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“Do you need help with your fastenings?”Daisy asked as Nic pulled on the gown.
Nic shook her head, smiling.“It’s magic.”She triggered the fastening, and the gown sealed itself, fitting to her figure.
“How clever,” Daisy said, but she sounded unhappy about it.
“Wine?”Nic asked, joining Daisy by the fire and picking up the carafe on the table between the chairs there.Not Elal wine, but that was another luxury she’d have to learn to live without.
“Oh, no, I really shouldn’t keep you.”But Daisy didn’t move.
“Want to walk with me?”Nic ventured.
“What I want to ask is, ah, private.”
“I see.”Nic sat and poured them both wine.“Is this about today, with Selly?”
Daisy plopped into the chair, taking the wine and drinking it down, then stared into the glass.Nic helpfully refilled it.“Is it true?”Daisy demanded.“Is my daughter a familiar like…” She didn’t finish, blanching as she realized the insult she’d been about to give.
“Like me,” Nic finished, cupping her hands around the metal goblet.“Yes, she is.I’m sorry that you had to find out like that.Gabriel and I planned to tell you and GF, but we were waiting for the right opportunity.And Gabriel needed time to accustom himself to the news as well.”
“How long have you known?”Daisy asked, not sounding friendly at all.Gone was the affectionate mother-in-law, and Nic sighed for that loss.
“From the moment I met Selly,” she admitted.
“And yet you said nothing!”Daisy drank her wine, mouth puckering.
“It was a party, and I’d only just met you,” Nic pointed out calmly.“I knew the news would be unwelcome.And I chose to tell Gabriel first.”
“I don’t know what I did,” Daisy said bitterly, staring into the fire.“First Gabriel and now Selly.Both of my children,contaminatedwith magic.I don’t understand why this happened, after all this time.”
Contaminated.It would seem like contamination to the folk of Meresin, living generations without magic, far from the Convocation.“No one knows why magical potential wanes in a family,” Nic said gently, “nor why it suddenly reappears, as it has in yours.But the magic breeds true, which means you and GF carried the potential for it.”
She snorted.“Nonsense.Neither of us has a lick of magic in us.”
Which wasn’t true.Daisy and GF might have low MP scores, but they had some.Why their pairing had produced progeny with such wildly high scores, well… no one knew.Though Nic was certain the Convocation very much wanted to figure it out.“The important thing to remember,” she said, “is that we can help Selly.Now that we know.”If we can recapture her.
“Help her,” Daisy echoed in patent disbelief.“What would that entail?”
Argh.Nic wasn’t really in shape to explain the physiology and mental and emotional health of familiars, but this was apparently falling to her.“The difference between wizards and familiars is that wizards can express the magic and familiars can’t.I have a great deal of magic, and I generate more all the time, but I can’t use it.That’s why I was paired to Gabriel, sohecan use my magic.”
Daisy looked dismayed, her spine unstiffening for the first time since she’d entered the room.“You’re not husband and wife?”
“We are that, too,” Nic hastily assured her, although that was a bit of a lie, since her imprudent escape meant they’d never had an actual wedding.In the eyes of the Convocation, however, as soon as the oracle verified that Gabriel had successfully impregnated Nic, they were as good as married.Not that she was going to explain that bit to her mother-in-law.Come to think of it, Nic wasn’t at all certain how Gabriel had explained the Betrothal Trials to his parents to begin with.Probably not with the bald truth.“When the Convocation pairs wizards and familiars in heterosexual teams, they want to ensure their compatibility in fertility as well as in magic.”
Daisy’s gaze fell to Nic’s still-flat stomach.“So your child will be…”
“Also a wizard or familiar, almost certainly very powerful,” Nic confirmed.Daisy’s unhappy frown wasn’t encouraging, so Nic plowed on past the point.“What that means for Selly is this: A familiar can’t express their own magic, so they need a wizard to do it for them.Selly’s magic has been building up inside her for years.Without a channel to express that magic, it becomes, well, like a bog.It’s not healthy.”
Daisy gazed at her with a wrenching combination of horror and hope.“Then… Selly isn’t crazy?”
Oh, Selly is crazy all right.The question was, could she be returned to sanity?Nic discreetly didn’t say that, however.“She isn’t.She’s just an untapped familiar.”
Daisy nodded, clearly not fully comprehending.“And what they said today, about you.What does it mean, you taking an alternate form?”
Nic smiled weakly.“Some of the stories are true.Familiars can become an animal, if their wizard provides the magical push to do it.”
“And that would happen to my Selly?”
“It depends, but probably.She would need to be paired with a wizard first.”
