Page 38 of Rogue Familiar

He bared his teeth, seizing her skewering finger in a hard grip. “It wasn’t like I planned it that way.”

“What did you plan then? Where were you going?” How could you leave me? she nearly added, but swallowed back at the last moment. She knew the answer to that. The real question was, how did she keep him from leaving her again?

“I was going as far away from you as possible,” he fired back. “And now look at us.” He wrapped his hand around hers, gripping it tightly. “We’re right back where we started, only this time I very nearly killed you. What in the dark arts were you thinking?”

“That you needed my magic to heal. You wouldn’t take it before, so I did what was necessary to make sure you’d get the magic you needed.”

“Yeah, well, I took so much that you were a desiccated husk. Exactly what I knew would happen.”

“And then you saved me, just as I knew would happen.”

“How could you know that?” he demanded, bewildered and outraged, shaking her hand clasped in his as if he could wring the truth out of her. “I didn’t know I could use my warped healing ability on someone else. How could you possibly have guessed it? I shouldn’t have been able to do it! That’s an enormous risk you took, Seliah. A foolish one, and you are not a stupid woman.”

So that’s how he’d done it. This would change things. For the moment, however, she decided not to mention that she’d envisioned him fetching a Refoel healer for her. “It wasn’t a risk, Jadren,” she replied, willing him to understand that she meant it. “I trust you. I believe in you.”

“You shouldn’t.” He sounded more like he was pleading with her, emotion stark in his black eyes before he dropped them to their clasped hands. With great care, he unfolded her fingers, then pressed her palm against his chest, lifting his gaze to meet hers. “Your heart was barely beating,” he whispered, like it was a confession. “How do you think I felt, waking up beside you, thinking you dead and knowing it was all my fault, Seliah?”

“I didn’t think it would bother you that much,” she answered, realizing in the pained depths of that heart that it was true. She didn’t have high expectations of Jadren. After all, he’d told her not to, and she understood, better than perhaps anyone, how damaged he was. Sure he’d told Gabriel he loved her, but it was salient that he’d never told her. And he might’ve healed perfectly on the physical level, but Jadren carried emotional and psychological wounds that were so twisted over with scar tissue that he might never be whole. Jadren had even described his mother as a monster incapable of love, and had called himself a monster, too. People that messed up didn’t become loving life partners. He’d never be like whoever occupied the other side of that bed inside, sharing the handmade quilt, and quiet days in the cozy cottage.

Right now, he was looking at her as if she’d thrust a blade into him. “How could you think I wouldn’t care if you died?” he asked in steady, but ghostly tone. “After all I’ve done to protect you, to save you from several and assorted terrible fates. Repeatedly.”

“But you left me,” she protested, feeling perilously close to tears. She hadn’t thought she’d say that to him, but the words dragged out of her of their own accord, demanding to be heard. “You drugged me and you left me, leaving that awful note behind.”

His jaw flexed, black eyes darker than ever. “I left you because I cared, Seliah. I care too much about you.”

She swallowed back the tears, taken aback that he sounded so angry and yet also so relieved to hear the words directly from him. “I did what I had to in order to save you, too, Jadren. I couldn’t do anything less. I love you.” There, she’d said it out loud, and she held her breath, waiting for his cruel set-down.

He stared at her, looking positively aghast. “No, you don’t.”

Of course that was his reply. “Don’t tell me what I feel.”

“I will tell you when you’re being an utter fool,” he retorted. “You don’t love me. You can’t love the likes of me. That’s the wizard–familiar bond making you think that.”

Now she understood Nic’s loudly voiced frustrations over Gabriel’s doubts regarding her feelings for him. She started to tug free of Jadren’s grip, but he held onto her, black eyes hard. “Running away?” he taunted. “You can’t flee every time you’re uncomfortable, Seliah.”

“That’s rich, coming from the guy who ran away because he couldn’t deal with our relationship.”

He barked out a dry laugh, releasing her hand and stepping back. “Our relationship? You’re just like the rest of those House Phel Phools,” he sneered. Very funny. “What do you imagine—the pair of us all happily wedded like the commoner denizens of this shack, living some kind of cozy, domestic life? They only have this because they’re obviously mundane citizens, buying whatever basic magical conveniences they can afford and muddling along. They aren’t us. We belong to the world of wizards and familiars and the politics of the Convocation, whether we like it or not.”

“Being those things doesn’t mean we can’t care about each other,” she insisted, well aware and vaguely ashamed of her girlish fantasies of marrying him in the gardens at House Phel, carrying a bouquet her father picked and arranged just for her, perhaps Gabriel presiding over the ceremony. “I might be bonded to you, but that doesn’t stop me from loving you.”

“You’re wrong.” He shook his head repeatedly. “You don’t love me. You and I don’t have any kind of relationship beyond wizard and familiar—and I tried to release you from that particular obligation. I was being fucking noble!”

“Noble,” she scoffed. “You don’t have a noble bone in your body, Jadren. You were being a coward.”

At last, she’d struck him mute. He gaped at her, clearly stricken, and at a loss for words.

“You were afraid because you care about me,” she continued remorselessly. “You admitted it. ‘Too much,’ you said.”

He recovered, face pinching in sardonic disdain. “So, in your estimation, I’m a frightened coward. I must say, Seliah, your wooing technique leaves something to be desired.”

She eased closer to him, and laid a hand on his cheek, stroking the silky beard. “Only sometimes. You’re only a coward when it comes to your emotions. The rest of the time you’re so terrifyingly brave it defies rationality.”

“Are we talking about me or you now?”

“I’m not brave.”

“You are.” His voice softened and he leaned into her touch, setting a hand on the round of her shoulder and smoothing down, lightly caressing her skin. “Terrifyingly brave. I’m not afraid of death—sometimes I wish I could die—but you put real fear in me, because I can’t bear the thought of you being gone from the world.”

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