I’m giggling at a wry comment of Liathen’s when we turn the corner to the hall with my guest suite.
Arach’s camped across from my drape-door, sitting with his bad leg extended and a staff across his lap. “You do realize that it’s past dawn,” he says mildly, as if he’s commenting on the weather.
I’m reminded of my uncle’s tendency to get very quiet, very calm, when he’s poised to unleash himself. Maybe he inherited that from his forefather. I swallow hard and don’t look at the dragon in human guise as I return Liathen’s things to him, my hands shaking.
Liathen accepts them but catches my hand before I can snatch it back. “So it is. Are dragons nocturnal?”
Does he seriously not notice what my forefather’s implying? Would he change his mind if he realized his very old, very powerful ally disapproved?
I lick my lips, mouth dry. “Liath—”
“Sh.” He gives me a brisk peck of a kiss on the lips, casual and oblivious to the fact that it’s my first kiss ever, as he faces Arach, expression bland…
Except his green eyes are hard. Cold, even.
Whereas Arach, brow furrowed and gray gaze soft, looks…tired. Disappointed?
In any event, Arach starts the slow struggle to stand up before Liathen says, “Peace of the morning, magus. I’ve appreciated your assistance, but I believe you have a grandchild in need of you. Lady Feyim’s brother?”
Arach grunts as he puts weight on his bad leg, and his shoulders are slumped as he leans heavily on his staff. “We do.”
He and Liathen share a long stare that I can’t read—his weary in the face of Liathen’s stone.
Arach sighs, a sound that’s definitely disappointment rather than frustration. “Your namesake would be appalled at you, you know.”
Liathen—technically Liathen the Second—doesn’t blink. “My forefather is dead.”
“As are Tobel’s children,” the ancient mage adds pointedly, as if he’d gotten the answer he’d been angling for. “Don’t repeat his mistakes—”
“I have never forced anyone,” Liathen interrupts, voice iced like a winter roof. “Taken advantage of a woman’s conflation of her desires with my own, yes. And I will forever bear the guilt of that.”
Their quiet, discreet argument sounds much like when Uncle Aldrik and my father have at it. The phrase ‘feeling like a third wheel on a pushcart’ applies, but Liathen won’t release my hand.
“Where do you think it started, Liathen? Your grandfather, fooling around with your grandmother while his wife was recovering from red fever.”
Something flashes in Liathen’s eyes, but he closes them for a long moment before I can read it. When he stares at Arach again, the muscles about his eyes have tensed, though his hold on me is no tighter than before.
“Oh,” he says, so softly that even I can barely hear him. “It started long before that. With Tobel, yes? Who enticed your sister into murdering her husband, ruler of Grehafen, and into helping him take that throne.” He steps closer, his grip on my hand drawing me with him. “Who blamed my namesake for the theft of what your hawk stole from him.”
He steps back, too tense for him to truly feel the relaxation his poise seems to be attempting to emulate, but his tone is unstrained as he continues, “I’m bound by what needs doing, magus. You remember what that feels like. You ignored the kidnapping, slavery, rape, and murder of innocents blamed for your actions for…three decades, before my father prophesied how the end would have to come about?”
YOU ARE READING
A Fistful of Water: Chronicles of Marsdenfel #3
FantasyShe can regain what her father gave up, but it'll cost all she has to get it... Geddis Feyim is tired of others complaining because they have all she ever wanted. Her father and elder sister serve as prophets for the king, their father's half-brothe...
