Chapter 14 #2
But if she told him she was in love with him, all of that would change.
He might develop expectations and Alise had found she tended to fail in meeting those.
She didn’t think she could bear to disappoint Cillian and she worried that, once he knew she loved him, she’d inevitably fail to measure up at some point.
Still, wasn’t that life? People sometimes disappointed one another and love was accepting that and sticking around anyway.
Cillian had waited patiently while she thought things through—just then and, really, for the entire span of their relationship.
He watched her now, not rushing her, seeming to know she needed to go at her own pace.
Just tell him. It’s true, regardless, so all that will change is his knowing for sure.
“I’m thinking…” she repeated, “…that this difficult wizard is in love with you, too.” There, she’d said it. Well, kind of. She’d still taken an out, talking in this third person game Cillian had started. Probably he’d done it on purpose, to make things easier for her.
He stroked her cheekbones, his gaze soft and sultry. “Do you think so?” he purred. “I’ve thought as much for a long time, but she’s never told me so.”
“I’m not surprised,” she confided, willing to take advantage of this buffer from her very personal, very raw feelings.
“I’m not either,” Cillian replied in that same confidential tone.
“Aren’t you?”
He slowly shook his head. “Such things are difficult for her. She hasn’t known a lot of love in her life. I’m not sure she’s ever said those words aloud to anyone.”
Tears unexpectedly pricked her eyes, almost painful.
That hadn’t occurred to her and… he might be right.
Even with her beloved Maman, or with Nic, she hadn’t ever said so.
She had said them to Bria, to that delightful, trusting bundle of newborn.
She’d whispered the words and brushed her niece’s forehead with a kiss, but that had felt like a secret.
Maybe feeling it for Bria, accepting that emotion for what it was, had cracked open something inside her and she could articulate it now. Almost.
“Only to a baby,” Alise confessed quietly, “and even then she whispered.”
Cillian smiled, sadly, the sorrow all for her. Still holding her face in his gentle clasp, he leaned in to kiss her, a sweet, lingering kiss full of all that love he spoke of so easily. “It’s all right,” he said against her lips. “She doesn’t have to say them until she’s ready. I know it’s hard.”
A few tears spilled over and fell, hot on her cheeks cooled by the descending mountain night. “It shouldn’t be hard.”
He smiled, a curve of his pretty lips. “I don’t think there are rules about these things. All I know is that it is difficult for you. And that I’m all right with not hearing the words. I don’t need them from you. All I need is this, being here with you.”
“You’re so easily pleased.”
He shrugged a little, still smiling that sweet, close-lipped smile that spread across his face and lit him up. “That’s all right, too, isn’t it? You deserve to have parts of your life that are easy, someone in your life who is easily pleased, who adores you and wants you to be happy.”
“I do love you,” she blurted out, overwhelmed, peripherally aware of the tears streaming down her cheeks, which seemed all wrong for the moment, but there it was.
Real. Unstoppable. The ice around her heart cracking almost audibly.
It both hurt and felt good, like stretching after an injury. “I love you, Cillian. I do.”
His smile couldn’t go wider, but it softened and brightened. “I know, Alise. You showed me long before you spoke the words.”
She nodded, sniffling unromantically, unable to say anything more.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know.” She really didn’t. “I think so. I should be.”
He tutted. “No more with the shoulds. It’s just us. You can always be and feel exactly as you are with me. It’s not just a promise; it’s a requirement. I love you, Alise, always and exactly as you are.”
She had to wipe her nose. Then laughed, watery. “Even with snot on my face?”
He laughed, genuine, loving and heartfelt, then kissed the—hopefully not snotty—tip of her nose. “Even with hunter goo all over you.”
She swiped at her hair, which she’d dunked initially, when the sun was still high. “I’m not clean yet?”
“You are.” He kissed her mouth, lavishly this time, his lips parting to welcome her in. “I shouldn’t have teased you.”
“It’s all right.” She smiled through the kiss, the passion rising between and around them like the steam growing increasingly dense as the colder air descended. “It’s probably good for me. Keep me humble.”
“I don’t think you need to be kept humble,” he argued softly, raining little kisses over her face. “My powerful wizard love.”
“You’re a powerful wizard, too,” she retorted, but laughing.
