"I do not understand why you're permitting this to happen," said Uachi. He stood just inside Diarmán's bedroom door, his arms folded. It was the morning after their first attempt to find Han Taín his bride. Uachi had come to meet him so they could go down to breakfast together.

They had not shared a bed since Han Taín's arrival, a fact Diarmán had decided not to notice.

"Permitting?" Diarmán knelt on the flagstones, rummaging through this clothes-chest, searching for something. He yelped and fell back as a spider scuttled across a sleeve, nearly touching his fingers.

"What?"

"Bloody damned spider." Diarmán shuddered, shaking his hand briskly.

Uachi raised an eyebrow. For the first time in what felt to Diarmán like a lifetime, a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. Gods below, he loved to see Uachi smile.

"What sort of lover are you?" Diarmán snapped with feigned peevishness. "You should be cantering over to gallantly save me."

"From a spider?"

"'Twas the size of a horse!"

Pushing off of the wall, Uachi strode over to Diarmán. He dropped to a knee. "Our horses in Penrua are bigger than yours, then."

"Ha." Diarmán shook his hand again.

Uachi reached into the clothes chest, pulling out the topmost garment and giving it a shake. "What are we looking for?"

"There's a linen tunic with an embroidered collar. Green, I think, maybe blue—my mother's work. If it hasn't been devoured by moths..."

"Very well." He continued to search, shaking out each piece of clothing as he pulled it out and set it aside. "It's not this?" Uachi held up a shirt.

"No, that's not it. Green or blue embroidery, I said."

"This is blue."

"That's violet, my darling."

Uachi frowned at the collar of the shirt, turning it in the light from the window. "It's blue."

Diarmán took the shirt and set it aside. "In any case, we're looking for a tunic. We'll need to find something for you to wear, too."

"Wear? To breakfast?"

"To the wedding. What you have on is fine for breakfast, although you won't turn any heads with your fashion sense."

"So I'm to attend this affair."

"The wedding? Why, of course you are. Why shouldn't you?"

Uachi didn't answer.

Diarmán glanced at his profile. His frown. "Why shouldn't you?" he repeated.

"I won't. I can't condone it."

Diarmán's stomach turned. He did not truly want to talk about this with Uachi. Not right now. "It's not a matter of what we condone or do not condone. This unknown lady is her own woman, Uachi. She makes her own choices."

"Diarmán." Uachi knelt on the flagstones next to him. He put his hands on Diarmán's shoulders, turning him away from the clothes chest. "Look at me. Look me in the eye and say these things. Tell me it's right. Tell me you believe this will be her choice, truly."

Diarmán met Uachi's eye, irritation flaring in his chest. "I simply—it's not that I..."

Uachi raised his eyebrows, waiting.

With a huff of frustration, Diarmán tugged away, rising to his feet. He strode to the window, turning his back on his lover. "He is not a man to be reasoned with."

"I suggest something between enthusiastic approval and outright violence. Believe me, I am in no hurry to fight this man over a woman's freedom. I've vexed him already, and I feel my hands are tied, Diarmán. He might work some spell upon me, or upon others. This requires more craft than I have in me."

Looking over his shoulder at Uachi, Diarmán said, "So you are still thinking to fight him? My father?"

"Of course I bloody am!"

"I thought you simply lost your head yesterday. Why would you risk it?"

"Gods below, you idiot!" Uachi got to his feet, slamming the lid of the clothes chest down. "It's like you have put out your own eyes and stopped your ears. I don't understand how you don't understand!"

"This is perfect. I thought I had been blessed at last with good fortune, for once in my life. I thought I might have two good things at once. I should have known it was the fates having a laugh."

Uachi sighed, but before he could speak, Diarmán cut him off.

"Go on, have at it. My lover and my father, at one another's throats—of course it's come to this. You realize, you'll get yourself killed? Not that it's any new risk to you, you lunking fool."

"Did I not say it's the reason I haven't acted? I'm not about to—"

"Here." Diarmán threw open the doors of a cabinet on the other side of the room. It was where he kept various personal effects—buckles, belts, his shaving implements. He reached in for his flute, which was usually on the top shelf when he was not away from home.

