The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(97)

“Léirsinn of Sàraichte may I present you to Mochriadhemiach, king of Neroche. Your Majesty, Léirsinn of Sàraichte.”

“Who don’t you know?” Léirsinn whispered in surprise.

He supposed the present time was not the best one to be making that sort of list, so he gave her a look that promised details later, then turned his mind to keeping them alive, which he suspected would require a great deal of flattering the king. There were, as it happened, several things he thought little Miach of Neroche could perhaps toss onto a rubbish heap of past misdeeds too unimportant to remember the author of clearly.

He suppressed the urge to take a step to his right and use his companion as a shield, took instead a deep breath, and put on his most conciliatory smile.

“I believe,” he said with as much contrition as he could manage, “that I might have some apologizing to do.”

The words rolled off his tongue with an ease that he knew should have shaken him to his foundations, but there you had it. His life was no longer his own, his code likely corrupted past redemption, and his willingness to save his sweet neck leading him down paths he never would have trodden if he’d been in full command of his power.

He sighed. The things he did . . .





Nineteen





Léirsinn wondered if she were having a particularly long string of encounters with handsome men or if it was just that everyone in Sàraichte was ugly.

She had considered the possible truth of that for the whole of the way north, simply because she’d needed a distraction. The journey had been made very quickly on the back of Sianach, who had changed his shape into something she had been just too tired to try to identify. He was fast, she would give him that, and he seemed to have an unwholesome fascination with trying to surprise Acair, which she couldn’t blame him for. She had heard Acair blurt out more curses in the past few hours than she had over the entire course of their acquaintance. She supposed he wasn’t particularly happy about any of it, but what could he do? He had a horse with a sense of humor who was apparently enjoying himself thoroughly at his new master’s expense.

She had to admit she was currently enjoying the fact that she was off any sort of winged beast and standing in the shadows of an enormous castle that looked as if it might offer not only a decent meal, but a safe place to sleep. She didn’t care if she slept in the stables, indeed, she thought she might prefer it. All she knew was she didn’t want to ever, ever look back over her shoulder and see a storm of that sort hard on her heels. It had been painfully obvious that it wasn’t a storm of the normal sort, it had been a conglomeration of evil.

She had almost died of fright.

“Mistress Léirsinn, perhaps you would care to sit.”

She looked at the king of Neroche and noted that he didn’t look any older than she was. How he had come by such mighty magic she didn’t know, but he certainly had it. She wished she could have said he was waving his arms and spewing out words in languages she didn’t understand just to make a spectacle of himself, but unfortunately, she had to admit she knew better.

At least she had stopped trembling when thinking about magic, never mind trying to deny it existed. She had seen more of it than she cared to, but she suspected that was going to be her lot in life for at least the foreseeable future. She looked at her horse and Acair’s grazing happily together fifty paces away. Shapechanging horses. Who would have thought it?

So many things she hadn’t expected when she’d gotten on that little boat and floated up the river to Beinn òrain.

She took the king’s proffered hand and didn’t protest when he saw her seated on a log. She lifted an eyebrow at Acair when he blustered that he could have done that, then propped her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists and settled in to watch what promised to be a goodly amount of entertainment.

She turned to the first player: the king of Neroche. He was, as she’d noted before, surely not old enough to be wearing a crown. Actually, he looked as if he spent most of his time in a barn or tromping about a farmer’s field. He was undeniably handsome, very well-fashioned, and looked to be the comfortable kind of lad she could have discussed tack with.

As far as his magic went, there had been no sparks coming from his mouth or streaks of white lightning coming from his fingertips, things she would have expected based on the faery tales she’d so loved in her youth. She had, however and in no particular order, seen him light a fire with a word, listened to some fairly dire things spilling out of his mouth back on the plains, and watched him earlier turn himself into a swirling wind that had then sped off toward the place where they now were, leaving them to catch up with him.

Hard to deny any of those things.

She looked at Acair next. She’d been looking at him for quite some time, actually, partly because he was very easy on the eye and partly because she simply couldn’t reconcile who she saw with what others said he was. He was as tall as the king of Neroche, easily, and equally well-fashioned. She couldn’t say that one of them looked more jaded or world-weary than the other. She could tell, however, that there was something going on between the two of them that she had definitely missed during the past moment or two.

Too much traveling on a horse made of wind, perhaps. It was hard on a woman’s wits.

“Don’t hold her keeping company with me against her,” Acair was saying seriously. “I didn’t give her any choice.”