Page 34 of Rogue Familiar

Worrying about Jadren galvanized her when worrying about herself hadn’t. Making herself move, she looked around.

Sure enough, there he was: sprawled bonelessly over a spindly bush and looking pretty much like a ragged set of black leathers left to dry. His pale skin showed through the rents, the rest of him in shadow. The bush didn’t look very comfortable and she wondered why he’d picked it, until her groggy brain figured out that he’d fallen from Vale’s back and landed there.

And it was up to her to get him off and into a more comfortable position. Selly was pretty sure that dislodging your wizard from various hazards upon which they’d impaled themselves was not covered in Nic’s Care and Feeding of Wizards lessons. Of course, she doubted that even the much-vaunted Convocation Academy taught how to handle scenarios where both wizard and familiar were so injured they couldn’t help each other. She certainly was in no shape to help Jadren and vice versa.

But he was capable of healing and she wasn’t. Therefore she needed to do whatever it took to put Jadren on track to accomplish one of his healing miracles, so he could save her in return. How she was going to do that with him spackled to a thornbush, she didn’t know. Vale nudged her shoulder, snorting softly and she reached up to stroke his velvety muzzle in appreciation for the comfort. He nudged her harder, this time on the side of her head. “Hey,” she protested, though without much force, her eyes widening as she took in the unexpected sight of a small cabin tucked back in the trees.

“You are the best, smartest horse in the entire Convocation,” she breathed, “and beyond!” She didn’t know if Vale had chosen this spot to dump Jadren on purpose—though she suspected he had—but she’d take advantage of this opportunity. Occupied or not, the cabin presented the best opportunity for safe haven. Deciding she only had it in her to traverse the short distance once, she hauled herself to her feet a final time, using the ever-patient Vale as a scaffold. Her whole body hurt, stinging and aching with countless wounds from that hunter that she must have failed to register in the heat of the fight, awash with whatever insane rage had overcome her.

Finding the oilcloth in Vale’s packs, she spread it on the ground, then tied a pair of ropes to one bunched-up end of it, tying the other ends to either side of the chest strap of Vale’s saddle. Leading Vale to the bush—and leaning on him, too—she got the cloth positioned beside it. At that point, she simply needed to lever Jadren off the bush and onto the cloth, where he collapsed in a boneless heap with a pained groan.

“Sorry,” she said, meaning it, but also knowing this was the best she could do. Jadren grunted again, though she couldn’t tell if he accepted the apology, rejected it, or simply reacted to the ungentle landing. “All right, Vale, let’s go.” She clung to the saddle as Vale moved forward at a slow walk, telling herself she needed to make sure Jadren’s weight didn’t shift the girth, but really because she couldn’t walk without the horse’s support. She must have lost a lot of blood.

Feeling a bit foolish, she knocked on the cabin door. What would she say if someone opened it to find her, no doubt looking like a victim of the scavengers that plagued the outskirts of Meresin, hanging onto a massive warhorse, dragging an apparent corpse? Hi, mind if we stay the night? Though it might’ve been prudent to have a weapon at hand, just in case the potential occupants were hostile, she decided against it, as no one would react well to this scenario, let alone with a big dagger on display.

Fortunately, no one answered the door. Until the relief hit her, Selly hadn’t realized how much she’d dreaded having to talk to someone, even a friendly face. Trying the handle, she found it fortuitously unlocked. Well, they deserved some good fortune after this long run of bad luck. Vale ducked his head and wedged through the doorway, barely fitting, but making it. Selly peered around in the darkened interior, then happily spotted the low glow of a sleeping fire elemental in a lantern. It was the sort that Alise had been installing in House Phel, with a switch anyone could trigger, and the small spirit inside leapt into bright light at her touch.

The place was small and plain. It could have been a farm cottage in Meresin, which made her feel right at home. A small kitchen area appeared to be scrupulously clean and well-stocked, looking very like her parents’ kitchen, giving her a kick of nostalgia and comfort. She’d love to have her mother there right then, to kiss and pet her, to take care of Selly in exactly the way she’d been rejecting this last little while, wanting to prove she could handle things on her own.

Guess this was her opportunity to prove it, so she’d best handle them.

Deciding the dark room through an open doorway was the bedchamber—and that no way was she getting Jadren onto a bed—she untied the ropes from Vale and dragged her wizard over to the fur rug in front of the cold fireplace. That hearth came with a fire elemental, too, so she triggered it, comforted by the cheerful flames it made as it leapt joyfully over the fuel the cabin’s owners had efficiently placed there. She kept Jadren on the oil cloth, so neither of them would soil the rug. The cursed thing was coming in handy.

While Vale stood there—and really hoping the gelding’s hooves weren’t scarring the wood floors—Selly relieved him of the packs and his tack, letting it all fall to the floor. She couldn’t do more and hoped the horse would forgive the neglect, especially unfair to him given all he’d done to rescue them. Liberated, Vale went out the still-open front door, head high, and Selly trusted that he’d be fine overnight. Wishing she’d thought to hold onto the horse before he left, she gave up on any pride and crawled to the door to close it and put the bar in place. People who locked doors to guard people inside, but not their possessions when they were gone, were people she understood.

