Chapter 25
Things moved faster than Selly had imagined they could. Granted, she was no scholar or scientist, but it still amazed her at the way her companions could decipher the documents and so rapidly reconstruct years of Anciela’s experiments.
Jadren, in particular, displayed a gift for understanding the methods and results Anciela had so carefully preserved for them.
Oh, she’d always known Jadren concealed a brilliant mind under that fuckboy attitude, but he’d clearly inherited more of his mother’s scientific genius than perhaps even he’d realized.
Selly didn’t say anything about that, of course, unwilling to invoke the sadistic spirit of Katica El-Adrel for either of them.
Besides, the thought had no doubt already occurred to Jadren and he’d valiantly set it aside, focusing his considerable attention on solving the problem at hand.
Watching him work so intently, Selly marveled at how sexy she found him.
Asa had arrived and, discovering that Healer Jonathan Refoel had necessarily been admitted to the inner circle of secrecy regarding the project after the incident with Lady Harahel, had immediately recruited his fellow Refoel wizard to assist him and Jadren with recreating the lab equipment and other necessary tools to begin trials of the Deana Method.
They’d decided to call it that for Anciela’s beloved familiar who didn’t live to benefit from it.
The three of them were inspiring to watch, all such handsome men and so clever, so committed to making this technique work.
She could watch them all day. And Selly kind of regretted that she didn’t have a brain that would make her a useful contributor.
But even before she’d gone crazy from magic poisoning she hadn’t loved that kind of thing.
She liked nature and growing things and being out in the bogs and marshes, in tune with the other wildlife.
Part of her would always be that wild girl Jadren still liked to call her from time to time.
She really loved taking her alternate form and giving herself over to the marsh cat.
Which was a major reason this decision had been so difficult for her.
But she wasn’t one of the brainy scientists, nor was she a powerful wizard like Alise and Gabriel, nor was she critically needed for the ongoing deciphering like Cillian, nor was she the mother of an infant like Nic.
They needed someone to volunteer to be the first test subject and she was the best choice.
She was very clear on that decision. The only real obstacle was that Jadren wouldn’t like it. Not one bit.
“Are you insane?” Jadren demanded, nearly levitating from his chair at the table in the lab workspace where they’d all gathered for their strategy meeting. “I’ve been tapping your magic regularly, so I know you can’t be reverting to crazy girl status, but you’re clearly out of your mind, Seliah.”
“It has to be me,” she replied simply, gazing around at the circle of surprised, sympathetic, and rueful faces.
Of them all, Nic seemed to be the least surprised and most sympathetic.
Selly didn’t doubt that Nic had been wrestling the same internal debate.
“We need a familiar for the first test subject. Someone in our inner circle. I’m volunteering. ”
“It could be me,” Iliana put in.
“Or me,” Han said. “We fit that exact same criteria.”
“With the additional perk that neither of us is important,” Iliana added earnestly. “You’re Lady El-Adrel.”
“That’s right,” Jadren agreed, jumping on that option. “Let Han or Iliana be test subjects. I’d be fine with that.”
“Jadren.” She gave him a meaningful frown.
“What?” he demanded, pale skin flushing with flags of color on his cheekbones. He thrust a hand at the young couple. “They’re risk takers and they don’t have anything to live for but each other. They’re the perfect volunteers.”
“Jadren,” Selly gasped, appalled by his callousness.
“Or let Nic do it,” he continued, not at all chastened. “She wants to be a wizard so badly.”
“No,” Gabriel said with quiet authority, backed the mantling silver and water magic in the air, a rumble of thunder outside. Nic laid a hand on his forearm.
“It has to be me for two other reasons,” Selly told Jadren.
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear these,” he snarled at her.
“Then sit down, be rational, and I’ll explain,” she replied with extreme calm, very glad she’d practiced this in the mirror.
Jadren looked about, as if surprised to find himself standing. Cillian reached up and patted Jadren’s shoulder. “Sit and listen,” he advised.
