Bright Familiar by Jeffe Kennedy
~ 10 ~
It was even stranger than he’d anticipated, seeing Nic in his parents’ small cottage where he’d grown up expecting nothing more than to become a farmer someday, to live a similarly humble life. The boy he’d been could never have guessed that someday his wife, a glamorous, high-born noblewoman, boldly beautiful and shimmering with rich magic, would be sitting at the plain wooden table where they took their meals.
And yet, oddly enough, Nic fit right in. She’d brought her lists and had them on the table in the cleared corner between her place and his mom’s. The both of them had their heads together over it, discussing guest lists and flowers, the merits of a buffet versus having meals served, as if Nic were any Meresin girl he’d found to marry.
The sweet young woman who grows oranges and feeds the geese, who’d be your loving wife and companion in all things. Who would bed you with sweet affection and bear you children that you could raise together, until they gave you apple-cheeked grandchildren to dandle on your knee. Someone who would never even think of wanting to kneel for you, who wouldn’t crave the silver chains of your arcanium.Gabriel flushed at the echo of Nic’s scathing words—and at the equally searing memory of her mouth on him, milking him with exquisite erotic pleasure. Not something he wanted in his mind at his parents’ table.
“This rain doesn’t bode well for the levee,” his father observed, and Gabriel gratefully put his mind on that. The fact that he’d rather think about the prospect of additional flooding ruining the orchards they’d been so carefully nurturing than about the puzzle that was his wife spoke volumes.
“Sorry we didn’t make it out there today.” Gabriel shook his head. He’d frankly forgotten about it. After he and Nic finally ate, quite late in the day, they’d had to deal with a second round of messages in response to the flurry they’d sent that morning. Then they’d argued, again, about what to do about the house. He hadn’t realized that so many of the wizards she’d arranged for would be arriving so soon, and now they had no suitable housing for them. By that point, they’d had to saddle the horses to ride over to his parents’ for dinner. Farmer’s hours, he’d explained to a puzzled Nic, and she’d cheerfully noted that would leave them plenty of time later in the evening. She had very carefully—and very obviously—omitted what she had in mind, but he knew she thought they should visit the arcanium to build power for another try at raising the arcade and possibly the north wing.
She also very carefully hadn’t said anything about the fact that the hunters had caught him flat heeled and nearly out of magic. If he hadn’t been able to break that stasis spell and fight manually, things could’ve gone very differently.
He didn’t want to think about any of it.
“Eh,” his father grunted. “The levee, she’ll hold or she won’t. You can’t be everywhere.”
“You’re a good boy,” Narlis said, beaming at him as she handed him a basket of rolls, freshly baked and still warm from the oven. When he took the basket from her, she patted his cheek, then turned back to the baking counter. Taking a roll, he buttered it and bit in, moaning at the way the soft bread melted in his mouth. He had to concede that Nic had been right, yet again, about the merits of them going to the hot food. She had a gift for hedonism that he should stop resisting, as he always ended up enjoying the results of her arrangements.
“Narlis is such a help,” his mother said, “and has a gift for baking. Perhaps you’d like to have her help in the kitchen at the manse?”
Gabriel and Nic exchanged a glance. “It would be best,” Nic said, “to keep her out of sight for a while. She’s safer here.”
“Safe from what?” his mother asked with a perplexed frown. “Out of sight from whom?”
“You never know,” Nic replied breezily, sliding him a look. Yeah, it was a tangled web of lies and the omission of truths. “And Narlis is still rebuilding her health. What do you think about flowers? If we have the wedding in midsummer, won’t they all wilt?”
Daisy launched into an enthusiastic discussion of the merits of various flowers, thoroughly distracted. Gabriel smiled at Nic in admiration, though she ignored him.
“Heard you raised the old arcade,” his father said.
“Did you also hear that it sank again?” Gabriel asked, stabbing a piece of meat. Nic glanced up, shooting him an inscrutable green glance before replying to something his mother said.
“I did, as a matter of fact.” His father laughed drily. “Perhaps the whole thing is best left sunk,” his father continued, shaking his head. “There’s a reason she sank in the first place, after all.”
