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~4~
All things considered,he felt oddly happy.
He recognized the emotion, though happiness wasn’t something he’d had much experience with in recent years. Sure, when he received the missive confirming that Nic had conceived and that he could claim her as his wife and familiar, he’d been ecstatic. But a large part of that had been relief that his gambit had paid off. And that he hadn’t bankrupted House Phel before it even got on its feet. That happiness had largely consisted of a healthy dose of self-vindicating triumph.
But Nic was right, as she so often seemed to be with her keen insight into the dark corners of his heart: Hehadbeen lonely, probably for a long time, without realizing it. Discovering the pleasure of her company, and her complete acceptance of the magic that had taken him by the fist and bent him all out of shape from the young man he’d been, had made that much clear.
His family meant well, and they loved him, but they didn’t understand him at all. Something about what Nic said had brought that home with the impact of a thudding arrow. They might want to understand, but they never could. It wasn’t their fault, nor could they change that.
Gabriel strode out of the empty house and surveyed the big lawn out front, cleared from yesterday’s welcome party. Only his parents and Selly actually lived in the house with him. As far as that went, he suspected his parents often retired to their own cottage, the one he’d grown up in. Selly… Well, as he’d told Nic, though he’d given her a bedroom in the manse, she tended to vanish into the marshes. Everyone else in his extended family preferred their homes in the various villages or near their fields and orchards.
Though much smaller and far less imposing than House Phel, their homes were at least largely dry and in good repair. Nic had a point that the pair of them couldn’t rattle around in the big place by themselves. And that they needed daily help maintaining it. He’d been all right on his lonesome, throwing together meals—a great deal from food his mother dropped off—and spending the bulk of his time either in the fields or reading as much as possible from the intact books in the library.
Nic deserved better. He’d put a great deal of expense and effort into preparing a decent bedroom for her, wanting her to be comfortable and feeling it was symbolically important to install the new Lady Phel in the manse. In retrospect, however, he hadn’t quite thought it through. Had he envisioned Nic as she’d been in her locked tower room at House Elal, forever tucked inside, reading her books, and gazing out the windows?
To his chagrin, he had to admit there was something to that. He certainly hadn’t imagined her demanding a tour of the house, taking over the accounts, and making lists of renovations. Though he should have. He hadn’t been in the same room with her for more than a few minutes before he realized nothing would contain her fiery ambition.
As he rounded the small lake before the manse, he studied the serene surface of the water, bright as a mirror this morning, and looked for any sign of the arcanium he now knew lay beneath. No hint of it showed. Perhaps the design of the dome, formed mainly of silver and glass, helped to camouflage the structure. It was amazing, however, that he’d ever been unaware of it. It seemed to call to him, a silvery and seductive song, magical and arousing. Perhaps he simply remembered the powerful coming together from the evening before. Nic, her naked body glowing with moonlight, turning in a slow pirouette beneath the moon window. With a desperate urgency, he wanted to be there with her again immediately, if not sooner. At the same time, he dreaded facing it again, beyond reluctant to confront the dark imaginings that plagued him.
Nic had said the arcanium would have spells laid into the walls to store and focus power, a heritage from a long line of Phel wizards, and that sex magic would infiltrate them, refreshing and reenergizing them. He’d sensed it, the power resonating through his bones and blood, calling to him to use it. Power was more seductive than he’d ever realized, and though the walls of the arcanium whispered of cruelty and twisted desires, he nevertheless craved what they held for him.
He now understood the source of the tales and rumors of various madnesses that had plagued the Phel wizards before the magic died down to insignificant levels in the last several generations. Until it burst back with full force in him. And Selly, too, if Nic was right. Why now? Why them? Worst of all, did the dark and twisted yearning the arcanium stirred in him mean he was destined to follow the same path?
“Ho, Gabriel!” his father called from a distance away, coming from the direction of the fields. His father waved, a strong and hearty man, at home on the land. He looked so… normal, so of the earth and natural things. He wouldn’t understand the shadowed imaginings of wizards.
