Page 9 of Strange Familiar

His grandmother nodded, passing him a plate of scones. “How did you meet her?”

“She came into the archives. I saw her then.” Night after night, Alise would arrive late, illuminating the quiet, shadowed space like a slim candle, her magic and fey beauty shining to eclipse all else.

“During your shift,” his grandmother noted.

“It was an independent study,” he explained, doing his best not to sound defensive. “She had to work on it late at night.”

“And then she, inevitably, needed your help.”

“I do work in the archives at the reference desk. It’s literally in my job description to provide exactly that kind of assistance.”

His grandmother held up her hands in a mockery of surrender, her expression set and wizard-black eyes hard. Belatedly, Cillian realized he was speaking with Lady Harahel, not his loving and beloved gran. He should have realized when she made that statement about the questionable safety of opening the folded archive. For the first time in his life, his grandmother was speaking to him as the head of a high house, questioning one of her wizard minions, one she wasn’t happy with.

“Believe it or not, Cillian,” she said, seeming to note the change in his internal weather, “I am on your side here. I do not mean to make you defensive, only to point out that there is a recognizable pattern in your behavior. Not to mention that you did what no one else could do. You were the one to locate the hidden Phel archives and extract them. You carried them here to House Harahel, drawing us into a conflict not of our making. Who else could have accomplished what you did?”

“We didn’t know I could. I didn’t know it, until I tried.”

“You have always been far more talented and full of potential than you give yourself credit for,” she observed, and he wished he felt less miserable and could take pleasure in the compliment. “Your MP scores are exceptional—and are a matter of public record.”

“No one cares about exceptional MP scores in library magic,” he retorted. It was like being champion moss-grower.

“Until they do,” she retorted remorselessly. “In this case, I posit that they cared deeply. Alise Elal escorted you here personally, to ensure the mission was completed.”

How to refute that except to explain that Alise had come with him because she loved him and cared about him? It sounded like more of the Szarina thing on the surface, sure, but he shared something different with Alise. Something intimate and heartfelt, a meeting of like minds and spirits. In contrast, he could look back on the time with Szarina and see that it had all been a lie from the beginning, a shiny fairy tale he’d wanted desperately to believe in. It had all been surface without substance, like Szarina herself. Whereas Alise was substance, through and through, feeling more deeply than anyone he’d ever known. She simply wasn’t capable of that level of deception.

“All I can say is that you’re wrong about Alise. You’ll understand when you get to know her. I wanted to wait until we were together to tell you all about us, but I’ll share with you now: Alise and I are in love. We know there are challenges to our relationship and that it might be for only right now. Still, I want that right now, whatever I can have of her. And I’m telling you so you’ll understand that Alise brought me here because I asked her to help me. She was afraid for me and worried. There’s no collusion, no hidden agenda to her. Alise is my girlfriend and my lover. I wanted her here to meet my family, see my childhood home. To meet you.” He finished his impassioned speech feeling as if he’d lost steam along the way, fading in the face of his grandmother’s stony reception. Worse, she almost seemed to be regarding him with… sympathy?

“My dear boy,” she said, shaking her head. She took a deep breath, glanced out the window where the snowfall thickened. “It grieves me to see you go through all of this yet again, but if what you say is true, why did she leave?”

Leave? Cillian’s heart, already chilled, dropped like a rock through his stomach. Alise wouldn’t leave him. She especially wouldn’t leave without making sure he’d recovered, without saying goodbye. But his grandmother—no, Lady Harahel—regarded him remorselessly, waiting out his shock.

“Alise wouldn’t leave,” he said, but he sounded tentative.

“She would and did. She left yesterday morning, shortly after she divested herself of you. Alise is gone.”

~ 6 ~

Alise rode in the elemental-powered carriage through the heavy snowfall, glad of the runners that let it function as a sleigh, through El-Adrel cleverness. Though she’d buried herself in the furry blankets, she couldn’t seem to get warm. A cold, numb core of herself refused to thaw.

