“You want to protect yourself so you might spend the rest of your life leaving me forgetting to drink my tea before it grows cold because I’ve been too busy being mesmerized by the color of your hair.” He shrugged lightly, though he didn’t look particularly casual. “A little self-serving, that, but I understand.”
“You’re trying to distract me.”
“Turn about and all that.” He held out his rune with the spell of death attached. “Take this.”
She didn’t want to, but he didn’t give her any choice. He took her hand, put it on her palm, and closed her fingers around it.
“If something happens to me, you’ll throw that at him in the confusion, without mercy and without hesitation. The world will survive. Then you’ll shapechange as we’ve discussed and head for the closest bolt hole.” He bent his head, kissed her fingers, then stood up. “But it won’t come to that.”
She couldn’t begin to entertain thoughts of what her life would look like if that weren’t the case and, surprisingly enough, that had mostly to do with that man there.
She rose, put her chair back where it was meant to go, then watched Acair as he went to fetch her satchel from the back door. He brought it over, created a pocket under the lid with magic she didn’t recognize, then tucked the spell of death inside it. He put the strap over her head, settled it on her shoulder, then kissed her quickly.
“You won’t need that,” he said quietly, “but there’s no sense in not having a fall-back plan.”
She nodded, then tried not to shiver as the fire extinguished itself. The werelight was very faint by comparison, but she didn’t ask him to make it brighter. She imagined he would douse it entirely before he opened the back door.
“Your house is beautiful,” she croaked.
He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. “We will return, darling. I promise.”
She would have attempted a nod, but it was beyond her. “What now?”
“I’m going to create a little something with my grandmother’s magic and send it off northward whilst we nip off to the east and a bit south. We’ll be at Seannair’s gates by sunset if Sianach behaves himself.” He pulled back, kissed her on both cheeks, then looked at her. “You’ll do what’s needful and so will I. This is just one more step forward.”
She didn’t want to say that she’d grown too accustomed to the peace and safety of his house to want to step away from it at all, but she imagined she didn’t need to.
He picked up their packs before he took a deep breath and led her outside.
She decided many hours later that he had known how long it took to reach the palace of Inntrig because he’d been there before on one of his forays into places where he shouldn’t have gone. There was something comforting about knowing that with Acair of Ceangail, some things never changed.
Twilight had fallen, which she might have found pleasing at another time. Presently, standing a hundred paces from gates she wasn’t sure they would manage to enter, she found the dark unnerving. She stood with her hand on Sianach’s withers and waited for her legs to stop shaking.
She distracted herself by examining the rather inadequate defenses that kept the king of Cothromaiche from being overrun by the rest of the world, then looked over her shoulder before she could stop herself.
There was no one behind them, but she wasn’t reassured. Sladaiche was just as likely as they were to be wearing a spell of un-noticing. What was even less reassuring was realizing that she was starting to find magic as normal as barn work.
“Léirsinn?”
She looked at Acair standing next to her, cloaked and hooded as he was, and shook her head. “I’m appalled by my own thoughts.”
“Shameless vixen.”
She couldn’t even dredge up the glare he deserved, so she settled for a deep breath. “I wasn’t thinking lecherous thoughts about you, I was contemplating magic.”
“That might be worse,” he said. “But whilst you’re thinking those sorts of thoughts, let’s speak again of how we’ll proceed from here. You’ll need to remove our spell of un-noticing, but make a production of tugging on that thread I showed you before. I’m going to be doing everything I can to remain unobtrusive.” He paused. “And just so you’re not surprised, my welcome here, should it come to that, might not be warm.”
She started to agree, then it occurred to her that there might be things she needed to know. “What haven’t you told me?”
“Whatever can you possibly mean?”
She shot him a look, but he only smiled and shrugged.
“You know me,” he said easily. “Off doing things I shouldn’t more often than I should.”
“Are you going to be specific so I know why the king wants you dead?”
“If you must know,” he admitted, “I laid a spell on the king’s hunting gear that caused arrows and whatnot to sprout flowers and vile smells—I know the two aren’t usually connected, but I was feeling particularly clever—when pointed in the direction of whatever hapless thing he was stalking at the time.” He paused. “I may or may not have also snuck into his bedchamber and written,I cannot find my arse with both handson his nightcap in letters only others could see.”
