Oh, so that was to be the way of it.“You wished to speak with me, Lady Harahel?”he asked, gesturing to a table with two chairs set away from the main work area.
She glanced, rather longingly, Cillian thought, at the table of stacked documents, but followed his lead to the chairs.Settling herself into one, she crossed her legs and gave him a piercing look.“So,” she said, whirling her fingers in the air in a come-along motion, “give me your report.”
“I was under the impression that you were going to tell me what you found from the interviews,” he countered, feeling uneasy for no good reason.
She huffed impatiently.“What I have or have not discovered falls under my private aegis as Lady Harahel.You are not privy to house business unless and until you agree to be my heir, which will require you to take certain vows of discretion.”
Increasingly, Cillian worried about what his grandmother—and more importantly, in her role as the head of his house—was getting at with this interview.It seemed very odd.“And House Phel?What about your responsibility to them to report what you’ve discovered regarding the systematic removal and concealment of the archives related to their house?”
She waved that off.“That’s the responsibility of Convocation Archives.They employ Harahel wizards and thus they—and you, as you should recall—become the responsibility of Convocation Center.”
He paused a moment, feeling as if he’d stepped into a maze of twisted reasoning.“Wait, which am I—your minion or an employee of the Convocation?”
“Your status is quite unclear at the moment, isn’t it, Cillian?”She pierced him with sharp black eyes that were all high-house wizard.“You have not obeyed me as a minion of my house, nor are you actually employed by Convocation Academy any longer.You seem to be more of a hanger-on to a dangerous crowd.Especially that Elal girl.You are young, but you should know by now that the world is not kind to a houseless wizard.”
Cillian rather suspected that Tandiya Uriel, if pressed, would claim him as an employee, rather than allow him to be considered adrift and houseless.For that matter, he was certain Nic and Gabriel would immediately take him on if his legal status was called into question.House Phel had already gained a reputation for taking in the iconoclasts and outcasts.It rather amused him, the staid, quiet librarian, to qualify for those ranks.
But his grandmother wasn’t going to press that matter, he felt sure.This was about Alise.
And about something else even more fraught.
He played along.“I don’t mean to get myself into trouble like this,” he said humbly, averting his gaze as if ashamed, but watching her in his peripheral vision.“I don’t quite know how I get drawn in, but then I am and I don’t see a way out.”
She smiled in satisfaction, as she wouldn’t have, he thought, had she known he was watching for it.“You’ve always been vulnerable to these beautiful wizard girls in apparent distress,” she said soothingly, sliding back into the nurturing grandmother he’d known all his life.“First Serafina, now Alise.But these girls are not in the least helpless.They’re using you, twisting you around and getting you to humiliate yourself by serving their whims like you’re their familiar.”
He had to bite back the retort that there was nothing wrong with being a strong partner to a wizard, nor anything humiliating about being a familiar.As much as House Harahel disdained the use of familiars—though he suspected that moral position would change if Harahel wizards truly needed the extra punch of magic—his grandmother would likely be ashamed of him offering to effectively be Alise’s familiar, to share his magic with her whenever she needed.Never mind that Alise had unstintingly given her magic to him when he needed it most.Lady Harahel wouldn’t see it that way.In her eyes, Alise was ever and always an Elal predator.
But that wasn’t the only thing going on here.He worried that this conversation had the stink of Hanneil manipulation and he’d been the one to let it in the room.He regretted now, the privacy that prevented him from accessing help.“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said miserably, which was a lie.
Her next words proved it.“I’ll help you, boy.”She clasped his shoulder with a firm grip.“I can help you understand your findings.Let’s go through the data and I’ll counsel you on what to do next.I know that Elal girl has her claws deep into you, but you don’t need to be her puppet any longer.I helped to extract you from Serafina’s clutches; I’ll help you get out of this.You can trust me.”She gave him one more squeeze, then pushed to her feet and strode toward the worktable.
Cillian fancied he could see the greed in the lines of her posture, which seemed unlikely, though her library magic reached out with palpable avidity.What was certain was that he couldnottrust her.But he also wasn’t sure how to stop her, other than bodily throwing himself across the documents she’d eagerly begun sifting through.
The door burst open and Alise entered, seeming much larger than her usual diminutive self.A spirit boundary swirled around her and her wizard-black eyes practically sparked with her powerful magic.She might not have direct access to the Elal arcanium at the moment, but that tutelage with her father had changed her, had somehow expanded her ability to absorb and retain magic.Han and Iliana had given to her generously—and Nic and Seliah had offered—but Alise also seemed to have increased her native ability to generate magic.
He had no idea how she’d known to come and save him, but he sagged in relief that she had.“Alise,” he began, wondering how to explain without tipping off his grandmother—or the wizard controlling his grandmother’s mind.
She flicked him a glance and returned her attention to Lady Harahel, who’d whirled to face Alise, keeping her body blocking the precious documents.“It’s all right, Cillian,” Alise said, slowly advancing after ensuring the room had resealed.“I know.”
Of course she did.
“Let her go,” Alise advised calmly, speaking to andthroughÓrlaith.“You are found out.Lady Harahel won’t be allowed to see anything of import, nor will she be trusted again until she’s been cleansed of your influence and her mind healed.”
His grandmother drew herself up, fully the regal head of an ancient high house.“I still outrank you, Alise Elal, and I will not abide your corrupting influence on my grandson and heir.You do not give me orders.”
“Second warning,” Alise said softly, her magic intensifying, heady as red wine, lethal as the thorns of the full-blooming roses scenting the air.Another element wove through her magic, something he’d only glimpsed in her a few times and just recently: the deep rooted vines of the dark arts, steeped in earth and fed with underground rivers, reaching for the sky and sunlight.“We’ll find out who you are regardless, but you let this wizard go or you will regret the opportunity to flee that I’ve so generously offered.”
Órlaith’s mouth opened, widened, and emitted a hiss.When her voice followed, the tenor of it had changed unmistakably, an eerily different personality channeling through the same vocal chords.“You cannot defeat us.We are everywhere and we have power you cannot imagine, baby wizard.The final conflict is coming and we will win.See what generosity means to us when you and every wizard in the Convocation is mentally enslaved to us.”
“Great speech,” Alise commented drily.“And we’ll just see who will triumph.In the meantime, this wizard is no longer yours.”
The thick vine of dark arts magic snaked out and Órlaith briefly seized in a convulsion.Cillian darted to catch his grandmother before she fell, the spasm dissolving as she fainted.Alise joined him on the floor, kneeling beside the unconscious wizard, the dark arts magic diffusing into a wider ray, the sunshine of it heating, balanced by the other elements.
“I can do something to help her now,” Alise said.“But we’ll need Jonathan Refoel to heal her mind.By the feel of this, those evil Hanneil psychopaths got to her quite a long time ago, so the compulsions are deeply embedded.”
“I didn’t know you could do this,” he marveled, watching her work with his wizard senses.“I mean,” he amended when she glanced up in surprise, “I knew Professor Seraphiel had taught you the dark arts as a defense against further Hanneil attacks, but I didn’t you could do…this.”He waved a hand at the prone form of Lady Harahel, looking oddly collapsed and fragile, a far cry from her usual proud and vital self.He felt a twinge of dread, as if something in his world that he’d thought immutable had suddenly shattered.
“I’ve been practicing,” Alise admitted, coloring a little.“I like the rituals of the dark arts.I find them soothing, like they balance me out.They make a good contrast to the, I don’t know how to describe it—the abstract nature of working with spirit magic.”
