Nic had to take a moment to master the swell of emotion.So many of them all at once that she couldn’t put names to them.All she could think about was that crashing moment when the oracle head had pronounced her a familiar, an incontrovertible sentence that doomed all of her life’s ambitions.She hadn’t given up.She was too proud and stubborn for that, but…
But those ensuing days of picking up the tiny, shattered pieces of who she’d believed herself to be had been the very worst of her life.She’d only gone on because she had to, because she’d been forced to accept that nothing could change.She’d had one choice if she’d wanted to continue to live: accept this as forever.
And now forever had changed.
Gabriel gripped her hands in return, his own expression a similar mix of passionate feeling.A tear streaked down his cheek, shining silver-white as his hair, and she became aware that she wept in a silent rain.“I’m a wizard,” she said in wonder, amazed at the power of being able to say those simple words.
“Yes, you are.”
“We’re going to have to build extra time into the schedule,” Jadren said, “if every familiar we convert is going to have to have an existential crisis.Maybe we should have counselors standing by.”
“Shut up, Jadren,” Seliah replied amiably.Asa and Jonathan Refoel said nothing, but Nic was sure she heard a snort of laughter from one of them at least as they busied themselves with resetting the equipment.
“Jadren is right,” Nic declared.“I have a lifetime to absorb this transformation.I’ll get out of the way so you can effect the next miracle.Who’s next—Han or Iliana, I presume?”
“Yes, I’m surprised they’re not here yet,” Gabriel answered with a frown.“I thought they’d come racing as soon as Alise told them.”
Her lips went numb, blood draining to her feet.“They would have.Something happened.Someone has to rouse the provost and alert her.And find Morghana Seraphiel.Wake everyone.”
“I’ll find Morghana,” Seliah said, and dashed out the door before anyone could stop her.
Nic started for the door, Gabriel catching her arm.“You can’t go alone.”
She didn’t shake him off, instead put her hand over his.“I need you to drag Tandiya out of bed.Go be terrifying Lord Phel.They won’t give way for anyone lesser.”
He grimaced, clearly wanting to argue.The others were already packing away equipment.“We’ve got this,” Jadren said.“Better hustle before the enemy hoard descends.”
Gabriel held her gaze a moment longer, then nodded sharply—and flooded her with a torrent of water and moon magic.“But I’m finding you after.Don’t be reckless.”
She gave him a swift kiss and dashed to the door, then hesitated.“We might need a healer.”
“Coming,” Jonathan Refoel said, handing over his documents and hastening to her.They ran out, Nic giving thanks that she knew approximately where Cillian had been reassigned—and where Alise had gone and clearly never arrived.Running through the shadowed, empty halls, Nic pulled her thoughts together.She needed to start thinking like a wizard.
This is your final exam,she told herself.All that studying and planning, it was all theory until now.This is the practicum.
This was saving her baby sister.
From… Nic almost couldn’t understand what she saw as she skidded around the corner to the horrifying scene.Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t a hallway sprayed with blood and a creature of distorted light and corrupt shadow occupying the center.It was both purely magic and not of magic at all.It stank of forced death, terror, and cruel violence.
A demon.
Her father had actually summoned a demon.Piers Elal stood on the other side of where the demon chewed on something it crouched over on the floor.The wizard watched with a kind of horrified fascination, looking monstrous himself, bleeding from dozens of wounds.His familiar, a young woman of House Chur, as Nic recalled, lay crumpled against the wall, like a broken and discarded doll.Spirits filled the air so densely they nearly crowded out breath.
It took Nic far too long to realize she couldn’t locate Alise because her sister was under the demon.While their father stood and watched.
“Stand back,” she told Jonathan.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he nearly squeaked, stepping well back.
Cleansing rage filled her, along with a fierce joy that she at last had the ability to fight back.Elal fire to fire.
It felt as if she had a lifetime of deferred power at her disposal.And she had her husband’s magic, too.She sent a bubble of water to encase her father’s head, the sphere turning a gruesome red with his blood, just enough to make him pass out on the floor to be dealt with later.
Then she turned her attention to the demon, riffling through everything she’d ever studied about demons, djinn, and the summoning—and exorcising—of complex spirits.They fed off of blood sacrifice and torture.This one likely grew stronger by the moment, given that their father had willingly sacrificed the child of his body and magic to the thing.
But it didn’t belong in this world and that was something to cling to.
Using the purity of Gabriel’s clear water magic and shining bright moon magic, both given with love, without reservation, Nic wedged a mental lever under the cankerous blight that was the demon’s unnatural existence.Finding, gathering, and binding spirits was the ancient Elal practice, but the other side of that coin was the banishing.
