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~13~
Recognizing Gabriel’s rapidlyfraying temper, Nic watched with considerable relief as he strode back into the manse. He’d acquitted himself well, much as he loathed the part he had to play, and now deserved some time and space being only himself. The Refoel and Byssan pairings all relaxed as they watched him go, which also gave credit to Gabriel’s performance. They’d been suitably impressed and intimidated. Gabriel wouldn’t like to hear it, but cold arrogance came naturally to him.
And, maybe it hadn’t been necessary, but she’d much rather new arrivals came away from meeting the mysterious Lord Phel reconsidering any plans they might harbor to spy upon or betray him.
“Well,” she said brightly, allowing them to think she, too, was cowed by her powerful lord and master and could now speak freely, “let me give you the grand tour.”
“Quinn,” Sage said, nudging her familiar forward, “go ahead and greet your old friend properly. I know you want to.”
Quinn flashed her wizard a grateful smile and flung herself at Nic with a squeal of delight. Nic returned the hug, more moved than she’d expected to see her dear friend. “We have so much to talk about,” Quinn whispered in her ear. “There have been so many rumors! And your letter said almost nothing, you bitch. I want to heareverything. Will you be able to get away to talk privately?”
“Yes,” Nic whispered back, deciding to ignore the implication that Gabriel might keep her on that tight of a leash. Hadn’t she just been deliberately creating that impression? “I’d love to catch up.” She hadn’t heard that Quinn had been bonded to Sage, her older sister, and she was very curious how that had come about. With a last squeeze, she released Quinn. “I’m so happy you’re here.”
Keeping the smile for Quinn firmly fixed so it wouldn’t cool with dislike, Nic turned to Laryn. “It’s good to greet you again, too, Laryn.”
With her wizard’s expectant gaze upon her, Laryn produced a polite smile for Nic. One that Nic knew had to be mostly, if not totally, fake. Laryn had never liked Nic, and she’d been particularly gleeful at Veronica Elal’s fall from presumptive heir to House Elal to lowly familiar. How irritating that she would arrive here.
Though it had been a possibility—even a probability, given the relatively small number of unaffiliated wizards who’d be interested in an opportunity like this—that some would be former classmates from Convocation Academy, Nic hadn’t been properly braced for it. Inevitably, in inviting junior wizard–familiar pairings to join House Phel, some would also be those who didn’t particularly love Nic. They may have all graduated to adult lives, but that didn’t mean they’d all matured past petty school-aged squabbles.
“Lady Phel,” Laryn replied, smirking enough to make the title a question. “Congratulations on ascending to such an enviably high position. I’m sure House Phel isn’t nearly as decrepit as you say.”
Nic smiled thinly, having said no such thing. If she’d realized Laryn was a possibility, she’d have worded her message to House Refoel differently. Or perhaps not. She’d been mainly concerned with attracting wizards who would mesh well with Gabriel and his eccentricities. Asa certainly fit the bill there. She turned to Asa, pointedly declining to reply to Laryn’s remark. “Asa, I’m so glad you’ve come. I’d hoped you would answer the invitation.”
Asa grinned at her, the genuine smile creasing his dark face. He’d been a year ahead of her at Convocation Academy, and a fine wizard. They’d sometimes speculated that he could find a place at House Elal someday, when she took over for Papa. “It seems our hopes might work out after all, Nic,” he said. “Even if somewhat sideways of what we anticipated.”
“Isn’t that the way of life?” she replied with good humor. She’d been relieved that Asa hadn’t applied for her Betrothal Trials, and she’d been prepared to use a summary dismissal against him. Not that he wouldn’t be a kind master. Healers weren’t necessarily gentle types, especially with some given to thinking themselves omnipotent, holding the power of life and death in their hands, but Asa had a good and generous heart. She just hadn’t been able to imagine submitting to someone who’d been a friend. Perhaps Asa had recognized that a familiar with her MP scores would be too much power for a healer, particularly a wizard not in line to head his house.
Now it seemed he hadn’t applied because he’d already bonded Laryn. Her face looked fuller than Nic recalled, a lush glow to her skin, her gown loose through the middle. No doubt pregnant with Asa’s baby, then. Quinn caught her eye, that familiar glint of pressing gossip in them.
“It is. Keeps life interesting. And I’m glad for this part, at least,” Asa was saying, taking in the sight of the elegant, rambling manse. “I hope Lord Phel finds me acceptable. This would be a grand adventure.” Laryn smiled at him but looked unconvinced. “You seem to have landed in an excellent position,” Asa continued, a lilt of a question in his voice as his gaze returned to the bruises on Nic’s neck.
Once again, she had to still her hands to keep from trying to hide the marks. She’d been so groggy when she dressed that she’d only been thinking of something clean, new, and stylish in which to greet their first visitors—not how the low neckline would reveal the hunters’ ravages and implicate Gabriel by default. She shouldn’t be concerned, as their assumptions would only add to the image she was building of a powerful and ruthless wizard determined to use all of his resources to defend House Phel, regardless of the cost. And yet, she hated for anyone to think badly of Gabriel. Such were the ramifications of harboring such affection for him.
“I’m grateful for my good fortune,” she replied firmly. “Shall we?”
