The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(115)

“Miach’s mother kicked me in the arse with a pair of them,” he said with a weary smile. “Then she made me polish the manure off the bloody lot of them—and there were many pairs—then put them all back where they’d come from. Your kind of woman, that Queen Desdhemar.”

Léirsinn supposed that might be the case, accepted a pair of boots in exchange for her shoes, then happily walked through the gardens and to the stables with a man who seemed to know where he was going.

Falaire was quietly dozing in his stall and Sianach celebrated Acair’s arrival by trying to reach out his stall window and bite him.

“And all is right with the world,” Acair said with a sigh. “Bad horse.”

She supposed Sianach would take that personally, but perhaps that was an observation better made at a different time. She held up her skirts with one hand, held Acair’s hand with the other, then walked out with him into the courtyard. The moon was waxing toward full, which she appreciated, and there were torches lit that made the pathways easily marked.

It also revealed that they weren’t alone.

If she’d been able to do something besides try to keep from tripping on her gown as she was yanked behind her escort, she might have found words to comment on the handiness of being able to see where she was hopping. When Acair snarled at her to run, she thought she might have to find Miach’s gardener and apologize for the plants she was currently trampling in her haste to do just that.

She stopped after a pace or two because she wasn’t about to run away, no matter what Acair had told her to do. She turned around to watch him catch a rapier that Rigaud had flung at him.

“You have no spells,” Rigaud spat, “so I’ll kill you in a more gentlemanlike way.”

“You might try,” Acair said, looking at the sword casually. He leveled a very cool look at Miach’s brother. “I imagine you won’t succeed.”

Léirsinn wondered if she would have time to run back to the hall and fetch help before something dire happened, but couldn’t force herself to move. She was trapped by her fear of what might befall Acair, a fear that left her standing in the midst of brittle leaves and the last of autumn’s flowers.

In time, she realized that the middle of a battlefield wasn’t a wise place to be. Before she could decide which way she should bolt, Acair lost his sword. She had to admit that Prince Rigaud looked as surprised as Acair over that turn of events, but he wasted no time in weaving a spell that gave her chills just to listen to it. She had no idea what language the prince was using; she only knew that the magic was not of a pleasant sort.

Rigaud continued to weave his spell slowly and distinctly, no doubt so Acair would know exactly what was coming his way. It seemed as if he were creating a blanket meant to smother a fire. She suspected it was intended to smother Acair’s ability to breathe, but what did she know? She could do nothing but stand there and watch Rigaud draw himself up, then step forward, no doubt to intimidate a bit more as he flung his spell toward his enemy.

Unfortunately, he caught his foot in a bit of garden foliage. She would have considered that a fortuitous turn of events except that what he had been directing at Acair had gone off course and was currently coming her way. Acair leapt toward her, though she wasn’t sure what he thought he was going to accomplish by that. She took a step backward, trying to find her footing beneath her, but then she realized what she had stepped into.

A spot of shadow.

Time slowed to a crawl and her heart seemed to slow right along with it. She tried to hold up her hands to ward off that spell coming toward her or reach for Acair’s hands he was holding out to her to pull her out of the way, but she found she could do neither. All she could do was stand there, motionless, and try to keep breathing. Her astonishment at what was happening to her was so great, she wasn’t sure she would manage that last bit for very long.

She could see. It was as if until that exact moment she had lived her entire life in a chamber with nothing in it. No windows, no paintings, nothing on the floor, nothing but bland, colorless wood. All of that had disappeared, leaving her standing in the midst of a garden, dumbfounded by the sight of flowers, trees, stone pathways—even the air was alive with a sparkling awareness she had never imagined, never could have imagined . . .

Miach was suddenly there in front of her, holding off with his hand and will alone a spell that was so full of horrors, she wept just looking at it. Death, but death only after agony and a despair that would have brought her to her knees if she’d been able to move. The path that contained that despair was so bleak and so relentlessly beguiling that it was all she could do not to set foot to it and hope that the torment would end eventually. The agony was so sharp and clear that it took whatever willpower she had left not to reach out toward it as well and see if it might be cool against her hands, quenching the pain that seemed to burn within her with a heat she thought might soon consume her.

And all those things were wrapped up in the magic that Rigaud had thrown at Acair to slay him, a magic that seemed to have no end . . .

She let out a breath that was as unsteady as her knees beneath her.

Magic existed. She could no longer even pretend to deny it.

Rigaud’s power was great, she could see that. See it, rather, in a way that left her wondering if she had ever looked at anything real before in her lifetime. The prince’s power was part of him, locked in his veins, drawn from his forebearers, simply waiting for him to use it or not as he willed.