“It is,” she agreed happily. “And what’s good for me is good for my familiar. You’ll prosper with me, Han.”
“Unless I manifest as a wizard.” He almost made it sound like a possibility.
“A big if,” she pointed out, her gaze sliding to Iliana, pirouetting on the ice, back arched gracefully as her gloved fingers twined in an aerial dance, fiery hair streaming. “But, even if you do, you’ll never have Iliana. My uncle has prepared an offer to buy her, too. Immediately.”
He stared at Sabrina, gut struck. “Why?” he managed.
Sabrina narrowed her eyes, not quite wizard black yet, but swiftly darkening. “I like the taste of her magic. Besides, she tried to defy me, and no one gets away with that. She can work for our house as a free agent, I can sip from Iliana any time I like. What?” She pouted. “I thought you’d be happy, being together. Of course, you’d never be able to talk to her, or bed her.” Sabrina gave him a knowing look, licking her lips. “I know what you two did last night. The emanations from your room were quite delicious.”
He stared at her stonily, neither confirming nor denying.
“House Hanneil has many proprietary tricks for increasing magic yield from our familiars,” she explained. “Anguish and longing work quite well. I’d maybe allow you two to catch just a glimpse of each other once in a while, unless you were very, very good and deserved a treat. Or if I needed you two to spin up erotic magic for me.”
Han ground his teeth. Maybe he could put a stop to this, here and now. Confide his secret to Sabrina and offer to go with her willingly, to submit to her bonding immediately, if she’d agree to let Iliana go. He opened his mouth to say so… Then shut it again. Sabrina would never abide by any such agreement. She was treacherous to the bottom of her cold, black heart.
“Happy Founder’s Day, Sabrina,” he said, standing and stepping onto the ice. “Prosperity through magic,” he sang out. “I hope you choke on it,” he added under his breath, as he skated toward Iliana to tell her the bad news.
Iliana took itbetter than he had. She had practice, he supposed. “At least we’ll be in the same classes again,” she told him, handing him a cup of hot cocoa. They sat at a table on what had been last night’s dance floor, well away from anyone else. Though the elemental lights still glowed overhead, the sunlight dimmed them into nothingness, a good match for Han’s own spirits.
He shook his head. “Not for long. You’re ready to graduate and—” He couldn’t bring himself to mention Sabrina’s dire plan for them. He might not be able to escape her net—his family would be thrilled to sell their useless familiar son to House Hanneil—but he could get Iliana out. “You need to go home,” he told her with sudden urgency. “Sign up for the Betrothal Trials or ask your family to bond you to a wizard you can live with, right away.”
Iliana didn’t comment on that, quietly sipping her own cocoa, watching him over the rim with solemn brown eyes. Her starry freckles stood out against her chilled skin and he recalled with considerable bitterness his vows to kiss them all. “I saw Sabrina talking to you,” she finally said. “I’m not letting you sell yourself to her in order to save me.”
“That’s why I want you to go, now, so she can’t do that to you.”
Iliana’s expression tightened, her usually softly cheerful face as stern as a warrior’s. “I’m not abandoning you to her. I refuse.”
He found himself gaping at her, not quite grappling this Iliana who seemed so much harder than his eternally cheerful friend. “What happened to our sacred duty and learning to work with even the wizards we hate?”
“That was before you became mine,” she replied. “Now I have something worth fighting for and I’m not just meekly giving you up.”
“Oh,” he replied, sounding like a fool, but also… joyful. Iliana loved him. More she planned to fight for him. “Then what’s your plan?”
She then drew up her hood around her face. “Let me tell you what Alise told me this morning.”
~ 10 ~
Han listened quietly,not interrupting, though his pale eyebrows rose in surprise, and lowered again in puzzlement. When Iliana finished, he was silent for several long moments. “I don’t understand,” he finally said.
Iliana leaned her forearms on the table, speaking with quiet urgency. “She escaped, Han. And if Nic can escape, so can we.”
Han gazed back at her as if she’d grown a second head and he wasn’t sure if it was entirely human. In truth, a big part of Iliana stood back in shock at her transformation into reckless rebel. True love was a grand motivator, it turned out. “We don’t even know that she escaped,” he said slowly, “much less how. She could’ve been abducted for all we know.”
“Alise doesn’t think so.”
“Alise doesn’tknow,” he countered. “And, even if it’s true that Nic escaped, I feel I should reiterate that we have no idea how she accomplished it, or even if she succeeded.”
“It doesn’t matter how,” Iliana replied, a stubborn set to her pretty mouth. “The fact remains that she did, which means it’s possible. That means we can, too.”
“What if we fail?” he asked.
“Then we’re no worse off than we are now.”
“That’s not entirely true,” he argued. “You’ve heard the same warnings I have. We’ll be labeled recalcitrant familiars. They’ll send us for discipline and retraining.”
To his surprise, Iliana grinned. “Which means Sabrina Hanneil won’t be able to get ahold of either one of us.”
Cocking his head, he considered this new, cannily rebellious side to his sweet Iliana. “This a diabolically clever plan.”