After a brieftour of the common areas of the house, Nic left Sage and Quinn creating glass for the windows in the north-wing guest rooms, completing the suite Asa picked out. To her surprise, Asa chose one on the ground floor, saying that he looked forward to being able to go on rambles through the fascinating landscape, and that having a small terrace to sit upon and that allowed him to come and go at will would be ideal. Laryn looked decidedly unenthused at the prospect of nature walks, but her smile for Asa glowed with all the serene acceptance a wizard could ask for from his bonded familiar.
Once Asa chose, Sage and Quinn had leave to pick out their own smaller set of rooms and put in the glass for those once they finished Asa’s. Nic felt ever so slightly uncomfortable designating what they were allowed as lower-tier magic workers—she’d clearly been corrupted by Gabriel’s radical egalitarianism—but Sage and Quinn accepted the boundaries with good grace, even evincing pleasure at the options Nic presented.
Asa and Laryn then walked back with her to revisit a series of smaller salons in the south wing. Nic, of course, hadn’t yet had the opportunity to explore the south wing thoroughly, but it did appear to mostly mirror the north wing, as Gabriel had noted and she’d anticipated. The House Phel architects had been exacting in observing the classical forms, the manse as a whole beautifully balanced in design. As opposed to House Elal, which had begun as basically a fortress and endured in much the same vein, though with each generation of prideful lord and lady wizards determined to leave their stamp on the edifice. The result was a hodgepodge of walls, turrets, wings, and towers, each attempting to best a similar existing structure in some way.
So far the primary exception with the south wing of House Phel as opposed to the north, was that the south-side version of the ballroom had been subdivided into a series of smaller salons and parlors. Perfect for offices and other kinds of small group gatherings. No doubt they’d been used that way before. Nic didn’t have Gabriel’s connection to the Phel heritage, naturally, but she found an unexpected pleasure in bringing life back to the house. As if ghosts had lingered in these spaces, pale echoes of what had gone before, and she and Gabriel were coloring them in, room by room, filling the house again with people and magic.
“I’m thinking this salon for you, Asa,” she said. The room faced the river and led onto a terrace that could be fenced off for privacy and also used as an entrance for patients who might not care to traipse through the main house to visit the wizard healer. “We could divide it into a reception area and a couple of smaller treatment rooms. As with your suite, we’ll have these rooms furnished as soon as the House Ratisbon wizard arrives, so you’ll be able to request exactly what you’d prefer.”
Asa beamed, nodding along as he envisioned what she described. “That would be brilliant. I hardly dared hope for such an ideal situation. Knowing it would be you here, well, I suppose Ididhope. Elals have a knack for pulling off everything with class and style.” He shrugged, somewhat abashed, while behind him, Laryn glared daggers at Nic. Wonderful. Asa tucked his hands in his loose trouser pockets, ambling around the room. A lone desk sat against one wall, apparently bolted to it. Though dried out, it remained suspiciously green, and Nic only hoped there weren’t desiccated water snakes in the drawers or something. She made a mental note to have the worker bees check for such things.
Asa edged a hip onto the desk, swinging one foot thoughtfully. “So, give me the full rundown. What do I have to do to get the contract? Tell me what this Lord Phel is really like. Powerful—I can sense that rumors didn’t overstate that. But he’s got to be completely ignorant of actual wizardry. Can hedoanything? And how do I win his confidence?”
It was interesting, as much as Nic had always liked Asa and enjoyed his easygoing nature, she noticed more than ever how much he oozed with that wizard-born arrogance. Laryn might as well be invisible to him, her presence falling out of his mind until he needed her. And he spoke easily with Nic, falling back on their old acquaintance from when their friendship had been based partially on the assumption they’d both be wizards. She understood, actually, his reasoning for asking for inside knowledge, bemused as she was that he was asking her to spill secrets on her wizard master. Was he relying on their friendship or did he think her weak-minded now that she was a bonded familiar?
Regardless, her loyalty belonged to Gabriel, and she wasn’t about to violate his trust—or the growing affection between them. She’d grown accustomed enough to Gabriel’s unconventional ways that coming up against Convocation attitudes was a bit discomfiting. “I would advise you to be authentic and forthright with Lord Phel,” she said in perfect honesty. “As a stranger to the Convocation, he has no patience for posturing or power plays. Be good at what you do, familiarize yourself with the customs and people of Meresin, and…” Her gaze went to Laryn, who was staring out the open windows at something. Or at her own thoughts. Laryn had always been serious to the point of being forbidding. “Treat your familiar well.”
If Laryn heard her, she gave no hint of it. Asa raised a brow, gaze going to her neck. “In what way?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.
This time, Nic did brush her fingers over the scabs and healing bruises, which hardly hurt at all. She considered pushing up her sleeve to show Asa the bite from the hunters, to explain that Gabriel hadn’t done these things to her. But she didn’t want to discuss her flight and subsequent capture by the Convocation hunters. The less said there, the better. And it wasn’t what she meant. She didn’t mind at all that Gabriel’s rope had left marks on her wrists, nor would she mind other marks from him in the future. How to explain to Asa that what the Convocation saw as appropriate use of a familiar was abuse in Gabriel’s eyes?
“Allow Laryn the freedom to follow her own mind when you have no need of her,” Nic said, following impulse.
