Chapter 3
Nic paced around the library at House Phel, soothing herself with the movement as much as infant Bria in her arms. Sated from nursing, Bria had quieted into sleep—but would almost certainly awaken if Nic stopped.
The baby liked whoever held her to be in constant motion.
Fortunately, Bria didn’t lack for people to patiently walk her about.
As her mother, though, Nic liked to keep that privilege largely to herself.
There was something about holding close the warm and cozy bundle of infant that soothed her.
Dark arts knew she could take all the soothing she could get.
“I don’t like this,” she said, for probably the hundredth time. Maybe the thousandth.
Her husband and wizard, Lord Gabriel Phel, sat behind his desk, elbows propped and fingers steepled under his chin, watching her pace back and forth.
His silver-white hair flowed to his shoulders, framed his golden-skinned, broad-cheekboned face.
The single black-as-night streak at his left temple echoed his wizard-black eyes.
He’d gotten up with her when Bria wailed awake, hungry and lonely, and accompanied her to the library, thinking to get a start on the day’s business in the early morning hours.
The Ratsiel courier awaiting them to report absolutely nothing on Alise—against all probability, and yet again—had felt like the worst possible news.
Most people, looking at him, would have thought he was calm, even contemplative, but she knew her wizard well.
He was bristling as much as she was, but internally.
His silvery moon magic practically sparkled in the overcast morning, like pointed dust motes.
However, instead of drifting about aimlessly, these little stars hung in one place and rotated idly, as if awaiting a target.
Gabriel had come a long way in mastering his magic.
Yes, the moon magic tended to solidify into silver when he was agitated, but he could keep the precipitates of that wizardry contained and more or less still—as opposed to raining on surfaces or flinging themselves at whoever had awakened his ire.
Likewise, his water magic still drew storms—hence the rumbling overcast outside—but he could restrain the torrential downpours of the past.
Nevertheless, Nic kept an eye on him and his temper.
As Gabriel’s familiar, she took her job to keep her wizard on an even keel seriously.
As his wife, lover, mother of his child, and partner in leading House Phel, she also knew to rein in her own impatience, lest her agitation goad him into impetuous actions.
All the same, she couldn’t help herself.
“There’s no reason I can’t go to House Elal,” he pointed out implacably, also not for the first time.
“We’ve been over and over all the reasons you can’t,” she argued, well aware they were going in circles, and had been for weeks, but unable to pull herself out of the hopeless cycle.
She’d squandered money they couldn’t afford trying to get information on Alise’s status in House Elal, to no avail.
“There is no way in all the land that I’m letting you beard my father in his den without me there to act as your familiar.
I don’t care how powerful you are. He’d have access to the power stored in the House Elal arcanium, plus I heard he bonded a new familiar. ”
She swallowed down the bitter grief over that, with his previous familiar, her mother, not long in the grave.
Even worse, rumor had it that the new familiar was a younger classmate of Alise’s, too.
Nic hadn’t been able to get more solid information than that.
What she wouldn’t give to be a wizard and be able to send her own spirits to spy on House Elal.
“You would have no back-up, no resources. You would be alone.” Maybe it was being a new mother, but emotions hit her at unexpected times.
The prospect of Gabriel facing her father alone nearly had her in tears.
“Nic,” Gabriel said, “there is no way in all the land that we’re leaving Bria here without either of her parents, and,” he added more loudly, holding up a hand to stop her next words, “we’re both agreed that there is no way in all the land that we’re taking Bria inside the borders of Elal.”
“Not so loud. You’ll wake the baby.” Her lips twitched, though, at his deliberate echoing of her words. He always seemed to know when she needed to be shaken out of her doldrums.
He snorted. “That child takes after her mother. House Phel could burn down around her and she wouldn’t even crack an eyelid.” An affectionate smile broke through the oppressive storm of his expression. “She’s so happy, safe, and secure in your arms.”
Nic looked down at her sleeping daughter, overwhelmed with love and protectiveness.
The brush of black lashes against her soft cheeks, the subtle violet of her eyelids, the perfect sweet bow of her mouth.
