His magic spoked out, forming a wheel, then a column, his wards shimmering into invisible place. With quick fingers, he flicked touched the straps on each of her shoulders, the silky-thin fabric falling away to pool around her kneeling form, cool air and sunlight touching her naked body. He’d done it out of order, she realized, waiting until she knelt to remove the robe, putting her slightly less on display.
Jadren also looked only into her eyes. His magic coiled around her, metallic and resilient, like a spring, the sense of cogs and wheels clicking around and around. “Repeat after me,” he told her, as serious and intent as she’d ever seen him. “Take my power with the severing of my hair, wizard.”
“Take my power with the severing of my hair, wizard,” she repeated in a whisper, but that was apparently loud enough because he nodded encouragingly.
“So that I may be bound to you while you live.”
“So that I may be…” She faltered, not able to say it. While he lived. Did his self-healing gift make him immortal? That would mean he’d live forever. Wildly she wondered if she was making the biggest mistake of her entire existence, one she might rue every moment of every day hereafter. Here she knelt, abasing herself, naked and at the mercy of her enemy, willingly handing him the keys to her very soul. Gazing up into those black eyes, full of remorseless determination, she reviewed what she knew of this man. A self-admitted liar, spy, cheat, and manipulator. This whole thing could be an elaborate ruse to trap her and she wouldn’t know.
Was she being fatally stupid? She wavered, unable to speak those final words that would seal her fate.
Jadren’s hand tightened in her hair, tipping her head back, face full of warning, adamant, a hint again of that wild emotion. There was no way out of this. “So that I may be bound to you while you live,” he repeated insistently, something in his manner, his magic, reminding her that he’d be bound to her, too. For better or worse, their fates would be tied together.
“So that I may be bound to you while you live,” she said, flinging the challenge back at him, meeting his magic with hers, sealing the connection that would bind him to her as surely as he meant to bind her.
Something flickered in his wizard-black eyes, an acknowledgment, maybe a glint of approval. Challenge accepted. He moved swiftly, slipping a blade she hadn’t seen him draw beneath the rope of her hair and slicing up in one clean stroke. His magic pierced her, a penetration almost sexual, an incantation clicking into place and sending ripples of reaction through her.
With the releasing of her hair, Jadren no longer held her in place—but his gaze still did. Standing over her, blade in one hand, the long tail of her hair in the other, he stared down at her with a fierce expression, his magic hooked deeply into the very core of her being.
Then he tucked her severed hair through his belt, sheathed the blade, and crouched, drawing the robe back up and fastening it over her shoulders. She was so shaken that she’d forgotten her nakedness. Jadren slipped a hand behind her neck, the grip steadying. “Are you all right?” he asked softly, seeming as if he might actually care.
“I… don’t know,” she answered faintly.
“Just a bit more. You’re almost there. Remember: mouth shut, eyes open. Follow my lead.” He stood, drawing her to her feet and dropping the wards, keeping a loose grip on her wrist as he drew her against his side. “Lady El-Adrel,” he said, adding a formal bow, “may I present Seliah El-Adrel, the newest familiar of your House.”
Seliah El-Adrel. Something deep inside wrenched apart, bleeding tears and laughter. Nothing would ever be the same again. It had been her wedding day after all.
~ 17 ~
Jadren faced his mother, braced and wary for her next move, aware of Seliah swaying on her feet beside him. She’d been dazed by the bonding, her amber eyes huge in her drawn face, pupils bare pinpricks, her emotional and mental state uncertain. He’d had no idea if the newly embedded enchantment that enacted the bonding from the familiar’s side would work. The in-house Haniel wizard had put Seliah unconscious while she was in the testing chair, installing the bonding spell and placing the geas on Jadren that would prevent him from speaking about it.
It just figured that when he really wanted to explain something secret to Seliah, he literally couldn’t. He kept a light grip on her, less than because he feared she might bolt, than to be ready to catch her should she faint.
