Page 25 of Strange Familiar

“I have a theory about that, too.” He finished shoveling the last of the food on his plate into his mouth and signaled no when she moved to offer more. His stomach strained with fullness, reminding him that he really had failed to eat as he should. No more of that. He needed to be strong for what was to come. For Alise. “But let me stick to this wizard who made the folded archive. Either they believed in the conspirators’ cause—which I am certain will be revealed when I find the root texts in the archive, the one or ones that began it all—or they were psychically manipulated.”

His mind-reading grandmother’s face tightened. “You think House Hanneil is involved.”

“I know House Hanneil is involved,” he corrected, “because they sent an agent to stop Alise’s research into the missing archives. He very nearly succeeded, too.”

“House Uriel could perform the same level of manipulation you suggest,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but they’re too principled. And,” he added when she looked dubious, “Provost Uriel has been helping us. She neutralized the Hanneil agent. She assigned me to assist Alise. I believe House Uriel is invested in uncovering this conspiracy.”

“A lot of suppositions,” Lady Harahel noted thoughtfully. But she’d also stopped arguing.

“True, but I’m working on verifying what I can. I need to get to that root book or books and you’re right, Grandmother, my magic is too low. I need help. A familiar or two. Someone I can trust.”

She gave him an impatient look. “You know full well House Harahel doesn’t employ or house familiars. They’re of no use to us here. Never mind one or two you can trust; I don’t have anyone of sufficient strength to assist you. Any familiar potent enough to be useful gets sent off to the other houses.”

Like a commodity to be traded. Cillian didn’t voice the thought, however. That was a core tenet of the Convocation and not something he could change by arguing with his grandmother, especially when he needed her to agree to this request. “I have an idea.”

She narrowed her usually warm wizard-black eyes. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. “But I think it’s a sound one. At House Phel there are two unbonded familiars, Han and Iliana. Both are exceptionally powerful and owe fervent loyalty to Lord and Lady Phel. They would assist me and be discreet.”

“I know about those two.” Lady Harahel pointed an accusing finger at him. “You think I’m an ignorant bookworm living in the backwoods, but I know those two escaped agreed-upon contracts with House Sammael to become bonded familiars. And Alise Elal is the one who helped them.”

“All true,” he replied evenly. “Which is why those two would sacrifice anything to repay the asylum House Phel gave them and what Alise did to set them free.”

“Need I mention that our relations with Sammael are already sour due to your shenanigans with Szarina?”

“All the more reason to ignore their wishes,” Cillian pointed out. “In addition, Han is particularly skilled with weapons, both wielding them and teaching others to use them in pitched fighting.”

Lady Harahel raised her brows. “Do I want to know why you think weapons skills are something I should care about?” She swept a hand at the quiet manse around them. “Do you expect our books to suddenly attack?”

“No,” he answered, though his amusement drowned in the seriousness of his gut-deep fears. “I expect that House Hanneil will.”

~ 13 ~

Alise refused to fuck the familiars her father sent to her. Even though it made them sad, sulky, bitter and, with one memorable young man, outright angry. She made each candidate sleep in her bed alone, while she wrapped herself in a blanket nest by the fire. They were locked in together, which wasn’t their fault, but no way would she sleep in the bed where they could crawl in to join her.

Beyond having to argue with these hopefuls—and dashing their hopes in the process—she grimly reminded herself that at least she enjoyed the privilege of being able to refuse them. Unlike Nic, who’d had no choice but to accept those wizards that won the monthly lottery and arrived to spend a night attempting to impregnate her.

In that circular room in the tower where Nic had been sequestered while Alise was happily off at Convocation Academy, Alise spent time surveying the slices of the view through the slanted metal shutters meant to prevent the occupant from escaping via the window—or throwing themselves to their death. Alise, as a favor to Brinda Chur, had written to Nic about her experience in the Betrothal Trials. Lines from Nic’s reply kept circling through her mind like her own pacing within those walls, the single door locked and warded against her escape.

It was awful.

I didn’t think it would matter to me so much, letting those men have me, attempt to impregnate me, but… it did.

It hurt me inside in ways I can’t describe.

I would have agreed to anything, to anyone, to any level of treatment to escape the extended torture of boredom punctuated by rape.

Because that’s what it is, no matter how they dress it up as informed consent.

Even if Alise hadn’t been resolved not to lay a finger on the familiars sent to her—or for them to lay a finger on her—those remembered lines would have stopped her. Though several of the familiars, most in fact, attempted some form of seduction, believing her to be shyly virginal, she had no trouble setting them back on their heels. Unlike Nic, Alise had neither agreed to cooperate, nor did she lack the power to enforce her will. And, sadly, the fact that the familiars had all been trained to reflexively obey a wizard worked in her favor.

Though she recognized many of them from classes above her at school, and though others were even older, they all deferred to her, once they got past their initial confusion at her determined refusal. A couple mentioned that her father had told them she was shy and needed a man to take the lead, so she quickly learned to disabuse them of that notion right off. In the end, though, she found her greatest strength and certainty in knowing that—no matter how eager they seemed to be—none of them could be considered to be truly consenting. Like all familiars, they had one pathway, which was to be subservient to wizards in one way or another.

It grimly amused her to witness her father’s persistence and how clever he imagined himself to be. As time went by, with one disappointed familiar after another leaving in the morning after a night alone, it occurred to her that the men he sent to entice her had begun to resemble Cillian more and more closely.

She reached her limit with a bespectacled familiar who could have been Cillian’s brother, with dark curls and an earnest, intellectual mien. It turned out, however, that he’d never read a book in his life that wasn’t for school. And that he didn’t even need the glasses. As the guard unlocked and opened the door, she called out. “Tell my father that he doesn’t know what I want, so to stop trying.”

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