The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(126)

Acair tucked Léirsinn’s hand under his arm. “She’s not our charming lady.”

“Well, she’s not yours.”

“She’s definitely not yours.”

“Could you both please stop?” Léirsinn asked. “Not that I’m not enjoying this more than I thought I would, but it seems a little silly at the moment, doesn’t it?”

Acair thought that silly might cover anything worthwhile about Mansourah of Neroche, but refrained from saying as much. He elbowed Mansourah out of his way and walked over to where he’d left his horse. Mansourah followed, something Acair realized he was going to have to accustom himself to. That, he admitted without any hesitation at all, didn’t set well with him.

“Where are we going?” Mansourah asked.

“The library at Diarmailt.”

“Are we?” Léirsinn asked in surprise. “Why?”

“I need to fetch a book,” Acair said. He wasn’t going to be able to use his damned book even if he could fetch it, but perhaps that wasn’t a useful thing to admit at the moment. It was full of his own scribblings, true, but also a list of spells he’d either hidden in other places or thought he might like to liberate from their owners who were residing in other places. That was the sort of thing he didn’t particularly care to have cluttering up his mind on a daily basis, which was why he’d written it all down and hidden it so well.

Mansourah looked at him as if he’d lost his wits. “But Rùnach has the book you left behind there.”

Acair despaired for the success of the enterprise, truly he did. He looked at Mansourah evenly. “Do you honestly believe I left that there by accident?”

Mansourah’s mouth fell open. “But—”

Acair tapped his forehead. “Think, lad, before you embarrass yourself.”

Mansourah looked at Léirsinn. “How do you bear him?”

“If I were looking for a man, which I’m not, I would have to say that I like him.” She smiled. “He’s honest.”

Mansourah took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “An honest black mage.”

“Just that.”

He shook his head, as if he simply couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was faced with. He looked at them. “I’ll need to give that some thought. If you don’t mind, though, I think I’ll go ahead and find lodgings. I do have my standards.”

Acair imagined he did and he supposed hell would see its first frost before he bunked with that meddling old woman.

“See you there,” Acair said cheerfully, waving him off. “Don’t dawdle.”

Mansourah grumbled a half-hearted curse at him, spoke a handful of words, then disappeared.

Acair realized that whilst he was no doubt not on Mansourah’s list of favorite people, Léirsinn apparently was. He looked at the spell that had been cast up over them, then realized Léirsinn was turning in a circle, staring at it in astonishment. She stopped and looked at him.

“What is that?”

“Safety for the journey.”

She smiled. “He is very kind.”

“My sister told him to do it.”

“Most likely.”

“Besides,” Acair said, taking her pack from her and attaching it with his own to Sianach’s saddle, “he just wants to come along to see how black magery is properly done. Obviously all that prissy magic he’s accustomed to putting on display simply isn’t attracting the sort of women he would like to aspire to.”

She put her hand on Sianach’s withers. “And what sort of woman does a black mage attract?”

He looked at her seriously. “Red-haired, dragon-loving, fire-breathing horse gels who have more courage than most men I know.”

Her smile faded. “I don’t have any courage, Acair.”

He considered, then reached out and pulled her into his arms. He wasn’t entirely sure that her squawk hadn’t come from his tangling a button from his cloak in her hair, but she seemed to find him not objectionable enough to not embrace in return.

“I have an abundance of the stuff,” he said, with as much bluster as he could. “I’ll share.”

“Will we die?”

“Not today. Not tomorrow, either, if I can manage it. We’ll worry about the day after when it comes.”

He didn’t want to think about that day after. He was off to do impossible things. He needed to locate the maker of those spots of shadow, discover what they meant, and eradicate them before they took over the world. He had to save Léirsinn’s grandfather and Hearn’s son. He had to find out who had created that spell that was following him before he did some unthinking piece of magic and it fell upon him and slew him.

And all of that whilst someone he couldn’t name was watching him.

But the most daunting task of all was that he had to accomplish all that with a woman in tow, a woman he was still trying to convince himself he wasn’t fond of, a woman without so much as a breath of magic to her name. A woman he thought he just might die to keep safe.

He was mad.

But he kept his arms around Léirsinn of Sàraichte just the same and was damned grateful for that red-haired gel who was willing to follow him into that madness. It was absolutely not what he’d expected and far more goodness than he deserved, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. They would do what needed to be done with whatever wit and cleverness they could both muster.