AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sorry,” he replied with chagrin. “Are you sure it’s necessary?”
“Yes. Especially if you don’t want to send her to Convocation Academy yet.”
“Ever,” he corrected firmly.
“I can teach you to drain her magic, which will make her mind less like aswamp,” she told him sweetly, laughing when he gave her a dry look. “Think of it as a levee against the muck threatening your sister’s sanity, saving the blossoms on her orange trees.”
Shaking his head, he breathed a laugh. “A valiant effort, but your farming analogies need work.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I feel quite certain I could live a long and fulfilling life without acquiring that particular skill. Regardless, it would be good to sit down with Seliah and talk. As a first step.”
“The first step would be locating her,” Gabriel corrected. “She tends to run wild in the marshes.”
Probably being away from people helped Seliah’s peace of mind, Nic guessed. But that wouldn’t save her from the eroding influence of her own untapped magic. “Canyou find her?”
“I’ll put out word,” Gabriel replied with a sigh. “We’ll find her. I’ve been thinking about Selly, though, and aspects of wizardry you explained to me on the barge. I didn’t manifest as a wizard until I was twenty-two.”
“She’s already twenty-four.”
“She could be still maturing,” he argued. “Maybe she will—”
“Gabriel,” Nic broke in, her heart aching for him and for herself, for the painful hope and the agonizing shattering of it. “She’s a familiar. She’ll never be a wizard. That’s why her mental health is so poor and degrading over time. The magic is building up in her with no outlet. It will only get worse.”
“I had no outlet for my magic until the deluge,” he pointed out stubbornly.
“But it also didn’t build up in you. There’s a reason the Convocation scoring system measures magicalpotential. In wizards, the ability is all in the potential to wield magic. In familiars, it’s the potential to store it. I don’t know why it is, but familiars are also different from wizards in that we gather magic. Or we generate it. There are two different schools of thought on that. It’s ironic in a way, but even the weakest familiar has more magic than the most powerful wizard—we just can’t use it.”
“Where I do get my magic, then?” he asked, intrigued despite himself.
“Every wizard is different, and some of what makes a wizard weak or powerful is their ability to draw magic on their own. The most commonly accepted theory is that you pull it to you from the sources you have affinity for, water and the moon, in your case. And now, from your familiar.” She fluttered her lashes.
“I begin to understand why wizards want familiars so badly,” he admitted grudgingly.
“You understood this before, or you wouldn’t have applied for me.”
He gave her a wry look. “I was just blundering along, grabbing onto any signpost that would guide me. ‘You’ll need a familiar,’ they told me and put me on the subscription list for the Convocation circulars on available familiars.” He blew out a long breath, searching her face. “Believe me, if I’d realized… If I’d had any idea what—”
She flicked her index finger against the tip of his nose, making him blink in surprise. “Bad wizard.”
“Ow,” he complained, rubbing his nose.
“It didn’t hurt that much. Enough with the guilt. It’s unproductive and holding you back. What’s done is done. Let it go.”
He eyed her warily. “You did warn me about your practical nature.”
“Exactly. And my practical nature is itching to organize my seemingly endless roster of tasks. Go enlist your troops. I have lists to make. I’ll also need a complete tour of the house so I can assess what work needs to be done and order supplies accordingly.”
“Should I be afraid?”
“Of drowning in the tidal wave of profits to come? Absolutely. As for the house repairs, if you don’t want to squander my dowry on your passion projects, I intend to invest it in making this house livable.”
Cupping her cheek, he kissed her. Softly and lingeringly. “When I say this isn’t the marriage I expected, I should tell you that it’s even better.”
She raised her brows, surprised—and surprisingly moved. “I told you before, you don’t need to tell me pretty lies.”
“Strange, terrifying, upsetting, frustrating, enlightening, and oddly twisted,” he qualified, lips twitching at what he saw in her face before he kissed her again, “and better than anything I could’ve imagined.” He hopped off the desk and saluted her. “I shall return with brawn.”
“You forgot one thing,” she called after him. “Expensive!”
He laughed and kept going.
