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He smiled in wry sympathy. “I know what you mean.”
“All right, let me think.” She stepped away from his heady presence, hoping that would clear her head. Glancing around the mostly empty room, she went to the only place to sit, perching on the edge of the silver bed. He frowned at her. “What? There is no other furniture in here, and it’s not conducive to rational thinking for me to be on the floor with you looming over me so enticingly.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “I never thought furniture would matter so much to me.”
Smirking, she crossed her legs, arranging the coat to cover her naked thighs when his gaze fixed there. “You asked how to push me into my alternate form, and the short answer is I don’t know. It’s in wizard training. Familiars aren’t taught it.”
He studied her, rationality returning to his fevered gaze. “The proctor knows I don’t have a Convocation Academy education. She was betting that I don’t know how to do this.”
Nic inclined her head. “It was probably her fallback all along. Even if your cursed reciprocal bond hadn’t befuddled the oracle head, she would no doubt have required this final demonstration. She wants me back at Convocation Center very badly.”
“Vengeance?”
“Probably in part. It galls her that I escaped on her watch,” Nic imitated the proctor’s pedantic complaint. “But… I suspect there’s more to it. The Convocation wants me back for some reason.”
“All the more reason not to let you go.” Gabriel stalked to her. Then, as if suddenly aware of his looming, he settled his weight onto the bed frame beside her, glaring at the thing when it creaked, as if it offended him.
“Even if we accomplish finding my alternate form, I doubt that will end things in this case. The Convocation won’t stop.”
He shook his head. “Let’s apply the breakfast table rule here.”
She blinked at him. Yes, her brain was fogged from arousal on top of the tumult of the day—it killed her to think Selly felt Nic had betrayed her—but she wasn’t following. “Breakfast table?”
He smiled and laid a hand on his muscled thigh, palm up in invitation, so she wormed out one of her own to lay her hand in his. “Let’s not worry about the next crisis until we at least survive the threat currently before us.”
“I’m pretty sure I was asking to forgo philosophy in favor of current threats,” she replied with a wrinkled nose, “but point taken.”
“You told me that taking your alternate form is something you want?” He made it a question, searching her face for the truth.
“I do want it. It’s just not easily done. I wanted us to practice and work our way up to that level.”
“Hmm. So not all wizards can push their familiars into alternate form?”
“No. It’s one of compelling reasons to bond with a powerful wizard, beyond wealth and status, if one has a choice.”
“That’s why you insisted on us using the arcanium, because it takes a lot of power.”
“At least the first time, yes. But I suspect some wizards are only able to do the trick while in the arcanium. That’s why you don’t see it all that often.”
“But I saw your father do it.”
“Yes.” She made a face for that. “Powerful, as I mentioned.”
“And near his arcanium.”
“True.”
He gazed past her, thinking hard. “You told me once that you didn’t know what your alternate form would be, that you might not become a cat like your mother because these things don’t run in families.”
“Your memory, as always, is excellent.”
“That implies that the form is already a part of your magic, that it simply needs to be unlocked.”
“I agree with the first part,” she replied, thinking it through. “There are multiple theories on why familiars take the alternate forms they do. Some think it’s born of the familiar’s magic. Others think the wizard’s preferences and needs shape the form. Others say it’s a combination of the two. I have never, however, heard the process referred to as ‘unlocking.’ It’s always framed as pushing or…”
“Forcing?” he filled in with a raised brow. “How unlike the Convocation to cleave to a metaphor that implies force.”
“Now who’s employing sarcasm?”
