her eyes close relentlessly. “To spare me that.”
“Aye,” he said very quietly.
“I wish I’d never gone inside in the first place.”
“You can blame that fully on me,” he said in a low voice. “I should have left you behind, but I didn’t because I am an idiot. Because I thought I needed you to find the spells. Because I thought you’d be safer with me than with Franciscus. Because I am, again, a fool of the first water.”
She almost managed a smile. “That’s more than you’ve said to me in a fortnight.”
“You told me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Only when we’re facing black mages with your death on their minds.”
Which, she supposed, hadn’t been that day. She’d come face-to-face with a black mage, but it hadn’t been Ruith’s death he’d had on his mind.
It had been hers.
She felt herself falling into blackness and surrendered to it willingly.
Nine
Ruith watched Sarah slip into what he hoped was a peaceful, dreamless sleep, then straightened and turned to face the other occupants of the chamber. Soilléir was standing near his hearth, watching him gravely. Rùnach, the one who had been masquerading as Soilléir’s servant, was standing next to Soilléir, his cowl pushed back from his ruined face, his expression equally grave. Ruith wondered if his brother would have revealed himself if Sarah hadn’t done it for him, or if he would have remained in the shadows.
The thought of that was, he had to admit, absolutely devastating.
He walked over to his brother, put his arms around him, and fought the urge to break down and bawl like a bairn. Rùnach returned the embrace, slapped him a time or two on the back with hands Ruith had already seen were not up to that task, then pulled back and kissed Ruith on both cheeks.
“Ruith,” he said, sounding enormously pleased.
Ruith dragged his sleeve across his eyes. “I can’t believe you said nothing.”
“I’m discreet,” Rùnach said, shooting Soilléir a look. He turned back to Ruith. “I thought you were dead, you wee fool,” he said, in his voice that sounded quite a bit like branches scraping against a sheet of glass. “Léir, of course, has said nothing to me during these long years to dissuade me from such an assumption.”
“Predictable,” Ruith said darkly. “And nay, I’m not dead, but ’twas a very near thing. And at the moment I think I’m very near to falling upon my arse from shock. Perhaps we could sit until I’m recovered.”
Rùnach stepped back. “I’ll fetch chairs—”
“Of course you won’t,” Ruith said. “I’ll see to it.” He started to walk away, then looked at Soilléir. He had to take a careful breath before he trusted himself to speak instead of doing his host bodily harm. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Soilléir said quietly.
“I don’t suppose you have anything else to say to me, do you? Siblings to reveal, censure to offer, reminders of my inability to face anything but supper and come away the victor?”
Soilléir smiled faintly. “I believe my work is done with all three. I’ll go pace through the halls and stir up mischief. You and your brother have things to discuss, I imagine.”
“You could have told me about him,” Ruith said in a low voice.
“Rùnach is not my servant,” Soilléir said with a shrug. “I do not reveal secrets that aren’t mine.”
“It would be so much easier to dislike you if you would just be wrong. Once.”
Soilléir clucked his tongue. “Unkind.”
“But poetically just. I would like to see it, perhaps when you’re undone by a woman, or trying to win a woman, or finding yourself turned about by a woman.”
“I’ll watch you a bit longer and see how the solving of that tangle is managed,” Soilléir said before he clapped Ruith on the shoulder and walked away. “You might consider taking her for a walk later, Ruithneadh. She’ll no doubt want to be free of the university for a bit.”
Ruith wasn’t about to ask him how he knew that, or exactly what he had done to make her see what she’d walked into, or what that meant for her now. He would ask before the day was out, but he supposed even Sarah wouldn’t begrudge him a moment or two with a sibling he’d thought was dead.
He drew chairs up to the fire, then sat and looked at the brother he hadn’t seen in a score of years.
“What happened to you?” he asked, when he thought he could speak without weeping.
“After?”
Ruith nodded.
Rùnach shrugged. “Mother covered me with her power as she died,