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~2~
Gabriel watched Nicread her father’s letter—and as her dusky skin paled to the point of having a greenish tinge. The missive hadn’t seemed all that terrible to him, but families had a way of slicing to the bone so subtly that those not in the know wouldn’t even see the blade.
“Maman,” Nic said, almost soundlessly, slowly lowering the letter to her lap.
“She sends her love, yes?” Gabriel asked. “That’s good.”
Nic lifted her gaze to his, the deep emerald green swimming with tears. Mutely, she shook her head, the rioting curls bobbing unevenly. He’d done a poor job of cutting off the long tail of her glorious hair. Not that he’d have expected differently using an athame in the middle of an overwhelmingly potent magic ritual. Still, he regretted not doing better by her.
On so many levels.
Getting up, he went around to Nic’s side of the table, easing the missive away and setting it aside. Crouching down, he took her clammy hands in his. “Tell me,” he urged.
Nic turned a look of profound misery on him, the tears spilling over to run down her cheeks. “Maman would have written her own note. She always did when I was at Convocation Academy. There’s only one reason that she wouldn’t have penned her own message.”
Gabriel closed his eyes briefly, unable to bear the pain in hers—and to hide his revulsion from her. He’d been in Lord Elal’s study when the wizard had forced Nic’s mother to take her alternate form. Lady Elal had begged to be allowed to have a voice in the conversation, but her husband had exercised his authority over his familiar and compelled her to change into a cat. The casual display of tyranny had repelled Gabriel then, and if anything, affected him even more now. “She’s still in feline form,” Gabriel said quietly, ordering himself to meet Nic’s gaze.
She nodded. “And he wants me to know it. Punishment for us both.” Pulling her hands away, she scrubbed furiously at her tears, then lightly slapped her cheeks. “Do you know, I never saw Maman weep? Not until the day I tried on my wedding dress—and Papa made her cry in front of me.”
Aghast, Gabriel swallowed against his dry throat. The image of Nic in the wedding dress she would’ve worn to marry him if she hadn’t escaped nearly crowded out his other thoughts, and he had to sternly order himself to focus. “Why do you think he did that?”
Canting her head, jaw firm, Nic gave him a hard look. “To remind me that a familiar is subject to their wizard master’s rule. Maman had raised the concern that you might not be able to restore House Phel, that I’d belong to a no-tier house with little fortune and meager prospects.”
“A valid concern,” Gabriel admitted, folding himself to sit cross-legged on the floor, keenly aware of the warped boards beneath the antique rug.
“I told you before, I don’t care about that. Besides, with me on the finances, House Phel won’t be impoverished for long.” She smiled thinly, and he took heart to see her fiery nature reemerging. “But the implication that I might try to evade being tied to you made Papa angry. Remember, I told you before that Papa likes you.”
“It didn’t seem that way to me at our single”—and singular—“meeting.”
Nic looked sympathetic. “He was in a rage, no doubt.” Her gaze strayed to the discarded letter. “He still is.”
As worry clouded her gaze again, Gabriel sought to distract her attention. “What did he say about me to make you think he liked me?”
“Fishing for praise?” she asked, clearly amused.
“I’ll take any I can get from you,” he replied lightly, abruptly aware of how much he craved that assurance of her regard. He had no illusions about their relationship, not with how he’d taken away her one chance for freedom. He also understood that she didn’t love him, possibly never would—and he frankly didn’t blame her—and that the Fascination would always complicate her feelings for him. Still, from their first meeting, he’d discovered the uncomfortable sensation that her good opinion mattered to him. He wanted to be worthy of her admiration, for himself, not because the magic demanded it.
“When he first approved your application for the Betrothal Trials,” she replied, “Papa told me that you deserved a chance to rebuild your house, same as any other man, and more than the soft, indulged, barely talented scions of established houses.” Her smile deepened. “He said you had balls even trying for me.”
Wasn’t that the truth? More than once, Gabriel regretted the ambition that drove him to try for a wife and familiar as talented and high ranking as Nic. Before he knew her, and before he understood how the wizard–familiar dynamic worked, he’d been sanguine about the gambit. Why not go for the very best? All of it had been a risk—and a lot of it had felt like a game. He hadn’t had much to lose. Yes, the fate and fortune of House Phel had rested on him, but in the end, the worst that could happen was they’d let the rotting structure sink into the marshes again, and his family and people would return to the living they’d been scraping out before that.
Now he knew better. He’d seen how the people of the Convocation lived, which was leaps and bounds ahead of even the easier life they enjoyed at House Phel since his wizardry took him by violent storm.
But Nic… Without realizing it, he’d ruined her life by tying her fate to his.
If he’d known, he’d go back and change it. At least, he liked to tell himself that. In the darkest corners of his heart, however, the knowledge lurked that he was savagely glad he couldn’t change the past. Nic was his now, and he wouldn’t let her go.It’s in a wizard’s nature to be commanding,Nic had said, only half because she liked to tease him. Before this, he’d have said it wasn’t in his nature to be dominating, but Nic changed everything. Her magic called to his with a siren song, seductive, sweetly tempting, and part of him hungered for her with an unslakable need. Even now, that silver bed in the arcanium, with its chains and whispers of erotic anguish, called to him.Monster…
Thrusting that image away, he shook his head, bewildered that he could feel such tender affection for her, could want to protect her with every fiber of his being, and also brew such dark sexual fantasies.
“You don’t agree?” Nic asked, canny green eyes studying him with alert interest. He had to think back to what they’d been discussing before his thoughts took him down such dark, twisting paths.
“That I had balls to try for you?” he asked, going for a lighter tone. “I suspect it was more the bliss of ignorance. You, more than anyone, are aware of how little I understood—and still fail to understand—about the Convocation. You called my applying for you in the Betrothal Trials a fool’s gambit, and you are likely correct.”
“We agreed last night: no regrets.”
He weighed arguing that, knowing full well how bitter and heavy her many regrets were. With her shadowed side of the coin, it would be beyond callous to express how profoundly he relished his success, how much he savored having her here with him, how very much he… well, that he loved her. He hadn’t admitted that to her, even when she’d baldly asked if he was in love with her. He’d equivocated, saying that he thought he could be, and then took refuge in honesty, trying to explain how wrong it felt to love someone the Convocation regarded as his possession. How could he love her when she had no choice but to be with him, when she was forced to be dependent on him in every way? Even his horse, Vale, had more autonomy, the ability to leave him if Vale didn’t like how he was treated. Nic, eternally bonded to him—chained to him by her own nature, by the magical force of the Fascination—had no freedom to walk away, no matter how he made her suffer.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, feeling supremely unable to rise to this challenge.
