Page 51 of Twisted Magic

“Have you lost what’s left of your half-feral, crazygirl mind?” he demanded incredulously. “Didn’t you hear the terms of the deal? I’d have to figure out how to put you in alternate form, preferably also with the ability to get you back out of whatever benighted, beastly form you take on, in less than a day and a night.”

She shrugged. “So, we figure it out.”

Arrested, he stared at her, a picture of utter astonishment. “You have lost your mind,” he said in a wondering tone. “How sad. Don’t worry, darling. I’ll always take care of you.”

“Very funny,” she retorted. “I’m perfectly serious. You’re meant to be Lord El-Adrel so we’ll figure out a way to meet this challenge.”

“Have you forgotten the lesson of Refoel?” he demanded. “I can’t do any wizardry at that level.”

“I remember you didn’t try.”

“Besides which,” he continued, “I’m not meant for anything of the sort. I gave it a shot. Bogdan called my bluff. We’re done here.”

“Well, I am not done here.”

“Is it so important to you to be Lady El-Adrel?” he demanded, throwing up his hands. “Is it the power you want? The wealth, the status? You saw your role model. I wouldn’t say my late, unlamented mother lived an enviable life.”

“No,” she answered, holding onto her patience. “You know me better than that and I refuse to be distracted by you picking a fight with me over nonsense. An argument we’ve had before, I might mention. I want this for you.”

“Well, I don’t want it,” he hissed, crouching as if hunted.

“And I want it for House Phel,” she continued, talking over him. “I want it for all the people whose lives you can make better. The house wants it for you, and for them, and you owe her for helping you today.”

“Is the house going to teach me how to put you in alternate form without killing you?” he asked, the question positively dripping with sarcasm. “Because, just in case that hasn’t penetrated your addled brain, that’s what’s at stake here. And please recall that I have no idea what I’m doing.” He finished on a near shout, waving his hands.

“Maybe the house will help? I don’t really know. What I do know is that countless wizards and familiars have accomplished this feat before us, so it’s clearly doable. Gabriel and Nic managed without knowing how.”

“Gabriel is hugely more powerful than I am,” Jadren pointed out acerbically. “I harbor no delusions there and neither should you.”

“And yet you’ve accomplished feats my brother couldn’t imagine. Aren’t you always telling me that magical types and talents and skills are all so varied that there’s no truly comparing them? That the Convocation uses magical potential scores for that reason, rather than some magical actuality score.”

“I’m pretty sure that was Liat, not me,” he replied drily, but also a bit more calmly, so she thought she might be getting through his instinctive panic. Then he visibly changed tactics, coming to her and going down on one knee before her chair, prying her hands off her arms and enfolding them in his. Gazing earnestly up at her, he seemed to have forgotten his gore-smeared state. His handsomeness shone through regardless, that sterling core of his character that hadn’t been warped by all that had been done to him, no matter how scarred and dinged. “I love you, Seliah.” He said it like an explanation.

“I love you, Jadren.” She waited.

“Don’t you see?” He rubbed his thumbs over the backs of her hands, though he was the one who needed soothing, not her. “It’s not worth it to me. Nothing that jeopardizes your life is worth it. I can’t believe you think I’d risk harming you just for some stupid ambition.”

“But it’s not stupid,” she said, turning over her hands to grip his. “And it’s not ambition. This is something you need to face, to get through, to overcome. Your mother is dead, but some of your demons still live. You’re not done with this battle.”

He narrowed his gaze at her. “What are you dressing up in philosophical language instead of saying to me directly?”

She took a breath. “I think you always run away.”

Paling, then flushing, he started to tug his hands away, but she held on. “I’m not saying you haven’t had reason, but you’ve gotten into a habit of running instead of fighting. If you run from this, there is something you’ll never get back.”

“What?” he snarled. “The opportunity to be Lord El-Adrel? Because that’s easy to walk away from. Some things aren’t worth fighting for, poppet.”

She nearly smiled at the way she’d accurately hit that nerve, but remained serious, because this was important. “No, my love: you stand to lose your self-respect.”

He stared at her a long moment, skin drawn tight over his cheekbones, before he recovered and drew on his cloak of bitter cynicism. “Ah, that’s where you’ve gone wrong. You see I can’t lose my self-respect because I’ve never had any. I have only self-loathing, so being a coward and running away like a scalded dog, yipping piteously with my tail tucked around my balls, is exactly in character. If you can’t accept that about me, then there’s no point in us going on.”

Her stomach went cold as congealed porridge at the implicit threat and she couldn’t help but be glad that she still hadn’t told him about the bond-severing option. In Jadren’s black moments like this, he was likely to seize on that possibility, if only to punish himself in his relentless self-flagellation. “I don’t accept it,” she told him crisply.

His betrayed expression, before he covered it over, told her everything. She held onto him. “I accept you,” she said firmly, “and you never let me take the easy way out. You never cut me slack for being a crazy girl and losing my shit to the point of getting me captured and you nearly killed.”

“That’s because—”

“Because you expected better of me. And I expect better of you. Sometimes love means pushing each other when we need it.”

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