“Besides,” he said, saving her further deliberation, “you’re wrong on several points. I do not want to be more powerful—in fact, that’s the last thing I want—and I do not need or want a familiar, either.” Letting those black eyes rake her up and down, he produced a lascivious smile. “Your bonding-virginity is safe with me, little familiar. I’m not interested.”
“Good,” she snapped, absurdly stung, as she didn’t want him to be interested. “Because I wouldn’t have you.”
“You would though,” he pointed out implacably. “Maybe we need to revisit your understanding of consent. You’d have no choice in the matter. If I decided to make you mine, I could.”
She contained a shiver of response at the way he said that. Make you mine. There was a throatiness to his voice, a suppressed longing. Probably for the concept of a familiar in general, though, not about her in particular. Whatever prevented him from having a familiar—his mother? Himself?—it bothered him more than he wanted her to know. “You wouldn’t do that to me though.”
He laughed. Not uproariously before, but sharp and bitter. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m your friend or that I harbor some sort of scruples. If it came to that, I’d use you in any way that benefits me, and so would any wizard. Don’t prance about in such doe-eyed innocence. All wizards will seek to use you to advance themselves without giving it any more thought than they give to the tender lamb that graces their dinner tables and tastes so delicious with fresh mint.”
“Not all wizards.”
“All wizards, little lamb.”
“Alise isn’t like that.” She didn’t think Gabriel was either, though he was a more tenuous example, after nearly going wild in his pursuit of Nic, laying waste to House Sammael to retrieve her.
Jadren rolled his eyes. “Baby Elal is exactly that: still an infant. She hasn’t graduated from Convocation Academy. She shouldn’t even be away from school now. The only reason she hasn’t been spanked and sent back to learn to be a proper wizard yet is because Lord Phel has a soft heart and Lady Phel has a soft head.”
“Alise is Nic’s younger sister,” Selly said, intrigued by Jadren’s assessment. “Why is Nic soft-headed for letting Alise stay and become a House Phel minion?”
“Because,” Jadren answered in an exaggerated drawl, “if they were thinking straight, House Phel would curry favor with House Elal by returning Alise to her designated slot. They’re fools to pass up the money and favor they could receive. Instead they’re risking inflaming relations with Elal even more with this sentimentality.”
“Being loyal to a beloved family member hardly counts as being sentimental.”
“Loyalty is an illusion created by those in power to convince those they hold in thrall that they don’t shrug off their chains from their own inclination rather than because they can’t.”
“You’re very cynical.”
“You have no idea.”
And there they were, back to his favorite conversation-ender. She was thinking up the next question to ask when he unexpectedly answered a previous one. “Not only am I not interested in acquiring a stick-insect of an untrained, feral marsh-cat of a familiar,” he said musingly, “but I’m not that stupid. On the off-chance that Phel manages to defeat Sammael and consolidate his holdings, I’m not going to risk his righteous rage were I to take possession of his beloved disabled sister for the rest of her natural life.”
“I am not disabled, you ass,” she muttered.
He grinned cheerfully. “I can admit that I’m an ass. You shouldn’t be ashamed to admit to a chronic disability that arose through no fault of your own.”
She set her teeth refusing to rise to his bait. He was deliberately taunting her, trying to get a rise out of her, trying to… To distract her from whatever the real reason was that he didn’t have a familiar. That he could never have one perhaps? “It’s starting to get dark,” she observed, deciding to let the topic simmer a while. Jadren was already brooding and, from what she’d observed of him so far, would continue to ferment until he couldn’t prevent a revealing remark from popping out of his mouth.
“Nothing wrong with your eyes, at least,” he replied with an approving smile.
“We’re going to have to look for a place to camp,” she pointed out, very reasonably.
“Camp?” he echoed, sounding appalled. He glanced at her with a narrowed gaze, clearly suspecting her of teasing him. “As, in sleep outdoors, on the ground?”
She nodded somberly, resisting the urge to smile at his dismay. “We’ll want to build a fire.”
“I don’t think ‘want’ is the operative term here.”
“A fire will keep the snakes away,” she explained with rounded eyes.
“Don’t be cute,” he snapped. “I told you I’m not terrified of snakes. You’ll get no joy out of attempting that leverage on me.”
“Other critters then,” she told him, maybe a little disappointed that her needling hadn’t worked that time. “Hunters.”
He snorted. “You think I’m a fool and it’s true I know next to nothing about camping in the wilderness, but even I can figure out that a nice bright fire with aromatic smoke wafting about will just serve to paint a target on our location. Too bad I’m no good at illusions or I could hang a big red arrow in the sky that says ‘ripe captives for the taking here.’”
“Fire is good for cooking meat,” she countered. “And brewing tea.”
“You already know I’m not a fire mage. We have no fire elementals handy. What do you want from me?” he demanded, eyes flashing black with irritation.
