AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In the end,Gabriel parked the bleary Narlis with Nic at a high-end Ophiel dress shop, which Nic wryly identified as well beyond the Iblis locksmith’s means, even if he had been inclined to dress his familiar well. While Nic picked out warm clothing for her “granny,” Gabriel paid good coin—pretty much the last of it, too—for a comfortable wagon, powered by a fast and fresh Elal-branded elemental. While it stung to put coin in Elal’s pockets, Gabriel comforted himself that he’d be getting a good chunk of that treasure back in the form of Nic’s dowry.
Or, rather, Nic would be getting it. If she couldn’t find her way to being his willing partner, he’d settle that fortune on her and help her find some kind of life. Where, he didn’t know. Maybe back in Wartson, ironically enough. He’d have to find a way to ensure her safety there, but that should be possible. And then there was the child. Could he talk Nic into living near House Phel, where he could keep an eye on her and visit the kid?
It was all such a miserable mess, and he had no idea how to solve it. So, he kept his sights set on getting them all safely to Meresin. In his head, he knew being home wouldn’t magically solve the tangled knot of problems, but his heart disagreed.
And his heart was where most of the trouble started and ended.
Narlis mostly napped, warmly tucked under a pile of blankets in the silently gliding sled—he’d gotten the kind that powered over any kind of surface, knowing that would be useful in Meresin—the third horse behind it, Nic riding beside him on her mare. Vale pranced along with refreshed energy, clearly pleased to be shed of bags. It was good for the gelding to carry only Gabriel’s weight again, but he regretted that he’d lost the opportunity to ride double with Nic.
He shook his head at himself. No—that was a good thing, as he didn’t need to be tempted more than he already was. What was he going to do about her? It was a puzzle with no easy answer.
“Gnats?” Nic asked, raven-wing brows arched. “Biting flies? You keep shaking your head,” she clarified when he frowned in confusion.
“I think it’s too early in the year for those yet,” he said. “It’s still freezing at night, at least inland.”
“Ah.” She nodded knowingly. “So, which problem is gnawing at you, then?”
“Take your pick.”
“Maybe we could discuss it,” she offered, a hitch of uncertainty in her voice. “This is something I could do, as your wife.”
He raised a brow, interested that she seemed to be trying a different approach with him. Her cheeks flushed with high color, though that could be the brisk weather. “What do you mean?”
She flashed him an annoyed look, much more in her usual character. “I was raised to head a High House. I know Convocation politics. I certainly know House Elal and my father inside and out. There must be a strategy to resolve all of this—a kind of reset to how things would have been if I hadn’t been such a ninny and tried to escape.”
“Don’t call yourself that. You had good reasons. I understand that now.”
She snorted at that, then was quiet a bit. “Let’s consider this. The wisest option—and the best for the future of House Phel—would be to turn me over to the Convocation to be disciplined, retrained, and—”
“No.”
“Hear me out. If you—”
“No. We just got that collar off of you. If any hunters pursue us, I’m killing them all, not blithely handing you over to be—”
“Gabriel!” She spoke his name sharply, and loudly enough that Vale swung his head to look at her in mild dismay. “Sorry, Vale. Gabriel, I have no desire to be handed over to the hunters either. Thank you for your passion on my behalf. What I’m saying is,youcould take me to Convocation Center. We’d face the council and accept their judgment. I take my lumps, learn my lessons, and you assert your rights when I’m done. Then we have a nice, public wedding with pomp to please everyone. You bond me so they know I’m duly controlled, and we go to Meresin to devote ourselves to rebuilding House Phel.”
“Yourlumps,” he repeated. “Do you have any idea what they’d do to you?”
“Some.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, though her face looked pinched. “I’m tough. They won’t want to do anything that will harm the baby, so they can’t hurt me too much.”
“Not physically,” he said darkly, remembering the Convocation proctor’s words.Even an experienced wizard may lose control of a recalcitrant familiar. You will need to be assisted by our Convocation trainers to ensure that she is properly subdued.“But I bet there are mental techniques.”
“House Hanneil does have methods,” she admitted, staring off down the trail. They’d had the road to themselves for some time, other traffic thinning to nothing, the width and quality of the road diminishing along with it. Almost no one who wasn’t from Meresin traveled in this direction. “Gabriel…” She firmed her lips. “What I’m saying is, it would be easier, for both of us, just to let them do it. They can make me happy with my lot. I would be content, understand?”
The image of a happily obedient Nic smiling mindlessly turned his stomach. “No. You can’t possibly want that.”
“Maybe I do,” she argued. “You know me by now. I might never be content otherwise. I’m ambitious and impatient. I don’t follow orders well. I’m not… I don’t have the right makeup to be a familiar, not a good one, not as I am. I should’ve been a wizard.” Her voice was growing increasingly agitated. “If not for my stupid brain”—she thunked the center of her forehead—“I would’ve been exactly right for that life.”
“And what would that have been like?” When she frowned at him, he persisted. “Tell me how you envisioned your life as a wizard.”
“I would’ve studied magic, developed my own spells. I’d have helped my father, eventually become Lady Elal, and helped run all our lands and businesses.”
“You can do all of that, with me, in House Phel.”
“Familiars can’t execute spells,” she reminded him pointedly.
“You can still study magic. You know far more than I do about using an arcanium, for example. There’s nothing stopping you from developing your own spells. We’ll combine our magic to execute them.”
