“My hero,” I purred against his neck. “You thought it was funny, but you got me out of there pretty quickly when I started bragging about your…” Perhaps I wasn’t completely sober yet. “You know.”

He leaned close, his mouth against my ear, and I shivered. “Would you like a refresher?” he whispered. I could feel the grin curling at his mouth.

I giggled, quite liking that idea and not really wanting to go back to our earlier fight. I cast a guilty glance at the other revelers, remembering my charge. “What about Likh? He wasn’t any better off than I was, and he’d been drinking more.”

Kalen paused. “You’re right. And he’s warded, so the rune won’t work. We’d best see if he hasn’t killed Khalad yet.”

“You noticed?”

“They weren’t hiding their emotions.”

We found Khalad and Likh both still in fighting moods. I’d never seen Likh so angry before. His hands were balled at his sides, and if looks could wither, Khalad would have been missing a few extremities.

“I’m sorry for interrupting.” I was still tipsy and wobbled a bit when Kalen set me on my feet. “But I want to make sure you guys are okay before Kalen and I go—”

“You’ve been arguing,” Kalen interrupted bluntly. “And we thought it was time you patched things up.”

“We’re not arguing,” Khalad said, and his heartsglass flamed blue.

“Shut up, Khalad. I’m not here to fight.” A headache was starting somewhere behind my eyeballs—not enough to put me out of action, but enough to irritate me. “Likh, drop your wards, and let Kalen make you sober.”

“I promised Khalad I wouldn’t do that again,” Likh snapped, “despite not taking what I want into consideration, and I’m fairly sure he won’t—”

“Likh, for the gods’ sake.” I flung out my hands, weaving a barely legible caricature of the Delving rune. “Look, let’s conduct a room-wide search to prove it’s safe to let down the barrier so we can—”

I couldn’t finish. The rune showed me the lie of my own words and was glowing a dark, sooty red over one of the guests.

I swung around, and the rune followed, like a pendulum—one, two, three, four. Four guests had the Blight rune incubating inside them—including Lord Aden.

“Tea?” Kalen matched my pace as I marched toward the center of the room, no longer drunk, channeling Scrying runes as fast as I could make them. Like stationary fireflies, they shone. I braced myself for the barrage of thoughts coming my way.

they should have nanghait hunts every year. I reckon we could convince the southerners to let us use their taurvi a time or two—

watered down codswallop, these things are nowadays. And only two years ago we had the finest lager straight from Steerfall—