Page 29 of Rogue Familiar

“Two,” she continued over him, “it’s well known that we learn best by teaching. These wizards have all received excellent academy training on wielding magic in general, so they have the necessary framework to learn, they lack only the expertise of the lone water wizard worth his salt in all the Convocation. Teaching them will not only give them the insight only you can provide, it will force you to interrogate your own methods. That’s a good thing, by the way.”

It didn’t sound like a good thing. For all that Nic loved to tease him about his introspective tendencies, Gabriel didn’t like thinking about his magic much. From the owlish look Nic was giving him, she followed that thought easily. “Not thinking about it doesn’t make it go away,” she said in a softer tone. “Third,” she added more loudly, preventing him from replying, though he didn’t really have a good response to that, “you’re attempting to divert me from whatever you hid under that pile of documents.” She smiled thinly at his wince.

“Do you have eyes in the back of your head?” he grumbled.

“I know my wizard.” She held out a preemptory hand, snapping her fingers, then opening her palm. When he didn’t immediately comply with the implicit command, she shook her head slightly, eyes full of surprising compassion rather than the anger he’d expected. “I know you want to protect me from the world, but even you, my mighty one, cannot keep the world from reaching out to us. Stronger together, remember? This is why you wanted me for your familiar.”

“I wanted you because I fell in love with your portrait,” he retorted, annoyed enough to tell the truth, even as he reached for the packet of letters. He’d known all along that there wasn’t any point to keeping them from her.

“Nobody falls in love with a portrait,” she huffed, though the high color on her graceful cheekbones gave away that she was pleased. That and her magic coiling warmly around him, like rose-infused wine, redolent as the roses blooming outside the open library windows.

“It was that stubborn tilt to your chin that did it. And the mulish set to your lovely lips.” He set the packet on her still open palm, lifted that chin, and gave her a lingering kiss on those tempting lips. She even tasted like roses and wine. “This won’t be easy to read.”

She didn’t pull away, instead smiling ruefully up at him. “I know, but have you ever known me to look for the easy way out?”

“No.” He had to agree there. Much as he’d like to protect her, he wouldn’t change that about her either. Her courage and determination delighted him as much as they alarmed him.

“And I’m not stubborn,” she added, pulling away and going to her own desk to lay out the letters, stacking them with crisp ease into an order she grasped with a single glance at each.

“She said, stubbornly,” he retorted. Unwilling—perhaps unable—to sit, he folded his hands behind his back and paced to the windows as she read. Paced back again. Made another circuit. Nic said nothing. He walked to the windows again. This was unbearable. “Well?”

“Shh. I’m reading.”

“I know you don’t read that slowly.”

“Reading and thinking, then. Give me a moment.”

Her voice sounded steady, even absentmindedly irritated about his interruptions, no hint of the tears he’d more than half anticipated. When her father had sent her previous messages expressing his anger and disdain, Nic had been hard hit. Not this time. In truth, she’d had a far more fierce, even militant air about her lately. She’d always been determined on her courses of action, but something about the abduction had changed her. At least, Gabriel assumed it was that, as she’d been different since. The change worried him on some level—though Nic would no doubt tell him he worried too much. Which was in no small part why he’d said nothing to her about it.

Finally she sat back, glancing up thoughtfully as he came around to edge a hip onto her desk. “What do you think?” he prompted.

“Other than that we’re fucked?” she answered drily.

He couldn’t say his hopes sank, as they hadn’t actually been high to begin with. Still. “I considered that some of it might be Convocation hyperbole.”

She raised one elegant black brow in question, glittering nails tapping a light rhythm on the documents.

He gestured vaguely. “You know—making it all sound worse than it is in order to intimidate us.”

She pursed her lips, then blew a stream of air between them, nearly soundless, but enough to make the longer curls draping over her forehead flutter. “It would be difficult to make it sound worse than it is.”

He decided on a preemptive strike. “I’m not handing you over. No matter what.”

Biting out a sigh, she raked a hand through her hair, the curls going wilder in the humidity of late morning. “We don’t need to have that argument again, though I might point out that these are official documents very clearly directing that you don’t have a choice.”

“Even the Elal ones?”

“House Elal filed an official complaint with the Convocation.” She pinned one document with a fingertip and spun it to face him. “That’s what this one means, that you stole me.” She did the same with five others. “Same with this one, accusing you of stealing a second familiar from House Elal, Maman. This one from House Iblis, documenting the theft of their familiar, Narlis.”

“We settled the question on Narlis.”

“No,” she corrected calmly, “we paid them off. The action was still against the law. Besides which, these two from Houses Ariel and House Phanuel, accuse you of same with Iliana and Han, respectively. As does this one from House El-Adrel, regarding Seliah. They describe this as a pattern of behavior and they’re not wrong.”

“I didn’t steal you,” he argued. “That one was perfectly legal.”

She actually laughed. “You realize that’s not a compelling argument.”

He supposed it did sound bad, put that way. “Seliah was illegally bonded to Jadren. El-Adrel didn’t have a contract with us. They owe us compensation, because—if we’re going to pretend that human beings can be owned—Seliah belongs to House Phel. You said that much.”

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