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“You’ve made quite a study. Should I be flattered?”
“Warned.”
“You haven’t yet told me why you came to our aid? Was it merely so you can execute me at your leisure? The cat playing with the wounded mouse?”
She arched one sarcastic brow. “That’s more in your line, isn’t it?”
He breathed slowly as he sought to banish the memories. Or at least manage them. But illness and pain broke down his usual iron control. Images burned hot in his mind, whispering figures moved through his consciousness like ghosts.
“No, I’ll not grant you your death wish, Brendan Douglas,” she said smoothly. “If I’m not mistaken, your greatest punishment is living.”
“No,” he answered, “it’s remembering.”
Her gaze froze him with its malice. “Then may you live until you’re old and gray and never forget. I know I won’t.”
They pulled the wagon off the road into a meadow. Unhitched the ponies to graze. A heavy sky threatened rain, gauzy mist threading the streambeds and bottomland. But the temperature remained pleasant, and Elisabeth shed her shawl as she crossed the grass to kneel beside Brendan.
“Miss Roseingrave’s ridden ahead. Now’s your chance.”
Brendan fumbled with the plate of sausages on his lap. “My chance to do what?”
“Poof us out of here in a cloud of smoke. Turn Rogan to a toad. I don’t know.”
“You really do have an odd notion of Other, haven’t you? And all along I mistook ignorance for hostility.”
“It was not!” She lowered her voice when Rogan looked up from pouring himself a cup of coffee. “It was not hostility,” she hissed. “I just don’t . . . or rather, it’s not as simple as that . . . that is to say I don’t . . . Oh, bother, I’m not going to waste my time explaining to you.”
If she couldn’t articulate it in her own head, how would she make Brendan understand her conflicted fascination-repulsion with the Other? Easier to let him think her unreasonable, even if it reflected badly. After all, she didn’t care what he thought.
Did she?
He juggled his fork and cup in his left hand, his right arm immobile in heavy bandages. “I bear Fey blood, Lissa. I’m not one of the faery folk myself. I don’t poof. And as chummy as you and Rogan have become, I’m surprised you’d even entertain the notion of his being transformed into a toad.”
“Just a temporary sort of spell. Nothing permanently scarring.”
Brendan scowled at a sausage evading all his attempts to spear it. One-handed, he couldn’t manage holding plate, fork, and knife. At every stab, the sausage wobbled and slid away from him. “The answer is still no. I can’t cast a spell over Rogan turning him into a newt, a snake, or a flea on Killer’s backside. He’s Rogan, and Rogan he remains.”
“But you said yourself they’ve been hunting you.” Unable to watch his frustrated fumblings another moment, she took his plate and utensils and carved the offending sausage into bite-size pieces before handing it back. “That Máelodor and the Amhas-draoi are both out to kill you.”
“Thank you.” He speared a piece of sausage, popping it into his mouth with a vicious smile. “To clarify, the Amhas-draoi want me dead. Máelodor wants me alive. Torture’s more fun that way. At least for the torturer.”
She dropped beside him against the wall, the ground damp under her skirts and liable to leave a muddy spot, but in this dress, who’d notice? “Then Helena—”
“Is not playing by the rules, which generates all sorts of interesting questions.” He finished his sausage. Sipped at his coffee. Leaned his head back against the wall, staring off into space with a sigh. “I won’t draw on my powers more than necessary, Lissa. It would be . . . unwise.” He blinked, and the anguish she thought she saw within his eyes vanished. “Besides, while I’m hampered with this damned shoulder, any escape attempt would end badly.”
“So we do nothing?”
“So we’re a ‘we’ now?” Amusement brightened his features.
“As much a ‘we’ as they are a ‘them.’” She frowned. “You know what I mean.”
“Which in itself should be enough to give us both pause.”
He sighed again, adjusting his sling as if his shoulder ached. She shouldn’t
push him. His fever still came and went, the marks of his injury etched in every fresh line upon his already finely drawn features.
“Until I sort out my business with the stone, you’re trapped with me, and while I’m vulnerable as a bloody kitten, we’re trapped with them,” he said. “Could be worse.”
