“As I continue to remind you,” he said with a deep sigh.
She only smiled. If she pulled his arm more fully over her shoulders and he leaned a bit harder on her than he should have, she didn’t say anything.
It was weariness, that was all. He might have been fretting a bit over making a decent impression on her siblings after they’d seen him at less than his best.
He supposed he also might have been desperate for an hour of peace and quiet in which to contemplate that nugget Soilléir had simply dropped into the conversation without any warning at all.
He didn’t protest when Soilléir suggested a retreat indoors to freshen up before perhaps thinking about where the events of the evening had left the world. Acair knew he had other things to see to still, but he wouldn’t argue against half an hour of sitting in front of a fire with his love in his arms and absolutely no one wanting to slay him closer than the other side of a locked chamber door.
That was, he suspected, always going to be something of a rarity.
Twenty-two
Léirsinn looked at herself in the polished glass and wondered if having one’s life completely turned upside down showed on the entire face or just in the eyes.
She turned away from the mirror, made certain she was buttoned and laced in all the right places, then pulled on her boots. One thing she could say about Acair of Ceangail: he had excellent taste in clothing. The other thing she could say about him was that he wasn’t shy about using magic when the price for the same was no longer death.
She left the small bathing chamber and pulled the door shut behind her, then paused and looked at the man who had given her not only what she was wearing, but the ability to still breathe the same sweet air that he did.
He was sitting on the divan in front of the fire, sound asleep. She walked over to lean against the back of the chair across from him and simply looked at him. He was right, of course. She’d been lost the first moment she’d seen him.
What she hadn’t expected, though, were all the things that had come into her life as a result, most notably siblings she’d thought were dead. Where they’d been and why they’d chosen the present moment to make an appearance was something she thought she might like an answer to.
She was beginning to see why Acair got himself into so much trouble digging where perhaps he shouldn’t have.
She was half tempted to stick a pillow behind his head so he didn’t wake up with a kink in his neck, but she supposed he’d woken with worse. At least he would wake again and so would she, though she wasn’t sure her chest would ever not ache. She put her hand over the spot where not even a scar remained and thought she might definitely have a different opinion of magic than she’d had in her uncle’s barn—
Her grandfather.
She caught her breath, then let it out carefully. She would let Acair sleep for a bit longer, find her siblings and hold onto them a bit longer as well, then she would see what could be done to save her grandfather before Fuadain did anything rash. There was still the mystery of what, if anything, he had to do with Slaidear, something she thought might be best to find out also sooner rather than later.
Ye gads, she was starting to sound like a certain black mage of her acquaintance.
She borrowed his jacket that he’d left lying over the back of a chair and made her way quietly from the chamber. She realized she had a destination in mind only after her feet led her unerringly back to the garden where she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t perished.
She walked through paths she hardly remembered having traversed previously and came to a stop in front of the birdbath that sat where a fountain had stood before. The crossbow and bolts were still there, the bolts lying where they’d fallen. She picked them up, then paused. The moon was still newish, but it gave at least a little light that fell on something that glinted faintly at her feet. She bent down and picked it up.
’Twas a rune that sparkled with a beautiful, dark richness that left her wondering if she might be holding onto a piece of someone’s soul.
She had the feeling she might know to whom it belonged.
She pocketed it, then glanced at the birdbath. She had the feeling no bird would care to use it, but perhaps she was wrong. The water wasn’t liquid, but instead something that greatly resembled a mirror if a mirror could have reflected anything but…well, she was going to say darkness, but that wasn’t what she saw. There was no telling what Acair and Soilléir—an unlikely pairing to begin with—had decided to do with Sladaiche, but perhaps locking him forever in a pool of shadow had been fitting.
She realized, as she looked at herself reflected by the light of that new moon, that she had only seen herself, flaws and goodness and an elven rune that greatly resembled a dragon made of flames.
She also realized quite suddenly that she wasn’t alone. She whirled around but found only Acair standing there, watching her gravely.
“Just me. Admiring our handiwork?”
She put her hand over her heart, mostly to convince herself that it wouldn’t beat out of her chest. “Have you looked in it?”
“Will I regret it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
He did, then shook his head and stepped back. “Soilléir’s doing, not mine. I will say I am every bit as handsome as I always suspected, if not a little rough around the edges at the moment.” He looked at the bow and bolts she held. “That was too close.”
She held them out. “I don’t think I want them.”
He took them, then held out his hand. “Perhaps we’ll gather up those damned horseshoes in the trunk at home, put them together with these, and send the whole lot to Soilléir to turn into something vile to leave under Droch’s sofa. I can think of worse ideas.”
She could too, but she imagined he knew as much. She let go of his hand and put her arms around his waist, avoiding things that had almost killed them both. “I found something you might want.”
“Besides yourself?”
She smiled up at him, then kissed him and shook her head. “A little rune on the ground.”
“Sìle’s now losing things from his pockets?” he asked. “I’m intrigued.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. She pulled it out of her coat—his coat, rather—then held it up. “What do you think?”
He gaped at it, then stepped away from her. He took several steps backward until he ran bodily into a bench, then he sat down abruptly. She walked over and sank down next to him.
“Well?”
He set the bow and bolts aside. “That’s something there.”