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Ere simply leaned back on his stool and grinned beatifically up at the towering warrior, cackling with glee.
Apparently, he was also a happy, mischievous drunk. Well, even more impish than usual. To his own personal risk, no doubt. But then, he was too pleased with himself to care.
“Did you at least get her name, Mr. Don Juan Mighty Cock?”
Ere giggled at his own ingenious nickname invention.
Kai, however, was nowhere near amused.
He wrestled his arm out of Sorin’s grip and pointed to Ere without looking at him, instead glaring murderously at Sorin. As if Ere was a misbehaving pet that had shat all over Kai’s food, and Sorin was his aggrieved but responsible owner.
“Silence that before I do it for you,” Kai spat. Then turned and stalked furiously out of the hall.
Sorin watched the other male’s retreating back until he was entirely out of sight, before sitting back down next to Ere.
He slid Ere a narrowed-eyed look. One that said,must you always stir shit up?
Why yes,Ere communicated back with his own widened eyes, dancing with merriment and inappropriate humor.
Yes, I must.
“That man wants to kill things,” Sorin uttered in his low, rumbling voice, indicating with a jerk of his head toward the direction that Kai had gone.
“Do not tempt him.”
“But it’s sofunto tease!” Ere crowed unrepentantly. “Did you see the look on his face!”
Sorin didn’t comment, going back to nursing his one tankard of mead.
“I thought I’d combust just witnessing the tension between the two of them. And I was all the way across the hall! And then he doesn’t even go after her when she left. What’swrongwith him? I’ve never known Kai tonotbulldoze through anything and everything in his way. There’s something there, mark my words. This won’t be the last we see of that black-haired warrioress.”
“Focus,” was all Sorin said. “We are not here for your amusement.”
Ere heaved a put-upon sigh and sobered slightly at that, in more ways than one.
“Very well, party pooper,” he pouted.
“Here’s what I learned.”
He went on to divulge all the intel he’d acquired about the Jarl and his men. As expected, the Skald’s stories about Olaf the Witch Breaker were exceedingly exaggerated. Of interest, however, was the part about the red-haired “witch,” whose silence Olaf managed to make her break.
“It can’t be a coincidence that the verses the witch recited are the same as the ones tattooed in your skin,” Ere said, now completely sober, the human’s alcohol no match for his still somewhat superhuman abilities, even in this form.
Sorin made no comment, simply staring into a smoldering fire, as the rest of the longhouse bedded down.
“This is the second time in three quests that we’ve encountered it,” Ere whispered, keeping his voice low so that only Sorin could hear.
“What do you think it means?”
Sorin slowly shook his head. Either he did not know, or he would not say.
For once, Ere couldn’t tell which it was. He felt like Sorin knew more than he was saying. But for some reason he wouldn’t share with Ere.
Reflexively, Ere held the golden feather against his collar in a tight clutch, protecting it.
As if protecting Sorin’s heart.
For the hollow calamus of the feather contained the blood from Sorin’s beating heart at its tip. He closed his other hand around Sorin’s fist upon the table, twining their fingers together.