Somehow Cillian got through and Jadren sat, looking bewildered. “Why?” he asked Seliah, almost plaintively.
She’d known this would hurt him, but she also knew with profound certainty that this was the way it had to go.
“First of all, Han and Iliana, while absolutely and solidly members of House Phel, they are not of the Phel bloodline. I am. We don’t know how much of our current coincidence of events are a product of those started decades or centuries ago, but it seems clear that Gabriel and I were born as the result of a deliberate effort to rejuvenate House Phel and the Phel family. ”
Gabriel’s black gaze met hers somberly, the dark streak in his silver hair startling. He’d been through a great deal to reestablish their house. Now it was her turn. He dipped his chin in acknowledgement and she smiled back gratefully.
“All my life, I’ve been the problem child,” she continued, transferring her gaze to Jadren and willing him to listen.
“The wild girl, the crazy one who had to be tied up for her own safety. I have to believe that I am more than that troubled girl. And that I am more than your familiar and lover and lady, Jadren. I love being those things, but I don’t want the history books to have me as some kind of footnote saying, ‘oh, and Seliah Phel was there, too.’ Finally,” she said forcefully, as Jadren opened his mouth to argue, “I believe I’m meant to do this. House El-Adrel told me.”
That stopped whatever he’d been about to say. “The house told you,” he echoed with dripping sarcasm. “When was that conversation, do tell.”
“That day in the courtyard she made for us,” Selly answered, giving him a moment to assimilate that. “The peaches on the espaliered trees meant that message was for me, too.”
“You don’t know—”
“I do know, Jadren,” she interrupted. “And you do, too, if you’ll get over your fear for me and just give it a moment’s thought.
The other way I know is that the sculpture in the center, remember?
That was Anciela Phel and that gazehound was her familiar.
” She let the shock that whitened Jadren’s face settle in, nodding for Cillian to slide the document he’d decoded to Jadren, more than grateful that Cillian had recognized its importance and shared it with her.
Numbly, Jadren picked it up and gazed at it with unseeing eyes.
“Anciela’s familiar was a woman named Deana Phel, whose alternate form was a gazehound,” Selly explained for the benefit of the group.
“They were lovers and beloved to one another. Cillian found the story in one of the peach harvest pamphlets, one of the odd ones that mentioned the seasons in strange ways,” she added to Gabriel, who nodded thoughtfully.
“Anciela wrote it in a different way from all her other notes. It’s more of a story.
Even a love letter. I think she wanted us—whoever eventually decoded her work—to understand why she sacrificed so much to this project.
She devoted her life to finding a way to help Deana become a wizard also. ”
“So romantic,” Iliana breathed, then elbowed Han in a most unromantic way. “And I was right! Remember how I predicted this?”
“I remember,” Han replied with warm affection.
Selly met and held Jadren’s bleak gaze. He understood now.
He didn’t like it, but he wouldn’t fight her.
“The house was telling me,” she said softly.
“She was letting me know that I’m like Deana.
I’m the gazehound, beloved by her wizard.
I’m the espaliered peach tree, distorted into an unnatural form for most of my life.
It’s time for me to play my part in this. ”
It seemed that everyone around the table held their breath. Nic cocked her head to the side slightly, and smiled at Selly. Beautiful, full-figured Nic, who’d told Selly the story of the princess locked in the tower. Selly’s first friend and now sister. Nic understood.
“It’s funny,” Nic commented, stroking Gabriel’s forearm, “how we always reference the saga of Sylus and Lyndella as the great wizard/familiar tragic romance, but the story of Anciela and Deana is truly about love and sacrifice in its purest form.”
“Maybe Seliah will write the novel someday,” Alise commented. “A new story to guide a new Convocation.”
Selly smiled at her. “I like that idea.”
“You won’t be writing anything if this experiment kills you,” Jadren said, his voice grating harshly.
“It won’t kill me,” she answered him softly. “At worst it won’t work. If I’m harmed, you can put me back together.”
