as tall as Ruith was and much more intimidating—so she settled for glaring at Ruith. She was half tempted to march back into that luxurious bathing chamber, change into something suitable for travel, and leave, but she wasn’t sure how she was going to get from her current locale to the gates without running afoul of spells she might not be able to see.
“Sarah.”
She looked at Ruith coolly, but said nothing.
He clasped his hands behind his back. “I apologize for the things I said on the way here. I feared that if what followed us thought I held you in any esteem, you might be in danger.”
“You could rather have used your magic, I think.”
“That wasn’t an option.”
Then what good were you to me was almost out of her mouth, but she stopped the words just in time. It was something her mother would have said, having been the sort of witch to look at things, animals, and people with a jaundiced eye and judge them according to their usefulness to her.
The unpleasant truth was, Ruith had kept her as safe as could reasonably have been expected along their journey, never mind that he had said terrible things to her in Ceangail. Those were things she knew he had said in an effort to get her away from his bastard brothers so he could instead die at their hands. Apparently, he’d done the same thing again on the plains of Ailean.
She drew herself up and wrapped as much of her tattered pride around herself as she could manage. “Well,” she said, reaching for all the haughteur she could muster, “the next time we’re faced with death by a thousand spells, I would like you to simply keep your mouth shut instead of treating me like a servant.”
“I will.”
“And just because I don’t have any magic doesn’t mean I can’t do some fairly important things,” she said, though she couldn’t bring a damned one of those things to mind at present. Hopefully Ruith wouldn’t want any examples.
“I watched you before,” he said very quietly, “and I agree. You have strung your loom with warp threads of courage and determination, then woven us all into a pattern that would have been the envy of any mage I know.”
She scowled. “Prettily spoken, but I’m still not going any farther with you.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t trust you.”
“I haven’t given you very many reasons to.”
That was unfortunately not true either. He had been willing to sacrifice his life to save hers. That he’d taken her into a place where that had been necessary was a bit problematic, but to be fair, she hadn’t given him much choice.
She managed to dredge up another scowl. “I imagine you’ll want my apology now for not having been particularly forthright about my lack of magic.”
He shook his head slowly. “There is nothing to apologize for.”
“Since you likely knew from the beginning.”
“I didn’t, and it made no difference to me once I did, except to be profoundly tempted to bring spells to life under your hands—”
“Stop it,” she said sharply. “Stop being kind to me.”
He looked at her, then nodded slowly and went to sit back down in front of the fire.
She looked out the windows for a moment, then glanced up at the ceiling. The firelight flickered against it, revealing it to be covered with all sorts of lovely carvings of heroic scenes. She wondered, absently, if any of the masters of Buidseachd had been a part of those, or if Soilléir simply enjoyed contemplating someone else doing the deeds depicted there.
She took a deep breath, then looked at Ruith again.
He looked impossibly tired. He was also watching her with a very grave expression on his unnaturally beautiful face. She didn’t want to feel comfortable around him—he was who he was, after all—but there was something so ordinary about the sight of him sitting there, she almost let her guard down.
Almost.
The truth was, it had hurt her far more than she wanted to admit to trust him and have him betray her—never mind that she was well aware of his reasons. And if she were to face a bit more truth, she would have to admit that what bothered her the most was not that he was a mage, it was that he was an elven prince. She was not his equal in any way.
Unfortunately, he didn’t act much like an elven prince.
“Did you eat already?” she asked, because she had to say something.