tell her.
He arched an eyebrow in Darkwind's direction. 'Perhaps I should be a little more explicit. Elspeth, while I am sure you are a very attractive woman to some, it is Darkwind's hair that I would choose to braid feathers into if I could.' He licked his lips. 'In point of fact, I have been wishing that since I first laid eyes upon him. Had he not put his own feelings toward you out where anyone could see them, I should already have done so.' And Firesong actually blushed.
Elspeth had thought she had come to the end of the surprises that living with the Hawkbrothers brought, but this last series had caught her flatfooted.
First, of course-that the famous Vanyel had left any offspring. There was no record of that in any of the Chronicles, and no hint of it in any of the songs and ballads. Then came the revelation that Firesong was the descendant of that child-or children. There was no reason to doubt him; he had never lied before, and why lie about something so stupid, something that couldn't be proved or disproved here? Firesong already had plenty of status- and presumably fame-on his own; he surely didn't need to boast of a bloodline like some fading, failed highborn.
But the last surprise-That he's-dear gods, what do they call it here? Shayachern? Is that where we get shaych? Why am I thinking about where a word came from when-When he wants Darkwind and not me...First came a rush of profound embarrassment. She hadn't been made a fool of. She'd made a fool of herself quite nicely on her own, with no help from Firesong, making assumptions she had no right to make. She just wanted to crawl away and hide somewhere.
But then she was overcome by a flood of jealousy. But not of Firesong's attraction to Darkwind. No, she was jealous-and afraid of Darkwind's possible attraction to Firesong. She knew the Tayledras were a lot more flexible about sexual matters than the people of Valdemar, even the Heralds. What if, now that Firesong's preferences were out in the open, Darkwind preferred him to her?
She was so jealous she was literally sick. Her stomach and shoulders were in knots; her throat too tight to speak.
Firesong was watching both of them, wearing an unreadable little smile, and measuring them from beneath his long white lashes. What was he thinking? Did he know how she felt? Was he amused?
Once again, she was dizzy with embarrassment, sick with the emotions warring for control of her.
She flushed, then paled, feeling herself growing hot, then cold, then hot again. Her ears burned, and the back of her neck; her hands grew cold, and she fought dizziness as she looked up with defiance into Firesong's face.
There was no doubt that the Adept had at least some idea of her internal battling; Firesong's smile increased, just a trifle. He tossed his head, sending his hair whipping back over his shoulders, and deliberately, tauntingly, lifted his chin at her. Then he grinned insolently, and turned away, walking off into the darkness, leaving his mage-lights behind him.
She couldn't look at Darkwind. She couldn't not look at him. She tried to look at him out of the corner of her eye, but caught his eyes by accident and was forced either to meet his eyes or look quickly away.
She chose the former.
He coughed, and she saw to her increased confusion-as if it could be increased any further-that he was flushed a little himself. No, more than a little; the peculiar illumination of the mage-lights tended to wash his color out. Her hands were cold, her face still flushed, but she no longer felt so sick.
'I feel like a fool,' he said, just before the silence became unendurable.' I feel like a true and crowned fool.'
'Well, imagine how I feel,' she said sharply. 'Especially when I realized that I didn't care a pin how he felt about me or you, but-' She didn't really want to answer him, but if she didn't, she'd never know what his feelings were in the matter. 'It really made me very unhappy to think you-might-' She shook her head, and finally looked right at him. 'All right!' she snapped, angrily. 'I was jealous, if that's what you wanted to know! I was jealous, because you might be more interested in him than you are in me!' He simply watched her, soberly, without so much as twitching a muscle.
He didn't say a thing, and now she was sick with embarrassment again. And with humiliation.
She knew, now that Firesong had pressed the issue and humbled her by forcing her to reveal things she had kept only to herself, that her attraction to Firesong had been nothing more than simple infatuation.
It had only been complicated because she had so admired his competence, his intelligence, as well as his stunning looks.
But Darkwind was competent and intelligent. And her attraction to him was something a great deal deeper. Deep enough to move her to jealousy; deep enough to make her willing to make a fool of herself, if it came to that.
'I have been a fool,' Darkwind said quietly. 'Even as you. Perhaps it was as much due to stress as anything else. We have been living a lifetime in the past few moons. We have both of us changed, sometimes profoundly. I can only take comfort in one of the Shin'a'in sayings' No one has lived who has not been a fool at least once.' And,' he summoned up a ghost of a smile, 'with luck, we have had our entire lifetime's foolery from this.'
'Oh I hope so,' she replied fervently.
'But there is one other thing. I think that one,' he nodded after the departed Firesong, 'brings trouble with him as easily and purposefully as he brings baggage. I think that no matter where he went, he would leave unsuspecting folk in some kind of tangle. And I do think that at some level he enjoys doing so.' But?' he prompted, and she flushed again, feeling her ears, neck, and cheeks burning.
Elspeth found herself smiling a little; the heat eased from her ears and neck, and her stomach calmed. 'No doubt about it,' she said wryly, as her flush faded. 'He would just revel in having the entire Vale fussing over him the way the hertasi do. I doubt he'd be happy if he wasn't the center of attention.'
'oh, and he would enjoy having us at odds over him as well,' Darkwind replied. 'Make no mistake about it. He is aptly named. I suspect he leaves lovers strewn in his wake like old, dead leaves. He would take great pleasure in being the centerpiece of a quarrel, only to turn about and mend it. But he is too much the Healing Adept to allow that to happen now in a situation this important. In a quieter time, perhaps.'
'Well, he isn't going to get another chance from me,' she replied firmly. 'Let him go play his games with someone else.' She shook her head, and realized that the muscles of her neck and shoulders were aching with
