Chapter 14
The hot springs were rough and barely adapted to human soaking, but also sheer paradise. Alise sighed in utter bliss and sank down in the steaming water to her chin. Beside her, Cillian gave her a sleepy blink, his soft black eyes mostly veiled by his extraordinary fringe of lashes.
“Better than stewing in stinking hunter goo, huh?” he asked throatily and she giggled.
“Just a little.” She tipped her head back, watching the purpling sky.
Evening in the mountains cooled down quickly, especially in springtime, but the steaming water had her balanced perfectly between too hot and too cold.
If only she could find that middle ground in her life.
Though… seeing Cillian beside her, their fingers interlaced under the water, in possession of the heady skills imparted by her father and yet away from his crushing possessiveness…
maybe she had found a kind of balance. “Can I get your opinion on something?”
“Anything,” he answered immediately, sounding much less sleepy. “You know that.”
She did know that, and this seemed like the time to talk about it.
Jadren had woken up, hobbled to the hot springs, and yipped like a stepped-on puppy at the sting of hot, briny water on his freshly healed wounds.
Seliah had quickly bathed, then returned with him to the comfort of the carriage, where they were now no doubt snuggled under fur blankets, peacefully resting.
Well out of earshot.
Seliah hadn’t exactly winked or waggled her brows, but she’d made it clear that Alise and Cillian would have the privacy of the hot springs. Except that so far, they’d both been too tired and grimy to do anything about it. Then she’d started thinking.
“I’ve been mulling this question…” She trailed off, wondering if she really wanted to say this aloud.
Cillian knew about her ability to severe the wizard–familiar bond, but they didn’t talk about it much.
She’d finally reconciled herself that she hadn’t actually killed her own mother by severing Maman’s bond to her wizard, but she would never rid herself of the guilt of her role in it—and her fear of the tremendous power she wielded.
Not to mention that the Convocation would likely execute her if they knew she could do that.
No wizard wanted their familiar to go free.
“Yes?” Cillian asked gently, after she paused for too long. “Mulling what?”
She turned to face him in the water. “My ability to sever the wizard–familiar bond and how it relates to us using Anciela’s method for unlocking the block in familiars’ minds to allow them to be wizards.”
He nodded, following her train of thought easily. “You’re thinking that, even if familiars can become wizards if we are able to decode Anciela’s notes, the ones who are bonded to their wizards might still need to be… liberated.”
“Yes. And… well, will they want to be?” Even though she knew that Jadren and Seliah couldn’t hear them, she lowered her voice. “Seliah likes being bonded to Jadren, she says. It creates an intimacy, beyond the exchange of magic, a deep connection. And then there’s alternate form.”
“I thought about that, too. We don’t understand why only familiars can take alternate form and why only their bonded wizard can trigger the transformation. But maybe that’s accounted for in Anciela’s work. We don’t know.”
“We don’t know far too much,” she responded with frustration, all lax sleepiness gone.
She wanted to pound on something. Or pace.
She also didn’t want to stir even a fingertip of skin out of the deliciously toasty water.
“What are we potentially unleashing with this information? What if we are able to turn familiars into wizards, but they’re still bonded—so all we’ve done is create a way for wizards to be enslaved to other wizards? ”
“I think—”
“And what if the familiars lose their alternate forms forever? Nic loves hers; so does Seliah.”
“Well, if—”
“What if this just leads to war?” she demanded, feeling increasingly panicked. “Loving wizard–familiar couples breaking up, families and houses dissolving. This could spell the end of the Convocation. Of civilized society and—”
“Alise.” Cillian took her by the shoulders. “I understand why you’re worrying about all of this, but let me ask you one question. All right?”
She nodded and pressed her lips together against spewing more of her fears.
“Do you believe the Convocation as it is, the current structure of our society and citizenship tiers, is a fair and equitable system?”
“No,” she had to admit. Obviously it was not. “But—”
“There are a lot of possible ‘buts,’” he interrupted.
“Still, at its heart, what we have now is not worth preserving. Yes, there might be pain and danger and violence that results from us releasing this information, but are you saying we don’t have that now, just in a more massaged and polished form we’ve been trained all our lives to accept as normal? ”
“That’s true,” she conceded, feeling herself calm at his reasoning.
