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“I know you do! What do we do about it?”
“I…honestly, I’m not certain.”
“Okay,” Oliver said, sitting in the dirt behind a boulder, Tir at his side. “Okay…then what? We give up, go home, say we couldn’t reach the Pool?”
“You couldn’t do that. I might be able to do…something…”
“Like what?”
Tir eyed Oliver’s short sword. Speculation in pale eyes.
“What, you want to…throw my sword at it?”
“No. Yes. I’d guess you need to do the actual deed. But I can offer assistance.” Tir bit his lip. “Magic, for a magical creature.”
“It needs magic.”
“You know all those children’s stories about enchanted blades and heroic deeds.”
“I’m not a hero!”
“You will be. Give me your sword.”
“But—”
Tir held out a hand. He’d tied his hair up, severe and sleek, but a strand of black had slid loose, along his temple.
Oliver drew his sword. Surrendered it to his fairy’s request. It was a good sword: no fancy name or lineage, just plain strong steel and solid craftsmanship. He’d never needed to use it beyond training, Home Guard reviews, drills. He was decent at those—he had the height and the breadth for power in swings, and he’d practiced because he’d wanted to be good, the way an Heir should be.
He’d never fought anyone, anything, in seriousness.
Tir closed a lightly bandaged hand around the blade, not the hilt. Oliver almost interrupted right then.
No blood appeared, despite sharpness. Ollie wasn’t sure what that meant.
He kept an eye on Tir’s fingers. He’d grown up with legends about magic and the cost thereof.
Tir murmured something, low. And stroked his hand along bare steel, a disarmingly intimate gesture. Oliver might’ve been imagining the way the sword thrilled to his caress, a ripple passing along the surface. Might’ve been.
Tir’s eyes were distant, faraway. His lips were parted. After a second he tugged a bandage looser, bared skin, touched the sword again: closer.
Oliver had a flash of astonished wondering: was this how Tir would touch someone he loved? With strength, with coaxing, with unhurried deliberate fingers and palm?
He swallowed. He tried not to think about whether magic always moved like this for Tir: a slow sweet seduction, a pulse-beat, a swell of desire.
He’d seen Tir do one or two things, small, quick. Cedric’s arm, for instance. But even that’d been years ago.
Everyone knew the Crown Prince’s loyal companion was a fairy. Oliver had never seen his best friend as a fairy before. Not like this. Not at all like this.
Tir blinked, shook himself, came back from whatever dreamy precipice he’d been on. “Here.”
“Was it good for you,” Oliver tossed back, a joke in the face of strange uneasiness. Tir’s hand stroking his sword, Tirian beautiful and inhuman and wrapped in invisible sorcery. The teasing landed badly.
“I put myself into it,” Tir said. No perceptible reaction to Oliver’s failed joke. Only sincerity and practical focus, which of course should be the case, in the face of a dragon. “My own magic. It should work.”
“You could use it. Um. If it’s…yours?”
“You’re better with a sword than I am, and it’s your Quest.” Tir shoved the sword into his hand and pulled both long knives instead. “I don’t know that it’ll work. I’ve never done this before.”
