He saw after the fact exactly how Soilléir had turned his grandmother’s spell into essence changing and wondered if that whoreson there knew what he’d revealed.
Léirsinn gasped as if she’d been struck, then let out her breath as slowly and peacefully as a babe. She breathed a time or two, easily, then opened her eyes and looked at him.
“I feel better.”
He gathered her into his arms and added Soilléir to the list of people he would slay if they ever spread about the way he sobbed into the hair of the woman who had so thoroughly stolen his black heart.
He thought he might have wept for rather an embarrassingly long time.
It occurred to him eventually how uncomfortable she had to be, so he stopped smothering her and helped her sit up.
She looked around herself, then froze. Acair supposed that might have been courtesy of what was visible thanks to the werelight Soilléir so thoughtfully provided. He would have crawled to his feet and helped her to stand, but he found she needed no aid. She leapt to her feet so quickly, she almost toppled him over in her haste.
If she hauled him to his and almost knocked him into the fountain, he couldn’t blame her.
She looked from the woman to the man and back.
Then she gasped out a hearty curse.
Well, that seemed to be the thing to do, apparently. He stepped back and watched as the three of them became one mass of weeping humanity. He wished heartily for a place to sit, but supposed the edge of the fountain was definitely not going to be his perch of choice. He looked at the pool of water there and found even just the sight of it to be profoundly disturbing. He looked at Soilléir.
“Any suggestions?”
Soilléir shrugged. “Mop it up?”
Acair started to tell him to go to hell, but found himself instead with a better idea. “I have just the thing.”
He used Simeon of Diarmailt’s spell to hasten the drying of ink and watched as the water simply disappeared. Unfortunately, the spell did nothing for what it left behind, which looked far too much like one of those damned pools of shadow for his taste.
He looked at Soilléir. “Your turn.”
Soilléir considered, then silently turned the fountain into a birdbath.
Acair almost laughed. “You bloody bastard.”
“At least I have a sense of humor.”
“So you do. Enjoy it whilst you may because when I’m more myself, you will spend too much time fleeing from my wrath to find anything amusing.”
Soilléir only smiled. “As you say. Oh, look, there is a bench. You should sit. You don’t look well.”
Acair was simply out of words, perhaps one of the more alarming states in which he’d found himself over the past year. He didn’t, however, see any reason to shun a chance to recover a bit, so he shuffled over to that slab of stone Soilléir had fashioned out of nothing and sat with a deep sigh. He didn’t protest when his primary tormenter joined him there.
“You have questions,” Soilléir said slowly.
“I’ll beat the answers out of you la—ah, damn it all. What next?”
Well, the king of the elves was what next, apparently. He wasn’t sure why that bit of magick-making he and his lady had indulged in had attracted such an audience, but perhaps he would investigate it later. For the moment, he thought he might want to just concentrate on surviving the next quarter hour. Given the expression on Sìle of Tòrr Dòrainn’s face, he suspected that might not be easily done.
Perhaps he had nicked one too many spells from the old elf and used them with a bit too much impunity.
He leaned over toward Soilléir. “Why is he here?”
“I believe Morgan sent him.”
Well, that was something. He wasn’t sure what he thought of that, so he decided bluster might be his only hope. Even if he’d been able to indulge in a bit of spell-making, it would have likely been only of the sort that allowed him to feint right, then dodge left. Sìle of Tòrr Dòrainn was a bit like the king of Durial, only with perhaps a tastier wine cellar. They were old, ill-humored, and sitting on a trunkful of spells he would have committed quite a few nefarious deeds to have a rifle through.
They were also two of the most powerful souls he knew and escaping the wrath of either would take more energy than he had at the moment.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective—that damned bit of Fadaire frolicking through his once satisfyingly wicked form had apparently recognized its sovereign and decided to flutter about in a bit of a salute. It was all he could do not to take a knee, as the saying went, and confess his love for all things elvish.
Soilléir leaned close. “You look unwell.”
“You already mentioned that, thank you,” he said grimly. “If you’re curious, I also don’t feel well.”
“You look…sparkly.”
He clutched his chest in profound alarm. It was a tremendous alarm, far greater than anything he’d felt before. He did heave himself to his feet, though, because he was no fool. Essence changers and elven kings were hemming him in, but his lady still might require a rescue from those two over there who had to be her siblings. ’Twas best he survive to see to that.
He noted that Soilléir had also risen to show the proper amount of deference. Handy, that, as he needed a bit of support. If he leaned harder on that damned meddler than was polite, he didn’t suppose anyone could blame him.
Luck was with him, oddly enough, for Sìle paused to have a look at the trio standing next to the fountain. Acair sighed deeply. A reprieve, though he imagined it wouldn’t last all that long.
“She won’t be entirely as she was before,” Soilléir murmured.
“I know that, damn you to hell,” Acair said, dragging his sleeve across his eyes. “I will endlessly torment you because of it, rest assured.”
“I would be disappointed in anything else.”
“I would have traded you most of my soul for more years for her, you know,” Acair said, because he couldn’t not say it.
“You did.”
He gaped at the man next to him. “What?”
“Tell her after the entire tale is finished,” Soilléir advised.
He found himself distracted mostly because the king of the elves—the only ones who mattered, as Sìle himself would have said—had turned his sights away from that glorious woman and her siblings over there and had come to stand in front of him. He wasn’t at all certain he wouldn’t meet his end in a terribly uncomfortable way, but when a gentleman was facing the prospect of either bolting or remaining with the woman he loved, he didn’t run.