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“Selly will be fine,” he growled. “For now, anyway. I have no doubt she’ll give everyone the slip, and at least out in the marshes she’s safe from your Convocation.”
“They’re notmine,” Nic protested, though it was reflexive. Her brain wasn’t working quite right, still numb from the emotional shock of seeing her Betrothal Trials proctor again. She knew the Convocation would send someone, and she even got the logic of sending the same proctor, but somehow she’d hadn’t been prepared for the brutal reality. Those long months she’d spent locked in her tower room, the proctor’s regular examinations and caustically patronizing remarks. That had been one world, her previous life. To have that woman appear here, in this place she’d begun to make into a home, sullying a house she and Gabriel had literally raised together from the muck and were building into something truly beautiful… well, it had been a shock.
If her brain were working better, she’d be able to think of a better way to phrase it to herself.
Gabriel wrenched open the door to the cellar, pausing only to tell her to close it behind them, then careened down the rickety wooden steps. Part of her mind that was keeping the endless lists on house renovations noted that they should fix those. The other part was sitting up and paying attention at the possibility of visiting the arcanium and all of its dark delights.
“We’re going to the arcanium?” she panted. “Now? But what about—”
“Whatever you’re worrying about, I don’t care,” Gabriel bit out. “It’s you I need to protect.”
Nic rolled her eyes to herself. Wizards. At least she could forever throw this back in Gabriel’s face if he ever again balked when she mentioned the nature of wizards. “You can’t seal me in the arcanium.”
He skidded to a stop. “Why not? That might actually work. They’re sacrosanct, right? No one can enter another wizard’s arcanium.”
“True. So when you find my desiccated corpse after I’ve died of thirst and hunger, no one else will have disturbed my bones,” she observed drily.
“I would bring you food. And water, as you’ve so often observed, is not an issue.” He grinned briefly, then strode on.
Since she was a patient and forbearing soul, she didn’t point out that he had a grip on her like a constrictor slowly squeezing the life from its prey. “If wizards could get away with imprisoning their familiars in their arcaniums, they no doubt would.” Nic drew in a deep breath when Gabriel paused to magically extract a fistful of silver nails from the door leading to the tunnel.
“I didn’t want anyone opening this door and finding the tunnel by accident,” he explained to her questioning look, closing the door behind them and sending the nails flying to seal it again. “I know no one can enter the arcanium without us, but better to keep the curious from getting close.”
“It’s good thinking. Proper wizard paranoia. I’m so proud.” She pretended to wipe away a tear.
“You get more sarcastic when you’re upset,” he noted, charging down the tunnel. “So I’ll let that go.”
“Do I? And here I thought my sarcasm was all-purpose, wear anywhere, use anytime.”
“That too,” he muttered, pausing at the final doorway. He already had a grip on her, so he pulled the magic easily, blending it with his own to spiral the door open. “Get inside.”
She obeyed, though his high-handedness irritated her. “As much as I love it when you order me around, my only love, I really don’t—”
“Have time to argue,” he interrupted. “We’re going to need a lot of sex magic. Take off your clothes and kneel.”
