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With a kiss she could taste the mystery of those scents, let them dissolve on
her tongue and flood her senses. She had not felt the desire for such before,
not with Morgan, and not from Shay's brief kiss. Was this, then, an
enchantment of
Rhiannon's son? Some druid charm?
A warning sounded in her mind, making her pull back a bare degree.Sticks! He
was far more dangerous than Aedyth thought, for she feared she could be caught
in this spell. Was her heart not already racing in anticipation?
She moved back to where she'd been and took his chin in her hand to scrub at a
recalcitrant spot. The rasca had stopped the bleeding and would keep the wound
from putrefying. "I could teach you how to counterblock the strike I used,"
she said, feigning ignorance of his state and applying common sense to her
own. She would not be caught in the trap of a kiss.
"I did block you." Wincing, he showed her the proof, the bleeding cut on his
wrist.
She released his chin and turned his wrist up to the light. Not only had she
sliced his face open, but his knife-hand too. She'd probably ruined any chance
she'd had of getting him to help her. He'd saved her and she'd done naught but
hack into him.
"You're scent-blind," he said abruptly. "You can't smell friend from foe, or
north from south, or danger when it's upon you."
" 'Tis a passing thing." She made her admission brief and scooped up another
dab of rasca.
He caught her hand when she raised it to his cheek. "Then until it passes, you
should not be allowed beyond Lanbarrdein. Bedwyr lies dead in the dark, and I
would not have the same happen to you. Nor would Trig."
"Trig doesn't know." She pulled her arm free with a quick jerk even as he
released her.
"He will soon enough."
"Not if you keep your silence. A simple promise could "
"Promises made in the dark are easily broken in the light of day," he told
her, then immediately wished he hadn't. The words had naught to do with what
she'd asked; they were oft quoted advice for the lovelorn, which of course she
was not. Nor was he, he added in silent disgust. The trouble he suffered from,
while not all lust, was most decidedly not love.
"Mayhaps," she answered, "but I would have yours."
Sweet innocent. She nearly swayed him with the hesitancy of her request, as if
she knew his promise might come with a price, but his course was clear and did
not include her.
"No."
Her mouth tightened, and after wiping the last of the rasca back onto its bed
of leaves, she began retying the petioles.
"I would stand with you, Mychael ab Arawn."
Not so much as a flicker of emotion inflected her words, but 'twas the first
time she'd spoken his name, and he was not unaffected. Just as quickly, he
renamed himself a fool. 'Twas idle banter at best.
Rhuddlan would not listen to a lavender-addled maid should the tide of opinion
turn against him.
"I stand alone." He always had, since he'd been five years old and ripped from
family and hearth, and he saw no end in sight until Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas
were at his side.
"So will I, if needs be," she said, pinning him with her gaze. Emotion aplenty
inflected that statement, and
it was all coolly convincing. She was the warrior again.
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Stubborn wench, he thought, stifling an aggravated sigh. No Quicken-tree alive
would choose to travel alone past Mor Sarff. Except for this one, it seemed,
the one least likely to survive the journey.
"Why?" he asked. "What calls you so strongly into the dark?" She'd already
gotten herself lost and half-frozen and frightened, and was scent-blind into
the bargain. The spider people were still skulking about, and she knew she was
their preferred first course. So what compelled her?
No answer was forthcoming.
His gaze skimmed the contours of her face, and for once he did not allow
himself to be misled by her delicate beauty. Rather, he noted the furrowing of
her brow, and her eyes, grown old before their time, and the resolute line of
her mouth as she bent to her task. The years did not lie as tenderly upon her
as he'd thought. The sadness he'd first seen months past in the oak grove
above Carn Merioneth, and again in Riverwood, was still with her, a sadness
that had begun when Morgan ab Kynan had been defeated by another's blade.
Aye, she'd lost a friend.
Or had Morgan been her. lover?
The question formed all too clear a picture in Mychael's mind, and he swore to
himself. He'd been ludicrously naive. He had known Morgan and the thief's easy
way with women. Llynya was of an age.
Both Ceridwen and Lavrans had still been mourning Morgan's loss when they'd
left to go north.
The elf-maid must be in mourning, too, and mayhaps contemplating a foolhardy
venture into the wormhole that would surely bring her death. Did she think she
would find Morgan in there?
"There is no margin for error in a wormhole, Llynya," he said, restraining
himself from grabbing her and shaking some sense into her. "None, especially
in the weir gate. No safe passage if a traveler missteps, and the cost of
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