The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(64)

Evil men didn’t do that, she didn’t think.

“This was not in my plans,” he said. “On the off chance you were wondering if this was part of our grand tour of the Nine Kingdoms.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, squinting up at the weeping ceiling. “I imagine there are worse places.”

“There are.”

She looked at him then. “And you would know?”

“I would know.”

She nodded, because she wasn’t quite sure what to say. She was in a dungeon, which was unusual, and she was there with a man who had reputedly made so much mischief over the years that kings and guard captains had an apparently inexhaustible supply of items to discuss, which was also unusual. Her life had become, she had to admit, very strange.

She thought it might have all started when her horse had sprouted wings.

Nay, it had been before that. It might have been the first time she’d seen Acair attempting to muck out a stall while Falaire had been eyeing him as a potential morsel to enjoy before supper. In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t at some point before that occasion wished for a new direction in her life.

She would have to remind herself to avoid that sort of wishing in the future.

She returned to her study of the man sitting several paces away from her. He didn’t look evil. He looked rather tired, actually, and as if he would rather have been sitting in a sunny spot, having a bit of breakfast and offering to pour her some tea. Him, a black mage? Even if she’d believed in magic, which she most assuredly did not, she wouldn’t have believed that of him.

Perhaps King Ehrne and his cohorts were simply having a bit of sport at his expense. What did she know of great men and their ways save how rude they could be to those they thought were their inferiors?

She looked about herself, desperate for a distraction. She’d had faery tales read to her as a child, of course, a cherished memory from her time with her parents. Either her mother or her father had read to her every night, then she’d listened to them continue the tradition with her younger sister, even past the point where she’d been too old for the same. She had never argued and they had seemingly taken great pleasure in handling one of the trio of books they had owned.

Dungeons had of course tended to figure prominently in Heroic tales and she had spent many an hour in delicious terror over the thought of just how awful they must be. The dungeons, not the Heroes. She thought the reality was less horrifying and more musty-smelling, but that was just her opinion.

“Where are we?” she asked absently.

“The Kingdom of Ainneamh.”

She looked back at him. “And what do they do here?”

“They talk a great deal,” he said, then he shrugged. “They’re elves. They go about sparkling and glittering and generally leaving everyone who encounters them wishing they were very far away.”

“Elves,” she repeated with a smile. “Of course.”

He leaned his elbows on his knees and folded his hands together. “Don’t believe in them either?”

“Of course not,” she said, but she couldn’t manage it with her customary snort of derision.

Her world was shifting underneath her and she didn’t like it at all. Things she had fully believed to be a certain way had become things she was being forced to consider might be another way entirely. And it was becoming increasingly hard to deny what she was seeing.

The king of the, er, elves had put his hands on her horse, spoken a few words under his breath, and Falaire had leapt to his feet, completely whole and sound. That had been odd in itself, but there was more. Those men, the king and his men, didn’t look like average blokes. The more she thought about it, the more she realized they had been frighteningly beautiful, as if they had stepped out of a dream that she thought she might be able to remember with enough effort.

She looked at Acair and wondered if what they had said about him was true as well. He didn’t look evil, but he didn’t look harmless either. In truth, he had a bit of that elvish look about him, though perhaps not so unearthly as the men who had escorted them rather politely into the dungeon.

She was accustomed to the powerful men who came to Fuadain’s stables to purchase the best horses in the barn, so she didn’t find herself particularly intimidated by Acair’s mien or his looks. But if he had magic . . .

He had told her he was a mage, hadn’t he? He’d also told her that he never lied. If he were telling the truth, then that meant that there were things in the world that existed beyond her imagination.

Magic.

Power.

Mischief of a dangerous and unwholesome sort.

“Léirsinn?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m thinking about things I haven’t thought about before.”

He smiled gravely. “The world is very large and full of unusual things.”

“And you would know.”

“I would.”

She rubbed her arms. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I am—unwillingly, I might add—silenced about my identity by the threat of a spell of death. Not that you would have believed me anyway.”

“I wouldn’t have,” she agreed. “I didn’t, if you’ll remember, when you tried to slip that sort of ridiculousness into polite conversation. But a spell of death?” She tried to smile, but she feared she was less successful at it than she might have liked. “Really.”