island_of_reil

Just let me and a few friends catch you in a dark street some night soon. Or just me alone, come to that. He hoped the thought showed on his face, whatever the cost.

Protective!Alec, *swoon*. I've really been enjoying his character arc through the series. Some of the Aurënfaie might still consider him childlike, but he's grown considerably in his three years as Seregil's pupil, then partner, then lover. In the third book you can see strong hints that in just a few decades he'll be very much the way Seregil has become, though with more monogamy and (one would hope) less angst.

Speaking of which, I was greatly amused by one item from the TVTropes page for the series:

Mangst: Seregil, oh gods, Seregil! It drives Alec, and pretty much everyone else, crazy at times.

You don't say? Last night I read the section where he wanders, supposedly unwittingly, into the quarter of Sarikali dominated by the Haman, the clan of the guest he murdered as a youth. Rather than flee before he's discovered, he shows his face to a group of young men who've been drinking, and then he passively submits to a vicious beating that he experiences as catharsis. His assailants cap off the beating by urinating all over him. (Note: While the phrase "glutton for punishment" can be said to fit him in general, I wouldn't say the same of "masochist.")

I have a theory for which I can find no support, in foreshadowing or in anything else. He readily admits that it was an immensely stupid thing to have done and that it's not the first immensely stupid thing he's ever done. But given that he went out walking after an exceptionally horrific nightmare that featured his old lover, that he just happened to find himself in enemy territory, and that he never remembers how he made it safely back to the Bokthersa baths where only Alec and a servant find him…. I have to wonder whether his old lover or someone else magicked him into seeking out danger.