Love was a complicated business.
But so was the rubbish he was currently embroiled in, so he set aside those flowery thoughts for examination at another time and tried not to wonder if his mother might have sent him on an errand that would prove to be fatal, just for the sport of it.
He honestly wouldn’t have been surprised.
He jumped a bit when Mansourah materialized next to him, then he glared at their companion.
“Magic?” he demanded.
“Skill,” Mansourah said distinctly. “I could teach you, if you like.”
When hell freezes over, was half out of his mouth before he thought better of it. He didn’t imagine Mansourah of Neroche had anything useful to teach him, but he was in reduced circumstances. At the moment, he was open to quite a few things he would have otherwise dismissed.
“Did you see anything?”
Mansourah shook his head. “No spells, no animals, no one inside. Are you sure about this?”
“My mother claims I should be.”
“Your mother also thinks I should wed one of your cousins.”
“You could do worse,” Acair said with a shrug.
Mansourah shut his mouth around whatever he’d intended to say and apparently settled for a look of consternation. “Miach would kill me.”
“I’d be more worried what Queen Mhorghain would do to you, but that’s just me.” Acair looked at Léirsinn. “I think you should remain—”
“Nay.”
He sighed. He wasn’t sure what else he could offer her in the way of protection, not that she would have accepted it. He had a dagger down the side of his boot and a very large collection of insults at the ready to hurl in her defense. Perhaps that was the best they could hope for at the moment.
He nodded, then looked at Mansourah. “I must admit that I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for,” he began.
“Sometimes that’s the best way to find it,” Mansourah said easily. “Let’s see what’s inside.”
Acair didn’t want to feel a twinge of anything that couldn’t be comfortably placed in the Reasons to Murder a Prince of Neroche saddlebag he’d dedicated to that middle-ish child of the terrifying Queen Desdhemar of Neroche, but again, there it was. His life could hardly be called his own at the moment. All the more reason to see if there was anything to what his mother had advised him to do. He nodded to his companions, then led the way forward.
The house in front of them turned out to be nothing more than a rustic little place that had obviously not been lived in for years. Spells hung in tatters over doorways and alongside windows. He opened the door, somewhat surprised to find it unlocked, then pushed it fully open. He ignored the shiver that went through him—exhilaration, naturally, not fear—and was more grateful than he should have been that a spell of something foul didn’t immediately fall upon him as he walked inside.
A thick layer of dust blanketed everything, something he thought best not to disturb overmuch. There was unfortunately nothing to be done about footprints on the floor.
“There’s something on the tea table,” Mansourah said quietly. “An open book.”
Acair didn’t dare speculate, so he simply walked over to the table set there before the hearth and looked down. He wasn’t sure there was any point in trying to read the damned thing, but his curiosity, as it usually did, got the better of him. He brushed aside the dust that obscured the top page and found a date written there.
“Almost twenty years ago,” Léirsinn said in surprise. “Has the place been empty for that long, do you think?”
“I haven’t been here in far longer than that,” Acair said slowly. “I wonder—”
Léirsinn’s fingers digging into his arm made him wince. He looked at her in time to watch her nod toward a spot next to the hearth. He looked in the direction she was indicating, but saw nothing. He glanced about the great room, but all he saw was his ever-present companion, that damned spell of death, standing a pace or two away from them, watching the hearth as well. Acair didn’t suppose that was any sort of endorsement of anything save of his own blindness, so he looked back at Léirsinn.
“What do you see?” he asked, his mouth as dry as some parched bit of cursed soil in Shettlestoune.
“You,” she said hoarsely. “A very young you.”
“Bollocks.”
She put her hand on the back of his elbow. “Your spell is going over to . . . ah . . . well, that younger you.”
He could see his minder spell, true, but past that, all he saw was Mansourah of Neroche’s shadow almost reaching the dust-covered hearthrug. He would have commented on the untidy condition of the house, but words failed him. He supposed that might have been from shock, but he wasn’t certain he should be the one to offer an opinion on the matter. He watched in astonishment as the spell that followed him stretched out a bony arm toward the hearth.
The damned thing took what he could now see was a shadow of a lad of tender years by the hand—
“Oh, but this is absolute rubbish,” he blustered furiously.
He had to do that because what he was watching was no longer what he was seeing. It was as if he’d been simply plucked out of his currently delightful life and deposited without care into his rather miserable past.
He saw himself at the fire, reaching up to take a spell from off the mantel. That younger him unwrapped the spell, examined it, then tossed it in the fire in disgust. A noise startled that poor, foolish shadow of a lad and he bolted, only a piece of himself caught on the door.
It was as if a bit of his soul remained there, unable to move, trapped in a place that was absolutely not suitable for a boy of ten summers, no matter his parentage.
He watched in what he could only term horror as an old man, the mage he’d knocked off the ladder on his way by, walked into the house, pulled the remains of the spell out of the fire, and shook off the sparks.
Then he turned and looked at Acair.
Not the young him, but the current him that was standing at present in a dust-covered gathering chamber, flanked by a woman he thought he couldn’t live without and a royal princeling he knew he could most definitely jettison without regret at his earliest opportunity.
Or at least he thought the mage was looking at the current incarnation of himself.
It didn’t last very long before the man turned his sights on that poor lad caught at the door. Acair didn’t stop to consider whether or not it was foolish, he simply stepped in front of that young, stupid version of himself and protected the lad. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but the look of absolute loathing he received from that mage by the fire—
Acair came back to himself to find his cheek stinging as if he’d been smartly slapped, which he realized he had been and by that damned Mansourah of Neroche.
“You’ll regret that,” he growled.