“You’re asking a lot,” Jadren replied, so coldly that her stomach clenched.
“I’m giving a lot,” she corrected. “And this is mine to give. It’s necessary.
You’ve been over the methods. You know we need to test this on a person.
There’s no intermediary step. I want to do this, Jadren, and I want your blessing.
I want you beside me and ready to be the first person to congratulate me on becoming a wizard. ”
He held her gaze for one long excruciating moment and a deep, insecure part of her wondered if he didn’t want her to be a wizard, if he feared her becoming equal in magical ability with him.
Certainly it would change their relationship, potentially disrupt the wizard-familiar bond.
She was asking a lot of him and Jadren was so deeply scarred that this might be more than he could give.
He, too, was like the espaliered trees the house had shown them, twisted out of a normal, healthy existence.
Selly was well aware that she had been the saving of Jadren.
Even though he never said so, she knew he feared she could be the destruction of him.
Finally he nodded. “I’ll run the treatment myself, crazy girl.”
And by that she knew he loved her and always would.
While the treatment team prepared the supplies they needed, Selly wanted to take one last stroll as the marsh cat, just in case that alternate form would be forever lost to her.
Jadren had to go with her, of course, and they walked together out of the Convocation Academy buildings, through the warm spring afternoon, to a deeper copse of trees bordering the parklike grounds.
They passed groups of students, some talking and laughing, others silently studying texts.
Jadren swung their joined hands. “Do you ever think about what it would have been like to attend Convocation Academy?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted, “but I’m not sure I’d have been happy here. Even without the magic toxicity and the crazy, I really loved running wild in Meresin. I don’t think I would have liked being cooped up in classrooms and dorms.”
He smiled wistfully. “That sounds very you.”
“What about you?” She swept a hand at the stately campus. “Can you see yourself here as Jadren El-Adrel, student wizard and haughty scion of a powerful high house?”
He snorted in derision. “I’d have been such an asshole. Yes, I can see it. I used to think that if I obeyed my mother, complied with her demands and assisted willingly with her experiments, that she’d eventually let me come here. She used to dangle that as a reward, you know.”
Selly hadn’t known, but she wasn’t surprised.
“Of course, that was before I knew she’d concealed my very existence outside the house,” he continued in that breezy tone that meant he concealed pain. “I think it all worked out for the best, for both of us. We learned our own lessons, the way we needed to.”
She nodded. “True.” And that shared experience—or non-experience—had been one of the factors that bound them together.
She didn’t say so, but that was her other reason that she didn’t care that she hadn’t attended Convocation Academy.
She regretted nothing about the path that had brought her to Jadren.
It pained her that she was causing him so much distress with this decision.
He was carefully concealing it under his usual insouciance, but she knew him well.
They stopped in a clearing, well out of sight.
Not that academy students weren’t familiar with familiars taking alternate form, but this moment felt private to her.
Possibly the last time she would feel Jadren’s well-oiled magic clicking inside to open the door for her to become the cat.
Very likely their last moments alone together if things didn’t go well.
Despite her confidence, Selly understood the risks. She faced Jadren, searching for words.
“Jadren, I—”
He laid a finger over her lips, stopping her. “I love you, too,” he said. “It’s all right, crazy girl. I know you need to do this.” He sighed. “And I think you’re right about the house’s message. I just have to trust in that, and in you, and you know…”
She smiled with sad affection. “Trust isn’t easy for you.”
“No, but I’m working on it.” He cupped her cheek. “I have the best teacher.”
Her eyes filled with tears at the emotion. Jadren was so rarely sentimental.
“I’ll miss your lovely amber eyes if you become a wizard,” he whispered, “but I want this for you. For us. With all my heart.”
“Thank you,” she said, just as quietly.
“Now go for your romp, kitty cat.” Brushing a kiss over her lips, all the sweeter for its whisper thin contact, he wound his clicking magic into her and her body changed. She became the big black cat.
Hopefully not for the very last time.