at his nettle-growing spell.
Nay, it wasn't that that troubled him.
It was that he loved her.
Miach paced, smiling, then finding that his smile was fading. It was easy enough to consider Morgan, viewed by the light of the fire, and think of her as nothing more than a beautiful, if deadly, shieldmaiden. It was easy enough to look at Morgan, the pale winter sunlight shining down on her dark hair, and think of her as a beautiful woman. It was easy to think of her as a perfect comrade with a smile that would have made a lesser man's knees a little unsteady beneath him.
It was not so easy to think of her as the wielder.
Miach wondered when he'd first known?that he loved her, not that he might have found the answer to the kingdom's troubles. He cast back over the recent past and suspected that it might have been from that first night, when he had caught her in his arms and carried her back to the inn. She'd been lovely and remote, the image of a queen of old.
Then she had woken and looked at him.
He'd been lost.
Somewhere, somehow during the past endless succession of days, he'd lost his heart for good. His mother had warned him there would be peril in his future. Why hadn't she warned him of the potential for peril to his heart?
"Another spell," Adhémar commanded, shifting uncomfortably as the aftereffects of his sitting apparently caught up with him again. "I'm sure you'll find it useful. "
Morgan yawned. "When you can best me," she said, "then I will think on it."
Miach watched his brother throw himself back into the fray with all his strength and force. Even Miach had to credit him with a valiant effort.
Unfortunately for him, king of Neroche or not, he was simply not Morgan's equal. Morgan finally rid him of his sword in disgust.
"I'm finished," she said, resheathing her sword with a scowl. "You be finished too."
"A spell, just the same," Adhémar cajoled.
