Page 6 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
Beau sighed. “You’re allowed to let people help you, you know. It isn’t some sign of weakness—”
“People get hurt when they help me.”
“Ais—”
He reached out to grab her arm, but she shucked him off. “This dance bores me,” she said. “I’m going back to our chambers.”
Beau loved his sister probably more than anyone else in the whole world, but she could be a bit of an idiot at times. As soon as she had accepted the quest from King Owen, she wanted to race off without so much as a plan.
Their parents exchanged a worried look, the same one that came with a side of, “she gets it from your side of the family.”
Beau was inclined to believe it was a bit of both. Juliana’s eagerness for battle, Hawthorn’s desire to just get the job done quickly and surely, without necessarily thinking everything through. It was not the best combination, and somewhat exacerbated by Aislinn’s desire to get out of the castle as soon as possible.
“We’ve just arrived!” he said, following her back to their chambers. “Can you not just relax for one moment?”
“Hunting people is relaxing!”
“The fact that you genuinely think that is troubling.”
Aislinn, not to be dissuaded, only agreed to delay the journey until tomorrow morning. He suspected she was still hungry, and, as much as she didn’t want to admit it, knew thatsomeplanning had to take place beforehand. He made his way to the library as she sat in their room, stabbing the slices of blood-red meat she’d had sent up.
The library was a good idea. It was quiet and calm, there were a fair few volumes on the mountain and the forest around it, a decent map, and a couple of tomes on dwarves, too.
The rather attractive young librarian assisting him in his search proved a little distracting, however.
It was difficult to read through any of it thoroughly in the time that they had, but Beau had an excellent head for reading. He wasn’t quite as good as their Aunt Aoife, who remembered everything she read as soon as she saw it, but he certainly had a gift for it. Aoife had taught him well.
He returned to their chambers in the evening, his notes carefully written up.
Aislinn was hurling knives into a hay bale when he arrived.
“What’s with the hay bale?” he asked.
Aislinn did not pause. “I wanted to throw them at the headboards but purposefully damaging our host’s furniture did not seem like the mark of a true princess.”
“So… a hay bale then?”
“It was the best I could do, but it’s nothing like stabbingreal flesh.”
“I worry about you sometimes.”
Aislinn at last looked up. “What’s with the glasses?”
“Oh,” said Beau, blushing as he pressed the new spectacles up his nose. “Well, I went to the castle library to see what I could find about dwarves, and there was thisveryattractive librarian there. He looked so adorable in his spectacles I had to try out a pair for myself—”
“Beau—”
“Don’t I look dashing?”
Aislinn sighed. “Try not to crush on any more mortal men while I’m gone. They’re funny about that sort of thing here.”
“By ‘funny’ do you mean ‘terrible’? Because yes, yes they are.” He sighed, placing his hand on his heart. “I promise to only outwardly display affection for the women of court, although it feels like I’m shutting half of myself away.”
“Read a book. You’ll be fine.”
“That does tend to usually help…” Beau paused. “I could come with you, you know.”
“What?”
