“You do,” he insisted gently.“Asa explained to me what we’d need to do, if this happened.”
“Well I’m thrilled you men had a lovely little conversation about my breasts,” she muttered at him.
“Rest will help you, Nic, darling.”He kissed her again.“You’re as fretful as Bria with colic.You won’t be in any shape to help Alise if you’re falling apart.You grew an entire person, while going through difficult transitions, abductions, and fighting literal battles, and then you gave birth less than two months ago and have been nursing and losing sleep ever since.I’m not trying to be a tyrant here.I’m worried about you.I only agreed to this trip because I thought it would be restful for you and set your mind at ease.Instead…” He sighed.
“Instead we’re in the thick of it all again,” she agreed ruefully.“Though, to be fair, we have been all along.We just had a little baby bubble of pretending it wasn’t so.”
“Embroiled in this mess since we met,” he agreed, brushing a lock of hair back from her face.
“From before that,” she reminded him.“Whatever forces fell into place to conspire for you and me to live in interesting times, they arrayed long before we met.Maybe before you and Seliah were born with your house-restoring magic.I still don’t believe it was random.”
“Do you still think your father deliberately arranged for you to become my familiar?”
Even him asking that question and using the word “familiar” innocuously sent a flare of needy desire through her.Though they’d—finally!—started having sex again, Gabriel insisted on being gentle with her, not giving her the firm hand and harsher treatment she craved.She was hard up, probably contributing to the fretfulness.Maybe it wasn’t more rest she needed, but the exact opposite.Maybe the inn was an opportunity.If she couldn’t go straight to Alise, it might be possible to convince Gabriel of what she truly needed to be in fighting form.
“Nic?”he asked, frowning because she hadn’t answered.
“I don’t know.But I’ll tell you what I do think—and that’s that someone is helping us.”
“But who?Everyone has been against us.You’re forever warning me about how many enemies House Phel has.”
“Some of that from your own behavior,” she pointed out with asperity.She now knew him well enough—or perhaps she’d always known—that she could never have stopped him from his reckless idealism.From that first time when he rescued Narlis, the beleaguered Iblis familiar, or before that, from his soft-hearted outrage on behalf of all familiars in the Convocation, Nic had known where Gabriel’s values stood.
“I wouldn’t change any of that,” he said, just a tiny bit testy about it.
“I know.”She laid an affectionate hand on his cheek.Who would have guessed in the beginning that she’d go from castigating him for being the kind of person to bash himself brainless against the wall of Convocation tradition to planning to bang her own skull against it?The power of Gabriel Phel.He’d even gotten the relentless jaded Jadren El-Adrel to become an idealist.After a fashion.“My point is,” she continued, “that someone made sure that whatever curse or enchantment or whatever killed off all the wizardry in House Phel stopped working, allowing that magic to rebound.”
“But who would or could?”
“That’s the million-coin question, isn’t it?It would have to be someone who would either benefit from Phel recovering and accessing the house archives or a person with an altruistic motivation.”
“Or both,” he countered thoughtfully.Catching her lifted brows, he continued.“If someone suspected what Anciela Phel had hit upon, and wanted to liberate familiars from the bonds of physiology reducing them to second-class citizenship, they could both want to personally benefit from it and want a better society for everyone.”
“Pure altruism like the latter is pretty rare,” she commented doubtfully.“I think financial or social gain is more likely.”
“Could be love,” he returned, smiling at her cynicism.He trailed a finger down her cheek.“It’s a powerful motivator.Look at how you want to turn yourself inside out for Bria and for Alise.”
“Just into a bird,” she sniffed, but internally had to admit that he had a point.“Iliana thinks that the person who helped Anciela Phel hide her data was either a familiar or someone in love with a familiar.But,” she added, stopping his next words and sliding a careful glance at Iliana.Sure enough, the red-headed familiar who’d sacrificed so much for love was watching them cannily, quickly looking away and pretending she hadn’t been trying to read lips.The young woman was far too intuitive—and nosy—for her own good.“But,” Nic continued, averting her face to be less easily visible, “Iliana is young and romantic.”
“She’s not much younger than you are.”
And yet Nic felt ages older.“Well, I don’t have a romantic bone in my body.”
“This is very true,” he agreed easily.
“Ha ha.My point is that those are not qualities to base an investigation on.”
“In my experience,” Gabriel said slowly, “people are motivated by greed, hate, or love.Sometimes all three,” he conceded when she opened her mouth to argue, “but usually one wins out.”
“What about lust for power?”
“That’s greed.”
Hmm.“What about fear?”
“Hate is a manifestation of fear.”
He could be right.He usually was, annoyingly enough.“Sometimes there’s fear in love.”