His fingertips slid over bare wood. Bending low with a grunt of frustration, Diarmán searched the shelf and then the one below it. "Let me just lend you my sword. You cannot go to war with Han Taín with naught but a dagger, my love."

"You are not being reasonable. I'm trying to talk about the threat he represents—I'm not telling you I want to run him through."

"Did you not say you'd considered violence?" Diarmán knelt, searching the bottom shelf. He found his buckles, scarves, shoes, and gloves, and the small box where he kept jewelry he never wore. There was a volume of poetry he had quite forgotten—unfortunately, he would have to burn it, for it was his own work from when he was young and under the mistaken impression that he was any good.

No flute.

"I said I suggested something less than outright violence, like reason!"

But Diarmán had stopped listening, distracted from the argument. An uncomfortable sensation fluttered in his chest: panic. "Where is my flute?"

"What?"

Diarmán rummaged once more through the cabinet, sliding things on each shelf to one side as he muttered, "My flute isn't here."

"Is it meant to be?"

Vexed, Diarmán snapped, "Yes, it's meant to be! I put it here when we arrived. I distinctly remember. I haven't touched it since."

The silence was tense, broken by the sound of Diarmán searching through the same possessions again. He knew that Uachi was frustrated with him, angry, even, about the business with his father. He knew that he was being flippant about things that deserved more thought—he could recognize that, and he would chew on it when he had the time, although he felt, like everyone else, that they had little choice in the matter.

But at the moment, the most urgent thing was that his flute was missing.

He had been gifted the instrument by his father. He did not, of course, remember when it had been given to him—Before you could walk, you held this instrument, his father would say—but he could not remember a time when he hadn't had it. He doubted he'd made music as a babe, but as soon as he could understand the concept of using an instrument, he had been playing his flute with the uncanny gift that was his birthright. He had never had lessons, never needed practice, never fumbled, never failed.

He had played at other instruments now and then over the years, and he took to each one with equal ease, coaxing music out of harps and pipes, but his flute, his flute was like a limb. It was like his own heart.

Diarmán did not realize that Uachi had approached until he felt the man's hand on his shoulder. "We'll find it. Perhaps you put it somewhere else when you were settling in. It wouldn't—"

"I didn't put it elsewhere!" Diarmán cried. "There is no elsewhere. It's with me, or it's here. I have never put it anywhere else. This shelf. Right here." He clasped the edge of the shelf.

Uachi hooked him under the arm and drew him to his feet. "Very well. Then mayhap someone has taken it. Have you any brothers who would play such a joke?"

"I'll bloody their noses if they have." Diarmán drew a breath, closing his eyes. Uachi was calm, and it had a steadying effect. "I'll ask them at supper."

"A good place to start. We'll find it." Uachi smiled, cupping Diarmán's cheek. "Okay?"

He looked exhausted. Diarmán had noticed the marks of tiredness on his face, but seeing him now, truly seeing him in the aftermath of their quarrel, he realized he was exhausted.

"Yes," Diarmán said, aching with regret. Why did this have to be so difficult? Why did he have to make choices between the two men he loved most in the world?

"And as we look, you must consider how to speak with your father. I saw it in your face. You speak as if you support your father's whims, but you don't, not truly. You want him to be happy, and you want your mother to be safe, and this seems like the ideal solution."

Diarmán sighed, putting his hand on Uachi's. "It may not be bad. He can offer so much. He is handsome, and he's charming, and he has power and wealth—women have married for less."

"They have. But I will wager there's not a woman on this world who's been faced with a marriage proposal from the man who turned her into a bird not half a moon past. I flatter myself that I am not easy to frighten, Diarmán, but seeing such a thing happen to others is enough to keep me awake of an evening. For a girl, hardly more than a child?"

Diarmán's heart ached. He looked into Uachi's eyes, knowing he was right. "What choice is there? He has offered Mother her freedom. That was all we wanted."

"You cannot let another woman succumb to what your mother did. Not if you're a man of honor."

Diarmán stepped into Uachi's arms, lowering his forehead to rest on his shoulder. "This is why I never decided to be an honorable man. It is far too much work, and a strain on my delicate constitution."

Uachi laughed, and the sound was a balm. "I think you will manage."