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Clearly baffled, she stared at him. “You just… invented a whole new system of magic manifestation overnight?”
Cautiously, he nodded. “Isn’t that what wizards do—make spells? I don’t have a Convocation Academy education, but I’ve read plenty over the last few years. I learned how to channel magic into spells that the books described. Those were useful to learn on, but it seemed to me that wizards prefer to create their own spells.”
She had an odd smile on her lips. “They have no idea just how dangerous you are.”
Flattered by her assessment—because he knew, if he knew nothing else about her, that Nic never gave compliments idly, and particularly to him—he set the urge aside to ask her to go on. He needed to understand this more than he needed to bask in her admiration, even if it was only for his ingenuity. “You know I don’t understand how Convocation wizards work. Why is what I did so odd?”
She gazed out the window pensively. The clouds had gathered to a heavier overcast, rain spitting against the glass windows. “My understanding is, of course, not complete,” she said slowly. “As I explained before, I only learned the basics of wizardry, which were designed to be a foundation for the real teaching. Wizards guard their trade secrets closely, so I know mostly what I can guess from casual remarks. I can tell you this, however, that when Papa wanted to perform a complicated incantation, he isolated himself in his arcanium, and he required Maman’s assistance. She would always be utterly drained after. It gave her terrible headaches. Sometimes she’d sleep for days.”
An unhappy shadow crossed her face, and he risked touching her, putting a comforting hand on her stocking-clad knee. The cable-knit yarn was surprisingly silky, and the heat of her body beneath an alluring hint of how much softer her skin would feel beneath his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, awkward, not sure what else to say.
She met his gaze, the green deep and thoughtful. “What are you sorry for?”
So many things. So much he’d change between them if he could. Some of that would mean changing all the world, and how could one man accomplish that? Though… maybe two people could. “I think you worry about your mother. That doesn’t sound like an easy life.”
A quirk of a smile lightened her expression. “Maman would tell you that she enjoys the solace of wealth and position. And her children,” she added, briefly resting a hand on her own belly, the first time he’d seen her physically acknowledge the life growing inside her.
He’d lived most of his life without wealth or position—and had barely scrabbled together either in recent years—but he rather doubted those were true compensations. Judging by Nic’s pensive expression, she doubted, too.
“Anyway,” she said, and sipped her wine, “my point is that you performed what the most powerful and experienced wizards would consider to be a complicated incantation—and, yes, most would love to create their own spells, but not all of them are able to—and you did it without the help of your familiar, not in an arcanium, but while pacing a barge on a rainy night, injured from a battle, and using half your magic to push said barge against the current.”
“It wasn’t half, exactly,” he explained. “The water and moon magic overlap in some ways, but for the most part they’re two different… wells to draw from. I could task the water magic to carry the barge and devote my attention to developing weapons with the moon magic.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “See? Dangerous.”
He didn’t feel dangerous, but hehadbeen determined to do a better job of protecting her. “Isn’t an arcanium a fancy name for a workroom? I don’t understand the significance.”
“I suppose that’s true of a lot of posers and pretenders to greater power than they have. You know, the bigger and more elaborate a wizard’s arcanium, the more certain their ability is this big.” She held up her thumb and forefinger in a pinch, amusement lighting her face. “Most wizards, though,” she said more seriously, “keep their arcanium secret. They spend years refining the space to best concentrate and intensify their magic. Sometimes a house arcanium has been handed down over generations. House Elal’s is that way, inherited by the next lord or lady. I’ve never been inside Papa’s. Only he and Maman can enter.”
“Interesting.” If House Phel had an arcanium, he didn’t know where it was. Of course, most of the house still lay in ruins, with some parts literally under water. It could be anywhere, if it had even survived. “I’ve never used an arcanium.”
“You need to start,” she said, leveling a stern look on him. “And you need to start using your familiar. You should have wakened me last night to assist,” she added.
He withdrew his hand, tucking it under his leg so he wouldn’t inadvertently draw from her. Nic’s magic was more addictive than wine, tempting him to take more and more. It was a sensation like no other, and he understood now, with brutal clarity, how these wizards came to rely on their familiars. “I don’t want to use you that way.”
Her eyes sharpened in a now-familiar exasperation. “You can’t threaten war against the most powerful house in the Convocation in one moment and go all soft and sentimental about using the resources at your command the next.”
He set his teeth, deliberately taking a sip of his own wine, knowing on one hand she was right and on the other annoyed at her scornful assessment. “I don’t consider you to be either a resource or at my command.”
“Then why did you set your sights on me?” she demanded. “You mortgaged House Phel’s fortune on the gamble to acquire me for a reason. Why?”
“I needed a familiar and an heir if I wanted to restore the house. I needed a highborn wife who understands the ways of the Convocation. Everyone I went to for advice told me so.”
“I’ll bet they did. It’s good advice. And they advised you to acquire the most powerful familiar that met those criteria that you could, didn’t they?”
“What is your point, Nic?” he asked, feeling very much backed into a corner. Probably he should admit to how he’d hedged his bet to ensure it hadn’t been much of a gamble at all.
“I think you know my point.” She dropped her gaze significantly to her knee, though his hand was long gone. “You act like you shouldn’t touch me and refuse your sexual rights even when I throw myself at you. You say you don’t want to use me as your familiar, even offer to take me home. You chased me across half the known world, wouldn’t bend when I asked you to let me go, but now you’ve made no move to bond me even though you know perfectly well how that jeopardizes your claim.”
“Wait.” He held up a hand. All of that was perfectly true, except for the last. “How does bonding affect our partnership?”
She actually rolled her eyes at him. “Really? Please don’t tell me tha—”Knock-knock-knock.Nic froze mid-word, eyes going wide with fright.
Gabriel leapt off the window seat and retrieved his sword, just in case. “Is it?” he asked quietly.
Nic relaxed minutely, blowing out a breath and shaking her head. “No. I’m just on edge.”
Knock-knock-knock.“Sir, madam—I have your lunch,” a boy’s voice called.