“Besides, it’s not our role to withhold information,” he continued. “Anciela, who discovered it, wanted people of the Convocation to know about this. All knowledge is worth having.”
She snorted. “You just think that because you’re a librarian. You’re obsessed with information.”
“Obsessed?” he echoed, trying to look offended, but eyes sparkling with amusement.
He’d set aside his spectacles on a nearby rock, annoyed when they fogged up on him, so she had a rare view of his gorgeous face without them.
“I’ll tell you about obsession.” His hands glided down from her shoulders to smooth over her arms, then up again to her ribs.
He leaned in closer. “I’m obsessed all right,” he whispered, “but not with information. Nothing so dry as that.”
“No?’ she asked breathlessly.
He shook his head, a closed-lipped smile curving his full lips.
“There’s a certain wizard, delicate of build, powerfully magical.
Absolutely gorgeous.” His hands spanned her waist under the water, fingertips nearly touching.
“She’s a little difficult at times,” he confided.
“Proud. Never lets anything well enough alone.”
“She sounds like a handful.” Alise gasped as his hands slid up her ribs to cup her naked breasts, his thumbs brushing her tightening nipples.
“Oh, she is,” he agreed in a dark murmur. He squeezed firmly, the way he knew made her squirm. “Delightfully so.”
“Anyone I know?” Alise asked, feeling her sex swell and go slick, even in the water.
“I’ll whisper her name in your ear,” he answered. “But don’t tell anyone. She doesn’t know I’m in love with her.” He leaned in and kissed the shell of her ear. “Alise Elal Phel.”
Alise shivered, even though it was a game. Somehow, the moment had become singularly intense. “I think she knows,” she whispered back, turning her lips to caress his unshaven cheek, the stubble delightfully prickly.
“Does she?” He pulled back to gaze into her eyes.
“You’ve told her,” Alise pointed out. “Several times.”
“Ah, but is that the same as her knowing it?”
“I think it is, because she knows.” She threaded her fingers through his adorable dark curls, damp from the steam of the hot springs and spiraling wildly because of it. “She feels it.”
Feeling suddenly shy, she dropped her gaze from his gentle black eyes and wrapped one springy corkscrew around her finger, admiring the gleaming coil, the blue-black shine of it.
Her heart turned over, slow and warm, the heat radiating through her stronger than the water they soaked in.
Cillian was the warmth in her life, the one person who understood her through and through, who offered both frank admiration of her virtues and forgiveness for her faults.
Why had she been hesitating to tell him how she felt in return?
Because you think you’ll destroy him. And you might.
Yes, there was that. But she’d tried to shake him loose, to no avail.
And he might just find a way to destroy himself chasing after her.
So she might as well… what? Accept what already existed.
Stop fighting the reality and learn to work with it.
Be honest and vulnerable. She lifted her gaze to find him watching her.
Cillian had stopped teasing her breasts, lifting a hand to cup her cheek and then slid it around to the back of her neck. “What serious thoughts darken those gorgeous eyes?”
“My eyes are already black,” she pointed out. “They can’t get any darker.”
“Ah, there you’re wrong.” He traced his index fingers over her eyebrows, swiped his thumbs lightly along the upper ridges of her cheekbones. “You have shades of black, lovely Alise. And now your eyes are full of somber thoughts and feelings. Tell me.”
“I’m thinking…” Even now it was difficult to speak the words aloud.
Even knowing he loved her and would be pleased to hear them.
It felt like a huge step to tell him so.
Because her life would never again be the same.
Not that she’d had any stability in the last year, with changes coming every day, it seemed.
But this was different. So long as they lived in this time when he loved her and did so with no expectations for her to love him in return, or to change her life or plans for him—such as they were—she enjoyed a certain freedom.
It wasn’t fair to him, by any stretch, but a selfish part of her—the megalomaniacal Elal part, no doubt—preferred things that way.
And Cillian would allow it, she knew. She could take advantage of that unconditional generosity of his.
He’d even articulated that offer: that he would love and support her, simply for the privilege and pleasure of being with her, even if she bonded a familiar and took that person as a lover.
He might even be happy, as that was absolutely who he was.
Only if she sent him away would he be miserable.