She closed her eyes briefly, gathered the last vestiges of her good sense, and pulled the book from its spot on the shelf. What she was certain of was that she wouldn’t find her sister’s addition to the final page.
She opened the book and started from the very first story, a tale of an elven princess who left her home, looking for an elusive stranger who had once passed through her father’s land and stolen her heart. After that followed tales of faeries, kings, evil sorcerers, and workers of magics of all sorts.
All the things her sister had loved.
She had to admit that she read more slowly than she needed to, but she came to the end far sooner than she wanted to. She stood there for far longer than she should have with her fingers gingerly holding the last page.
She finally gathered her courage and turned the page before she could think about it any longer.
A child’s drawing was there of a horse, a girl, and a boy.
She closed the book with a snap and almost shoved it back on the shelf, but found that all she could do was hold it and try to catch her breath.
Why did that book find itself in Acair of Ceangail’s private library? It wasn’t possible that he’d had anything to do…
Anything at all…
Surely, not.
She stood on the edge of something that terrified her and couldn’t find the courage to look at what lay there. Books found their ways into the hands of those who loved them through strange and unusual paths, no doubt. That her sister’s sole possession should find itself so many leagues away from where her sister had once held it meant nothing.
But if it did—
She gathered the tatters of her courage, then stepped up to the edge of that abyss and looked into its depths. Admittedly she had seen things that had called into question everything she believed. It was also true that Acair of Ceangail had likely done things she wouldn’t want to know about.
But she had seen him in the king’s garden in Tor Neroche, standing there perfectly balanced between good and evil and she knew what was in his soul.
She took a step backward from that terrible place and that great pit faded to nothing. There were things she could believe of many people, but believing that of a man who had wept over her, who knew that her parents had been slain when she was a child, who in spite of perhaps several other things he would rather have been doing, had promised to try to heal her grandfather?
She could believe many things of him, but not that.
She dragged her sleeve across her eyes and was momentarily blinded by a few Fadairian sparkles that seemed to have worked their way through the fabric of her sleeve. She took a deep, steadying breath and wondered what she was to do now.
“Léirsinn?”
She looked at the doorway to the library and wondered how long Acair had been standing there.
“Are you unwell?”
“I’m fine,” she croaked.
He walked across the beautifully patterned rug comfortingly free of shadows and came to stand in front of her. He frowned.
“You don’t look well.”
“I was reading.”
“Tales of horror and woe?”
She shook her head and held the book out. “I found this.”
He peered at it, then shot her a dry look. “Faery stories?”
She found that all her protestations aside, all she wanted to do was stand there and weep. She felt as if she were holding onto a hinge-pin that trapped her between her past and her present and was making a horrendously loud noise as it turned.
“Do you remember where you got it?” Her hand was trembling, but she hoped he wouldn’t notice. “I’m just curious.”
He took the book, studied it, then smiled wryly. “I do, as it happens, for it cost me a ridiculous amount of my own coin.” He looked at her again, then frowned. “You’re very pale. Let’s find somewhere to sit—”
“I’m fine,” she said, perhaps more sharply than she intended. She attempted a smile. “Sorry. I’m just restless.”
“Well, I understand that.” He ran his finger over the cover, tracing the shape of the pegasus there.
Léirsinn suddenly wished she’d agreed to the idea of a chair.
“You know, this is a strange little book. I was skulking about somewhere I shouldn’t have been—in Bruadair, if memory serves—and a peddler almost ran me over on the sidewalk with his cart of treasures. I gave his wares a look, because you never know what you’ll find in a dusty corner, and he insisted that I needed this.”
“Oh,” was the absolute limit of what she could manage.
He shrugged a bit sheepishly. “Foolish, I know, but ’tis a lovely thing, isn’t it? But I’m always a bit dazzled by a tooled leather cover, truth be told.”
“Beautiful,” she agreed.
He looked at her and smiled. “If you tell me you had one as a child, I will refrain from pointing out how jaded you’ve become in spite of it.”
She took the book as he handed it to her. “Something very like it,” she lied. “You can blame my parents for filling my head full of this sort of rubbish.”
His smile faded. “I’m sorry,” he said carefully. “The memory must be difficult.”
She shook her head. “Actually, it isn’t,” she said, finding it was true. She took a step back. “I’ll keep looking.”
“I’ll read to you tonight, if you like.”
“From this or from that book King Uachdaran gave you about terrible mages?”
“Your choice. The content will be about the same, I’m guessing.” He nodded toward the door. “There’s stew, if you’re hungry. Coming?”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she said. “I’ll put this back.”
He nodded, looked at her with another faint frown, then walked toward the door. Léirsinn turned to the bookcase, but found she couldn’t place the book back where she’d found it. There was something about it that wrenched at her heart in a way she couldn’t begin to describe.
Acair had bought it from a peddler. Her relief over hearing those words was as terrible as the abyss she’d almost stepped into at the thought that he might have gotten it another way.
“Léirsinn?”
She couldn’t turn around. “Aye?”
She heard him come to stand next to her but she couldn’t look at him.
“Is that your book?” he asked quietly.
She had to take a deep breath. “My sister’s.”