Nic had to stop herself from showering that precious face with kisses, which—despite Gabriel’s claims—would indeed wake the infant.
She settled for inhaling Bria’s scent, the powdery fragrance of baby mixed with the deep wine and roses flavor of the Elal magic she’d been born with.
“I want Bria to stay happy, safe, and secure. You know that. But I’m worried about Alise. Why hasn’t she answered any of my letters? Why is there no information?”
“Undoubtedly because your father is intercepting the letters and any attempts to gather information,” Gabriel replied patiently, having said this more than once, also.
“Or she’s choosing not to reply,” Nic replied darkly. She paced over to the gloomy windows. “She could be angry with me. I let her sacrifice herself to save Bria. My own sister and I gleefully let her submit herself to our father’s abuse. Dark arts only know what she’s suffering there.”
“You were hardly gleeful about it, Nic,” Gabriel replied with some exasperation.
The silver motes grew longer spines and began rotating faster.
Outside, a steady drizzle commenced. “None of us were happy about that solution, but Alise saw—and forced us to recognize—that her going with Piers was our best option.”
“It was hardly a good option,” she retorted, too strongly, because Bria stirred.
“I said it was our best option,” he answered evenly. “Even, arguably, our only option at the time,” he added in a lower voice, having also noted Bria’s restlessness.
The baby had been awake most of the night, which meant both of them had been too.
Neither of them was at their best. Once Bria had at last fallen asleep, they’d snatched a couple of hours of sleep before she jerked them awake again with her strident demands.
Then, not only had the last spy she’d paid to infiltrate Elal sent word of utter failure, the row of Ratsiel couriers waiting for them with messages had none from Alise, House Elal, House Harahel, Cillian, Han, or Iliana.
Surely out of all those people and entities someone could reply to her messages.
Even Lady Harahel, who’d sent an actual person to deliver her request that Han and Iliana travel to House Harahel to assist Cillian with a project regarding archives relevant to House Phel interests, hadn’t replied to Nic’s human-carried requests for updates.
“Well,” she said, making a heroic attempt to be conciliatory, “let’s not reiterate that particular debate. What can we do besides one of those three things? Because I can’t take sitting here on my thumbs any longer.”
“You’re spending every waking moment caring for a newborn and grabbing insufficient sleep in between.
You’ve hardly been sitting on your thumbs.
Nor,” he added pointedly, when she glared at him, “has anyone else at House Phel. We’ve been over the legalities.
The deal was fairly struck. Our only legal recourse lies in that we pre-paid Alise’s tuition, room, and board at Convocation Academy and your father’s, ah, interruption of her education means we have something of a lever.
But if Provost Uriel won’t intervene with House Elal, we’re dead in the water there. ”
“I know all of that,” Nic flung at him in frustration.
“You seemed like you needed reminding.”
“Ha ha. Well, I don’t. We have no legal recourse to rescue Alise, only illegal ones.”
“And yet,” he commented, wizard-black eyes tracking her restless pacing, “you dismiss the illegal options.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “We’ve only just gotten House Phel on a reasonably firm financial footing.
Our enemies are at least leaving us alone, for the first time in nearly a year.
We might actually meet the metrics to be firmly reinstated as a high house, and being off the probationary period would give us far more negotiating power in the Convocation.
We can’t risk any of that by engaging in illegal activities or heating up the current cold war into an actively raging one. ”
“As we’ve discussed many times already.”
“You seemed like you needed reminding,” she shot at him.
With a sigh that was half laugh, half exasperated exhalation, Gabriel flattened his palms on the desk and rose to his considerable height.
Nic never ceased to be a little surprised by Gabriel’s size, the breadth of his shoulders, the warrior’s musculature so unusual in the wizard set.
But then, Gabriel had never been the typical wizard in any way, from his unconventional upbringing to his lack of Convocation education to his stubborn refusal to capitulate to social conventions.
He came to her and she experienced that intimate thrill, his wizard’s magic and sexuality so heady they made her dizzy.
The wizard–familiar bond between them hummed with the intensity of their connection, amplified by love, a meeting of minds, hearts, and bodies that transcended anything she’d thought possible for her to have.