Fetched, even.
Iliana beamed at her from the other seat, holding Han’s hand and looking perfectly happy.They’d been friends a long time, the three of them, since before fate determined they’d be divided by their familiar and wizard statuses.Classmates and buddies—until Alise’s early manifestation as a wizard had taken her away from the general coursework, and from the friends of her youth.
“It’s funny, isn’t it,” Iliana said, “to be returning to Convocation Academy together like this.The last time we three were in this place, we were running away from it in the dark of night.”
“I can’t decide if that’s a good memory or a bad one,” Han said, giving her an affectionate glance, kissing her bright hair, then meeting Alise’s gaze with his unusual teal blue eyes.They were a startling shade, emphasized by his white-blond hair, severely smoothed into a tail that hung down his back.While the black eyes of wizardry was an obvious status symbol and clear indicator of a magic practitioner—and even a marker of the individual’s power and years of practice, by the intensity of the blackness—Alise would be sorry if some of these striking eye shades were lost to magic.If Anciela’s method worked, would everyone end up with black eyes, leaving the variety of eye color to the mundanes?
For that matter, a thought that hadn’t occurred to her until now, would Anciela’s techniques work to potentially makeanyonecapable of wielding magic?That was both exciting and terrifying to contemplate.
“I am amazed you three pulled it off,” Cillian said, smoothing a hand down Alise’s arm and snugging her tighter against him.“And that you did something so rebellious,” he added to Alise.“The first step that led you away from the path you thought you compelled to travel.”
He had a good point.Before Iliana had come to her, asking for help to reprogram the sleigh so they could escape the dire fates that would separate Han and her forever—a task only a wizard could do for them—Alise had been the quintessential good girl.She’d lacked Nic’s boldness and Nander’s self-involved callousness, but she’d done well at behaving herself, certain that careful toeing of the line would lead to success.When Nic manifested as a familiar, Alise’s future as the next head of House Elal seemed inevitable.She wasn’t the golden child Nic had been, more quiet than brilliant, and never their father’s favorite, but she could be obedient and learn to do everything the way he liked.That had seemed like a viable future until…
Well, until Nic unexpectedly ran away.Her sister’s escape had turned everything upside-down, and Alise lost her bearings on what the world should be like.It was as if Nic’s rebellion, her casting aside of all the social expectations she’d once embraced, had created a crack in the dam of Convocation Society.Ultimately, Alise had agreed not only to help Iliana find the freedom to enjoy her love and life’s partner, but to go with them.She’d had a grand and noble idea of rescuing Nic, who turned out not to need rescuing at all.Alise had felt foolish, but that excursion from mindless adherence to the rules governing her life had permanently changed something in her.
All leading to this moment.Perhaps this was, in truth, a more triumphant return than she’d thought.She no longer had her tail between her legs, no longer needed to beg to be readmitted.Whether Provost Uriel agreed to allow Alise to graduate, or to otherwise earn her certification as a wizard, no longer mattered.Gabriel and Jadren both headed their houses without an Academy degree, so if she did want to take over House Elal—though she deliberately turned her mind away from what it would take for her to attempt to defeat, and most likely have to kill her father—then she didn’t need the academy’s say so.Upon reflection, perhaps the crumbling of rigid Convocation rules had begun with Gabriel becoming Lord Phel.The wild card and iconoclast, empowered by Nic’s fire.
“It is funny,” Alise said, “the turns our lives have taken.A year ago, none of us thought we’d be taking the paths we are.Or that we’d have found the love we never expected—or perhaps thought we didn’t deserve.”
Eyes bright and misty, Iliana clutched Han’s hand, and he pressed another kiss to her hair as she tipped her head against his shoulder.Cillian tightened his arm around Alise, meeting her gaze with his warm, black one.“You have always deserved love, Alise,” he murmured.
“So have you,” she countered, nearly laughing when he screwed up his face in disbelief.“Anyway,” she said more loudly, setting a hand on his lean thigh and rubbing lightly, “here we all are.Ready to solve this last puzzle?”
“I very much hope Jadren and Seliah find that key,” Cillian said fervently.“I don’t know how any of us can find out much about Anciela’s method without it.”
“Maybe Nic’s plan will work to convert the council holdouts and get them to vote to approve researching Anciela’s data?”Iliana suggested.“If we get a full team of people—or multiple teams!—working to break the code, we might get there faster.You said it might take a long time,” she reminded Cillian, but losing steam in the face of his obvious lack of enthusiasm for her plan.
Alise stepped in, feeling bad for Iliana.“In a healthy society, a normal situation, what you suggest is perfectly valid, even smart.But we’re facing a situation where House Hanneil, at least, and probably in collusion with multiple other houses, has worked diligently for centuries to suppress this information.They’re not sitting idle right now, you can bet on that.”
“I agree,” Han said, expression grim.“The question I have is, what are they doing and why haven’t they acted directly to stop us yet?”
“Well,” Cillian said thoughtfully, “if we go with the theory that Anciela herself encrypted and hid the documents, then by releasing them from the folded archive, we’ve handed House Hanneil the opportunity to destroy the information finally and forever.They might be waiting for exactly this moment: for us to bring the documents to one place, so they can act.”
Alise’s stomach bunched with heavy anxiety.“Including the key.And we’re delivering the perfect opportunity for Hanneil to make sure it all disappears.”
“Or so that they can use it for themselves,” Cillian pointed out, “to continue their work to create super-wizards.That would explain why they haven’t moved more decisively yet.”
“But most of what we have is copies,” Iliana said with sudden distress.“We left the originals at House Harahel.We need to warn them!”
“We anticipated that,” Cillian reassured her.“Or, rather, Grandmother and I discussed it and she took steps to secure the house and all our archives from any incursions by Hanneil operatives, or any others.”
“A time when House Harahel’s legendary paranoia comes in handy,” Alise murmured.“Your house may not appear to be fortified, but it would also be difficult for anyone to infiltrate the lands and house short of a massive show of force, and I suspect Hanneil is still hoping to avoid attracting any more attention to this problem.”
“The last thing they want is to give the other houses a reason to unite against them and deliver a final defeat.”
“No more giving House Hanneil rope, if all of this proves to be true,” Han said.“We might see the permanent retirement of a high house from this.”
“I wouldn’t mind witnessing that,” Alise commented, surprised at the snarl in her voice.She’d thought herself reasonably over what Gordon Hanneil had done—and tried to do—to her at the behest of his house, but the dull anger still smoldered deep inside.“Let’s just hope Provost Uriel, and House Uriel, are anticipating this kind of attack and are ready to prevent it.”
“Just the same,” Cillian said, “we should make sure everyone has that in mind and is prepared for subterfuge.Hanneil has been three steps ahead of us this entire time and they’re not fools.”
“Do you think they’ve guessed what Jadren and Seliah are up to?”Iliana worried.
“It depends,” Cillian answered slowly, looking uncomfortable that they’d all turned to him for the answer.“It’s logical for Seliah to visit House Phel and her family, which is one reason we agreed they were the right ones for the job, but I think we also have to assume that we’re all being spied upon, all the time.Alise can make sure there aren’t Elal spirit spies watching us, but only while she’s around.”
That was true.She’d gotten so habitual about scanning for and repulsing the spirits sent to spy on her, that Alise didn’t think about it most of the time.But spirits were as ubiquitous as the elements.She couldn’t keep her father’s spies—and those sent by Elal minions—away from everyone, all the time any more than she could purify the air everyone breathed.
“And I can’t detect Hanneil psychic scanning,” she commented.“Not unless it gets very intrusive.”
