She had been, she had to admit, very silly as a girl of ten summers.
She opened the book, then froze. There had been a tale there of a dragon, that much she remembered, but that story was gone. She flipped through the rest of the book until she came to the endpapers.
She found she simply couldn’t turn the page.
“Léirsinn?”
She handed Acair the book. “The first tale is gone.”
“How do you—oh, I see.” He held the book up and looked at the front of the book where the pages had been cut out, then shut the cover and looked at the spine. He froze, then let out his breath slowly. “The second volume in the series, is it?”
She could only nod.
“Might there be an addition at the back?”
“Aye, but I don’t have the courage to look.” She met his gaze. “You do it.”
He simply looked at her for a moment or two. “Yours?”
“I’m not sure.” She hesitated. “It might be.”
He flipped through the pages from the beginning, gently, as if he held a great treasure, then he paused as well before he turned the final sheaf. He finally turned the page.
A child’s drawing was there of the sea, a dragon, and a man.
He ran his finger over it, then looked at her and smiled. “Breathing fire even all those years ago, were you?”
“Apparently,” she said, ignoring the crack in her voice.
“Handsome lad there. One could argue that the coast there looks a bit like my bay.”
“One could.”
“I hesitate to say it, but your sister was a better artist.”
She elbowed him in the ribs, perhaps harder than he deserved, but he only huffed out a bit of a laugh before he shifted and put his arm around her.
“I love you, even if you cannot draw.”
“I was a prodigious dreamer, though,” she said archly.
“I suspect you were.” He hugged her briefly, then released her and handed her back her book. “I think you should keep this one. I’ll repay Soilléir for it later by not slaying him whilst he’s asleep. What was the first tale about?”
She opened her mouth to speak, then found she couldn’t. She could scarce believe what she was thinking, but it was undeniable.
“Léirsinn?”
She turned a bit and put her mouth next to his ear. “It was a tale about a dragon who had lost his soul and all the things he had to do to recover it.”
He bowed his head and made a noise that might charitably been termed a laugh had they been in different circumstances. He slid her a look.
“Did he find it?”
“I believe so.”
He leaned his head back against the wall. “Do you remember any of it?”
“I remember the entire thing.”
