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Sergio slammed a hand against the wall beside her head.So help her, she did flinch.Worse, he saw it and was pleased.“The warrant is valid, my disobedient familiar, and I have you here with full knowledge of the Convocation, as I volunteered to handle your punishment and retraining myself.Such is my duty to the Convocation.”
It could be true.That was more believable than Sammael risking the Convocation’s ire.
“You might be able to keep me prisoner,” Nic retorted boldly, “but I am not bonded to you.”
“You will be, in time.In the meanwhile, I intend to keep you healthy.We can’t have you losing what little mind you have and wasting away while we wait for your travesty of a wizard to cease being an inconvenience and die already, which means tapping your magic.”
“No.”She firmed her jaw.“I refuse.”
“You cannot refuse!”
“And yet, I am,” she returned calmly.
With a growl, Sergio clamped a hand over her throat, forcing her chin higher, his fingers digging in like spidery claws.He leaned against the wall with his other hand, using the leverage to choke her lightly.She held his gaze, glaring her lack of fear.He wouldn’t kill her.He wanted her too badly.“Yield, Familiar,” he ordered.“Give me your magic.”
“No.”Oddly enough, sharing her magic with Jadren helped in this moment, having given her insight into what made it more difficult for him.She’d also been practicing with Gabriel to govern the flow of her magic.Every little bit helped.Supposedly a wizard couldn’t take magic from an unwilling, bonded familiar—but she also didn’t want this to be how they discovered that her bond with Gabriel was gone.
Sergio’s magic clamped onto hers, echoing the hand pinning her to the wall.He was a powerful wizard, despite Jadren’s insults and his weak personality, and the pull was difficult to resist.Still, she was powerful, too, and being around Gabriel and his radical ideas had given her new confidence in her abilities.
Her magic washers, to keep or give, and that certainty made all the difference.She would not give even a drop to Sammael.
Sergio’s face reddened with effort.“Yield, curse you!”he shouted in her face.“It’s your duty to submit to your betters.”
“I see no one better than me,” she choked out, and his hand spasmed on her throat, her vision darkening at the edges.Maybe hewouldkill her.
“I can give you pain,” he said, leaning his face even closer to hers.“You know I can.There’s a great deal of pain I can deliver without harming you.I can make you suffer so much that you’ll be begging me to strip you of your magic, and the pain will only generate more.”His magic blazed into her, setting her blood on fire with agony.
She gasped and writhed in his grip, fisting her hands and flailing at him.Sergio only laughed, savoring her suffering.“I can feel it even now, how your magic is growing like a bonfire.You love this, as all familiars do.Abandon your pride and admit it to me.”
Nic opened her mouth—and spat in his face.
With a screech, he leapt back, wiping away her spittle in disgust as she collapsed to the floor without his supporting throttle.Her body screamed in every pore, and she drew in great lungfuls of breath, trying to calm and restore her alarmed system.The pain isn’t real,she told herself.There’s no injury.It’s an illusion.
Except the painwasreal.Her nerves jangled at high alert from Sammael’s magic, her body trying to make sense of how to react to an attack it couldn’t otherwise perceive.Sergio’s shiny black boots filled her vision before he crouched, vising a hand on her chin to force her gaze up to his—and to hold her jaw closed so she couldn’t bite him again, she felt sure.“You can’t win this fight,” he said softly, false sympathy in his face as he shook his head.“You cannot hold out against me forever.As your sanity dissolves and your will softens, you won’t be able to remember why you were so stubborn.Eventually you’ll submit to me.And when I bond you to me, you’ll adore doing it.I’ll make you crawl as I lead you with a leash, and you’ll delight in kissing my feet.”
“Never,” she ground through clamped teeth.
He laughed softly.“Time is on my side, naughty familiar.And I will enjoy breaking you.”
Dropping her again, he stood and dusted off his hands.“I advise you to contemplate your situation.There is no rescue coming.The Convocation was happy to confer your punishment to House Sammael, which is legally binding.Even the house of your birth has turned its back on you, given your reckless and rebellious behavior.I am the only one who wants you, and I have complete power over you.You’d do well to appease me, as I am and ever will be your new master.”He gave her a jolt of pain that made her nerves flare into panic again.She bit her lip to keep from screaming.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Sergio said cheerfully, as if saying farewell at a party.“Make sure you look pretty for me.”
As the door closed and locked, Nic lay on the floor, too exhausted to move, dully contemplating her prospects.Had Lyndella endured this from her captors?Likely so, or similar, though Lyndella at least had the hope that Sylus would find and rescue her.Nic held out no such hope.Sergio was right: She would eventually break.She wouldn’t be able to hold out against the combined force of his torment and her own unreleased magic.Something would give—either her will or her sanity.
Insanity was starting to sound pretty attractive.
“Let’s go overthe plan,” Gabriel told the group.Iliana, Han, and Rat had arrived on nearly spent horses, all of them mud-spattered and smelling more like the bottom of a bog than any person should.But—largely due to Rat exploiting his intimate knowledge of the marshes—they’d arrived well ahead of their pursuers.The two familiars were in high spirits and ready to fight the hunters that had plagued them for days.Rat had already been sent off to the infirmary and had gone without protest, which was a greater mark of his exhaustion than his haggard face or the deep shadows under his eyes.He’d kept his charges alive, but he’d paid the price.
“Everyone select a weapon or two,” Gabriel continued.He handed the machete to Jadren.“I believe you had your eye on this one.”
Jadren took it warily.“But I lost the bet.”
Gabriel shrugged and grinned.“I always planned to let you have it.”
Scowling and muttering under his breath, Jadren unbuckled his belt to contrive a way to carry the big blade.Alise, playing with a pair of daggers she’d selected, rolled her eyes at him.
“I’m a decent archer,” Iliana said, taking up the quiver of arrows, “if there’s a bow to go with these.”
