Lady El-Adrel gave her a sly look. “Not that you’ll be reporting this to anyone, even if you had contacts in the Convocation, but this is perfectly legal. It uses no psychic magic at all. Instead the mechanism—solidly within El-Adrel purview—employs gauges designed to detect magic through its physical effect on the smallest energies in the world around us. You’ll find it’s far more accurate than the Hanneil method. Much more scientific than those archaic mummified heads. So gauche. You’ve never been tested at all?”
“No, Lady El-Adrel,” Selly answered humbly. She needed the woman to underestimate her, to remain close to that tray. Jadren gave Selly a considering look, not fooled at all. Hopefully he wouldn’t guess what she planned.
“Excellent. I do have an oracle head, as an experimental control.” Lady El-Adrel patted the seat of the chair. “Upsy daisy.”
Jadren held onto her a moment too long—afraid for her or afraid of what she might do?—but released her wrist as she moved obediently to the chair of horrors. Selly pretended to hesitation, slowly hitching herself onto the seat, and Lady El-Adrel impatiently pulled at her arm, ready to secure it with the strap closest to her. Quick as a snake, Selly twisted the grip, seizing the woman’s hand in return, snapping up a sharp implement from the tray, and yanking Jadren’s mother down at the same time that Selly stabbed upward, slicing for the wizard’s throat.
She drew blood—and a shocked shriek—viciously pleased with her success.
Then needle-thin darts flew at her, burrowing into Selly’s flesh with hot spurts of agony. Time seemed to slow, each instant delineated with the light of desperation. It felt impossible to persevere under that assault, but this was an all or nothing moment. She wouldn’t get a second chance. She hung onto Lady El-Adrel’s thrashing arm with the tenacity of a marsh leech, knowing that she needed to stay close if she wanted to kill the wizard. She twisted the implement, desperate to widen the wound, but her muscles responded sluggishly. More missiles flew at her.
“Fyrdo!” the woman shouted, throwing out her other arm, and he leapt to assist, holding out a hand as he crossed the small space. Selly knew what that meant. In a moment, Lady El-Adrel would have the full power-boost of her bonded familiar. The darts still flew, making squeaking noises as they screwed themselves into her exposed skin and even through the thin material of her gown. Blood made Selly’s grip on the sharp tool slip. Lady El-Adrel turned her head. Fyrdo closed the distance, all moving with excruciating slowness.
Jadren moved also, colliding with his father and sending the older man flying into the wall. He seized Selly, wrenching her away from his mother, and Selly screamed in inarticulate fury, turning the implement on him. He fought her with grim determination, wizard-black eyes blazing like a lightning-stabbed night sky. She sliced at him with all the wildness in her, catching him across the hand as he reached to take the blade from her. He howled in pain, but followed her slashing strike to grab her by the fist clenched around the haft. “Stop!” he shouted in her face, pushing her up against the wall, pinning the hand with the weapon above her head.
“I’ll kill you!” she screamed, thrashing. “I’ll kill you all, even if I die trying!”
~ 13 ~
How did things go so sideways so fast?
Because Seliah is involved, Jadren answered himself grimly. She was like an unstable enchantment: as likely to turn on its wizard as what it was pointed at. He should’ve known she’d blow rather endure even the minor trial of his mother’s testing. Not that he blamed Seliah for panicking, but he’d rather hoped this delaying tactic would buy him more time to formulate a plan to get them out of there.
Now his mother was bleeding from a gash to her throat while her missiles screwed their way into Seliah’s flesh. Unless his mother called them off, the vicious little attackers would tunnel all the way to Seliah’s vital organs, inevitably killing her. And with Seliah so obviously frenzied, completely out of control, there was no way his mother would relent. Not now.
Things had been going reasonably well, too. He should’ve known Seliah would lose her shit at the sight of the labs. It didn’t help that his own mental state had frayed under the onslaught of memories he’d buried for good reason. In another moment, his mother would connect with her familiar and then she’d—
“Move aside, Jadren,” his mother ordered. Magic blazed past and through him, and Seliah convulsed, screaming as the darts accelerated, changing course to target those vital organs as his mother’s augmented power took hold and directed them.
Moving aside was the last thing he was going to do. Instead he flattened himself over Seliah, pinning her to contain her thrashing—fuck, but that little blade had laid open his hand—and shield as much of her as possible. “I’ve got her!” he snarled at his mother. “Pull back.”
“Not a chance,” she snarled, sending her mechanical darts drilling into Jadren’s back, too.
“No, Katica!” Fyrdo yelled. “Don’t hurt our boy!”
“Give me your hand, familiar,” the wizard woman demanded, harsh and astonished that Jadren’s father had apparently wrenched himself away.
The darts slowed their spinning, and Jadren took advantage of his mother’s distraction to slam Seliah’s hand hard against the wall. He hated that it hurt her, but there was no reasoning with her in this state, even if he’d had time. Her nerveless hand dropped the implement, even as she howled in aggrieved betrayal. He felt as if he’d punched himself in the heart.
“Not until you promise not to hurt Jadren,” his father pleaded, followed by the sound of scuffling.
Jadren focused on Seliah. Holding on, trying to still her thrashing, he spoke into her ear, telling her to calm, that he had her, that it would be all right, to trust him—and her teeth sank into his ear, tearing a chunk out.
“You dare defy me?” Lady El-Adrel growled, the anger in her voice making Jadren shake inside with old terrors. “I’ll make you regret this, Fyrdo.”
“Not defiance, no,” his father insisted. “Never that, my lady, my love, my wizard—only caution! Think of all you’ve invested in Jadren. To lose him forever over an accident—”
“An accident? That feral creature tried to kill me!”
“She’s crazed. We knew that. Out of her mind from magic stagnation. But look! Jadren has her under control now. He can contain her, as he promised.”
That was overstating things by quite a bit, but Jadren attempted to look as if he had Seliah contained, never mind the hot blood running down his neck from his ear. In truth, she’d lost some of her fight, collapsing into broken-hearted sobbing, reminding him brutally of how she’d been before they’d healed her. “I trusted you,” she whimpered, breaking his heart.
Hopefully she hadn’t totally reverted, hadn’t lost the tenuous grip on sanity she’d achieved with such determination. Even if she had, Jadren would take responsibility for her. He owed her that much. Turning to look at his parents—keeping the copiously bleeding, throbbing ear carefully to the wall—he grinned over his shoulder. “Did we say spirited, or what?”
His mother looked so flat-footed, so completely incredulous that, under any other circumstances, he’d have relished the triumph. It was nearly impossible to take the formidable and jaded Lady El-Adrel by surprise. “You’re crazed,” she pronounced in a faint tone. “As out of your mind as she is.”
“A perfect pairing,” he replied, making it sound like he agreed and it was a good thing. At this point he’d do anything to save Seliah from being bonded to one of his siblings. Seliah was safe from being bonded to him. His mother would never allow that; it would give him far too much power, perhaps the ability to slip her hold forever. She was only stringing Jadren along to get what she wanted. And he was playing the delay game. Appear to cooperate just long enough to get them out of there.