“Because there were no longer any wizards in the family to maintain it,” Nic put in, proving she’d been listening closely even while carrying on another conversation. She took the buttered roll Gabriel handed her, giving him a warm smile in exchange, and he set to buttering another for himself. “The physical aspect of House Phel is important symbolically as a representation of the metaphorical reincarnation of House Phel,” she explained, looking seriously from Daisy to GF. “I absolutely support Gabriel’s decision to restore the manse. He’s a powerful enough wizard to do it—you should be immensely proud of him—and this project will announce to the Convocation that Lord Phel is a wizard to be reckoned with.”
Gabriel wrestled with the twin burns of pride at his parents’ pleased expressions and chagrin at the lie. He’d failed embarrassingly and utterly that day, something that Nic continued to blithely ignore.
“I see the symbolism, dear,” Daisy said thoughtfully, “but who in the Convocation will ever know? It’s not as if any of them visit Meresin.”
“They will when we have the wedding at House Phel,” Nic assured her with sunny optimism. Her bland glance to him was the only warning he got. “And we’ll have visitors starting very soon.”
“We will?” Daisy looked to him, and Nic raised a questioning brow, a hint of knowing accusation in her eyes.
He cleared his throat. “We’re bringing people in. Wizards specializing in other kinds of magic, and also in water magic, to supplement what Nic and I can do. It will help me with the not being able to be everywhere at once,” he commented to his father, who nodded judiciously.
“What other kinds of magic?” his mother wanted to know. “And when are they arriving? You didn’t tell me about this, Gabriel.”
Nic watched him, eyes jewellike and amused at his predicament. He didn’t know when, exactly, he was to have filled in his parents on their flood of plans. “The first arrives tomorrow,” he admitted.
“Tomorrow?” his mother echoed, aghast, looking to Nic for corroboration. “Wherever will we put him?”
“They could be a woman,” Nic corrected gently, patting Daisy’s hand. “A House Refoel wizard, so you’ll be very glad to have them here, and we’ll figure something out for accommodations. We made it clear that we’re in a rebuilding phase, and they will have volunteered for the position.”
“Refoel,” GF echoed. “I know that’s a High House, but what’s the significance? What magic can this wizard do that my son can’t?” He laid a proud hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “As you say yourself, Gabriel is a powerful wizard. He can do anything he sets his mind to.”
The smile Nic gave him was smug, and he knew exactly what she was thinking. That is why you fail. Charming. “Healing,” Nic explained to them. “House Refoel specializes in healing, which I think will be most welcome here.”
Daisy clasped her hands together, awarding Gabriel with a hopeful smile. “There is healing magic? And we’ll have someone right here to do it! This is wonderful news, Gabriel. Thank you!”
“Nic gets the credit for thinking of it, and for setting up the exchange,” Gabriel told her. “We’ll have other help, too, to fix up the manse. Wizards who can make furniture and put in glass, and so forth. If we can lift it out of the water.”
“Which we can,” Nic said firmly.
“Not by tomorrow,” he cautioned the three looking at him expectantly.
“I disagree,” Nic countered.
“Disagree all you like,” Gabriel said with measured patience, “but even you can’t bend reality to your expectations.”
She fluttered her lashes. “Want to place a bet on that?”
“You two,” Daisy said on a laugh. “I’m so happy yours is a love match. It doesn’t always happen under circumstances like yours.”
“They’re clearly two peas in a pod,” GF agreed. “What’s for dessert, Narlis sweetie? Let’s have some and send these lovebirds on their way.”
Narlis came over with a glistening strawberry pie and set it in front of Gabriel, to his father’s comical dismay. “You’re a good boy,” Narlis told him, and kissed him on the forehead.
“Narlis’s strawberry pieis now my favorite thing in the entire world,” Nic announced as she mounted Salve. “The entire meal was delicious, in fact.”
The pie had been especially good, redolent of spring sunshine and sweet cream, the pastry flaky with butter. “Mom was very flattered that you were so complimentary.”
“I wish she wouldn’t worry so much about me being a fine lady, blah, blah, blah,” Nic said, drawing up the hood of her cloak against the persistent drizzle. “Her food and the other meals people have been sending over are as good as anything ever served at House Elal.”
“I wonder if we could get the recipe for that gravy we had in Ophiel?” Gabriel asked.
Nic grinned at him. “And the garlic-infused mashed potatoes. We need those recipes. I’m going to investigate.”
