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Lord Elal had the grace to look apologetic—though he also didn’t move from his thronelike chair behind the big desk. Lady Elal stood just behind him, her hand on his shoulder, chin tilted at the exact regal angle her daughter assumed at her most obstinate. Her mother had the same glossy black hair that Veronica had said she inherited from that side of the family, but Lady Elal’s eyes were a misty blue. Hard to say where the green had come from. Maybe from her father, but Lord Elal’s eyes were of course totally black now from working magic.
“Won’t you sit, Lord Phel?” Lord Elal suggested smoothly, and not for the first time. “The brandy is excellent, and I’m sure you could use the warmth after your long journey through this weather.”
A long, bitterly cold journey only to find his bride had disappeared. “With all due respect,” he gritted out, “I want answers.”
“And you shall have them,” Lord Elal replied, losing some of his politeness, “but I insist that you sit and cease looming so threateningly.” A static of unpleasant needlelike sensations burst over the back of Gabriel’s neck—not painful, but a sharp reminder that Lord Elal could use unseen spirits against him. Gabriel might be able to combat them, but he was on enemy territory, and Lord Elal held the position of First in the Convocation for reasons beyond his wealth and inherited rank. A rank that far exceeded Gabriel’s own, not incidentally. Even if he triumphed in a contest of wizardry—doubtful, especially with Elal’s bonded familiar right there—he’d absolutely be sanctioned by the Convocation. Perhaps to the point of destroying any hope of restoring House Phel.
“Once you have calmed yourself,” Lord Elal added, “we can rationally address your questions.”
With ill grace, Gabriel plopped himself in the expensive leather chair, plucked the full brandy snifter from the desk where Lady Elal had set it, and downed it in one gulp. Pretending the fire of it didn’t burn his throat enough to make his eyes water, Gabriel thunked the glass onto the desk again and stared down the other wizard.
Unperturbed, Lord Elal lifted a finger, and Lady Elal picked up the brandy decanter, leaning across the desk to refill Gabriel’s glass—without ever removing her hand from her husband’s shoulder. An indication of Lord Elal’s willingness to wield powerful magic. Ever since Gabriel had been ushered into this study, Lady Elal had kept her hand on her husband’s shoulder. They both clearly worried about Gabriel’s reaction to the bitter news that Veronica had disappeared. Not that he’d expected her to meet him at the gates with excited smiles and a warm welcome, but…
All right, yes, he’d fantasized exactly that scenario, more the fool he. By the end of that long, luscious night together, he’d imagined that she’d softened toward him, that she might have grown to like him somewhat. He knew he hadn’t imagined that she’d responded to his touch with real pleasure, even caressing him in return. He’d gone over that night an endless number of times in the last weeks, replaying it as fodder for fantasies to sustain him until he had her in his bed again.
And now she was gone.
Since raging would clearly get him nowhere with the coldly composed Lord Elal—clearly the apple hadn’t fallen far fromthattree—Gabriel picked up the refilled snifter and cradled it in his hands. Like everything at House Elal, both the glass itself and the brandy were exquisitely crafted. Had Veronica fled in the face of his poverty after all? Or, far worse, it suddenly occurred to him, had she been abducted? He drilled down the rising panic. House Elal was too powerful to cross. They’d be able to recover Veronica before anything terrible happened to her.If they’re so powerful, then how did they lose her to begin with?
“So,” he said, managing to take most of the bite out of his voice, “fled, abducted, or merely misplaced?”
Lord Elal sighed and steepled his fingers, elbows braced on the arms of his big chair. “We are not entirely certain. She was not here this morning when her maid went to wake her. We thought perhaps she’d gone to the library for more books, or perhaps on some other errand.”
“Nic has been enjoying the freedom to leave her tower room,” Lady Elal put in, making it sound like it was Gabriel’s fault her daughter had been locked in there to begin with. “We were not concerned at first.”
Nic.So the formidable Lady Veronica Elal had a nickname—one she hadn’t offered to him, despite their other intimacies. Gabriel sighed to himself. He had been a fool to imagine she’d softened toward him.
“But you’re concerned now?” he asked, leashing his impatience.
“We did not expect you until tomorrow,” Lord Elal admitted, “so we do not yet have a comprehensive report. I have determined that Nic is not anywhere in House Elal. My sentry wizards noticed nothing unusual. No magical attack or other incursion took place. I had just begun examinations of the household staff when we received word that you’d arrived at the border.” Lord Elal managed to sound put out by Gabriel’s early arrival. No doubt there had been a flurry of panic at how to deal with an angry jilted wizard. The image rather soothed him. Theyshouldbe worried.
