“What was that?” Selly asked.
He turned a furious glower on her. “What part of ‘be quiet’ do you not understand?”
“I understand you don’t have a muzzle,” she answered sweetly, baring her teeth.
“I’ll make one,” he snapped, thumping his free hand against his chest, then pointing to the array of tool-elements he carried. “El-Adrel wizard, remember? We create enchanted artifacts. I can work up a muzzle that would stop you from speaking another word.”
“Seems like all I’d have to do is keep talking while you try to conjure it up and you’ll never get anywhere,” she replied, adding a sly wink.
Oh, she did not just say that. The old frustration welled up in him, all the methods his maman had enlisted to break his concentration, all supposedly to train him to be the very best and all unbearable to recall. “Seliah,” he said, setting his teeth and speaking through them, “if you want to wake up in the morning without a hunter’s collar throttling you as they drag you off to Sammael, would you pretty please, with cinnamon sugar and candied cherries on top, be silent?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it abruptly, gesturing at him to proceed. Finally. Taking several deep breaths, he reached again for the meditative state he could achieve reasonably well. Then, bracing himself for the sharp, fresh flavor of her, he drew on Seliah’s magic. It flowed into him with unimpeded force, unrefined, uncontrolled, like a mountain spring. It made his teeth ache with its potency—and he nearly fumbled his control in the face of the renewed vigor of it.
If drinking of Nic’s magic had been like gulping an entire bottle of potent wine, Seliah’s unfettered magic reminded him of being drowned in a lake of snowmelt while shards of silver pierced his limbs. Not that he’d ever experienced anything like that, but surely this was how it would feel. He also had frustratingly little experience working with such a powerful familiar. Now that she was getting better at not holding back, the magic flowed over him like an icy tidal wave. He grappled. Strained to shape and funnel it. Lost his hold.
Breaking his grip on her magic and on her hand, he gasped for breath as if he truly had been drowning. Dizzy with it, he bent and braced his hands on his knees, head swimming.
“Will you bite my head off if I ask if you’re all right?” Seliah spoke very quietly, as if low volume would’ve made a difference, had he still been trying to concentrate.
“I’m fine,” he bit out, making up in confidence what he lacked in believability. “Your magic is like standing under a waterfall and trying to take a sip by tipping back my head and opening my mouth.”
“When we fought the hunters earlier, you said I was tense and trying to wring magic out of me was like sucking on a dried lemon rind.”
Forcing himself upright, he gave her a weary look. “You do memorize everything I say. It would be touching if it weren’t so bloody aggravating.”
“I have a good memory,” she replied stiffly, a high flush on her cheekbones visible even in the thickening dusk. “And I’m invested in learning this stuff, so I do pay attention to what you tell me in the hopes that it will be useful information.”
“Well, there’s your first mistake,” he commented wryly. “I’m not known for being useful in any way, shape, or form.”
“As you say.” She was still stiff. Embarrassed? He could never quite predict which of her several distinct personalities would emerge at any given time.
“I apologize,” he said on a sigh. “None of this is your fault. You’re completely untrained. Worse than that, you know just enough to be dangerous. And I’m not experienced at working with familiars, so I’m not giving you good information.”
“Oh.” She unbent enough to offer a small smile. “I am trying to get better.”
He recognized that in her, the wounded pride at not being good at something, even though she was diligently applying herself. “Yes, well, these things are complicated by the nature of magic—particularly yours, it appears—in that it’s not a static thing. You’re still generating magic at a crazy rate, so what you had earlier today is nothing compared to what’s built up since. Clearly you need to be tapped regularly.”
Her lips twitched, lifting into a sensual half-smile that grabbed him by the groin. “Why does that sound dirty?” she purred, amber eyes lambent with a hint of silver moon magic.
Manfully, he cleared his throat and looked away from her. “You don’t talk like a twenty-four year old virgin,” he muttered, instructing himself to get a grip.
“Because I’m not. Are you actually blushing, Wizard El-Adrel?” she asked with a widening smile.
Curse his transparent complexion, he probably was. He’d been keeping his prurient thoughts off of the alluring Seliah by reminding himself that she was a child in a woman’s body. How had she managed to have sex when she’d begun to lose her wits at adolescence? Then a terrible thought occurred to him, rage billowing in a blaze. “Who took advantage of you?” he demanded.
Seliah blinked, actually backing up a step at his forcefulness. “What? Nobody.”
He wasn’t buying that innocent act. Stabbing a finger in her face, he advanced on her. “You started losing your mind when you began budding breasts, so don’t tell me you weren’t abused. Either someone had you when you were little more than a child, unable to consent, or they had you when you were insane from magic stagnation, equally unable to consent. Now, tell me who it was.”
She punched her fists to her hips, lifting her pointed chin, and refusing to back down further. She looked like a fey creature swathed in shadows, far too fragile for the cruelty of the world they lived in. His furious advance had brought him way too close to her. “What will you do—hunt them down and kill them for me?”
“If necessary,” he snarled. “I may not be much of a wizard, but I can kill a commoner, which is who it had to be, as there wasn’t anyone else in Meresin before the rest of us arrived.” Then an even more horrible thought occurred to him. “Unless it was your brother.”
“What?” she gasped, an expression of shocked horror contorting her face, too vivid to be a pretense. Something vicious and murderous in him relaxed slightly. Phel would be difficult to kill, but Jadren would’ve found a way. “Gabriel would never!” Seliah continued, unnecessarily.
He waved that off, putting distance between them. “I see by your reaction that’s true.”
“But how could you even think it? My own brother!”