“I wasn’t serious,” he protested, realizing belatedly that he needed to be careful about expressing desires of any kind. Between her magically induced desire to please him and her innate determination, she took his least yen as a directive to make it happen.
“I am,” she replied, undaunted. “House Phel will serve delicious food if I have anything to say about it, which I do. Why not collect the best recipes we encounter? There are a few I’d like to extract from Missus Ryma back in Wartson, too. I know a few magical conveniences that might tempt her into a trade, too. Hmm.”
“Perhaps we should concentrate on the tasks before us?” he suggested.
She sighed. “Are we going to argue about whether or not to try to lift the house out of the swamp again?”
“Well, no, because you took care of that—didn’t you?—by enlisting my parents to the cause.”
She shrugged, a dim figure in the rainy twilight. “That wasn’t my intent. They’re proud of you, Gabriel, and they deserve to be. And you deserve to feel good about your wizardry once in a while, instead of forever agonizing over it.”
“Ah.” Now her ulterior motives became clear. “All of this is by way of luring me back into the arcanium.”
She huffed a sound of exasperation. “It’s your arcanium! I shouldn’t need to lure you there. It’s just a tool, Gabriel. Nothing more or less. A tool is only what you make of it.”
There was a cold logic to that, he supposed. Though he wished on one level that he’d never insisted on finding the arcanium. Then it wouldn’t pose such a temptation, wouldn’t be filling his mind with alluring and perverse images of what could be. He couldn’t regret the result—he’d wanted to try a reciprocal bonding instead of making Nic into some kind of mindless and subservient tool in her own right. And that had worked, hadn’t it?
“We haven’t really talked more,” he said quietly, “about the reciprocal bonding and what it means for us.”
She didn’t look at him, the cowl of her hood creating a still and abstract profile. “We can’t know what it means—if anything—if we don’t work on magic together,” she finally replied.
“We worked together all day today,” he pointed out.
“Those are beginning steps. Unbonded wizards and familiars do much of the same at Convocation Academy. Part of the point of having a bonded relationship is taking advantage of that sexual give and take. You experienced that for yourself when we recharged this afternoon.”
When she had serviced him, teasing him and then driving him into erotic rapture with her mouth and hands, refusing any pleasure for herself. “Seems to me that was all me taking and you giving.” Just like with the magic. He really hated that those exchanges followed the same pattern.
“I was and am perfectly fine with that. I enjoyed what we did together.”
“But would you say so if you didn’t?” he pounced on that.
She took a beat too long to reply. “Yes.”
“No,” he said for her. “You wouldn’t, because in your twisted-up idea of what our relationship should be, you think you can’t refuse me.”
“Gabriel Phel,” she said tightly. “You may have noticed that I argue with you freely. Some might say constantly.”
There was that. “You won’t refuse me sexually. That’s not the same thing, and you know it.”
“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. Let’s confine this particular argument to the magic. Yes, I wanted your parents convinced about us raising the manse because I think it is the thing to do and I think we can do it. Most important, however, I strongly believe that if you experience for yourself the kind of power we can brew between us, and if you can see with your own eyes that we can use it to raise and stabilize the entire manse, then you will gain the confidence and ability you will absolutely need if it comes to war.”
While she caught her breath, he mulled her points. “You truly believe it could get that extreme.”
“Wasn’t today enough to convince you?”
“Those hunters were from before,” he replied obstinately. “Remnants of the previous conflict.”
She shook her head, slowly and firmly. “We’re already at cross-purposes with the Convocation. Part of that’s my fault. Some of it comes from this historic conflict that brought down House Phel to begin with.”
“Regardless of fault or history, we’re in this together,” he affirmed.
She turned her head and grinned at him, teeth a white gleam in the shadows. “Yes, we are. If worse comes to worst, I want us to be the most effective team possible. And until you unbend enough to truly embrace what you are and what I am—how we can be together—then we’re hobbled. Have you considered that, if I were able to take my alternate form, I could’ve escaped the hunters today?”
That hadn’t occurred to him. “You don’t know what your alternate form is.”
“Maybe I’m a tiger.” She bared her teeth in a fierce growl. “Then I could slice and dice those hunters myself.”