He grimaced playfully. “Books and nonsense. I’m fine with that.” Sobering, he said, “I want to tell you something first though.”
That sounded awfully serious. “Anything.”
“Bonding with a familiar—you were saying earlier about the intimacy of that connection, how you thought some wizard–familiar pairs wouldn’t want to risk losing that bond.”
She nodded, knowing where he was going with this. “I don’t—”
“Let me say this first,” he interrupted firmly. She loved that about him, too, for all his sweetness and gentle handling of her, he knew when to be firm. She wouldn’t be able to have a life with him knowing she could push him around. She nodded, made herself wait.
“If you ever want to bond with a familiar,” he continued, “I want you to do so without reservation or guilt, even if you think the intimacy of that connection might interfere with or supersede what we have.”
“I don’t want—”
“Promise me.” He was dead serious. “I can’t be with you thinking that I’ve stopped you from having that kind of connection, that access to a familiar’s magic.”
“It might be moot anyway,” she argued. “If we decode Anciela’s data and—”
“If,” he said with grave significance, “we are able to decode it after months or years of study, or ever. There’s a distinct possibility that we never will find the key, and then—even if we do and are able to decode her findings—we might never be able to apply them.
Her method simply might not work, or might not work on everyone, or we might not sway the powers of the Convocation to allow her methods to be applied.
The fact of the matter is that our current paradigm might persist for a long time, possibly for our lifetimes, and that means you most likely having to face your father again in a duel. ”
A duel… with her father? She couldn’t win that.
“No, I want you to listen to me right now,” Cillian said when she opened her mouth.
“I wasn’t any help to you in that fight back there, which nearly killed me.
Even if I’d convinced you to take my magic, I couldn’t have given you the level of power a good familiar could.
I can’t live with myself knowing I’m holding you back.
Even if you are forced to fight and defeat your father and become Lady Elal, you might—no, undoubtedly will—have to use your wizardry to protect your house and people, and I want you to have the best possible resources to do that.
That very possibly will include bonding a familiar, maybe very soon. ”
She waited a beat. “Are you finished?”
He considered. “Yes, I think so—though I reserve the right to add arguments at any time.”
She laughed through her exasperation. “We’ve been through this.
I had an opportunity to bond any of the familiars my father presented to me.
” All of whom had looked like Cillian, which had been no accident.
Just a sign of how her father regarded other human beings, as basically interchangeable. “And I didn’t want any of them.”
Cillian simply stared her down. “That’s not what I’m saying and you know it. I want you to promise me this.”
“It might not come to that.”
“If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But if it does, I will have this promise from you.”
“Or what?” she demanded, half-laughing. He wouldn’t leave her. He’d already promised never to separate from her again.
“Just promise me, Alise. I haven’t asked much else of you, but I’m asking for this. A token of your love for me, if you will.”
“I don’t like this.” She really didn’t, and she was tempted to dig in on the subject, to refuse to consider this—especially when the thought of being this intimate with anyone but him felt repellent—but he was right that he didn’t ask for much from her.
“But I promise to give the possibility fair consideration.”
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “That’s not a promise to do it.”
“I can’t possibly promise to do something in the future, not knowing what those circumstances will be,” she countered, justifying to herself that she wasn’t really splitting hairs.
This was a perfectly fair argument. “I won’t rule out the possibility, but I’m not promising to bond a familiar regardless of extenuating circumstances, no matter what. ”
“You’re so stubborn.”
“Guilty, but you love me anyway.”
Cillian looked like he wanted to argue further, but finally sighed, expression set in lines of resignation. “Yes, I do. And I suppose that’s the best promise I’m going to be able to extract from you.”
“Yup,” she agreed cheerfully. Rare for her to win an argument with Cillian and this felt like a win.
“You understand why I’m asking this of you?” he persisted. “I’m not being a martyr. This is sincere concern for your wellbeing and for you to be able to do what you need to do.”
“Cillian.” Now she framed his gorgeous face in her hands, kissed him.
“I know. It’s all right. I love you.” It was getting easier to say every time.
Less fraught. Happy-making, even. “You love me. Let’s just agree that we want to help and protect each other and we’ll do our sincere best to agree on what that will require. ”