She crawled back to Jadren, thinking vaguely that she should get some food into them, but only capable of digging the ever-replenishing flask out of the packs and setting it by his side after she drank as much as she could hold. Only a bit longer to last, she told herself. As best she could—feeling slightly stronger for having drunk the water—she began arranging him into an at least well-aligned, if not comfortable position on his back. It could be her imagination, but he looked somewhat less terrible than he had, his face more recognizable, regaining its shape. She stripped him as she went, which was easy, given the sorry state of his clothing.

Once Selly got the scraps of Jadren’s shirt off, she spotted the chain around his neck, the brass tube threaded through it. She’d worn it around her neck for a while. At some point Jadren had reclaimed it. Moved, brushing her fingertips over it, she wondered at the significance of him wearing it.

Going to his boots, this time she didn’t hesitate, probably numbed by exhaustion and all the violence, pulling them off and throwing them aside. His feet were long and pale, oddly vulnerable looking, but miraculously not mangled—or at least not that Selly could discern. All of him was sunken, blue-white as a dead thing, and she could only hope that his wizard’s instincts would take over and seize her magic when he wasn’t in any state to fight it.

Nic had said that wizards naturally craved magic, particularly from their bonded familiars, and that they had to control themselves to not take it. Not many wizards really wanted to restrain themselves from draining their familiars dry, she’d said; they only hesitated for fear of draining their familiars to the point of death or beyond.

If she did this right, Jadren would be in no condition to restrain himself. She’d seen him come out of injury-induced unconsciousness before and he wasn’t in his right mind in that state. Jadren had understood that about her from the beginning, how the madness affected her, what she needed to come out of it and recover when it overtook her. She could turn that around, use that shared understanding against him. Or, rather, to save him. His instincts would do what he would stop himself from doing, given the time and opportunity to think. She’d make sure he didn’t have the chance to do something stupidly noble.

With him laid out to her satisfaction, so he’d heal as cleanly as possible, she removed her own clothing, grateful for the ease of the release of the Ophiel fastenings. Her clothes were torn in places, but not to rags like Jadren’s. Still, the burn and tear of wounds reopening as she pulled the leathers away made her aware of the injuries she’d only guessed at till then. That hunter had hurt her far worse than she’d realized, the deep bites from its fangs and the scores from its talons bled anew, some of them frighteningly deep. She didn’t look too closely, however. Her strength had run out and she had nothing left in her to attempt to staunch any of the bleeding.

Laying herself down next to Jadren felt like the easiest and most natural act in the world. She laid her head in the fold of his shoulder, draping her upper arm over his chest and her thigh over his groin, sighing at the deliciousness of the skin-to-skin contact. Even if she never had more with him than this, even if she never tasted the passion he’d promised and taunted her with, she had this moment, this deeply satisfying if fleeting present. Losing herself to the drag of sleep, to the bliss of finally letting go, she felt safe as she never had.

She was with Jadren, and that was all that mattered.

~11~

Jadren walked through a nighttime marsh flooded with the light of the full moon. Tree limbs hung heavy with waxy ivory blossoms over still water, the reflection of the flowers twining with the white moonlight. Night creatures sang unfamiliar songs, the chorus oddly charming—quirky and yet beautiful, reminding him of Seliah.

“Quirky, but beautiful makes you think of me?”

Jadren turned, catching his breath at the sight of Seliah, clad only in her long dark hair. Distantly, he wondered at that flowing hair, thinking that perhaps he should realize something about it. But the thought fled, dispelled by the sheer seductiveness of her. Her skin glowed in the moonlight, the sensual curves of her long, delicately boned body shadowed here, revealed there. Her full lips curved and she lifted one hand to a branch above her, tilting her head and swaying there like one of the water reeds, like another blossom of the marshes.

“Where are we?” he asked, unable to take his eyes off of her.

“You don’t recognize it? I suppose you haven’t ever been here. Still, I thought that you might recognize this place, having been inside my magic.”

“This is your magic?”

She shrugged a little, her breasts rising and falling with the movement, her hard, dark nipples peeking briefly through the screen of her hair as she gazed over the landscape. He wanted her with consuming passion, his hands aching to touch her, so he moved closer. Glancing back at him, Seliah smiled invitingly. “The landscape of my magic… Perhaps so, yes. A familiar’s arcanium, as it were.” She held out a hand to him. “You’re welcome in this place, wizard of mine.”

Delighted by the invitation—though a puzzling part of him shouted that he could not, should not touch her—Jadren took that final step and clasped Seliah’s hand, interlacing his fingers with her long, slight ones that felt so fragile between his, yet also shimmering with magic that flowed into him like water coming to the desert. He was parched and she nourished him.

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