“I made good time,” Gabriel replied, not apologizing by tone or gesture. He’d been so stupidly thrilled that his gambit had paid off, so excited to see his fiancée again, to begin their life together. “Then you believe she fled,” he said flatly.
Lord Elal’s visage blackened, fury and disappointed betrayal leaking around the edges of the polite mask he’d been wearing. “She wouldn’tdare,” he hissed, fingers tightening on each other. Lady Elal blanched, swaying slightly, her eyes unfocused. “My daughter is obedient,” Lord Elal declared, “to the Convocation and to me. She would never defy me or humiliate House Elal in this fashion.”
“Nevertheless,” a smooth feminine voice said behind Gabriel, nearly making him wrench his neck, he was so startled someone had snuck up behind him. “Lady Veronica seems to have effected her escape in the night.” The Convocation proctor gave him a thin smile, clearly amused that she’d surprised him. He should have sensed when she entered the room, but no—which spoke to high-level cloaking, though he read her as a mid-level wizard. Her smile for Gabriel turned sympathetic, as if she understood his confusion. “She isn’t the first familiar to attempt to break the rules—her breed is sadly inclined to fail to see how those rules are in place to protect them—and I daresay she won’t be the last. I’ve sent a message to the Convocation. In the interim, I can make preliminary determinations.”
“House Elal will handle the situation,” Lord Elal told her, nearly shouting as his temper frayed.
The proctor approached the desk and set down an elaborately decorated wooden tabernacle, like a small cabinet, inlaid with metal foil and arcane runes. The ancient, incredibly potent magic that oozed off of it made Gabriel’s skin crawl, and he fought the urge to scoot his chair farther away from it. What in the dark arts was in that thing?
“Never seen an oracle tabernacle before, Lord Phel?” the proctor inquired. She made a tsking sound. “But I forget, you don’t have a formal education. Pity.” Gabriel ignored her pointed remark—far from the first or the rudest insult he’d heard. “The Convocation will handle this, Lord Elal,” she continued. “I would have been on the case earlier, had I been immediately notified, as I should have been according to protocol.” She held up a hand as Lord Elal opened his mouth. “Regardless, I have been alerted and, I, as the Convocation proctor assigned to this case and as anobjectiveobserver, will lead the inquiry.”
“Now, see here—” Lord Elal said, rising from his chair, a swirl of spirits taking shape in the air around him.
The proctor pointed a finger at him. “Stand down, Lord Elal,” she commanded, “or you will receive even more severe sanctions than you already face. This is a Convocation inquiry, andyouare a suspect.”
“What?” Aghast, seeming staggered by that, Lord Elal sank into his chair. “You can’t think that—”
“Can’t I?” the proctor returned coolly, making it very clear she could—and did. “Lord Phel here is hardly the ideal son-in-law and ally, not for a High House like Elal. No insult intended, Lord Phel. I’m sure you understand.”
Gabriel swallowed a reply along with a sip of brandy, keeping a wary eye on the tabernacle.Oracle tabernacle—where had he read about that?
“There are other incriminating indicators, Lord Elal,” the proctor said, her fingers working an incantation pattern over the tabernacle’s locked doors. They looked like the entrance to a castle, two of them, arched to meet in the middle, with detailed latches. “Lady Veronica, while an exceptionally well-trained familiar—as all of our Convocation Academy graduates are—is also a naïve and sheltered young woman. Living here, in the lap of luxury…” The proctor glanced around the lavishly appointed room with a thin-lipped expression of contempt, and possibly envy. “Lady Veronica is soft, sheltered, and blissfully unequipped to cope with the greater world. She could not possibly have executed an escape on her own.”
“We don’t know that she—” Lord Elal burst out.
“Iknow,” the proctor interrupted in a repressive tone, “and so does the Oracle. Observe.” She opened the doors of the cabinet, not with the dramatic flourish Gabriel expected, but with meticulous care. Fascinated despite his intuitive horror, he sat up to look. It seemed to be a sculpture of a human head, the skin made from leather, though from an unlovely, rough-cured variety. The lips were thin and colorless, no hair on the smooth scalp, eyebrows made of delicately etched gold. Its eyelids had been inlaid with lapis outlined in gold leaf, and—had it moved? Surely not.