Waiting for his father at the far side of the lake, Gabriel thrust aside the darkly erotic thoughts, focusing on a practical assessment of the regally dilapidated manse. It was a gracious old thing, mostly white—where it wasn’t yellowed or coated in green moss—with steps leading to a balustraded porch that ran the length of the main section, though the porch listed noticeably in places, giving the impression of an uneven smile. The columns supporting the several tiers of balconies on the center section, however, had only required a bit of shoring up, as they’d been sunk directly into solid rock, which supported the original core of the house.
If not for that foundation, the entire house would have sunk. The more distal wings certainly had, their gable rooflines barely showing here and there among the marsh foliage, while the more proximal wings lurched at unlikely angles. One was the arcade leading to the sunken north wing, which he’d begun to raise when he received the message that Nic was pregnant. As his parents said, it had indeed sunk again, possibly even more so than it had been before, looking to be creating a strain on the mostly intact part of the house where it was attached. He should probably have Nic find a place on her lists for that.
It would have been easier, and possibly wiser, to finish sinking the entire decrepit manse and build elsewhere. Start fresh. But sentiment had won out, along with an expensive dollop of pride and stubborn determination. Still smarting from how his life had changed so dramatically, he’d been determined to restore the ancestral manse along with the non-tangible aspects of House Phel.
Despite that determination, the solid farmer in himself had considered the entire enterprise a folly. And yet Nic hadn’t thought so. She would have said so if she did, but no, she was throwing herself wholeheartedly into restoring the place. Knowing about the attached arcanium changed everything, and he was grateful in retrospect that sentiment—Nic might call it his wizard’s intuition, though he didn’t think he deserved that much credit—had won and he’d kept the house in place. The arcanium might be soaked in the blood and cruelty of his ancestors, but that translated to potent stored magic.
He had a feeling they’d need every bit of magic they could gather. He would find a way to control himself and not succumb to the dark needs that whispered to him.
“I thought you’d still be abed, romancing your beautiful new wife.” His father clapped him on the shoulder, giving him a broad grin and startling the shit out of him. What he got for brooding and forgetting what was going on outside of his head. “Honeymooning, doncha know,” he added with a broad wink for Gabriel’s absentmindedness. “Or is she still feeling poorly?”
Gabriel had to quickly suppress a vivid image of taking Nic hard and thoroughly on the floor of their bedroom not an hour ago. There hadn’t been any romance to it, giving him a flush of shame in retrospect. He had to search his brain for an answer to the feeling-poorly question, finally remembering the excuse he and Nic had given for retiring early from the welcome party. So much had happened since, though it had been less than a day, that it felt like another lifetime.
“Nic is fine this morning,” he answered, unable to help the smile at justhowfine she was. Apparently his shame didn’t last long in the face of his overwhelming lust, which had been his problem all along. “A good night of sleep made all the difference. She’s in the library with the accounts. She’ll be handling those from now on.”
His father grunted in approval. “With her fancy education, she’s a good choice for it.” Lifting off his broad-brimmed hat, he scratched his head, the hair beneath already damp with sweat from his labor in the fields, though the spring day remained mild. “Cut your hair, did ye?”
He’d forgotten about it, and ran a hand through the disordered mess. “Yes. I need to get someone to neaten it up.” Nic’s hair, too, though how they’d explain the mutual shearing, he didn’t know.
His dad turned to stand beside him, gazing at the house also. “You’re thinking about work on the house?”
“Mmm, yes. Nic has plans. She’s going to set up agreements with other Convocation houses for us to buy and barter for supplies and services.”
Giving him a sidelong look, his father frowned. “You think doing business with those greedy, arrogant bastards is a good idea?”
“No,” he replied honestly. “But Nic does, and she knows the Convocation. She made a good point that I can’t do things halfway. If we’re to restore House Phel as an official Convocation house, then we need to engage in trade and establish alliances.”
“We’re not like them,” his father cautioned. “If you hadn’t turned up as a wizard…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Gabriel had turned all their lives upside down with his unwanted magic. The only way to make up for that cataclysmic upheaval was to use that magic to improve all their lives. “Nic and Iarelike them, whether we enjoy the idea or not,” Gabriel reminded him.And Selly, too,though he didn’t say so. Breaking that particular news to his parents would be gut-wrenching. “I’m trying to find a balance that gives us the best of both worlds.”
“You know what they say about a man trying to straddle two worlds.” His father’s grin cracked his weather-worn face. “He gets split up the middle, starting with his balls.”
