Page 35 of Rogue Familiar

She smiled as he drew her close and gathered her naked body against his, running his hands over her, his breath quickening at her shiver of heated response. He’d wanted to touch her like this from the first moment he saw her—wild, strange, more than a little insane. The perfect woman for him.

When she drew him down to the cushioned bed of moss, waxy white petals showered around them, and he luxuriated in the sense of her. Kissing her, he drank her in, pure water and radiant moonlight filling every empty, aching part of him, banishing the pain and giving him what he so desperately needed.

Jadren awoke, deeply confused, sizzling with magic and well-being. Also hugely aroused. The naked woman who was draped over him explained the last bit, though he couldn’t imagine who she was, how she’d ended up in his embrace, or where in the Convocation they were. Though this was far from the first time he’d awakened magically sated with a naked woman, usually he was sexually sated, too. And this didn’t look like House El-Adrel, by any stretch.

Nor did he understand why he felt like he’d been drenched in pure water from the inside-out, leaving him brimming with bright white magic that reminded him of moonlight and—

“Fuck me!” he yelped, thrusting Seliah away from him. Far too late. She rolled away with boneless lassitude, limp as a wilted flower, not even making a whimper of sound. At the other end of the bond between them gaped a vast nothingness, a void complete and depthless.

She was dead.

He’d done it after all, the one thing he most feared, what he’d always suspected lay within him and what even his mother didn’t realize he was capable of doing. He’d felt it before, all those times of waking up with the various women his mother had bred him to, the infinite hunger within him that would drain anyone dry of their magic to feed itself.

To devour and become… What?

He still didn’t know, and didn’t want to. Though he’d find out now that he’d finally become the monster. And Seliah had paid the price. Of all the people who could’ve been sacrificed to the voracious beast within him, it just had to be the one person who’d ever mattered.

“No no no no no,” he chanted under his breath, coming onto his knees and rearranging her lax limbs on the… tarp? Yes, some kind of primitive treated cloth—of Meresin farmer-make, no doubt—laid over something cushiony.

Seliah wore only underwear, some incongruously lacy stuff, and he ran his hands over her chilled skin. Cold as death, despite the warmth of whatever the fuck kind of shack she’d somehow stowed them in. Her normally dusky skin was gray and bloodless, covered in fresh bruises, the many wounds savaging her long, lean body giving evidence to a fight that had to have been hunters, given the tooth and claw marks. Indeed, the foul, oily feel of the hunters’ magic clung to her, like the scent of rot and cruelty. How she’d survived and escaped, he didn’t know.

He knew that the hunters hadn’t killed her, however.

He had.

All that magic surging within him was hers. He’d healed so completely that he felt better than he remembered ever feeling, as if he’d lost years and gained a new level of youthful vitality. He’d taken so much of Seliah’s magic that he’d not only fully healed, but filled himself to bursting. With a despairing laugh, he lowered his forehead to Seliah’s cold breast, thinking of all he could do with that magic, all of it either selfish or useless. He could heal himself—of anything, apparently—or make an unending supply of widgets and gadgets. But no gadget would bring Seliah back to life and he had no ability to heal anyone else.

So ironic that he experienced the pinnacle of personal power at the moment that he fully realized how worthless that power was to him, holding the empty corpse of the woman he loved. The only person he’d ever loved.

As he lay there, contemplating new levels of self-loathing, bits and fragments of what had happened came back to him: their capture by the Hanneil wizards, the hunter attack, Vale carrying him off at breakneck speed. He could kill that horse, wherever the creature had escaped to now. From where Jadren lay, Vale’s tack and packs sat clearly visible not far away. Seliah had to have been the one to relieve the horse of his burdens. Before she deliberately set herself up to be drained by him as soon as he recovered just enough for his instincts to kick in, for the insatiably greedy and ruthless monster at his core to awaken and take all she offered and more, and before his better self—if he even possessed such a thing in the rotten core of his soul—realized in time to call a halt.

Alone with Seliah’s cold corpse, Jadren found himself weeping as he hadn’t since he was a boy. He couldn’t claim that he grieved for her death, as he’d never been so unselfish and was unlikely to develop that ability now. No, he wept for himself, for all that he’d lost. And he wept from impotent rage at his inability to do anything right, ever.

He’d tried to get away from her, hadn’t he? He’d tried to spare her this fate, but no. No, she’d just had to come after him, had to find him and drag him away from what should have been his grave in the boneyard at the bottom of the cliff.

Tears flowed onto Seliah’s clammy skin, and absurdly he thought of a gruesome childhood poem, of a young woman crying over her slain lover and how flowers had grown from his decomposing body, blossoming with white petals and drooping heads.

That dream… It hadn’t been a dream at all, no more than the others of her had been, when he’d been repeatedly dying from that fall. Seliah had known how to manipulate him into taking her magic and she’d done so with the finesse of an experienced familiar. She’d clearly learned a few tricks. And he knew just which tricky Elal familiar to blame for it.

Oh, he’d make Nic pay for this all right. Once he was done watering his dead lover. Only he’d never gotten to have that with Seliah, another bitter regret. If this were a romantic tale, he’d die here in this stranger’s hut with Seliah, the two of them entangled in death as they’d never managed in life. The tragic romance of it appealed to him, even as he observed the additional irony that, not only couldn’t he die, but he was bouncing with health.

As he lay there—all right, as he wallowed in self-pity—he became aware of a slow sound, a deep, soft thud, followed by a long pause. Then the thud came again. Not from outside, but from beneath his ear.

Seliah’s heart. Beating.

Slowly, oh so slowly, but there.

Some part of her yet lived.

Hope, a very strange, painful, stabbing emotion he didn’t quite recognize, shattered through him like the lightning bolts of his family crest. It galvanized him, and he leapt to his feet, Seliah’s wilted body in his arms. He could still save her! A healer. He needed to find a Refoel healer for her. He glanced wildly about the decrepit little cabin, as if a Refoel wizard might emerge from a crack in the woodwork.

No such luck, of course. Wizards: they popped up and captured you when you wanted to be left alone, but couldn’t be found when you needed one.

That meant he had to get Seliah to a healer, and dark arts only knew where they were now. Somewhere not far from Hanneil lands, most likely—and also not far enough. If that border patrol had made it back to tell the tale, House Hanneil would be coming after them. Realizing he was standing naked in the center of the room, holding Seliah as if he meant to dash out the door, he figured he’d better get ahold of himself and make an actual plan. Seliah seemed as dead as ever, her swanlike throat exposed with her head draped back over his arm, her hair short from the bonding ceremony. It had been long in that dream that wasn’t a dream.

With each passing moment, one of those slow, labored heartbeats could be her last. He had to find a way to save her. And standing there naked, in a panic—and apparently still weeping like that girl from the childhood poem—wasn’t going to do a thing. He started to set Seliah down again, observed the gory state of the tarp they’d been sleeping on, and decided against it.

There must be a bed in this place. Spotting the doorway to a dark room, he carried Seliah in there and laid her gently on the bed, then took stock of his surroundings. Someone’s tiny cottage, nothing fancy. Barely the basic conveniences. It was night, but no telling which night or how long it had taken him to regenerate. By the looks of it, the residents had only left temporarily, which meant they could be back soon. That little confrontation could go either way.

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