The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(116)
She looked away, but finding Miach in her sights was worse. Whatever it meant to be king of Neroche in practical terms was nothing when compared to what it meant for him to be a mage king in that realm. He was Neroche and Neroche was him and she couldn’t begin to separate the two or find the words to describe what she saw in him. She fancied he could have cracked the world in two with a word if he’d so chosen, but she knew just as surely that he would never consider it. He held Rigaud’s spell of death at bay with very little effort, then caused it to disappear with a single word.
Rigaud was full of a white-hot rage that should have singed anyone who dared come near him, but he cursed his brother, shot Acair a murderous look, then turned and strode away.
Léirsinn watched Acair turn to face her, then saw realization dawn as he understood where she was standing. And in the trio of heartbeats it took him to reach her, she saw him.
How she had ever thought him anything but what he was, she couldn’t have said. He wasn’t a cultured man with a deliciously posh accent and perfect table manners, he was a mage with power to rival the king of Neroche’s. He might not have been able to use it, but it coursed through his veins and drenched his soul, enough power to have brought kingdoms to ruin. She half wondered how he managed to live inside himself. The light and the dark were perfectly balanced in him, something she had the presence of mind to assume he wouldn’t want to hear.
He held out his hand to her as if he feared to touch her. She almost feared she wouldn’t be able to reach him, but the moment she touched his skin, he jerked her out of the circle she’d stepped in and into his arms.
“Léirsinn,” he said urgently.
“I’m fine,” she managed.
“You were screaming.”
She looked up at him, then felt her eyes closing. She surrendered, because she simply couldn’t look at anything else. Everything she’d seen whilst standing in that shadow was gone. Miach and Acair were just men, the garden was nothing more than dirt and leaves, and the moon shone down with nothing more than an ordinary and quite pedestrian light.
She thought she just might weep.
She closed her eyes and saw no more.
Twenty-two
It was useful, Acair decided, to periodically take stock of one’s life and examine it for strengths and weaknesses, and occasionally simply for things that were so odd as to be scarce believed. Such as, for instance, sitting in the solar of the king of a realm full of magic ripe for the picking and not having any desire to bean the man over the head and make off with as many spoils as possible before he woke.
He paused. Well, perhaps he wasn’t entirely free of that desire, but he was who he was after all. Old habits died hard.
“I’m afraid my selection of libations isn’t vast,” Miach said solemnly, “though I do have some Durialian bitter ale you might want to accustom yourself to.”
“On the off chance I actually set foot inside that irascible old fool’s borders and find myself in his dungeon?”
Miach smiled. “It might soften his heart to watch you toss back without flinching something that generally brings lesser men to their knees.”
Acair took a deep breath. “Pour away, then. I like to be prepared.”
“I’ll return posthaste. Don’t poach any spells whilst I’m away.”
Acair smiled wearily. “Too tired tonight, though don’t think the thought hasn’t already crossed my mind.”
“I would be disappointed by anything else.”
Acair listened to him close the door behind him, then looked around himself in something he might have called consternation if he’d been prone to that sort of emotion. The archmage-now-king of Neroche’s private tower chamber was the last place he would have ever thought to find himself. Well, find himself unfettered, that was. He was torn between walking over to Miach’s table and rifling through papers there, or pulling the exceptionally lovely and fierce Léirsinn of Sàraichte up out of her chair and kissing the hell out of her.
Dire were his straits indeed.
He walked over to toast his arse against the fire and looked at the woman sitting in a chair next to that fire. She had regained her senses true, but she looked easily as devastated as he felt, though obviously for different reasons.
He had caught her as she’d fallen, after he’d pulled her free of that accursed spot of darkness. He knew Miach had covered that patch with a spell so it wouldn’t cause anyone else trouble, been grateful for the king’s aid, then accepted the sanctuary of that same monarch’s private solar. Léirsinn had come back to herself after only a few moments and she hadn’t looked terribly upset, but it wasn’t as if she would have blurted out her fears right there in front of the company that had gathered to watch the spectacle of Rigaud of Neroche attempting to slay him.
He clasped his hands behind his back and studied his companion. She was simply sitting there, staring into the fire as if she saw things she didn’t like.
“Léirsinn?”
She looked up at him. “Aye?”
He wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject of what she’d experienced, so he simply stared at her, mute. Foolish, aye, but there it was. She was completely out of his experience and he was definitely not at his best.
“Are you unwell?” she asked.