Free Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) by S. L. Farrell Page B

relative darkness, with Sevei’s back against the cold curve of a tower’s base. The fireworks display of the mage-lights had come far earlier than usual, just as they’d finished their supper, with the edge of the sun still visible over the horizon of the Westering Sea. For the first time, Sevei had lifted her own cloch to the lights, standing between Gram with Lámh Shábhála and Máister Kirwan with Snarl, both of them instructing her as the intense colors of the sky inundated them, banishing even the dying sun’s light. The brilliant multicolored shadows had swept around the White Keep and the First Holder’s Wing, and Sevei had gasped with the wonder of it all, marveling at the feeling of holding the mage-lights within herself, within the clochmion.
    Though she still didn’t know what her stone could do. It had yet to tell her.
    “Was it awful for you tonight, my love?” she whispered into Dillon’s ear. “I know Gram can be . . . intimidating.”
    “Well, that’s certainly one word for her,” Dillon answered and she felt him shiver once in her arms. “She seemed . . . I don’t know, a bit distant all evening.”
    “She’s not feeling well,” Sevei answered, “and she’s taking medication for the pain. Kala bark.”
    Dillon nodded. “The rumors I’ve heard among the students are that she uses andúilleaf, too.”
    Sevei shook her head at that. It was gossip she’d heard as well, a tale she hoped wasn’t true. Andúilleaf addiction had driven Jenna mad twice already, with disastrous consequences both times. “I don’t think so. I don’t think she’d be that foolish.”
    Holding him, she felt Dillon’s shrug. His breath tickled her ear, warm. “Maybe not. But when she finally started talking during dinner, I thought she was going to interrogate me about every last person in my family down to the fourth cousins. I swear that she knew family members I didn’t know I had.”
    “I’m sure Gram had her staff doing research all day before you arrived. She’s thorough that way. I don’t blame her for wanting to know, though. A little suspicion is a survival trait in our family, I’m afraid.”
    “I understand.” He gave a quick chuckle. “And then watching all three of you, with the mage-lights . . . well, I’m amazed that I’m allowed to be near you at all.” His lips sought hers again, and she lifted her face to his.
    For several long breaths, they said nothing. Sevei let herself fall into him, as if they were one body. She’d had infat uations before, some serious, some not. Before she’d been sent out to fosterage, she and Padraic Mac Ard—Banrion Edana and Doyle Mac Ard’s oldest son—had become close, close enough that she knew Mam and Auntie Edana had whispered about a possible marriage in the future.
    But Dillon . . . Dillon was an even more intense attraction than Padraic: handsome, intelligent, a talented Bráthair of the Order even if he held no cloch na thintrí yet, and a gifted musician with the harp. She could sometimes feel as close to him as she could her twin Kayne. She wondered if she could feel his thoughts as she did her twin’s, if she tried hard enough. They’d been together for half a year now; a time that felt simultaneously like forever and but a few days. When at last she reluctantly pulled her head back, she put her mouth next to his ear.
    “I suppose you’ll do,” she husked.
    They both laughed—that had been Jenna’s comment to Sevei as they left her chambers hand in hand: “I suppose he’ll do. As long as he’s what you want right now . . .” They kissed again, shorter this time but more urgently, and when Dillon’s fingers slid down her side to her waist, she caught his hand with hers. “I should be getting back to my room. Máister Kirwan said he was going to be following along in a few minutes, and you know what that means.”
    “Aye, I know. Though . . .” He stopped. “Maybe he’ll spend the evening with your gram