Chapter 21 #2
If they were lucky, he would manage to communicate his request and return without causing any kind of violent incident. It wasn’t as if he were foolish and unaware. He’d lived in a royal court. Kept company with a king. He could surely find ways to avoid violence if he tried.
“Dance with me, pretty lady?”
A man slid into the booth next to her. Two more dropped onto the seat across the table.
“We haven’t seen you here before,” one of them informed her with a slightly tipsy smile. “Wouldn’t want you to leave without showing you a good time.”
Ryn very carefully set down her spoon, resigned to their hopefully good-natured idiocy. “And what, exactly, do you gentlemen consider to be a ‘good time’?”
“Buy you a drink.”
“Maybe a dance or two.”
The third man waggled his eyebrows. “I could show you my hornpipe.”
Oh, good heavens.
“Well, my idea of a good time is books,” she said firmly. “Lots and lots of them, and the bigger, the better. Do you have any books?”
They looked at each other in confused silence for a moment, then laughed uproariously.
“A bit of a wag, isn’t she?” the man beside her remarked jovially. “Now let’s all get out of here and go somewhere else before that depressing fellow with the dark hair comes back. His eyes…” The man shuddered. “Thought he might have cursed me just by looking at me.”
“I beg your pardon?” Ryn turned to glare at him wrathfully. “You’d better not be talking about…”
“Oh, aye,” the man on the opposite corner of the table agreed with a sober nod. “Like a death omen, that one. Wouldn’t want him aboard a ship, not for his weight in gold.”
“Might as well invite the reaper himself to take the wheel,” the man across from her added. “Or a woman.”
And that was when Ryn kicked him in the shins.
He howled and jumped to his feet. Reached for her across the table and was met by a half-full bowl of stew to the face.
“Anything else you’d like to say?” Ryn snapped, and when the man beside her seized her arm, she grabbed the first thing she found in her pocket and stabbed him with it.
Her pencil, as it turned out.
Rather a waste of a perfectly good pencil.
But strangely, he didn’t fight back. Didn’t yell or strike her, only froze with her pencil sticking out of his arm, his face white as a ship’s sail.
Ryn looked up. Xavi stood beside the table, a mug in each hand, regarding her with an almost amused quirk at the corner of his lips. “What was that you said earlier about starting a brawl?”
She scowled. “They started it.”
“I have no doubt.” He set the mugs down on the table. “Now, which of you foolish humans would like to be first?”
They might not have understood the invitation, but they tried anyway.
They really did, but as Ryn very quickly discovered, Xavi had been right—the table truly did get in their way, which meant that he didn’t even need to try very hard to leave them all on the floor, groaning and partially covered in stew.
The entire room paused for a moment, as if holding its breath, waiting to see if the fight would continue.
But Xavi stepped over the various flailing arms and legs and held out a hand to Ryn. He said not a word, just waited, with a hint of a smile on his face.
She reached down and reclaimed her pencil. Lifted her chin and set her hand in his.
Only to be instantly yanked off her feet and into a familiar vortex of brilliant golden light…
That dropped them only a handful of moments later.
Ryn’s eyes were firmly shut against the searing brightness, but she somehow remained upright as her feet landed on a firm, smooth surface. Wherever they were, the air was much cooler and smelled oddly familiar.
Her eyes opened.
It required the space of a single blink to recognize the golden stone portico and the wide double doors in front of her.
“Oh, no.”
Beside her, Xavi tensed in response. “What is it? Are there enemies here?”
That was a very tricky question.
“I don’t think so? But this might actually be something worse.”
“And what does a scholar consider worse than facing her enemies?”
She didn’t have a chance to answer before the doors swung open.
“… we’ll have to call in an expert. Can’t afford to lose any more. Not with the lords being pressed for…”
The man barreling through the front door stopped just barely short of plowing into them.
Stopped, dropped the book he was carrying, and turned an alarming shade of gray.
“You… you… you…”
Ryn quailed internally, cursed fae enchantresses and pretty much all magic of any kind, and faced the tall, ruddy, slightly balding gentleman with a rueful smile.
“Yes, Olivier, it’s me. I’m not dead. And I’m back, but I don’t know for how long. Do you think I could convince you not to tell Mother, at least for a few hours while I…”
But he wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t even seem to be listening to her. Instead, his eyes were fixed on Xavi with a sort of fascinated horror. Until his gaze chanced to fall on her hand, which was still firmly gripped in Xavi’s strong, protective clasp.
“The heavens wept,” the gentleman proclaimed fervently. “Who the devil are you? And what are the two of you doing here unannounced?”
Ryn’s eyes shut. She muttered a few unladylike words under her breath, gathered her courage, and silently begged Xavi’s forgiveness.
“Olivier, this is…”
“Xaviel,” her companion said flatly. “My name is Xaviel. And who might you be?”
Ryn turned to stare as he uttered every word in absolutely perfect and unaccented Abreian.
The wretch. So he had understood everything she’d said back at the university.
Olivier looked as stunned as she felt. “Baron Halivard, of course. Olivier Halivard. Lady Camryn’s brother.
And may I say, I find it very poor form to court a lady without requesting the proper permissions or consulting her family in any way.
Good heavens, man, you haven’t even been introduced to her mother. ”
Xavi’s head tilted. He glanced down at Ryn’s hand in his.
“But I am not…”
And Ryn panicked. In a moment, he was going to say something that would enrage Olivier—not out of malice, but because he really didn’t understand human culture or rituals—so she opened her mouth and somehow managed to make things a thousand times worse.
“He’s not courting me, Olivier, and he’s not taking advantage of me either. I met Xaviel… er, on my field study. He’s very smart, and he takes an interest in my work, and well, the circumstances were very odd, but I can assure you that we…”
Olivier’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t.”
Ryn felt her face heat. “Well, of course we didn’t…”
“Mother!”
The very last person they needed to become involved in this was her mother.
“Olivier, no! You’ve got entirely the wrong idea. It’s only that we…”
“Mother, Camryn is back! And she’s betrothed!”
Oh help.