Chapter 23
For the rest of that evening, Ainsworth felt as though he were a victim of one of those tragic Transportation Circle accidents—stuck in a frozen state and yet torn mercilessly into two halves by opposing forces.
Enach was here. Here. Lavishing Ainsworth with the kind of affection he had never exhibited back in Hinslyth.
However, he was sadly not offering the same kind of warmth to the people who had treated Ainsworth so generously.
Although Ainsworth had to admit, Enach had not behaved nearly as badly as he could have.
Once Honey had gently and thoroughly tended to Ainsworth’s wound—with Ashe and Quiddle floating around nervously and Enach lounging with a drink in the corner—Alvea announced that all Ainsworth needed was some good, hearty food to set him right.
While he longed to sleep, his stomach also ached with hunger, and he realized some of his shakiness could be attributed to the fact he had not eaten since morning.
He and Enach then worked on the Transportation Circle paperwork while the rest of the staff went about their business.
It involved Enach administrating a spell here at the inn that would link up to the Transportation Circle he had newly set in Wenslykirk.
Anyone who paid the fee and filled in the forms supplied by Honey on this end would be granted access to the circle.
Honey would be expected to send a cut of the profits to the Skarrow Institution annually.
“Does the innkeeper organize her bookkeeping well?” Enach asked as he finished the work.
“Well, she does now,” Ainsworth said softly, thinking of the attic.
“What?”
“Er, yes.”
Ainsworth did not know where Honey had ducked away to, but Spin and Bren came to sit by the fire and ask about his expedition with Ashe.
Enach, sitting behind them, made disbelieving faces at their responses and questions.
He made these gestures in a way that suggested he expected Ainsworth to join in, to mock the pair for their earnest questions about how the spell worked, or for Ainsworth to explain the signs of magic he was looking for as though they were simpletons as opposed to people who simply had other cares and knowledge and interests in life.
It was as though the breath was snatched from Ainsworth when he registered that—primarily because he realized he had joined in such mockery not long ago and sometimes had been the one to instigate it.
At dinner, Quiddle pelted Enach with questions about Skarrow, and Ainsworth held his breath as Enach gave short, clipped, but thankfully amicable answers.
Ashe joined them at the table but did not eat much, instead sending curious glances Enach’s way.
Spin seemed completely oblivious that they had a new guest, and Ruraidh was several times more skittish than usual, even going so far as to knock over Alvea’s glass of wine.
When Enach gave a sarcastic clap, Ruraidh reddened, and Ainsworth had to hold his hands together tightly under the table to stop them trembling.
Honey arrived to the table late, but when she did, she walked over to Bren—sitting to Ainsworth’s left and muttering all he knew about dark beast wounds until Ainsworth was convinced he must be turning a shade of green—and asked him to move one seat up.
“You’d ask an old dwarf to move his bones?” Bren asked with a wink, and in the tone of voice he only reserved for Honey. Ainsworth tried very hard to look like he wasn’t listening, and instead nibbled on a piece of bread Alvea had laid out while the stew finished simmering.
“I would. I’d like to give Ainsworth a once-over, check he has no sign of infection.”
“Oh, you have done so much for him already. Please, relax and enjoy your meal,” Enach, to Ainsworth’s right, said with what Ainsworth knew to be a false laugh and forced smile.
“Ah, but just to be sure…Bren—shift it!”
Bren did indeed shift it, and in less than a second Honey had descended next to Ainsworth and placed a hand on his forehead. “Doesn’t feel like you’re burning up anymore. You feeling all right?” she asked brightly.
“He’s fine, aren’t you, Ains?” Enach said from his other side.
Honey’s eyebrow twitched, and Ainsworth quickly replied: “I am indeed. But thank you, Honey.”
The look she gave seemed to convey what lay heavy and unspoken between them—the conversation in Alvea’s kitchen, all he had told and the feelings he had spilled.
He remembered, too, suddenly, the way she let her tail fall across his lap when they both sat cross-legged on her bed chatting the night away.
He recalled the way he had sometimes accidentally-on-purpose brushed it with his hand when he reached for his tea, and how she flushed the first time he did so.
