Page 5 of Reluctant Wizard

“Elal spies are everywhere.”

“So I always hear. I don’t have a say in what House Elal does—but I can promise you that, if Elal has sent spirits to spy on this hallway, then they’re even more certainly in my room. Lord Elal and I haven’t exactly seen eye to eye of late. Speak here or nowhere.”

Gordon’s jaw flexed. “I will only deliver this very important message in the confines of your private chamber, Wizard Phel.”

She shrugged. “I suppose you won’t be delivering your very important message then, as I have no intention of letting you into my room. It’s your very important message. You keep it.”

“You’re awfully cheeky for a young thing.”

Alise was getting a bit tired of people treating her like a child. Yes, she was slight and looked younger than her years. But she had reached actual, legal adulthood, not to mention being a full-fledged wizard with not inconsiderable abilities. And she would only grow stronger, whereas this mid-level—at best—Hanneil wizard had topped out. She outranked him in every way and he thought he could bully her? Anger coursed warm under her skin, far better than the previous chill of trepidation.

“What I am is late for my practicum, Proctor,” she bit out, emphasizing his job title. “Move away from my door and cease delaying me—or I shall report you.”

His face took on such ugly anger at her words that Alise wondered how she could’ve ever thought him handsome, even objectively and in passing. “You wouldn’t dare,” he hissed. Darting forward, he seized her arm in a crushing grip that felt like it went to the bone. Equally numbing, his psychic magic wormed into her through the contact, sending invasive tendrils through her throbbing nerves to her brain. This was no low- or mid-level wizard. In fact—she realized, far too late—he was more powerful than she knew how to defend against.

Alise didn’t know what he intended to do. Influence or control her in some way, that was certain. Psychic manipulation was also hugely illegal, but unless she could get to help, piffling laws didn’t matter. Belatedly, she tried summoning a warrior spirit to get the wizard off of her, but her magic went nowhere, feeling as if it had bounced off a glass wall. He was blocking her somehow. She should have taken defensive action sooner. Hard on the heels of that regret, came a frisson of real fear.

“Listen to me, and listen well, sweetheart,” he said into her ear, his breath unpleasantly hot on her cheek, the message behind his words pounding through her brain from the inside of her skull, reinforcing it with irresistible insistence. “You will cease looking for the House Phel archives.”

She tried to jerk away, to wall out the psychic magic pummeling her will, encasing her in an ugly wall of dissonance, but his grip, both mental and physical, only tightened. Tears blurred her vision.

“You may keep up the appearance of conducting a search,” he continued relentlessly, “but you will not be effective. Any information you learn, you will immediately forget. Any information you discover, you will hide or destroy so no one else can access it. Finally, you will tell no one of this conversation. You will be unable to speak of me or what we just discussed. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” she heard herself say in dull obedience.

“Glad to hear it.” He sounded smug, self-satisfied, no doubt pleased to have so easily bested her. To her shocked horror, he licked her ear. “Mmm, tasty. You might look like a little girl, but I bet you’re all woman in bed. Be grateful I didn’t decide to instill a compulsion for you to come to mine. Mind yourself, or next time, I will.” He drew back and caressed her cheek with a finger, smiling when she shuddered.

“I can make you want me,” he murmured. “Or I can let you loathe me as I sense in you right now and compel you to give yourself to me anyway. I enjoy that, too. Perhaps more. Your call, baby wizard. Do as I say: don’t even think about retaliating or speaking a word about me other than to sing my praises, and I’ll leave you alone.”

At last he released his vise-grip on her arm, and the equally agonizing hold on her will, and Alise gasped at the sheer relief, then began shaking uncontrollably. The warrior spirit she’d tried to summon before suddenly manifested, looking to her for instructions. Gordon Hanneil glanced at it, then raked her with a salacious stare that left her feeling filthy, and shook a warning finger at her. Hastily, she banished the spirit.

“Not completely stupid,” the other wizard said. “Though I was kind of hoping you’d test me. Something tells me you’ll end up in my bed eventually, panting and eager, spreading your legs willingly, while your mind shrieks in useless protest. Mmm. I can feel it already. Are you a virgin? Ah, yes. Delightful.” He paused, not waiting for a reply so much as enjoying her terror. “There. Message delivered. Was that so difficult? Remember your instructions.”

He strolled away, whistling a tune vaguely familiar, but that she couldn’t identify. Alise flung herself at her chamber door, fumbling at the Iblis lock coded to her and her alone. The door gave and she hurled herself inside, slamming and locking it as if it could protect her from what had already occurred. Only then did she release the sob of utter and horrified despair, realizing as her stomach spasmed that tears weren’t all she’d be spewing. She made it to the washbasin and vomited, hard and painfully. Continuing to dry heave for a while, she wept continuously. Surely either puking or sobbing, or both, would provide a cathartic release and she’d feel better.

But she only felt soiled and ill.

At last, she got herself together enough to summon an earth elemental to clean up her sick. For those creatures, getting to consume anything was reward enough, but she was so grateful to it for removing the smell and visible evidence of her shame that she fed it an extra boost of magic, too. Sitting wearily on her narrow bed, she gazed bleakly around her small room.

The tiny earth elementals employed by Convocation Academy didn’t allow for dust to gather, but the room still seemed stale with disuse. She’d had a much grander room, back when she’d been Alise Elal, heir apparent to House Elal, petted and spoiled by her papa. Now that House Phel had taken over her expenses, the days of being one of the wealthiest students at the school were over. Her sister, Nic, and her husband Gabriel, had apologized that they couldn’t give her more, but Alise had been quick to shush them, knowing very well the precarious state of the House Phel finances. She certainly didn’t want to be more of a burden than necessary on her new family.

She didn’t long to go back to those relatively carefree days of wealth, when all she thought about was herself and her wizardry. She didn’t even wish to go back to the time before she’d impulsively gone to Meresin to rescue her family under siege at House Phel. No, all she really wanted, with every aching bone in her body, was to go back half an hour, to before that Hanneil magic fouled her mind. She fervently wished, as if wishing could make it so, that the encounter with Gordon Hanneil had never happened.

But it had. And she would never be the same.

A knock on her door set her heart lurching in the cavity of her chest, then to pounding frantically. Had he come back, perhaps to make good on his threats? Gazing at the inside of the door in stark terror, she distantly groped at the idea that she should muster a defense of some sort.

The knock came again. “Wizard Alise Phel?” a voice called.

Female. Not Gordon Hanneil.

“Wh—who is it?” she stammered, her throat tight and burning.

“Proctor Divya Hanneil. You’re quite late for your practicum.” A pause. “Is all well, Wizard Alise? I’m sensing agitation from you. Please open the door.”

Alise made an effort to strengthen her mental shielding, the annoyance that her distress had leaked through to the psychic wizard beyond the door helping to bolster her will. She made herself get up, unlock and open the door. “I’m fine. I just needed time to change clothes.”

Proctor Divya gave her a long searching look—along with an assessing probe that made Alise flinch, even though it was the oblique, non-invasive variety she’d experienced from the academy proctors her entire life. Nothing like Gordon’s lancing power that had laid her mind open as easily as a knife through butter.

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