“You were shouting,” Mansourah said, looking rather startled. “Don’t do that again, though I won’t deny that I enjoyed the terror in your voice. Still, don’t do it again.”
Acair wondered if they’d lingered too long, but he was too caught up in a dream that had felt a damned sight too much like reality to do anything but stand there and shake.
“Ye gads,” he managed, “I need a drink.”
“I’ll go see if all your shrieking called any of your bastard brothers to come admire the spectacle,” Mansourah said grimly. “Be prepared to flee.”
Acair hardly needed the injunction as he had no desire to remain behind and watch anything else untoward. He ignored the stinging of his cheek—surely Mansourah could have delivered a more gentlemanlike tap—and stumbled out of the small gathering chamber. If Léirsinn had to half hold him up as they left the house, well, he would ignore it and thank her later.
He finally stopped under the eaves of the forest, uncomfortably aware that he’d paused there all those years ago. If there was one thing to be said about the accursed soil he stood on, it was that it hadn’t changed all that much so the spot was easily recognized. He leaned against a tree, concentrating on not looking as if he were desperately dragging air into his lungs. It was difficult.
He tried to look at the house sitting there so unassumingly in the clearing, but all he could see was that poor sniveling child so full of bluster flinging himself into the shape of something with wings. He also couldn’t rid himself of the sight of that piece of his soul being caught on that door.
The worst, though, was the sight of that mage looking at him. At him, as if he had been standing in that gathering room in his present form, facing off with a mage in his current incarnation.
What he did know was that he would never admit to having toppled into a pile of snow when Mansourah stepped up next to him. Worse still was that he wasn’t sure the lad hadn’t materialized in the usual magicless way. The prince reached out and hauled Acair to his feet.
“Nothing to be seen,” he said quietly, “but I don’t like the feeling here. Where to now?”
“You know where to,” Acair said, trying not to gasp for breath. “We’ve already discussed this at length.”
“I thought you were trying to torment me,” Mansourah muttered. “Are you certain?”
The truth was, there was only one other place in the whole of the Nine Kingdoms he wanted to visit less than he wanted to skip off to his maternal grandmother’s house, but things were what they were.
“Of course,” Acair said. He reached for Léirsinn’s hand. “I’m sure we’ll be invited in for tea.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mansourah said honestly. “Any more cousins I need to keep a watch out for?”
“And by telling you as much, rob any of those cousins of the opportunity to pursue your charming self?” Acair said. “I think discretion is the order of the day.” He looked at Léirsinn. “Let’s be off, shall we? More delightful adventures await.”
She said nothing, but he could tell she was worried. He would have reassured her that he had everything under control, but the truth was, he didn’t.
He started to march off with a cheery spring to his step, but it was difficult. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he felt absolutely shattered by what he’d seen. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find inside that house, but it hadn’t been what he’d seen. Damned unnerving, that.
He also didn’t appreciate that rubbish his dam had foisted off on him about his needing to collect bits of his soul that he’d left behind. Surely an insignificant piece of naughtiness such as the one perpetrated in that house didn’t count. If he’d left anything behind, it had been his dignity, courtesy of his hasty flight away from the bloody place.
But the worst thing of all was his inability to shake the sensation he had of being watched.
He glanced casually at Mansourah only to find the prince of Neroche studying him with a hint of a frown creasing his noble brow. He prided himself on his ability to carry on an unspoken conversation across a ballroom, so he saw no reason not to attempt the same at the moment.
Do you sense that we’re being observed? was what he would have asked but imagined he didn’t need to.
Dolt, what do you think?
Acair mouthed a vile insult and had a smirk in return. He turned away and shook his head. What was the world coming to when he could exchange friendly banter with an insufferably virtuous royal of that stripe and not have tummy upset afterward?
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
What he did know, however, was that whoever was watching them was playing a terrible game of chess. Perhaps it wasn’t even as lofty as that. He felt a bit like a mouse in a stall, darting frantically about whilst being watched by a fat, lazy cat who blocked the only exit. Time was being bided, and he had the feeling he was intended to know the same.
All the more reason not to be absolutely helpless in the face of that deadly game.
He would see what his granny’s inner sanctum had to offer in the way of details he might need. He wasn’t sure at the moment if it was more critical to identify who was stalking him or who had made the spell that was also stalking him. It was odd how both seemed to be about the same foul work. He didn’t want to believe that both were linked to the same mage, but what did he know?
Nothing was what he knew, nothing past the need to keep Léirsinn safe and unravel the threads tightening around him.
He set his face forward and carried on.
Thirteen
There were strange things afoot in the Nine Kingdoms.
Léirsinn could scarce believe she was considering the like. She who had never given thought to anything past what the port town of Sàraichte might hold for her, now contemplating the state of the entire world? It was almost too ridiculous to be believed.
She wasn’t sure that word didn’t apply itself rather handily to the whole of her life at present. Her current circumstances were proof enough of that.
She had recently flown—flown, not ridden—for endless hours on the back of a black dragon who tended to nip if his master got too close but who liked to nudge her hand or warm her feet with his remarkably soft, fire-snorting nose. She was wearing clothing gifted her by a witch who seemed to believe she might be engaging in nefarious doings in her future and should be dressed appropriately.
That same witch had sent her son on a quest to search for lost parts of his soul, though what he was supposed to do with them if he found them was anyone’s guess. She had listened to Acair and his mother discuss the particulars on the way out the door the morning before and only her own vast amounts of self-control earned over years of refraining from snorting had kept her from doing the same then.