The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(33)

He bid his aunt a good day, collected his horse miss, and left before Cailleach could say anything else untoward.

“Chummy, weren’t you?” Léirsinn asked. “One would think you knew her.”

“One shouldn’t ask questions I can’t answer.”

Léirsinn stopped and looked at him in surprise. “You do know her.”

“I can’t say.”

“You know I’m going to ask her about it the next time we meet.”

“You do that.” He could only imagine what his auntie would decide to reveal about him, so perhaps he would be offering to run errands in town for the foreseeable future to spare Léirsinn any details she didn’t need to know.

He supposed he could think of worse things than to be doing something—anything—besides the backbreaking labor of endlessly moving horse droppings from small piles to much larger piles. If one more horsefly landed on his arse . . . well, he couldn’t bring to mind exactly what he would do because the choices were so dire—

“Watch out!”

She hadn’t shouted, but she’d come close. He waited until an appropriate number of locals had looked at him as if they pitied him for his companion’s obviously damaged sanity, then he looked at the shadow in front of him. It was smaller than the others, but even he could see its edges.

He didn’t pause to think; he simply ignored the warning bells going off inside his head and stepped into the middle of it.

He lost his breath. Nay, he hadn’t lost his breath, it had been ripped from him by claws. The spell continued to tear at him in a way he honestly couldn’t describe. His mind, his memories, his very essence was being pulled from him with a ruthlessness that astonished him. It took an effort that was impossible to even begin to calculate to wrench himself out of its terrible embrace—

He stepped back and leaned over, struggling to simply draw in breath, until he could put his finger on what had happened to him.

He had lost a piece of his soul.

It was excruciating.

He was vaguely aware of Léirsinn pulling his arm over her shoulders and taking a good deal of his weight onto herself, but he couldn’t find the strength to protest. It was all he could do to breathe in and out.

“What happened—”

“Find a quiet place,” he begged hoarsely. “I’ll be fine in a moment.”

“I don’t think—”

“Please.”

She looked at him in surprise. He imagined he was wearing the same expression. He had never in his life uttered that word—

Well, that was a lie, but he would be damned if he would revisit when he’d last begged for anything.

The next thing he knew he was sitting in a darkened corner of a gathering room, there was a fire within reach, and Léirsinn was fumbling with the purse at his belt.

“I should be enjoying this,” he wheezed.

“First a gambler and now a lecher,” she said sternly. “What else have I yet to discover about you that’s worse?”

“Don’t ask.” He closed his eyes because the chamber was spinning so wildly, he thought he might lose what breakfast he’d forced himself to ingest that morning.

He suspected he might have slept, for the next thing he knew, Léirsinn was shaking him awake. He pried his eyes open, then accepted something that someone might have termed ale if they’d never tasted the same before. He drank, though, because feeling nauseated from bad ale was better than feeling half dead from what he’d just had done to him. He looked at Léirsinn but could scarce see her. She leaned closer to him.

Her eyes were green. Not greenish-blue like the sea, but green like spring leaves in the most beautiful parts of the elven gardens of Seanagarra where he had only dared venture once during a year when Sìle had been abed with exhaustion from some piece of elvish rot . . .

He could honestly hardly bear to look at her, she was so haunting lovely.

“What do you think?” she whispered.

He let out a very ragged breath. “I think you’re beautiful.”

She rolled her eyes. “Nay, about . . . well, about those things. There’s something untoward about them, isn’t there?”

He closed his eyes. “Considering I couldn’t possibly know anything of magic and that sort of rubbish,” he managed, “perhaps I’m not the best one to judge.”

“You know, you look like you’re going to puke.”

“Aye, well, I can judge that,” he agreed. He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I’ll think I’ll forgo the pleasure for the moment.”

“I ordered food.”

“Or something resembling it,” he said with a groan.

She smiled, but it was a very strained smile indeed. “I think I might be afraid.”

“I think you might be a very wise gel,” he said. He looked around the pub blearily for anyone who might want him dead, saw no one, then leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “Wake me if someone wants to kill us.”

“If you like.”

He wasn’t sure he dared express what he would have liked. The list began with wishing that damned spell following him had at least warned him before he lost part of his soul to some spot a crotchety old village warlock had likely laid on the cobblestones for his own amusement. His list ended with renewed determination to give his constant companion the slip the first chance he had, even if that meant he had to clout it over the head with a pitchfork. Given his newfound abilities with the same, he thought the bloody thing might never see that coming.