“Actually, you do feel a bit warm,” Honey remarked. Ainsworth gently batted her hand away, grateful for his slightly feverish state that would conceal the true source of his heated face.
Alvea soon dished up a whitefish stew, buttery and loaded with carrots and other root vegetables from Spin’s garden.
“Alvea, this is wonderful,” Enach exclaimed after his first spoonful, much to Ainsworth’s surprise and delight. And then, sending his heart crashing down: “But it is a world away from the food I am used to being served from your kitchen.”
“Well, get used to it.” Alvea snorted. “Your colleague did.”
“Oh, I would hope Ainsworth referred to me as more than a ‘colleague’!” Enach laughed, placing a hand on Ainsworth’s shoulder. Ainsworth let him do it, and gave an uncomfortable laugh of his own.
“Well, I…of course!” said Ainsworth. Not entirely a lie; Spin had asked plenty about Enach during the early days of their acquaintance.
“W-when did you two meet?” Ruraidh asked, and Ainsworth was all too happy to slink into silence, bar the odd nod and laugh at appropriate moments, as Enach recalled their early days as students at the Skarrow Institution and how he first noticed Ainsworth when he shot to the top of their history class with his excellent papers.
Enach had a way of glossing over those turbulent first few months of their courtship, omitting his early dalliances with various other students when Ainsworth had been under the impression they were exclusive.
Enach had, of course, claimed that he had made it very clear they were not and that Ainsworth had misunderstood.
Throughout the meal, Enach worked his charm on them—intertwined with clever, concealed insults that never failed to hit their mark, yet were phrased so that the target wouldn’t pick up on the meaning until later, if at all.
Enach’s conversation was like a strong spirit—utterly intoxicating and dangerously risky.
But only later did you feel how indulging in it hurt you.
Ainsworth’s stomach tightened. Alvea was right; with every bite of food, he felt his strength return to him. But the unbearable weight of Enach’s presence, the finality of it, was too much.
Enach was here to take Ainsworth back to Hinslyth.
Unless Ainsworth was brave enough to resist him.
He cursed himself under his breath. Since when did he not want to go back?
It was foolish. He always knew he would have to return at some point.
The project parameters needed updating for the funding council.
He could do most of his write-up at the Skarrow Library, and besides, he’d have to return to the Misnich Inn on and off anyway for further research on the curious phenomenon affecting the adventurers.
With the Transportation Circle on the hill outside the inn, he could be back here in no time.
But he sensed that something fragile he had established here would break if he left now.
The easy way of life he had descended into, the way he helped with tasks around the inn and took joy in simply being with its inhabitants, at ease with them in a way he had not felt since he had left, and then lost, his family.
It was not something he had felt at the Skarrow Library, even with his dearest friends.
Many of them were like Enach—cutting him with compliments-turned-criticism.
Treating him as a name to be brandished in front of others to highlight how distinguished their networks and connections were.
He had noticed that occurring more the higher his career climbed, and he had thoroughly relished it: that his had become a name that could be dropped.
Next to him, Honey leaned down and picked up something from the floor. “Your little book, Ains,” she said. He could almost sense Enach stiffen at the use of his nickname. “Sketch anything interesting this trip?”
And of course, there was Honey. Several times a day over the past moon’s turning, he had found himself making excuses to spend time with her—bringing her “news” of his research, pestering Alvea to let him brew her some tea, the many trips they had taken to the standing stones at the bottom of Mount Vengeance, their hands brushing every so often as they made the long trek.
And then suddenly he didn’t need to make excuses, for she always seemed to be there alongside him—standing by his side shelving scrolls in the attic, knitting by the fire as Ainsworth sat engrossed in writing in the tavern room, dragging him out the door in the foulest weather so they could go foraging, then warming up together huddled under blankets and hands wrapped around hot mugs.
Did he truly wish to walk away from that—from her?
Honey flicked through the pages of his small book—it must have fallen out of his coat when he placed it on the back of his chair—and suddenly she smiled.
“What?” Ainsworth asked.
She turned it toward him, holding both pages open, to a page of absent-minded doodles he had made during times of restless solitude when Ashe was off hunting or scouting.
“The way you’ve captured the rocks of the mountain face here,” she said, almost breathless.
“You saw the place differently this time, didn’t you? ”