Page 76 of Twisted Magic

“Your magic is looking thin,” Gabriel noted. “I’ll send a familiar to you.”

“There’s no one available right now,” Asa replied, “but thank you. All the familiars are tapped out after answering that call for magic to build that weapon they hoped would wipe out the hunters.”

“No one asked me,” Nic said with surprise. She hadn’t even known about it. “What weapon?”

“It doesn’t matter since it didn’t work,” Gabriel said wearily. “And I gave orders that you’re not to be tapped for magic as you insist on keeping me refilled.”

Wary of repeating her earlier error in arguing in front of the rows of patient-filled beds, Nic sunk mental jaws into her temper. “I have more than enough magic to keep you going and also—”

Gabriel took her by the arm, gently but implacably, and drew her into an empty examination room. “We lost the arcanium,” he said quietly.

“Oh no.” All anger fled, she sagged at the news. “I knew they were getting close, but…”

“Despite Nathi’s best efforts to run off the crews, they reached the arcanium at dawn. I collapsed the tunnel myself.” Emotion swam in his wizard-black gaze, a grief Nic shared. Losing that private, intimate retreat felt like an enormous blow.

“You had to do it,” she told him, willing herself to mean it. “We knew that was coming–and that we couldn’t let them inside the manse.”

“I know.” He leaned against the exam table, exhaustion in every line of him. “But I’m wondering—what are we holding out for?”

She nearly snapped a reply, but realized she had no good answer. “Because the alternative is giving up?”

“I mean, what is it they want from us? Are there no terms for surrender?” he asked, expression bleak.

“Surrender?” she echoed. “They don’t want our surrender, Gabriel.” She had to tamp back a bit of impatience with him, aware that Asa had been spot on that her temper had frayed to nearly nothing. Still, how could he not realize the uncaring wall of the Convocation they’d fetched up against? She’d known from the beginning that he was the sort to beat his head brainless against that wall, but not that he’d continue to ignore the fact of it.

“Then what do they want?” he demanded, half angry, half plaintive.

“Annihilation.” She let the word hang there. “They tried to destroy House Phel before and very nearly succeeded. If not for your re-emergence as a Phel wizard, that would be a done deal.”

“And Seliah’s,” he reminded her.

Nic shook her head. “Seliah would have foundered in her untapped magic, succumbing to insanity. “You were the trigger. It’s you they want to destroy. They won’t settle for anything less.”

Gabriel studied her for a long moment, desperation creeping into his gaze. Though she’d wanted him to face reality, she found she deeply regretted seeing him lose the last of his innocence. Naturally, she’d been the one to do it. Perhaps if Gabriel had found someone else, a different familiar, things would have gone differently for him.

“I accept that that’s the case,” Gabriel was saying. “but we should be able to negotiate for safe passage, at least for noncombatants. Your mother. Cornelis.”

“Negotiate with whom?” she asked in turn. “We face a mindless mob out there, magically tasked to be single-minded in their intent to overrun us completely. They kill anyone they encounter, taking no prisoners. Even if we appealed directly to Elal, El-Adrel, and Sammael, offering surrender, we have no way to get a courier out to them. Also, we have nothing to offer them that they want.”

“Your father wants you,” Gabriel pointed out remorselessly.

“Well, he can’t have me,” she snapped.

“Isn’t being alive worth it?” he persisted.

“No.” She was firm on this one. “Not if you are dead. And before you suggest that Sammael might take Han and Iliana, they’ll give you the same answer. Not every life is worth living.”

“I know.” He rubbed his forehead. “I do understand, truly. I just feel like we’re only delaying the inevitable. If their goal is our utter destruction, as it seems to be, and our ability to withstand them weakens every day, every hour—what are we hoping will happen? Unless you think someone might come to our aid…”

No. No one was coming. They’d never had any hope of that. “I don’t know,” she told him. “I only know that I refuse to roll over. They will win—I harbor no illusions there—but I don’t want to go down in history as someone who turned belly up and willingly offered her throat to the enemy.”

He stared at her in horror. “Don’t even say that.”

Raising a brow at him, she nearly smiled. It settled and reassured something in her that, despite her best efforts to instill her own cynicism in him, he retained at least a bit of that naivety she so loved in him. Rubbing a hand thoughtfully over her belly, she contemplated that another woman might be less selfish than she was and try to live for their child, but she didn’t want to survive Gabriel, couldn’t live in a world without him. He’d brought color to her life and, when he died, he’d take it with him, leaving only endless gray behind.

Reading something of it in her, Gabriel drew her into an embrace, their child snugged between them. “I’m sorry,” he said, face pressed to her hair.

“For what?” Though she’d kept her voice steady, tears made it watery, much as she tried to hold them back.

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