Sabrina gasped. “You are not allowed to talk to me that way, familiar!”
Iliana cracked on eye open to find Sabrina’s beautiful face looming so close she looked like a monster. “I’m not allowed to refuse you magic, Wizard Sabrina. But you are not my bonded wizard, so you can’t run my life.”
“I wouldn’t have you anyway,” Sabrina shot back. “Han is going to bemyfamiliar. I heard he was summoned to the Testing Tower and that the oracle will designate him a familiar today.”
Iliana used her self-discipline techniques to still her emotions. Sabrina was baiting her. There wasn’t any way the wizard girl could know that yet. “Be quiet. I’m supposed to meditate.”
“Wizard Angela!” Sabrina called out indignantly. “Familiar Iliana just told me to shut up.”
Iliana didn’t open her eyes, but she clearly heard the glares shot in Sabrina’s direction as she interrupted everyone else’s meditation, too.
“That’s because Familiar Iliana is supposed to be meditating, Wizard Sabrina,” Wizard Angela replied coolly. “It would behoove you to learn to treat your familiar with more care, or they will not last long in your service.”
Nobody outright laughed, but the sifting magic in the atmosphere took on a cast of gleeful amusement at Sabrina’s set down.
Under cover of the workbench, Sabrina pinched Iliana’s thigh painfully. “I’ll get you for this.”
Iliana did her best to sublimate the pain and frustration at the injustice into her magic. This afternoon was going to be torture.
~ 3 ~
By the timeIliana dragged herself back to her room, her bones felt like one breath might send them crumbling into a puff of dust. One of the Refoel healers had checked her out at the end of the practicum, but said Iliana wasn’t in need of healing, that she wasn’t suffering anything a good meal and a full night of sleep wouldn’t cure—and added an injunction to practice her magic replenishment techniques.
Of course, Sabrina had to saunter past at that exact moment and snidely comment that no doubt Iliana was fine because she hadn’t completed the assignment, that Iliana hadfailedto yield up all of her magic without resistance.
The remark still made Iliana bristle, in no small part because it was true. Normally Iliana was very good at her lessons, but today had been an abysmal performance. She simply hadn’t been able to get over her intense dislike of Sabrina Hanneil. Iliana didn’t want that bitch to have any of her magic, let alone all of it. Infuriated by Iliana’s recalcitrance, Sabrina had gotten heavy-handed, yanking on Iliana’s magic with wrenching force that felt like her intestines were being extracted from her body through a straw.
Fortunately, their pairing hadn’t been the only utter disaster and Wizard Angela had finally cut the practicum off early, saying that she’d clearly expected too much of them and that they’d repeat the exercise with more harmonious pairings the following day, and then work up to the difficult pairings from there. While Iliana was relieved to be able to try again with a wizard she got along with better—she really hated that she’d performed so poorly—she also dreaded having to open herself up again like that, even with someone like Alise. Worse, if she did learn the skill, she’d still have to face the blade of Sabrina’s wizardry scraping out her insides again.
Inside the quiet sanctum of her little room, instead of sitting in a meditation pose as she was supposed to, she flopped facedown onto the bed, feeling as if she could dissolve into it and sleep for days. But she couldn’t let herself do that. She was under strict orders to eat heartily, too, so she’d get up and head to the dining hall in just a moment…
A knock on her door woke her from such a deep sleep she nearly jumped out of her skin, disoriented and groggy. Getting her bearings, she checked the El-Adrel timepiece on her bedside table and found she’d only been asleep a short time, but wow—she’d really passed out.
“Iliana!” Han called through the door. “Are you in there?”
Oh, right! She jumped up, ran her hands through her hair and saw in the mirror that one half of her face was red and smushed with the pattern from her coverlet. Fantastic. And no way she could make Han wait outside while she got a grooming imp to fix her up.
“Iliana?” Han sounded concerned, knocking again, more urgently.
“Coming.” She tripped the magical lock on the door and opened it for Han, who was glaring at her, hands on hips.
“You didn’t show for dinner,” he said accusingly, slipping past her and into the room. “I was worried.”
Wincing, she closed the door and engaged the lock again. She was a terrible friend. “I’m so sorry. I fell asleep. What did the oracle head say?”
He sat on her bed and flopped back, arms akimbo. “Uncategorized. Still.”
“Oh, Han.” She sat beside him and stroked his pale hair back from his brow. Fascination might be a myth, and even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t feel it for someone not a wizard, but she’d gladly give Han all the magic in her to make him feel better. If she had any left, that was. “I’m so sorry,” she said again, unable to think of anything better, even though this was another order of magnitude of regret.
He opened his eyes and rolled them. They were an extraordinary shade of blue, with a deep ring like the ocean in summer at the outer edge, shades of crystalline blue inside that, and a sunburst of grass green radiating from his pupil. Finer rays of green shot through the other blues. From a distance, his eyes looked very bright blue, standing out against his dusky skin. Up close… Well, Iliana sometimes found herself staring at the rays of green, and how the concentric rings of varying blues seemed to shimmer from one to the next.
If Han became a wizard, his eyes would eventually turn black from magic wielding. As much as she wanted that status for him, she secretly hated that those lovely colors would disappear from the world. Though that was silly: there was a high probability, nearly a certainty, that Han would disappear from her life completely, let alone his fascinating eyes. Maybe she fastened her proactive grief on that color vanishing because it was easier to imagine never seeing him again.
“It’s not a big deal,” Han was saying as she gazed into his eyes, memorizing how they looked. “Just frustrating. And, as a special bonus, I get to go for testingevery daynow.”
“Oh wow.” She’d never heard of anyone getting tested daily. “But maybe this is a good sign. After all, why would they want you to come in every day unless they’re worried about you suddenly manifesting as a wizard and blowing up the dining hall?”
His annoyed scowl softened and he sat up, taking her hand and tangling her fingers with his. “You are the best friend there is, you know that?”
