snorted. “Take your rest, little twig. I’ll see to you well enough, I imagine.”
Ruith imagined he wouldn’t see to himself without at least a bit of rest, so he happily pitched his tent, as it were, with Sarah in front of the fire.
He didn’t want to think about the loss of Keir or Mhorghain’s success in closing the well. Both were simply too overwhelming for a proper contemplation at the moment. He couldn’t bring himself to even look at the possibility that he was the last hope for finding his father’s book in its entirety.
But he would have to look at it, and soon. He would, if he survived what he was certain would be an absolutely brutal stint with Uachdaran in some underground cavern where no one would hear him scream.
He felt Sarah take his hand and lace her fingers with his.
Sleep did not come easily.
Twenty
Sarah stood at the door of the king’s private solar and reminded herself that she’d been instructed to treat it as her own. Considering the fact that she was keeping company with a notorious spell-poacher, that was likely saying something.
She walked inside, and found that she was still breathing and hadn’t been overcome by a nefarious spell designed to keep her immobile long enough for the king to come collect her and deposit her wherever he took thieves. Down to his lists, no doubt, to relentlessly show them where they had room for improvement in their magic.
She had to sit down, even though she’d been sitting for the better part of three days. She’d been offered a variety of locales where she could take her ease whilst Ruith was about the heavy labor of being shown where he could make improvements in his own magic. She had passed a bit of her time in the library, reading obscure books that the king had personally selected for her, or pacing through the passageways, listening to the tales the stone had to tell her. She’d also sat on the edge of what served King Uachdaran as some sort of training field, though she wasn’t sure anyone would have marked it as such without aid.
If the great hall had been cavernous and the king’s throne room enormous, the lists eclipsed them by sheer size alone. Well, that and the fact that once a body entered through the stone doorway, the stone sealed behind him and left no indication of having been there.
She’d felt a little claustrophobic, truth be told.
But she’d decided that if Ruith could bear the work, she could bear the watching. She’d occupied a tidy little stone bench near that doorway that came and went capriciously, and never lacked for food or drink. She had watched Ruith train during the morning on that first day, if training it could be called, building his strength without complaint.
Actually, it hadn’t been done without complaint; it had been done with an attitude of thankfulness that she’d been sure hadn’t been lost on Uachdaran, though he’d not gone easier on Ruith because of it. He had tested Ruith in a thousand different ways, relentlessly, ruthlessly, far, far past the point where she would have begged for mercy. She had asked Ruith, when he’d been released to find water after countering ever-increasingly complex and weighty spells, why he was doing it. She had fully expected him to say it was so he could fight the mages out in the world who wanted his father’s spells.
She’d been rendered speechless by his answer.
“For you.”
He’d made her a low bow, then turned away to walk back out into the middle of the uneven stone floor.
She might have thought he was simply flattering her, or angling for another dance, but each time she’d had that thought creep into her head, she’d caught a look he’d sent her way, as if he’d known the precise moment she’d begun to disbelieve him.
For you.
It was almost enough to make her believe he was serious in his professions of, well, affection.
There had come a point, somewhere during the afternoon of that first day, when she had no longer been able to soldier on so well. King Uachdaran had dredged up from some unpleasant well in his mountain home an entirely new collection of very vile spells. They had made her ill to watch them. Even Ruith had paled a time or two. He had called for a halt, then walked over to her. He’d pulled her to her feet, opened the door, then pushed her through it wordlessly.
He’d