Page 17 of Strange Familiar

She stepped up to Gabriel’s beaming parents, exchanged a smile with them, and set a gentle hand on Bria’s forehead. “I bestow upon thee a guardian spirit to watch over and protect you.” She’d summoned and tamed the spirit for Bria, tasking it to interfere as it was able, should the child stumble into danger, and also to alert Nic and Gabriel if anything unusual happened. Alise, Nic, and their brother, Nander, had all had such protectors when they were little. The efficacy of the guardians tended to fade over time, especially as the child grew more mobile and unpredictable, exhibiting more complex behaviors and motivations. Certainly Alise and her siblings—especially all being sensitive to spirit magic—had learned how to duck their protectors at a fairly young age.

Children possessing spirit magic quickly figure out who is tattling on them and spirits as a rule aren’t that bright. No one could say yet whether Bria would end up with magical potential scores in spirit magic, or any magic at all, but the guardian would serve to look out for the child in her most vulnerable years. Knowing that, Gabriel and Nic gave her grateful smiles, and Alise felt the warm embrace of truly belonging to a family. Bria’s unfocused gaze followed the spirit and she blew bubbles at it as it flew around her head and nestled by her cheek. The affinity boded well for Bria’s potential in spirit magic.

Seliah and Jadren were next, presenting Bria with a clockwork doll made with El-Adrel magic that looked lifelike and was so stunningly lovely, with shiny, soft copper skin, that the child immediately reached for it with wide eyes and grabby hands.

Wizard Asa stepped forward, adding a gift of healing magic to keep Bria strong and vital through her early years. One by one, other wizards, familiars, and mundane family, stepped up with gifts tangible and magical, tears and laughter intertwining at the celebration of Bria’s fresh new life and limitless possibilities.

It was an event of pure joy and celebration. Until it wasn’t.

Alise sensed the breach in the spirit-patrolled boundaries around House Phel at the same moment the voice rang out.

“Did someone forget to invite me?” Piers Elal inquired.

~ 9 ~

Piers Elal, Lord of High House Elal, posed in the center of the room for effect. He’d dressed for the moment, too, wearing a deep violet velvet cloak over a fitted Ophiel suit of the same material, which took on black lowlights as it shifted, giving him a sinister cast. The effect was amplified further by the gold metal eye-patch he wore, affixed to his head with matching buckles that fastened to black leather straps.

He smiled at them, malevolent and triumphant, unmoved when Gabriel hurled a silver spear formed of moonlight at his head.

“No!” Nic shouted, lunging to stop Gabriel, even as the invisible shield of spirits surrounding their father deflected the spear, sending it spinning wildly away into the gathered guests, who scrambled out of its path. “You can’t,” Nic urged Gabriel, hanging onto his arm, even as he tried to put her behind him. “Jadren, help me!”

“Lord Phel,” Jadren said in a carrying voice that caught Gabriel’s attention. “Lady Phel is correct. You cannot take action against her father at the naming of his grandchild. It’s against Convocation etiquette.”

“Watch me,” Gabriel snarled, his magic billowing in the air, intensifying into water and silver.

His father, GF, tucked the baby securely into his wife’s arms and put himself between them and Lord Elal, standing squarely beside Gabriel. “Agreed,” he said in his deep voice, clasping together work-roughened hands. “This old farmer may not know Convocation pretty-quette, but I know a murderer when I see one.”

Nic cast a pleading glance at Alise, reflecting her own inner conflict. This could go very badly. Would go very badly, regardless, but they could at least protect Bria. Alise faced Gabriel and GF, feeling not unlike a mouse confronting two angry bull elephants, the men towered over her so, but she was a wizard, and she possessed the grounded strength of a practitioner of the dark arts and those aspects outweighed physical stature.

Beyond glad that she’d filled herself with the magic of the dark arts—but feeling like a traitor at the same time—she locked gazes with Gabriel, the wizard who’d become more of a brother, more of a father to her than either of her biological ones.

“Gabriel,” she said, speaking wizard to wizard, as aunt to father of this child they already loved beyond life itself. “This is about Bria. Convocation law supports primacy of blood. You cannot prevent a grandparent from having contact with a direct descendent or you will give them legal grounds to take custody of the child.”

“The hell you say,” Gabriel ground out. “That would happen over my dead body.”

“It would,” Alise insisted, “and then my father would still be able to take custody of Bria. Think about it. This is what he’s wanted all along.” As she said the words, she realized the truth of them. Their father had somehow engineered the match between Nic and Gabriel, wanting to bring that water and moon magic in combination with spirit magic into House Elal. “Don’t let him play you.”

“Alise is right,” Nic said in a quietly strangled voice. “We wondered why he was staying so quiet. This is the moment he has waited for, knowing that either way he’d win access to our child. Our only path toward maintaining control is to cleave to Convocation law and etiquette.”

Gabriel never glanced at Nic, fiercely glaring at Alise instead, as if she had somehow instigated all of this. “Asa, Wolfgang, Quinn—what say you on the boundaries of the legal requirements here?”

Alise didn’t relax enough to release a breath of relief. She held her stance, hoping to transmit through the firmness of her physical and magical posture just how serious this was. The two wizards and familiar that Gabriel called for briefly consulted. They’d all been champions of their debate teams and mock trial events at Convocation Academy.

Wolfgang, the Ratisbon wizard who, with his familiar Costa, produced furniture and other carpentry goods for the house, spoke for the group after a hurried, whispered discussion. “Lord Phel,” he said with a bow, at the edge of Alise’s peripheral vision, “we agree that Lord Elal must be allowed to approach his grandchild and to inspect the infant’s health. He need not hold her to do so. The law is very clear on this, that the infant can remain in the physical control of one or both parents, but the grandparent must be allowed to touch the infant.”

Gabriel set his jaw, a bright chiming echoing through the vast and silent hall as silver pinged in a soft rain onto the marble floor. At last he tore his gaze from Alise and turned to Nic. “What say you?” he asked.

Behind Alise, Lord Elal scoffed. “Some wizard and supposed lord of a house, asking his familiar for an opinion.”

Everyone ignored him.

“We stick exactly to the requirements,” Nic said, too softly for anyone beyond those right there to hear. “We get through this moment, then regroup.”

Gabriel nodded, the silver rain halting abruptly even as his magic intensified around them. Behind Alise, her father’s Elal magic similarly burgeoned, blazing like a furnace against her back. “Don’t let him provoke you,” Alise warned Gabriel. “He’s seething for a fight. Don’t give it to him.”

Gabriel gave her a sharp dip of his chin in acknowledgment. “I’ll hold Bria for this.” His mother, Daisy, looked like she might refuse, her pressed lips wobbling, but she let Gabriel take the infant, gazing up at her powerful son in beseeching trust. He whispered something to his mother that Alise couldn’t hear and Daisy turned to bury her face GF’s chest. Bria, who’d been happily clutching the clockwork doll, gleefully tasting any part she could fit into her mouth, gave an unhappy warble, subsiding when Gabriel kissed her forehead.

“Nic, Alise, by me,” Gabriel said, and stepped off the dais.

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