Page 32 of Reluctant Wizard

“Why not?” He was genuinely curious and, in this interstitial bubble of time between night and dawn, he thought she might tell him. “I don’t think my doing this bothered you.” He gestured vaguely at the shattered pieces of ceramic, taking a step that direction to pick them up.

“Allow me,” Alise said, a waft of her magic blowing past him like a warm, rose-scented afternoon breeze. A bevy of earth elementals answered her call, coalescing around the detritus, eagerly consuming it. “And no, your brief, mild show of temper hardly would attract a glance at House Elal. My papa was infamous for his rages, all the worse when he was quietly furious. We all learned to tiptoe around him.” She looked briefly, profoundly unhappy, staring off at some memory. “Well, except for Nic. She always enjoyed his very best attention, until she manifested as a familiar, that is.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her, wishing he could comfort her in some other way.

Her gaze focused on him again. “Nothing to be sorry for,” she replied briskly. “I envied her all that time, sure. Probably I gave into jealousy when I shouldn’t have, since Nic suffered far more than I ever did. I could wish that Papa had loved me like he loved her, but at least that means he had nothing to take away from me. He punished Nic, hurt her deeply, by withdrawing his regard. He can’t do that to me.”

Couldn’t he? Cillian wondered, but didn’t say aloud. Piers Elal had a hook deeper into Alise’s heart than she realized, he thought. Hopefully he wouldn’t ever choose to use it. “Time enough to speak of these things tomorrow. The bed is through there.” He pointed, even though it was obvious. “You need to sleep and I’m keeping you up.”

He should have known better than to press her right now. It just gnawed at him, the need to know what Hanneil had said to terrify her, to do something about it. How could he begin to help her if he didn’t know?

Thing was, he suspected he did know.

“No.” Alise shook her head. “First of all, I’ll take the couch.” She held up a hand, jaw sharp with determination. “I won’t put you out of your bed, Cillian. Second, let’s finish this conversation, so it’s not hanging over me.”

A pang of guilt shot through him. This pressure came from him, from his needing to know. And what would he do once she told him? He couldn’t fight a wizard of Gordon Hanneil’s psychic might. But he could listen, and he knew from bitter experience—he’d at least learned that from the Szarina debacle—that telling someone of a painful thing lessened its sway over you. “Let’s sit,” he said, gesturing to the couch so they could sit together, then belatedly realizing he’d stacked it with books. “One moment.”

“You don’t have to…”

“Well, I will have to at some point, if I’m to sleep here.”

She didn’t reply, rather pointedly not renewing the argument over who would sleep where. He restacked the books without much regard for their previous order, though he kept a mental tab on the current organization, so he could revisit, then plumped the crushed cushions of the couch until they looked, if not entirely welcoming, at least not so forbidding.

Turning back to Alise, he found her eyeing him and the couch with a wry expression. “Do I even want to know how long that piece of furniture has functioned as a bookshelf instead of a couch?” she asked.

“Probably not,” he admitted, unable to quite recall the last time anyone had sat there. “I don’t entertain visitors often, so…” He shrugged, helpless in the face of his own foibles.

Alise sat gingerly, adjusting her narrow bottom, then frowning. “I don’t think anyone should sleep on this thing. Or rather, attempt it, as I don’t believe sleep would be possible.”

“I can sleep in my reading chair.” Sitting beside her, he had to acknowledge the truth of her observation. The cushions were packed hard as rocks. No amount of fluffing could save them. Oh well. “I sometimes fall asleep there anyway.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” She twisted her fingers together, eyes darting away from his gaze. “I don’t know quite where to start.”

“At the beginning,” he replied promptly. “Here, this will help.” He scooted into the corner of the couch, half-reclining, and laying an arm along the back. “Lean against me.”

She looked dubious, but complied, edging herself hesitantly against his hip, then lying stiff as a slim board against him, tense enough to spring up at a moment’s notice. “Like this?”

“Yes, except relax. And maybe no spirit bottle,” he suggested as it ground against his leg uncomfortably. “Surely nearby is good enough?”

“Sorry,” she muttered, sitting up to extract the thing from her pocket and set it on a pile of books. He really needed to clear some space.

When she laid back down, he lifted the hand from the back of the couch to stroke her silky hair, going carefully, coaxing her into settling that busy head into the nook of his shoulder. “Better. Now tell me. Start with where you first encountered Gordon Hanneil.”

She nodded, then began. “There’s not that much to tell, really. Nothing actually happened, it was all suggestion.” She told the tale in fits and starts, staring up at the ceiling while he caressed her hair, petting and calming her. When she haltingly repeated the vile threats to assault her sexually, she began trembling. The fury coursed through him cold as chilled mercury, thick and viscous in his veins, but he held himself still, not allowing the tension riding him to leak through to disturb her. Alise wept a little, a few tears sliding down her cheeks to settle on his shirt and soak through, where they dampened his skin with her fear and sorrow.

She wound down soon after, correct that it wasn’t a long tale, just a horrifying one. At last emptied of the unbearable tension, Alise lay lax against him, her breathing deepening into sleep. He should move. Get up and get her into the bed. But he found that he couldn’t lift even the hand resting over her forehead, her light body a delicious weight he couldn’t bear to shift. Feeling his own heavy eyelids lowering, he instructed himself to move. To no avail.

~16~

Alise drifted up through lazy billows of sleep, a sense of renewal and wellbeing suffusing her. Such a perfect, delicious way to wake up, feeling rested, restored, and ready to take on the new day. She opened her eyes and studied the unfamiliar ceiling, the old plaster threaded with cracks in a blue-gray light. She’d been in a lot of different places lately, so she’d become accustomed to taking a moment to equilibrate upon waking, to remember if she was at House Phel or Convocation Academy, and then which room she’d most recently occupied.

Wherever it was, the bed was hard as a rock. No, not a bed—a couch. Cillian’s couch.

“Ah, she’s awake,” Cillian said brightly, his Harahel accent lyrical as birdsong. Not that there was any birdsong, as it appeared to be late afternoon, the winter sky solidly overcast and threatening snow. “I made you soup.”

She sat up, aware suddenly of the stiffness in her body, the down-soft quilt she’d noticed the night before spilling into her lap. She’d fallen asleep while talking. On top of Cillian. At some point he’d extracted himself from under her—remarkably without waking her up—then covered her with the quilt. She didn’t know how to feel about that, but the emotions swirled gently, warm and sweet.

“Go ahead and use the bathing chamber while I dish this up,” Cillian called. “I imagine you’d like to.”

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