“Yes.And… well, will theywantto be?”Even though she knew that Jadren and Seliah couldn’t hear them, she lowered her voice.“Seliah likes being bonded to Jadren, she says.It creates an intimacy, beyond the exchange of magic, a deep connection.And then there’s alternate form.”
“I thought about that, too.We don’t understand why only familiars can take alternate form and why only their bonded wizard can trigger the transformation.But maybe that’s accounted for in Anciela’s work.We don’t know.”
“We don’t know far too much,” she responded with frustration, all lax sleepiness gone.She wanted to pound on something.Or pace.She also didn’t want to stir even a fingertip of skin out of the deliciously toasty water.“What are we potentially unleashing with this information?What if we are able to turn familiars into wizards, but they’re still bonded—so all we’ve done is create a way for wizards to be enslaved to other wizards?”
“I think—”
“And what if the familiars lose their alternate forms forever?Nic loves hers; so does Seliah.”
“Well, if—”
“What if this just leads to war?”she demanded, feeling increasingly panicked.“Loving wizard–familiar couples breaking up, families and houses dissolving.This could spell the end of the Convocation.Of civilized society and—”
“Alise.”Cillian took her by the shoulders.“I understand why you’re worrying about all of this, but let me ask you one question.All right?”
She nodded and pressed her lips together against spewing more of her fears.
“Do you believe the Convocation as it is, the current structure of our society and citizenship tiers, is a fair and equitable system?”
“No,” she had to admit.Obviously it was not.“But—”
“There are a lot of possible ‘buts,’” he interrupted.“Still, at its heart, what we have now is not worth preserving.Yes, there might be pain and danger and violence that results from us releasing this information, but are you saying we don’t have that now, just in a more massaged and polished form we’ve been trained all our lives to accept as normal?”
“That’s true,” she conceded, feeling herself calm at his reasoning.
“Besides, it’s not our role to withhold information,” he continued.“Anciela, who discovered it, wanted people of the Convocation to know about this.All knowledge is worth having.”
She snorted.“You just think that because you’re a librarian.You’reobsessedwith information.”
“Obsessed?”he echoed, trying to look offended, but eyes sparkling with amusement.He’d set aside his spectacles on a nearby rock, annoyed when they fogged up on him, so she had a rare view of his gorgeous face without them.“I’ll tell you about obsession.”His hands glided down from her shoulders to smooth over her arms, then up again to her ribs.He leaned in closer.“I’m obsessed all right,” he whispered, “but not with information.Nothing so dry as that.”
“No?’she asked breathlessly.
He shook his head, a closed-lipped smile curving his full lips.“There’s a certain wizard, delicate of build, powerfully magical.Absolutely gorgeous.”His hands spanned her waist under the water, fingertips nearly touching.“She’s a little difficult at times,” he confided.“Proud.Never lets anything well enough alone.”
“She sounds like a handful.”Alise gasped as his hands slid up her ribs to cup her naked breasts, his thumbs brushing her tightening nipples.
“Oh, she is,” he agreed in a dark murmur.He squeezed firmly, the way he knew made her squirm.“Delightfully so.”
“Anyone I know?”Alise asked, feeling her sex swell and go slick, even in the water.
“I’ll whisper her name in your ear,” he answered.“But don’t tell anyone.She doesn’t know I’m in love with her.”He leaned in and kissed the shell of her ear.“Alise Elal Phel.”
Alise shivered, even though it was a game.Somehow, the moment had become singularly intense.“I think she knows,” she whispered back, turning her lips to caress his unshaven cheek, the stubble delightfully prickly.
“Does she?”He pulled back to gaze into her eyes.
“You’ve told her,” Alise pointed out.“Several times.”
“Ah, but is that the same as herknowingit?”
“I think it is, because she knows.”She threaded her fingers through his adorable dark curls, damp from the steam of the hot springs and spiraling wildly because of it.“She feels it.”
Feeling suddenly shy, she dropped her gaze from his gentle black eyes and wrapped one springy corkscrew around her finger, admiring the gleaming coil, the blue-black shine of it.Her heart turned over, slow and warm, the heat radiating through her stronger than the water they soaked in.Cillian was the warmth in her life, the one person who understood her through and through, who offered both frank admiration of her virtues and forgiveness for her faults.Why had she been hesitating to tell him how she felt in return?
Because you think you’ll destroy him.And you might.
Yes, there was that.But she’d tried to shake him loose, to no avail.And he might just find a way to destroy himself chasing after her.So she might as well… what?Accept what already existed.Stop fighting the reality and learn to work with it.Be honest and vulnerable.She lifted her gaze to find him watching her.