“I’ll be the judge of whether the familiar is truly bonded to my house,” Lady El-Adrel said, summoning that same Hanneil wizard from the crowd of observers with a flick of her fingers. The older man stepped forward, carrying the tabernacle containing the oracle head that was the tool of his trade. Jadren’s maman might like using her homemade testing equipment to satisfy her own curiosity, but when it came to official House business, she always employed Convocation methods. She was a stickler for documentation when it suited her purposes. Jadren had studied wizards she’d assembled for this little ceremony—and public show of her munificence in granting her black-sheep son a powerful familiar, even if said familiar was of dubious provenance—and noted that they were all loyal to her. No one would be reporting Seliah’s questionable status back to Convocation Center, but there would be a record of her bonding to House El-Adrel, should a legal challenge arise.
The Hanneil wizard flicked open the tabernacle doors, the mummified head within opening its lifeless eyes. This specimen was less decorated than most, but the sight of one was always a shock. Essentially a bodiless head ensconced in their protective tabernacles, the oracle heads weren’t exactly alive, but they weren’t dead either. No one knew what proprietary magic House Hanneil employed to animate the heads—rumored to be those of former wizards—but the oracles were never wrong, and therefore much in demand. They were the last word in all Convocation legal wrangles.
“Drop your wards, if you will, Wizard Jadren,” the Hanneil wizard requested with polite formality.
Chagrined that he’d forgotten his wards were still in place—no doubt out of a subconscious desire to protect them both—Jadren did so, feeling as naked as Seliah had been. He didn’t know what he’d do if the oracle head delivered a negative verdict. If he had Gabriel Phel’s power, he’d use that to blast their way out of this elaborate trap. But he’d tried that before, failed dramatically, and suffered consequences that still gave him nightmares.
Having awakened the oracle head, the Hanneil wizard made a show of asking the formal question, and the powerful thread of the thing’s psychic magic lashed out and sank its claws into Seliah and him with irresistible might. It didn’t hurt so much as it felt simply wrong. Seliah whimpered and Jadren slid his hand down her wrist to interlace his fingers with hers.
Hold on, sweetheart, he thought at her—she wouldn’t be able to hear his thoughts, but the new bond between them might allow her to sense his intention—just a bit longer and then we can be alone.
And then what? the snarling, sardonic part of him wondered.
He didn’t know. He’d heard stories, of course, of wizards celebrating the bonding of their new familiar by immediately using them in some complex incantation that had escaped their abilities before that day. Often it involved sex magic, or pain, or both, none of which he intended to subject Seliah to, ever. In fact, he didn’t intend to employ Seliah’s magic for anything beyond the expedient. He had no intention of becoming his mother, which meant confining himself to making smallish artifacts and keeping his own wretched skin intact.
Seliah tugged at his hand, her self-control slipping as the wild urge to flee palpably surged within her. He’d always empathized with her that way, sharing a profound understanding of feeling trapped and vulnerable to the predator’s tooth that lashed at the inside of your skin. As with facing many predators, however, running didn’t work. It only excited them and incited them to give chase. As wrong as it felt in the moment, freezing, hunkering, down, pretending to be innocuous—the magical equivalent of a possum playing dead—that was the surest way to surviving.
Then, if the predator attacked anyway, there was still the option to run.
The oracle withdrew its psychic tentacles and Seliah relaxed slightly, no longer quite so tensed to fling herself at the nearest escape route.
“Yes,” the oracle said, a terse answer to the question of whether he’d properly bonded Seliah. Relief washed through him with the intensity of a Meresin downpour. His mother frowned in disappointment, naturally, but her brow quickly cleared—for show and because she no doubt realized the opportunities now open to her.
“Welcome to House El-Adrel, Familiar Seliah,” she intoned with a patently fake smile, one that brightened with malicious glee when she turned it on Jadren, her gaze going to their joined hands. “We’ll retire to the laboratories now.”
