“You do that,” she managed.
He walked past her, giving her a wide berth.
She didn’t watch him go.
She paced through the parts of his house that weren’t near his bedchamber, partly to give him privacy but mostly to give herself time to come to terms with what she’d seen.
She wondered if King Uachdaran had known how much restraint Acair had been showing down in his underground arena. Likely so only because she suspected the king was surprised by very little. The business with Aonarach had been strange, but perhaps there was some unwritten code amongst mages that said one didn’t slay the relatives of one’s host. She had the feeling if Aonarach had been sitting next to her an hour ago, he might think twice about provoking Acair again in the future.
Why Acair had felt the need for that sort of display that morning was curious. She understood the necessity of releasing a bit of pent-up energy. She had shooed countless ponies into turnouts where they could run until they had run themselves out.
But, as she’d noted before, Acair was not a horse and that business out there hadn’t been a mage simply taking his spells out for a canter around the arena.
She walked into his study without thinking and found him standing in front of the fire, his hands on the mantel, leaning against it as if he were simply too weary to stand. His hair was still damp and he looked fresh-scrubbed, but he was definitely not at peace.
She would have turned around and left him to himself if she’d been a different sort of woman, but she was accustomed to facing feisty stallions head on. She reminded herself of that as she walked across the room, sat down, and looked up at him. He didn’t look as if he intended to speak any time soon, so she opened the conversational stall door herself.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Remembering who I am,” he said hoarsely. “Darkness is my birthright and use it I shall until the world ceases to turn.”
She had no doubt he would. She leaned her head back against the very fine leather of that chair and studied him.
“Why did you do all that?”
He shot her a look that she was certain was exactly the sort of thing she slid stable lads who asked questions they already had the answers for.
She nodded. “To discourage him from coming after you.”
He took a deep breath, but said nothing. She would have assured him that no one with any of their wits still in their possession would have approached him after the display he’d put on, but she supposed he knew that already. If his intention had been to show the mage lurking in the shadows what he was capable of, he had definitely accomplished that. She wasn’t sure why that morning had seemed like a good time for it, but it wasn’t as if he’d been able to use his magic freely before then.
What she couldn’t understand was why he’d been so hard on her.
The truth was, he hadn’t until that morning pushed her to do anything but dabble in magic. In fact, if she were to be entirely honest, aside from a very easy morning of not much at all in Léige, he hadn’t pushed her to learn anything. She had no idea why he’d changed his mind…
She felt her thoughts come to ungainly halt.
There was no reason for him to indulge in that sort of flourishy display for himself. Surely the mage outside his spell knew who he was and what he was capable of.
There was even less reason for him to push her to learn any sort of spell beyond simply containing that spell of death so he could use his own magic.
Unless he didn’t fear for himself.
She found herself on her feet. Easier to run that way, perhaps, though she wasn’t sure where she thought she would go. She simply stood there, shaking, as things occurred to her that hadn’t before.
There was only one reason why Acair would want her to have more spells than a simple one to keep that spell of death bound so it wouldn’t slay him.
She felt her heart almost stop.
“He doesn’t want you,” she managed.
Acair only looked at her, silent and grave.
She felt a horror descend that was far worse than what had caught her by the throat when she’d realized her uncle was plotting her murder.
“Me?” she asked, but the word came out as barely a whisper.
He only shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”