“Maybe you’re a bunny rabbit,” he countered to tease her, but the image of her as a defenseless, small bunny at the hunters’ mercy made his blood run cold.
“You could not be more wrong,” Nic argued, oblivious to his fear. “I know in my heart of hearts that my alternate form is something ferocious and terrifying to behold.”
“That would certainly match your personality,” he noted drily.
“Ha ha. My point is, unless we practice together, you will never be able to trigger my alternate form. That’s something I want, Gabriel.”
And it would be wrong of him to deny her that. He sighed internally. “Does it have to be via the arcanium?”
“Not necessarily, but the arcanium amplifies and focuses your wizardry. It’s foolish to reject that tool.”
“It doesn’t seem all that useful if it only works when we’re inside it.”
“Aha! But that’s not the case. We haven’t yet awakened the arcanium and attuned it to your magic. Mine too, which should make you feel better. Once we have, you’ll be able to use its focusing power and stored magic from a distance.”
“How far?”
“We won’t know until we experiment. With your MP scores? I’m guessing quite a ways.”
That did sound useful. “How do we awaken and attune it?”
She raised her brows and cocked her head.
“I don’t understand why all of these techniques have to be sexually fueled,” he said with considerable frustration.
“I know you don’t. I didn’t before you bedded me, but now I suspect the Betrothal Trials test sexual compatibility beyond simple fertility.”
That was an uncomfortable thought. But he knew what she meant—he’d felt that sizzling, sensual connection between them from the moment he walked into her tower room. Maybe even before that, studying her miniature and recognizing something in her that was meant for him.
“I have a basis for comparison,” she continued. “You don’t because you haven’t worked with any familiar besides me.” She hesitated. “You won’t like this, but one solution would be for you to tap Seliah’s magic. Along with helping her, you’d learn to feel the difference.”
She was right: he didn’t like it. “I’m not doing that with my own sister.”
Nic blew out a breath, and he vividly picturing her dramatic eye roll. “I told you once before that it wouldn’t have to be sexual. Not in this case.”
“If that’s true, then the magic transference doesn’t have to be sexual between us.”
She growled in incoherent frustration. “You are the most stubborn wizard in existence.”
“No.” He set his teeth. “That would be you.”
“Wrong. I’m the most stubborn familiar in existence.”
He wasn’t going to gratify her by laughing, though it took considerable effort. “We’d have to catch Selly again to try that.”
“Or at least prevent her from immediately escaping when she turns up again,” Nic agreed ruefully. “I am sorry that I wasn’t prepared to prevent her from bolting.”
“I should’ve warned you. She’s slipped me more times than I’d like to admit.”
They’d reached the stables, and he dismounted to light a lantern. “I’ll take care of the horses if you want to go in,” he said. “The fires are laid and simply need lighting. The strikers are right there, too.”
“And then what shall we do?” she asked mildly, as if wondering if he’d like to play cards or simply have a glass wine by the fire.
He lifted the saddle off Vale’s high back, the reach and muscle needed for it giving his newly strained injuries a twinge. A good reminder there of how little time had truly passed since he’d found Nic in Wartson. They were still learning each other. Amazing, really, how much they did understand each other already. Most of their arguments stemmed from them not agreeing with what they saw in one another.
Sliding the saddle onto the stand, he studied it as if the worn leather might hold answers. Would he be giving in because he secretly wanted to be convinced to indulge in those darker desires? Either that or Nic had finally convinced him to at least try.
Perhaps both.
“I suppose your first choice would be for the two of us to visit the arcanium and practice building and transferring magic.”
“Yes,” she replied promptly. Her slim arms slid around his waist, and she nestled against his back, embracing him. “I wish you wouldn’t sound like it’s a death march through the marshes.”
He laid his hands over hers. “I worry about what else I’ll discover in myself.”
“Like discovering you could make a wall of water fall from the sky or that a nightmare manifested in reality by covering your bedroom floor in silver,” she murmured, cheek pressed between his shoulders.
He turned in her arms, tipping back the cowled hood so he could see her bright face and knowing eyes. “How did you know it was a nightmare?” He was sure he hadn’t told her that part. He hadn’t told anyone.
“The feeling in your magic when you spoke of it,” she answered somberly. “Your moon magic has a bright face and a dark one, like the moon itself. That dream was all dark side of the moon.”
