Nic gave him a long look, fire sparking in her gaze. “You’ve been through a great deal, between worrying to death about me and now worrying about Selly, so I’m going to very gently remind you that I know a great deal more about being a familiar than you do, along with what it’s like to feel helpless against your fate. So don’t you take that tone with me, Gabriel Phel, or I will make you sorry.”
His lips twitched despite himself. “If that was a gentle reminder, I’d hate to see the harsh one.”
She sniffed, lifting her nose regally. “Keep that in mind.” Then she relented and laid her palms on his chest, gazing up at him with concern. “Now, why don’t you tell me what your stalking about the lake and scowling has to do with finding Selly? Maybe I can help problem-solve.”
He laid his hands over hers, immensely grateful for her presence in his life, even when she was chiding him for his misguided ways. Perhaps more so for that. Since he’d become a fearsome wizard, few people dared to correct him in any way. “There isn’t really a problem to solve. I was just fuming at my Phel ancestors for sinking the arcanium under the lake. Why can’t it be atop a tower like other self-respecting Convocation houses?”
Eyes dancing with amusement, she dug her nails into his chest, very lightly, just enough to tease. “I suspect contrary behavior runs in the family.”
“That was my thought, too.”
“But why is this a problem? Under a lake or atop a tower, an arcanium is an arcanium. Location is irrelevant. What matters is the power of the wizard using it and the ancestral magic embedded within. Your arcanium is the best I’ve heard of—even given the propensity of wizards to oversell their arcaniums and present them as bigger and better than any other wizard’s,” she added impishly.
“Our arcanium,” he corrected, “and yes, I know it’s a good one. It’s only a problem is that if it were higher in the sky, I could use it to cast about with wizardry and try to locate Selly. And Jadren.”
A line folded between her elegant brows. “I may regret asking this question, but why do you need to be up in the sky to do that?”
“It’s how I reached you with my magic when you were trapped inside House Sammael,” he explained. “From the overlook across the valley, I could see the tower and extend my magic to it. Jadren said there was no way I could affect anything magically from that distance, but I could, and I did.” His finish was perhaps a bit more emphatic, and vindictive, than called for.
“Yes, my only love,” she purred, petting him with soothing strokes. “You did what most wizards deem impossible because they lack both your power and your iconoclastic innovation with wizardry. Jadren was very wrong to doubt you.”
He narrowed his eyes at her oh-so-bland expression and sweetly lilting tone. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Never,” she promised, fluttering her lavish black lashes, then giggled. “Your face right now… All right, all right, I’m maybe teasing you a little. But I’m only needling you because you are so very powerful, and innovative with it, that you accomplished this incredible feat of magic to rescue me, then limit yourself with something as trivial as physical location.”
“You’re saying it doesn’t matter where the arcanium is.”
“I’m saying it doesn’t matter where the arcanium is,” she confirmed soberly, with the barest hint of humor. “You don’t have to be able to physically see, Gabriel.” She tapped his forehead between his brows. “Use your wizard senses. Those are not limited by your physical eyesight.”
“But I want to use the amplification of the arcanium. My magic alone isn’t enough to reach to where Selly is. I’ve tried.”
“Oh?” she asked lightly, not fooling him for a moment as he’d learned to recognize that dangerous edge to her voice, even in a monosyllable. “When did you try this? Because I know I wasn’t there.”
“Last night,” he admitted, telling himself he had nothing to feel bad about, “and again this morning. While you were sleeping.”
“And why,” she continued in a harder voice, “did you not ask for my assistance?”
“Because,” he returned in the same tone, hopefully even harder, “you’re still recovering from your ordeal. I have no intention of draining your magic even further, possibly endangering your health when I can—”
“When you can struggle to accomplish a critical task without me?” she demanded, yanking her hands away and fulminating with fiery annoyance. “I am not fragile, either, Wizard Phel! You retrieved your familiar from any enemy high house because you need me, not to—”
He seized her by the arms. “I rescued my wife,” he snarled, “my lover, and the person in whom my heart resides entirely. I did not risk my family, friends, and myself because you’re a valuable tool. And I have no intention of jeopardizing your health and recovery now, especially when I know I’m overthinking this and that you are confident Selly will make it home safely. How could I ask you to assist with that?”
“You ask because it’s important to you, and what is important to you is important to me.” She wiggled out of his grip and framed his face in her hands. “Not because I’m duty-bound as your familiar—though, let’s be honest between ourselves, that duty is very important to me—but because I love you and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
“That’s what frightens me.”
“Always afraid I won’t tell you no if I need to.”
“Our bonding may be non-standard, but I’m very aware of how it, and your training by the Convocation incline you to… accommodate me, shall we say.”
“Weasel wording worthy of the finest politician,” she replied with a rueful smile, then she searched his face, lowering her hands to take his, squeezing them. “Is that why you’re most worried about Selly—you fear that her familiar nature will make her subject to Jadren’s commands, that he might even bond her?”
She saw through him all too well. “Am I wrong?” he asked, rather expecting her to reject the possibility out of hand, but she pursed her lips thoughtfully.
“You understand more about Convocation wizards than you once did,” she allowed. “And normally I’d agree that this is a reasonable fear, even a foregone conclusion. Letting a powerful, unbonded familiar go roaming about with a wizard from an ambitious high house, one who has no familiar for no apparent good reason, is just asking for a hostile bonding.” Her frown deepened. “Or there’s always the chance that someone else could come across them and steal her. Sammael and Elal minions are swarming the region, and we certainly know that Sammael at least won’t scruple about the ethics.”
His hopes—never very high—sank at her frank assessment. “I never should have let her stay with him.”
