She moved, curling up her legs on the seat and scooting over to lean her head against his shoulder. He held himself rigid, hoping she’d get the hint. Her magic infused him through the connection, minty and fresh, green leaves and high mountain lakes, moonlight on snowfall. He wanted to roll around in her magic like a cat in catnip. He shrugged his shoulder, trying to pop her off of him, but she was back in persistent feline mode, cuddling closer and working her head into the crook of his shoulder and neck. It couldn’t possibly be comfortable for her—it certainly wasn’t for him—but she stayed there, making soft, snuggly sounds he found perversely erotic, fantasies blooming in his mind of other things he could do to make her moan like that.
He was definitely losing his mind.
In fact, he nearly lost control entirely when her lips brushed his ear, the sensation lightninging straight to his groin. “You can sleep,” her voice wisped into his ear, very nearly soundless. “I can watch it and wake you if anything changes.”
“Get off me,” he growled. “You’re filthy and you stink.”
Undaunted, she wrapped her arms around his waist, managing to slide the insidious things around his rigidly held posture, then pressed a kiss to the hollow beneath his ear, sending another bolt of lightning through his body. “I mean it,” she whispered. “You walked all night to rescue me.”
Rescue? Uh oh. This wasn’t good if she’d settled on that for his motivation.
“Sleep while I keep watch,” she continued, lips against his skin. “Let me do that for you, Jadren.”
The sound of his name spoken by her throaty, bedchamber voice galvanized him. Steeling himself, he unfolded and seized her by the waist. Picking her up bodily—she weighed no more than a starving kitten—he deposited her on the opposite seat, taking note of how she immediately scooted to the corner farthest from the sentry spirit. He hadn’t been sure if she could see it, untrained as she was. Familiars couldn’t wield magic, of course, but many of them, particularly the more powerful ones, could passively sense the presence of magic. Whichever wizard had parked this spirit with them, however—Jadren’s coin was on Lord Elal himself—was powerful and deft enough to erase extraneous magical signatures. But Seliah knew it was there all right, though whether she knew what to watch for was something else entirely. And he couldn’t teach her the fine points, not without betraying to their spy that he wasn’t simply using Seliah Phel, as per his maman’s instructions.
“Sit,” he instructed Seliah in his most condescending tone, pointing at her. “Stay.”
Her amber eyes flashed with ire. That was better. He plopped himself back onto the opposite seat, glaring at her disdainfully. “I realize you may be Fascinated by me—who could blame you?—but cuddling up to me won’t get you anywhere. Quite the opposite, in fact. You’ve been spoilt and coddled all your life. It’s time you learn your place.”
“My place?” she echoed, managing to look both waifish and powerfully angry at the same time, as only she could.
Dark arts take him—that combination of sweet naivety and gritty spine undid him every time. “Yes. Your. Place.” He spaced out the words, making it clear he suspected her of being too stupid to fully understand. “You are uneducated in anything that matters, from a backwater swamp so ignorant that no one had the wit to recognize you as a potent familiar for over a decade, jeopardizing your sanity and your very life. You’re lucky I was able to save you from your degenerate state.”
“Gabriel saved me,” she retorted, offended on her brother’s behalf where she wouldn’t be for an insult to herself.
He waved that off. “Oh, Phel took the brunt of the initial backlash, sure. More the fool he for doing so, as it very nearly killed him. But remember that I am the one who bled off the rest of your foul, stagnant magic. You should be showing me your gratitude.” He made a show of yawning—which was a mistake, as his jaw nearly cracked as his body took over, begging for sleep. “You’re welcome,” he added, as nastily as he could manage.
“I am grateful,” she replied softly. “Thank you.”
“Don’t bother about it. I had my reasons.”
“Then why did you bring it up?”
“The question you should be asking is why I saved you.”
She didn’t fire the question back at him immediately, unlike her usual quick witted self. Instead, she considered, assembling the clues in her mind, amber eyes darkening as the puzzle pieces formed an image for her. “That’s what you were planted in House Phel to do: abduct me.”
Tossing off a jaunty salute, he grinned at her growing consternation. He didn’t love doing this, but he was glad to see her growing angrier—she’d need her anger—and he couldn’t help but be pleased at the success of his manipulation. That was a key to acting the part: find the emotion in yourself and turn it to the purpose at hand. The grim pleasure he felt at his own cleverness could be rechanneled into creating the appearance of satisfaction at his trap having worked.
“Not you, in particular, poppet. You were a delightful surprise, as House Phel had been surprisingly effective at keeping your existence a secret. Naughty them.” Now he was working to feed the sentry spirit, and thus its wizard guide, selected information also. “We’d rather thought Nic would be up for grabs, given Phel’s enormous lapse in losing track of her and then his embarrassing lack of education, much like yours, which it seemed had prevented him from bonding her correctly. Imagine my raptures at discovering your existence! The only thing more enticing than an unbonded familiar is an unbonded familiar who is unknown to the Convocation and so ignorant as to be a blank slate, so malleable and moldable.”
“What are you saying?” Her voice had dropped to a bare whisper, her face pinched, gray under the golden tone.
He tutted at her. “Perhaps you are an idiot. Don’t pretend you can’t put one and one together and make two—or is that math too advanced for whatever they teach in your one-room-schoolhouses?”
“How about you just tell me what two signifies,” she replied flatly.
He was getting to her. She still wanted to believe he was her friend, but she was wavering. He’d successfully sown enough of the tiny black seeds of doubt to poison the camaraderie he’d carelessly allowed to fester between them. Now he need only water those seeds and encourage the choking vines to grow. This was what he wanted and what she needed. He shouldn’t feel this cloying sense of… surely not loss.
Shoring up his resolve, he infused his attitude with sneering pride. “House El-Adrel hoped for Nic—and I must say I’m a bit disappointed, as her magic is as intoxicating as anything I’ve ever tasted. Dark arts but that woman is delicious—but that’s water under the bridge, so to speak.” He made a show of chortling at his own joke. “Phel successfully retrieved her and they clearly are duly bonded, plus he’s not dead, so…” He shrugged, smirking at her. “You’re the consolation prize.”
“You were trying to betray Gabriel by encouraging him to ride up to House Sammael.”
He had to think back, quickly evaluate his best option for a reply, and produced a rueful grin. “Everything would have gone much more smoothly if he’d just played along. We’d have had you, Nic, plus Sabrina’s much-sought unbonded boy-toy of a familiar Han, and Phel could’ve been easily dispatched.” He shrugged, making a sad face. “Alas for best-laid plans. But it’s come out well, at least for me. Not so much for you.”
“What about Alise?” she asked, watching him cannily.
He had no easy answer for that one, so he waved off that consideration. “Baby Elal is hardly consequential. No doubt she’d have been sent back to school to learn to be a proper wizard.”