“I know you laugh at me for it, but I am afraid,” he confessed. “That dark side frightens me.”
“I only tease you about your fears because that dark side doesn’t scare me,” she replied, the raw honesty clear in her shining eyes. “Does it help to know that?”
“I don’t know. I think that maybe you are so fearless that you aren’t afraid when you should be.”
“I was afraid today, when those hunters attacked.”
“Self-preservation.”
Her lush mouth tilted in a wry half smile. “I was afraid enough of you and what we might be together that I ran to another country, Gabriel.”
He brushed a loose curl off her forehead, then trailed the finger down her smooth cheek. “Fearlessly throwing yourself into a new life rather than chain yourself to a future you dreaded.”
Breathing a laugh, she shook her head, then leaned her cheek into his palm, eyes emerald in the low light, and very serious. “I trust you. I realize that my assurances are questionable, because yes, I would have submitted to anything my wizard required of me, regardless of who they were.”
“Even Sammael,” he said, the name burning his throat.
“I would have had to,” she replied. “I would’ve been compelled, with no choice in the matter. You have given me the choice, and I choose to give you this. Choose to give it to us both, because I want us to win. Because I want my alternate form.”
“Even knowing I could lock you into it without your will?”
“Even so, because I know you would never harm me, not even at your darkest.”
“We don’t know that,” he cautioned.
She snorted, a most unladylike scoffing snorfle. “We do know that,” she assured him. “I bet when you were all in a rage after our big fight last night, you were still feeling bad about breaking the dishes.”
He frowned at her. “They were expensive dishes, and we don’t have that many.”
Her face lit with her laughter, and she stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “See? I’m not at all worried about you breaking me.”
“Nic…” he groaned, untangling her from his arms.
“We’ll start slow,” she promised. “You’ll be in control, and you decide what we do.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best—”
She shook her head, a slow and emphatic side to side. “You control the magic, so that’s how it has to be. I’ll help you with the horses, and we’ll go in together. This will be fun.”
Aroused, more than a little terrified, and darkly excited, he resigned himself to facing his sinister self.
“Once we raisethe entire manse,” Nic commented, peering unhappily at the flooded tunnel, “we’re going to dry out this tunnel.”
“I offered to carry you,” he pointed out.
“And immediately noted that the water is only ankle deep,” she replied tartly. “As if you don’t know perfectly well that I am congenitally incapable of backing down from a challenge like that.”
He chuckled, no doubt as she intended, as she flashed him a sunny smile. “At least your boots were already wet?”
She waded through the shallow water, holding up the skirts of her gown and screwing up her face in disgust. “That is not the positive you’d think. When are you going to magically waterproof my boots?”
“You should add that to your lists. Then I’ll know when it appears on my schedule.”
“You laugh, but I’m going to do exactly that.” They’d reached the end of the round tunnel, the lantern giving off a meager circle of light. Gabriel stared at the pinch of the stones that finished the tunnel at an apparent dead end, Nic’s determined banter fading as the trepidation crawled along his nerves.
Shooting him a stern look, Nic held out a preemptory hand. “Open the door, Gabriel,” she said gently enough, but clearly unwilling to let him back out.
With a sigh, he took her hand, recognizing that it was indeed growing easier to accept taking her magic. Proving a point to himself, he only drew on a small amount, just enough to trip the ancient enchantment on the door, rewarded by Nic’s approving smile.
The first time they’d opened the arcanium, he’d had his eyes closed, kissing her to blend their magic, still awkward with their partnering and going on instinct. This time, he observed as his moon magic sifted into the cracks between the stones, the grinding was less pronounced, and the swirling motion of the stones as they spiraled open to make a portal almost liquid.
Nic stepped through, tugging on his hand, but he paused on the other side of the threshold, touching the stones with curious fingertips. “What are you noticing?” she asked with quiet curiosity.
“I’m wondering… the stones moved almost like water. Do you suppose that they could be some sort of solidified water magic?”
She gave him such a pleased and proud smile that he nearly preened. “Now you’re thinking like a wizard. And like a Phel. It makes sense to me that you’d guard your greatest secret with a lock that combines moon and water magic. Surely those don’t occur in concert outside your bloodline, certainly not in any strength. Now we have an idea of how your ancestors stabilized the foundation of the manse, too.”
