Page 19 of Twisted Magic

Iliana brightened with enthusiasm. “Very well! We’ve found a fish diet she likes and she’s thriving. And I’m getting better at communicating with her.” Her smile dimmed. “Except I keep feeling like she’s trying to tell me something and I can’t figure out what she’s getting at.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Nic reassured her. Iliana was so earnest, always wanting to do her best. As a familiar with Ariel magic, Iliana had been working on using her passive-magical abilities to sense Nathi’s wants and needs. Nothing like having a giant, pink seahorse unhappy with their living situation and acting out. They had enough problems already. Nic’s gaze went to the still firmly locked testing chamber.

“Would you like to say hello?” Iliana asked.

It took Nic a moment to recall the current conversation and realize Iliana meant Nathi. Bemused, but grateful for something to occupy the waiting time, Nic nodded.

Leaning over the low wall that served more as a warning that a depthless pit of water lay beyond it than any other useful purpose—it certainly did nothing to contain Nathi or the water she displaced in her vigorous splashing—Iliana lightly slapped the calm surface. Almost immediately, a pair of widely spaced pink knobs broke the glossy surface, followed by the great, spiny head of the strangest creature Nic had ever seen. No matter how many times she took in the creature that looked like a seahorse the size of a sailing ship, the pink of spring rosebuds, with gloriously long eyelashes, Nic found herself marveling that Nathi existed. Judging by the sudden, arrested silence of the workroom, she wasn’t alone in her continued astonishment.

They still hadn’t determined how or when Nathi had been installed in the watery reservoir built into the manse, one that connected to the lake fronting the house. If Nathi knew, she wasn’t saying. Of course, Nathi’s communication with Iliana seemed to be limited to giving her name—a singularly clear moment—and otherwise generally positive or negative reactions to various kinds of fish.

Nathi lowered her long, reticulated snout and affectionately nudged Iliana, who’d climbed up on the low wall and stood on her tiptoes to embrace the creature, heedless of the water soaking her pretty gown. “You remember Lady Phel,” Iliana said after a moment, turning to gesture to Nic.

Blinking her long lashes, Nathi inclined her head in an approximation of a bow, making fluting sounds like a musical instrument. “She understands you that well?” she asked with some surprise.

“More or less,” Iliana answered. “She seems to get the intent of my words, or the images in my mind. I was imagining her being polite to you, and a lady’s curtsy.”

“Hmm.” If a familiar with Ariel talents was able to do that much, Nic would love to see what an actual Ariel wizard could do. Though she’d hate to mitigate Iliana’s excitement by bringing a wizard in. She supposed this wasn’t a problem that needed solving, unlike twenty-seven other issues she could think of off the top of her head.

“I only wish I could understand her half so well,” Iliana fretted. “I keep getting images of mist around the edges of the lake and—”

“Nic?” Gabriel seized her waist from behind, his big hands no longer close to spanning it as he once had. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, spinning her to face him, his wizard-black gaze going suspiciously to Nathi, his magic intensifying.

That is, what there was of his magic. “You’re running low on magic,” she informed him. “Whatever have you been doing? Better have some of my mine.”

“Something is wrong, Nic,” Gabriel said with exaggerated patience, lowering his gaze to scrutinize her face, “or you wouldn’t be here. I could feel you worrying from inside the testing chamber. The baby…?”

“The baby is fine,” she told him, as she seemed to daily. The baby, safely ensconced in their cozy womb, was probably the one person out of everyone who was perfectly fine. “Have some magic and I’ll tell you what’s up.”

He narrowed his eyes threateningly, his voice dropping to a warning growl. “Nic…”

“What if someone suddenly attacked?” she asked with wide eyes, figuring she probably looked like Nathi with her fluttering lashes. “You’d want to be at your best.”

With an annoyed grunt, he pulled on her magic, the sensation so sweet, nearly erotic—more so now than ever, given all the playing they’d done around building and sharing magic—that she had to take a moment to maintain her Lady Phel composure. Gabriel felt it, too, making a low sound, deep in his chest, the tension sizzling through their connection. “Now start talking,” he told her. Even though the command wasn’t remotely sexual, she responded with vivid excitement. Too bad so many people were watching them, openly and covertly.

Not trusting her voice, she lifted the missive and showed it to him. If he hadn’t been caught up with his concern for her, he’d have noticed it long since. Catching his breath at the sight of the Refoel seal, his alarmed gaze went to hers. “Seliah?”

“We won’t know until you read it. It’s keyed to you.”

“Not here.” Taking her by the wrist, not touching the missive she still held, he towed her out of the workroom, then out a side door that led to the lawn at the back of the house, gently sloping down to the lazily flowing Dubhglas River. Insects buzzed in the trees, making a heavy droning sound that somehow intensified the thickness of the humid air. As the house continued to restore itself, replicating how it had been centuries before the family lost its magic and fell from power—the untended manse eventually sinking entirely into the marshes—the gardens surrounding it also burgeoned in the late summer heat. Farther north, autumn would be making itself felt, perhaps the leaves starting to turn in Elal, workers harvesting the last of the grapes, but in Meresin, summer still reigned with a heavy hand.

A labyrinth of rose hedges had reconstructed itself at some point in the last weeks, growing with magical speed, the self-grooming bushes higher than even Gabriel’s head, only the heavy, bloodred blossoms dripping from protruding stems breaking the otherwise crisp lines of the rows. Nic hadn’t had time to explore the maze, though she’d heard tales from the others who’d gotten gleefully lost there, and followed along with interest as Gabriel led her into it. With unerring decisiveness, he brought them to the center, where a fountain rested in the middle of a rose-festooned clearing. A clever sculpture of a moon topped it, showing phases from fingernail to full, depending on where you stood, bright water shimmering in silvery sheets to the basin below.

“You didn’t mention this fountain,” Nic remarked, breathless with admiration—well, and from keeping up with Gabriel’s long-legged stride. “So perfectly House Phel.”

“I hadn’t seen it before. This is the first time I’ve come here.”

“How’d you find your way to the center so easily then?”

He gave her a bemused look. “I don’t know. I just wanted to get to a private place and here we are.”

His attunement to the manse then, a wizardly perk she could envy. She held out the missive and this time he took it. “Will my unsealing it notify the sender I’ve done so, like with the legal demands?” he asked.

She peered at the seal. “Not this kind, no.”

With a grunt, he placed his finger on the Refoel sigil of a bee on a stylized blossom, the magic clicking almost audibly. He read swiftly, and Nic did her best to contain her impatience, very aware of Gabriel’s magic sharpening and intensifying with his distress. “It appears that Seliah abruptly disappeared and Jadren believes she was abducted by House El-Adrel to force his return. He’s left House Refoel on Vale, bound for El-Adrel and asked for us to be informed, but that he’s handling it.”

To Nic’s relief, Gabriel remained relatively calm in the face of this dread news. “Jadren believes,” she repeated. “They don’t know? How can they not know?”

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