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“I never wanted this,” he admitted. “At first I felt like a monster. After I got used to having magic, and began to learn all the ramifications… There’s a lot of responsibility that came with it.”
It couldn’t have been easy for the young wizard, facing building an entire house from practically nothing. “We’re quite the pair,” she said, trying for a teasing tone. “You’re what I wanted to be, and I—well, I guess you never wanted to be a familiar, so it’s not quite parallel.”
“I might’ve been happier as one, though.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. No onewantsto be a familiar.”
His lip curled. “You don’t have to say it—I’m acutely aware of how the Convocation oppresses familiars and relegates you to a life of essential bondage.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” she replied quietly, taken aback at his brusque summation.
“No, because you don’t want to admit that’s what’s happening,” he replied easily, “that even your own family would see you brutalized rather than free.”
“Wrong,” she retorted. “I know—far better than you do—the realities of my station in life, to have my beloved papa go from cherishing me as his heir one day to treating me like yet another Elal export the next. To have assholes like Cousin Jan sneer when I have ten times his MP scores.”To crave Gabriel so much that I could never leave him, even to save myself.Furious with herself, she dashed away the unwanted tears. Great, and now she’d ruined her makeup.
“I apologize,” Gabriel said quietly. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that, sometimes you seem like you excuse the Convocation for how terribly familiars are treated.”
“No,” she replied, hearing the bitterness in her own voice. “I just don’t expect a wizard to understand.”
“That seems dramatically unfair,” he said, staring ahead. “I’ve tried to understand.”
“Youhave, yes.” Which still bewildered her. “But if I’d become a wizard, I don’t think I would have. I’d have happily seized the power and no doubt used my familiar equally as terribly.”
He cast a curious glance at her then, lips quirked in disbelief. “No, you wouldn’t. You like to pretend that you’re so practical and hard-hearted, but you have a depth of compassion in you, Nic. You feel everything so deeply—probably that’s why you developed such a hard shell. But that shell is a construct, not who you truly are.”
His words struck hard at that vulnerable part of her, so much so that she had no reply. Especially if she didn’t want to meet all of House Phel looking like a sodden and sniveling fool.
“What I meant was,” Gabriel continued after a while, as if the emotional exchange hadn’t occurred, “outside the Convocation, a familiar could go undetected, right? An advantage of not having this”—he tapped the center of his forehead as she had earlier—“is the magic doesn’t go anywhere if you don’t use it. No spontaneous deluges or moonlight layering the floor with silver while you sleep.”
She did a double take, a watery laugh escaping her. “Did that happen?”
“Yes.” He gave her a look of combined chagrin and curiosity. “I never told anyone else about that. It’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Definitely weird,” she agreed, smiling as he made a face at her. “I don’t know of any other wizards of your power who went untrained for so much of their lives, though. In the Convocation, by the time wizards mature to the point of active manifestation, they already know the basic disciplines to control it.”
“Figures.”
He sounded so glumly annoyed that she felt she needed to offer something in return. “It’s not true, however, that familiars can just live like a nonmagical person. Not the potent ones, anyway. The low-potential familiars—and the low-potential wizards,” she added, thinking of Dary, “are fairly common and use their magic unconsciously or not at all, like many of your people in Meresin. But the high-potentials, they face dangers besides abduction.”
She was skirting the edges of secrets she’d been resolved not to tell him—and was also unable to summon that resolve anymore. Somewhere along the way, she’d stopped being able to think of him as her enemy. The Fascination, no doubt, taking over her better sense. She couldn’t help herself—shewantedto tell him. He intuited as much, watching her with alert curiosity now. She let out a sigh, giving up one more line of defense. “Remember that I told you how there are good reasons for the wizard–familiar power dynamic?”
He nodded cautiously.
“A familiar can’t vent their own magic, so it builds up inside us. It’s like, well, a swamp. There’s no channel cut for the magic to flow into, so the ground all around gets mushy and stagnant.”
“Swamps—and marshes—aren’t necessarily stagnant,” he began with some indignation. “That’s a common misperception. The truth is that—”
“You can teach me all about it someday,” she interrupted, eyeing the rapidly diminishing distance to the house. Now that they’d broached the topic, she didn’t want to leave it hanging. He deserved to know this about her, and if she had the opportunity to remember the good reasons she’d kept it from him, she’d lose her courage. He’d treated her well, and she could do this one thing for him. “The analogy is unimportant. The point is that the magic bottles up unless vented, and since familiars can’t do it on our own, we need a wizard to do it for us.”
“What happens if it isn’t vented?” he asked, catching on now, wizard-black eyes fixed on her.
“We basically go crazy,” she admitted. “An ungoverned familiar is a danger to everyone. The more powerful the familiar is, the greater the chance of disaster. That’s why a wizard must bond and control their familiar, Gabriel. I didn’t go into the Betrothal Trials only because I had no good options. I also don’t want to lose my sanity.” So she traded free will for her mind—not a wonderful trade, but that was the way of life.
“I see.” He nodded, considering, but unconvinced, judging by his expression.
“There’s a reason there are so many stories of familiars succumbing to madness,” she persisted.
“What was your plan in Wartson, then?”