“By changing water to rock?”
Shrugging cheerfully, she nodded. “Why not? And then, over time and without a wizard to maintain it, the enchantments frayed and the rock turned to water again, slowly sinking those wings.” Dropping his hand, she carried the lantern into the arcanium.
“I thought you said the transformations were permanent, like the moonlight to silver.”
“I think they can be. It depends on what forces are going counter to that state. If you melt the silver, maybe it turns back into moonlight. It’s your magic. You figure it out.”
He took a few steps backward, observing closely as the door spiraled shut again, burnished silver on this side, gleaming before the domed room fell into shadow too deep for Nic’s lantern to fully illuminate. Beyond the arched glass panels inset in silver frames that formed the walls of the submerged room, the lake water was black with night. Even the great lens of the window at the centerpiece of the curved ceiling was dark, allowing no moonlight through. Too overcast for it.
“No moonlight tonight,” he commented.
Nic glanced at him over her shoulder, carrying the lantern around the room, using the flame to light the sconces embedded at regular intervals in the silver frames. “You don’t need it.”
“But what if—”
“You don’t need it,” she repeated. “You have me. In addition, not being able to draw on moonlight should help you focus on pulling only from my magic. Also, it might help you distinguish my magic from yours.”
As if that was ever an issue. She was the fire to his water, the sun to his moon. “We’re still surrounded by water,” he felt he should point out.
She curled a lip. “You don’t have to remind me, but unless we move to the desert, that’s a given. Just don’t let the lack of moonlight affect your thinking, all right?”
Oh, right. He tried to clear his mind. Not that he was very good at it. Probably there were mental exercises taught at Convocation Academy that everyone knew but him. Nic moved gracefully from sconce to sconce, adding oil, then lighting them. Almost complete, a circle of warm light surrounded them. “I didn’t notice these sconces last time,” he said.
“I did, which is good because we’d have been out of luck if I hadn’t thought to grab some oil. We can see each other this time.”
He’d kind of loved how she’d looked clad only in moonlight. Though tonight they would’ve been fumbling in the dark. “Maybe once the shipment of elementals arrives, we can put one or two in here for light and heat.”
“Are you cold?” she asked, sliding the silver grate over the final flaming sconce.
Oddly enough, he wasn’t, though his palms were damp with the chill sweat of nerves. He rubbed them dry against his thighs. “No, I thought you might be.”
“I suspect there are spells laid into the arcanium to keep it at a stable temperature.” She set the lantern aside and met him under the moon window. Until she stepped into the tiled circle centered under the great lens, he hadn’t realized that was where he stood. Something in his magical awareness tingled as she crossed that threshold, the glittering silver-and-blue-tiled border exactly mimicking the boundaries of the moon-window lens above. Tension riffled through him, along with dark desire.
Take,it whispered. Have.
Or was that Nic? She tilted her head, observing him with languid, catlike eyes. “Besides,” she said, “you never want to bring another wizard’s magic into your arcanium. Only your own magic.”
“What about enchanted artifacts that I’m supposed to buy from House El-Adrel instead of violating obscure Convocation rules by making myself?” He’d tried to sound lighthearted, but too much tension simmered between them.
“That’s an excellent question,” she conceded. “And I don’t know the answer. I suppose anything you keep in your own arcanium wouldn’t be subject to Convocation law. After all, how would they know? But we could ask House Tadkiel for a ruling.”
“Let’s … not,” he ground out, recalling that Tadkiel had helped create the hunters. He was also having a difficult time assembling thoughts beyond plundering that mouth of hers. The way she’d looked that afternoon, with her lush lips wrapped around his cock… Nic’s eyes glittered as if she sensed his thoughts. They stood very close, a breath apart, but not yet touching. “What are the consequences of having your magic in my arcanium?” he asked, his voice whiskey rough.
Her lips curved in sultry knowing. “My magic becomes a part of yours. That’s entirely the point. That’s why wizards have familiars, why you take our magic into yourselves and make it into something greater than the sum of the parts.”
“Tell me, then,” he murmured, feeling as if he could fall into those emerald depths and swim there in eternal contentment, “since we are awakening this arcanium together, attuning it to us—what are the consequences of having my magic become a part of yours?”
