Page 37 of Rogue Familiar

His inner critic rolled his eyes, muttering about woo woo nonsense.

Jadren didn’t care. He’d been a fool for Seliah’s sake many times over. At least this time was for her. Focusing on Seliah, he laid a hand over her barely living but (hopefully) still beating heart, holding the device over his own heart, slowing turning it until click.

He couldn’t quite define the sense of rightness, except that it felt like when an enchanted device worked correctly, when he’d found the exact way to make it function smoothly. A sense of being well-oiled and perfectly fitted. A harmonizing of gears and wheels. He gave his magic to it as he would to any device he created, enchanting it to do its job, to carry his healing ability to Seliah and into her, infusing her body with his own self-healing.

Her heart thudded under his palm, a drumbeat of response. The wizard–familiar bond snapped into vivid life and Jadren had to sternly leash himself so as not to take from her, but to give instead. The bond resisted momentarily, then seemed to accept his will and reversed the flow, creating another venue to pour healing into Seliah’s blood-starved, exhausted body.

It was odd, viewing the process from this side. Not so much accelerated healing as a kind of rejuvenation. As his unusual magic permeated her cells, they began to renew themselves, repairing damage of all kinds, resetting to their previous state with astonishing rapidity, like waves of lightning ricocheting through her body. Was this what his maman saw in him? It could be, and—though he couldn’t quite grasp the significance of it—he began to understand why she’d been so focused on harnessing this particular magic.

And on keeping the Convocation from knowing about it.

He set that aside to puzzle over later. At least he’d begun to believe there would be a later, for Seliah, and perhaps for him. Color returned to her complexion as her poor, strained heart regained its rhythm, her body producing blood to flow through collapsed vessels. She twitched, muscles and nerves reawakening. And her magic followed, gaining strength like a rising, waxing moon, water flowing into dry creek beds, bringing life to cracked soil.

She took a deep breath, undulating, becoming alive again before his eyes. In a bizarre and unexpected development, her hair visibly grew, spiraling, then stretching until it reached its previous glorious length. Finally, she sighed into a real sleep. How he knew that, Jadren wasn’t sure, but his internal sense—all right, probably his stupid wizard’s intuition—told him it was done. Carefully withdrawing his touch, just in case Seliah relapsed without it, he remained there a while longer, assuring himself that she indeed lived. In truth, she looked healthier than he’d ever seen her. She’d lost the gaunt hollows of her madness-induced, feral life and now looked… absolutely radiant.

Thoughtfully, Jadren turned the small device over in his hands, still not entirely sure why it had worked. Wasn’t it enough that it had? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly he never wanted to be caught without it. He’d even be willing to have it surgically implanted, if someone like Asa could find a way to do it and have it stick. Although, with Jadren’s terrible luck, he’d likely end up shredded again and lose the thing. He’d have to figure out how to make a new one, should this one be lost. He certainly didn’t want to be in the position of going back to his mother begging for another.

Finally able to believe Seliah would sleep this off and be all right if he left her alone for a bit, he took himself off to wash and find clothing. They needed food, too, and he’d better see where Vale had gotten to. Seliah might’ve mustered the strength—Jadren didn’t know how she’d done it—to bring the horse’s tack inside, but he doubted she’d been able to groom him. Hopefully he hadn’t run off.

Come to think of it, how had Seliah come to be riding Gabriel’s horse? And how had she found Jadren? Surely Phel hadn’t sanctioned this ill-advised pursuit. In fact, he’d promised Jadren he’d handle keeping Seliah at House Phel. Jadren snorted. Fine job there, Lord Phel.

It was, no doubt, a crazy, ill-conceived, and infuriating tale. Oddly, he found he couldn’t wait to hear Seliah tell it to him. With one last, lingering look at her, he went out to assess their situation.

Maybe they weren’t completely fucked, but he doubted it.

~12~

Seliah woke alone, in an unfamiliar bed drenched in late-morning light, wearing only her Ophiel lingerie.

The last thing she remembered, she’d been wandering her dream-marsh, enjoying the peaceful beauty of the place without the enervating mists of insanity to foul it. Jadren had been there, whole and well, and his dream self had…

She sat bolt upright. The lovingly handmade wedding-ring quilt fell away. How had she ended up in the bed? She distinctly recalled laying herself beside Jadren’s broken body on the oilcloth so as not to mess up the linens of these unknown people. If she’d gotten blood all over the white linens, she’d never get it out again. Household magic had never been one of her fortes. Probably because she was a familiar, she realized for the first time. Nic had told her that many of the folk of Meresin were minor wizards, able to use water magic to dry out their homes and fields in the saturated landscape, and probably wash linens so they looked like new.

But she hadn’t bled on the sheets—though plenty of dried blood had flaked off on them. Those disturbingly deep injuries from her battle with the hunter had all closed up as if they’d never been. The bruises from her falls in the rock-strewn boneyard were gone, too. She felt… quite good. And her hair. It spilled around her, reaching again to her waist as if it had never been cut in the bonding ceremony.

Jadren. He had to have done this. Her plan had worked!

Tossing aside the quilt, she leapt out of bed, finding someone—hopefully Jadren—had left her a pitcher of water and soap to wash with, bless them. She efficiently stripped off the sheets, too. Finding a clean set in a chest against the wall, she made up the bed again. Later she’d wash the soiled ones.

Hearing the sound of footsteps, she ran into the main room of the cottage—just as Jadren walked in.

He stopped, hand on the handle with an arrested expression, emotions stark on his face for once, fleeting in such quick succession she couldn’t identify them all. Her heart thundered, feeling as if it echoed his somehow, recognition simmering in the space between them. He looked good, to her immense relief. Perfect, even, with his auburn hair bright and beard neatly trimmed, wizard-black eyes intent on hers, magic sharp-edged in the air, clicking like well-oiled gears. He wore a commoner’s plain, working clothes, but looked anything but mundane.

His gaze dropped, leisurely scanning her from head to toes and up again, before he met her gaze with a sardonic lift of his brows and a twist of his fine lips. “Still trying to seduce me, poppet?”

Once, she might’ve been bothered by the scathing tone, but she knew better now. Erotic tension fulminated along the bond, echoing hers, repeating and intensifying. “Why,” she answered in the same tone, “planning to drug me insensible again?”

“I should, as clearly the message didn’t take the first time.” He shut the door behind him and prowled toward her, her skin prickling with awareness. And longing. “What in the dark arts were you thinking, coming after me? I seem to recall that I specifically ordered you not to!”

“I was thinking I was saving your miserable life!” she retorted. Jadren could bring up her ire like no one else—and yet she felt almost giddy to be fighting with him again. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“I don’t need to thank you because I saved yours in return,” he snarled, “which I wouldn’t have had to do if you’d stayed put as you were told.”

“If I’d stayed put, like a child or a pet who can be ordered about—which I might mention, I am not—you would still be at the bottom of that cliff, dying and healing over and over again, being eaten alive by scavengers.” She poked him in the chest with her index finger to emphasize the point. At the physical contact, the bond sizzled to a higher level, nearly stealing her breath. “How would you have liked that?”

“I liked it fine.” He seemed to catch himself on that, a haunted look crossing his face before he firmed his jaw. “At least I knew you were safe. Turns out I was sorely deluded on that point, but apparently all bets are off when it comes to feral swamp-creatures.”

“I could say the same of you.” She skewered her finger in harder, furious, relieved, and aroused. All emotions swirled together when it came to him. “How can you be so hapless?” she demanded. “How did you get yourself attacked by a crew of dimwitted wizards, robbed of all your things, and thrown off a cliff?”

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