She couldn’t bear to contemplate Cillian’s hurt when he discovered she’d left. But what could she have done? Cillian’s grandmother hadn’t even allowed her to leave a note. She could hardly stay at House Harahel without Lady Harahel’s permission, in the face of her express instruction to leave. Though Alise might not care if House Elal got called upon to make reparations for an intrusion by one of their own, she would care if House Phel got in trouble because of her. Nic and Gabriel had already gone out on a limb by taking her into their house, paying for her education at Convocation Academy—which she’d screwed up, yet again—and being so forgiving about Maman’s death. She couldn’t possibly jeopardize everything they’d struggled to build and protect by adding to House Phel’s already too-long list of enemies.

Leaving had been the only thing she could reasonably do. The current problem was, she didn’t know where to go.

She couldn’t return to Convocation Academy, not yet. Maybe not ever. She certainly wasn’t going to House Elal. She could live her entire life without returning to those spirit-infested halls. There was only one place she could feasibly go, the place she’d wanted to go in the first place and probably should have, even if she might not be wholly welcome.

So, she programmed the air elemental—one perfectly tamed and bonded, exactly to House Elal factory specs, as Lady Harahel had indicated—to take her to the only real home she had anymore: House Phel.

Then she tried to sleep, though she didn’t think she’d be able to, with her mind racing and her heart breaking. Exhaustion must have caught up with her, however, sending her into sleep at some point, because she jarred awake, steaming hot and sweating, at the jolting of sleigh runners on rocks. Hastily, she halted the air elemental’s single-minded—if you could call it a mind—forward progress and stepped out of the carriage, shedding blankets like the fur of some stinking mammal after hibernation. She felt greasy and filthy, unable to recall when she’d last bathed.

Worse, her shoes, adequate for the heated halls of Convocation Academy, sunk ankle-deep in muck when she stepped out of the carriage. “Welcome to the swamps of Meresin,” she announced to herself, spreading her arms and smiling maybe just a little. She didn’t have much humor in her, but the moment made her think of Nic and her sister’s unrelenting needling of Gabriel over Meresin being one big swamp. It wasn’t, of course, but much of the place did sit at or below sea level, with wildly prevalent wetlands of all varieties.

It was also warmer in Meresin, in these more southern and western climes, though not actually warm. In truth, the pervasive moisture generated a chill that penetrated to her bones in a way the frozen weather hadn’t. Of course, it didn’t help that she stood outside in her shirtsleeves, sweat cloying on her skin after being buried in the furry blankets.

Alise supposed she was fortunate the snow had given way to this waterlogged excuse for a road, rather than dry ground. As it was, the sleigh runners looked a little chewed up. In the exigency of their midnight escape from Convocation Academy, Alise had “borrowed” the plush House Elal carriage from the storage facility. Maybe she was having a hard time breaking the childhood habit of worrying about what her father would say or do, but she was relieved that she hadn’t actually broken the cursed thing. Finding the button to trigger the El-Adrel mechanism, she watched as the clockwork devices extended wheels and withdrew the sled runners. Not ideal for the swampy ground of Meresin, but Nic’s joking suggestion of carriages that could convert to boats had yet to be taken seriously, let alone implemented.

With the carriage on wide rimmed wheels that only sunk partway into the muck, Alise sat in the open door of the passenger compartment and pried off her mud-soaked slippers, then knocked off as much of the gunk as she could before setting them in a far corner inside. Pulling on a more judicious blanket or two, she set the elemental into motion again, sorry to find that the earlier speed over snow had slowed to a boggy crawl. The carriage lurched and heaved as it hit a rock one moment and a water-filled hole the next.

It pleased Alise to see that her sentries remained in place, notifying Lord and Lady Phel of her incipient arrival. Or so she was extrapolating from her tests of the entities’ responsiveness. To be certain, she’d have to check the messaging system she’d set up at House Phel for timeliness and accuracy. And, while there, she’d also inspect and refuel the other imps and elementals she’d set up for Nic, though her sister, while a familiar and not a wizard, still had a knack for coaxing the creatures along. Nic possessed considerable Elal magic, though she couldn’t wield it directly.

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