Sìle shrugged. “Figure it out yourself.”
“Would my father know?”
“Go ask him. Take notes of his reaction and send word.”
Acair was tempted to invite the irascible monarch to make the journey with him, but perhaps ’twas too soon. The old elf didn’t look particularly chummy, but it had been a long evening so far.
Sìle looked at Soilléir. “My bit’s done and my debt to this wee bastard paid.”
“What did you gift him?” Soilléir asked.
“I vow I’ve forgotten already,” Sìle said, seemingly stopping just short of scratching his head. “An irresistible impulse to endlessly go about doing good, or perhaps an inability to memorize any more spells. Can’t say I remember at the moment.”
Acair was certain of many things and none more than elves had very poor taste in jest. He listened to Soilléir and Sìle exchange the usual sort of pleasantries the moment called for and he should have participated in, but he found that all he could do was stare stupidly at the back of his hand at lines that were so beautiful he could hardly manage a coherent thought.
“What do they mean?” Léirsinn whispered.
“Haven’t a clue,” he murmured.
What he suspected was they were akin to those tangled spells his dam handed off to overeager youth who came to beg something intricate and mysterious from her. Those pieces of magic were nothing more than endless loops that ended where they began, leaving the mage unsatisfied and the spell worthless. His mother never failed to chortle as those same annoying yobs wandered off into the forest with their brows knitted and their faces fair buried against the spells in their hands. More than one lad had returned to his dam’s house with a great knot in his forehead from where he’d encountered some immoveable object or other.
Sìle’s gift was likely just the same. He would spend years trying to unravel the damned runes, sneaking into libraries where he shouldn’t go, trotting off occasionally on the proverbial wild goose chase, only to find out after decades of the same that what he possessed was nothing more than directions to the king’s most unkempt privy.
He wouldn’t have been surprised.
He thought he might be wise to ignore the way that damned spell wrapped around his heart seemed to recognize a fellow coconspirator, calling to it with a sweet song of Fadaire—
“I believe he’s cursed me,” he wheezed.
Léirsinn put her arms around his waist and leaned her head companionably against his shoulder. “You do look a little green.”
“I’ve had a long day,” he said. “Worry over you, of course.”
“You’re an awful man.”
“As I continue to remind you,” he said with a deep sigh.
She only smiled. If she pulled his arm more fully over her shoulders and he leaned a bit harder on her than he should have, she didn’t say anything.
It was weariness, that was all. He might have been fretting a bit over making a decent impression on her siblings after they’d seen him at less than his best.
He supposed he also might have been desperate for an hour of peace and quiet in which to contemplate that nugget Soilléir had simply dropped into the conversation without any warning at all.
He didn’t protest when Soilléir suggested a retreat indoors to freshen up before perhaps thinking about where the events of the evening had left the world. Acair knew he had other things to see to still, but he wouldn’t argue against half an hour of sitting in front of a fire with his love in his arms and absolutely no one wanting to slay him closer than the other side of a locked chamber door.
That was, he suspected, always going to be something of a rarity.
Twenty-two
Léirsinn looked at herself in the polished glass and wondered if having one’s life completely turned upside down showed on the entire face or just in the eyes.
She turned away from the mirror, made certain she was buttoned and laced in all the right places, then pulled on her boots. One thing she could say about Acair of Ceangail: he had excellent taste in clothing. The other thing she could say about him was that he wasn’t shy about using magic when the price for the same was no longer death.
She left the small bathing chamber and pulled the door shut behind her, then paused and looked at the man who had given her not only what she was wearing, but the ability to still breathe the same sweet air that he did.
He was sitting on the divan in front of the fire, sound asleep. She walked over to lean against the back of the chair across from him and simply looked at him. He was right, of course. She’d been lost the first moment she’d seen him.
What she hadn’t expected, though, were all the things that had come into her life as a result, most notably siblings she’d thought were dead. Where they’d been and why they’d chosen the present moment to make an appearance was something she thought she might like an answer to.
