Page 29 of Strange Familiar

Even Jadren and Seliah, still assimilating their roles as Lord and Lady El-Adrel—a house that likely was part of the conspiracy before their coup d’etat—had considered going after Alise, before eventually agreeing to wait. Jadren had extolled the virtues of simply formally approaching House Elal as another high-house head, with Seliah rolling her eyes and demanding if he planned to simply knock on the door, and Jadren retorting, why not, it had worked to rescue her from House Sammael. Han and Iliana even partially acted out the two roles in their recitation, which had Cillian laughing despite himself.

Which, he realized, had been their aim.

In the end, no one knew what to do and so no one had done anything. The solace they all clung to was that Alise should be safe. Lord Elal wanted to subvert her, to bring her into alignment with his cause, so he wouldn’t hurt her. But there had been no word from her either.

Cillian listened to all of this, nodding along in apparent agreement, his thoughts delving deep. He might be giving in to romantic delusions to imagine that he knew Alise better than any of them, but he believed he did. Alise kept that cool reserve around her like an impenetrable wall, allowing others to see only what she wanted them to see. And Alise wanted to be seen as capable, intelligent, in control of her magic and her destiny. Which she was. But she was also a deeply sensitive and caring individual who’d been starved of love all her life. Though she’d found a sense of belonging and family at House Phel, it was still new to her.

How would Alise feel that no one had come for her? She would assume they had written her off, that everyone was preoccupied with their own problems and concerns. And she wouldn’t be wrong. After all, Cillian had accepted his grandmother’s edicts and buried himself in the archives, believing the worst of Alise without attempting to see if she was all right. And he was the one person she’d finally trusted, that she’d allowed inside that careful reserve.

For the first time, he considered that she perhaps hadn’t left him without a word of her own free will. His grandmother wasn’t above lying to protect him and House Harahel, or simply slanting the perspective on what had happened. She’d clearly indicated she felt Alise was a threat.

Regardless, the ultimate responsibility lay with him. He could have chosen to rebel against his family and house instead of knuckling under in his usual meekly accommodating way.

Angry at himself, he fulminated over his lack of action. If he wouldn’t go against the rules for Alise, then who would he do it for? This was a test of character and so far he’d failed miserably. His grandmother, so-called friends, and pleasant-voiced enemies, they all gave him shit for being bamboozled by beautiful, sweet, lithe-limbed Szarina, saying he sacrificed his integrity for her. They liked to mock him for thinking himself her savior, for fancying himself a white knight charging to the rescue, but he’d had good reasons. Honorable reasons. Yes, he’d violated his personal integrity for Szarina, but he’d had the noblest of intentions.

He would stoop to far worse for Alise. She wasn’t fine and safe at House Elal. She was in the gravest peril, even worse than what she’d faced from Gordon Hanneil. That vile wizard, at least, had been clearly her enemy. She’d known from the first moment that he posed a great danger to her, and she’d had the wit to be justifiably afraid, finding ways to fight back.

With her father, as much as Alise feared becoming like him, as much as she hated him, she also still loved him in that indelible way of a child for their parent. Cillian knew that some part of Alise, the girl who’d been perceived as less than and had been neglected by her father, still longed for his approval.

And Piers Elal might be a loathsome toad of a wizard, but he was far from stupid. He knew how to manipulate people and he’d clearly set his sights on winning Alise over as his heir. He’d pull out all the stops to convince Alise that she could be happy embracing whatever it was he wanted her for. Alise was a powerful wizard, possibly more powerful than anyone who hadn’t swum in her magic as he had could know. The opportunity to exercise that power could be terribly seductive. Especially if she believed that no one cared about her. It had taken diligent effort on his part to convince her of his love for her. She might not return his intense feelings, but it would harm her to think he hadn’t been sincere or that his feelings had changed.

How could she believe otherwise when he had effectively abandoned her? He’d promised her once that he’d never let her down, that he’d always be there for her, and when it had come down to it, he’d failed her. Well, no longer. If no one else could think of a way to extract Alise, then it should be left to a librarian. He would develop a foolproof strategy that wouldn’t require might or the law or the assistance of any of the high houses, including his own.

Also, he possessed a secret weapon. He patted the pocket where Alise’s favor rested, always over his heart. Such antiquated Convocation customs transcended law, dating back to the days of outright war. Lord Elal would abide by it. So would Alise, whether she wanted to or not.

Cillian became aware of the silence in the room, broken only by the crackle of the fire, now dying low. He should add some wood to it. Han and Iliana sat still, arrested expressions on their faces. He rather thought the three of them might have been sitting in silence for some time.

“Cillian?” Iliana ventured, a worried line between her fiery brows. “What’s in your pocket.”

“A key to open a locked door,” he answered, not intending to be inscrutable, but liking the way it sounded. Heroic.

“I told you he’d go after our Alise,” Han said with satisfaction. “I’ll go with you.”

“Lord Phel forbade it,” Iliana reminded him, almost absently, her gazed focused on Cillian.

“Thank you, Han,” Cillian said. “Thank you, both. But the plan I have in mind will work for only me to go to House Elal. I promise, though, I’ll get her out.” By hook or crook.

“Well, all right.” Iliana sighed. “Though we only just got here and I thought you needed our help. Magical help.”

“Oh, I do,” he assured her. “And I have to do that first, so let’s get to it.”

~ 15 ~

Alise spent day after day with her father and Brinda in the arcanium, the light passing over and around them in sun and storm, moon and night. Without those cues—and her regularly scheduled escorted sojourns to her locked room to sleep—she might have forgotten about the passage of time entirely.

She was both exhausted and bursting with magical energy. True to her father’s word, he’d taught her how to take full advantage of Brinda as a power source. Even with Brinda bonded to her father and not her, Alise had discovered that the pure inhalation of that magic, especially amplified and intensified by her ancestral arcanium, intoxicated her to the point of losing reason. She finally understood why wizards, especially the most powerful, had succumbed to various levels of madness working their enchantments in their arcaniums.

In that space, she exceeded the boundaries of her own skin, becoming mightier than she’d dared imagine she could be. It had never occurred to her that the Elal arcanium would feel as if she’d slipped her hand into a glove. No: into an armored gauntlet. But the place had been built by wizards like herself, sharing her same blood and her same magic. Over the ensuing centuries, they’d imbued the arcanium with their magic, storing it there and creating channels for more. Alise could open a gateway with a drop of her own magic and receive an ocean in return.

She had to give Brinda credit where it was due, also. Back at Convocation Academy, the familiar had been arrogant in her confident assessment of her own magic, over the edge into unbearable, despite her otherwise charming ways. Well, her charming mask, which had given way to an inner ugliness when she threatened to expose Gabriel and Nic for using a fertility spell to game the Betrothal Trials, strictly against the rules. But now that Brinda had what she wanted—or what she thought she wanted—she was back to being delightful company. And her magic was exactly as robust and adaptable as she’d bragged about.

The House Chur fire and sun magic burned bright and hot, indeed. Brinda had referred to it as the universal donor and that hadn’t been an exaggeration. Her magic folded seamlessly into Alise’s—and, she assumed, her father’s—making Alise feel like a sun herself. She understood now why the ancient and reclusive House Chur had survived centuries of challenges by upstart houses even though they brought few direct products to market, and why the powerful magics they supplied worked so well to fuel countless other manufacturing processes. House Chur didn’t need to play the political games to amass wealth and power. They could simply rest easy on their already massive, old-money coffers, kept healthy and vigorous with a steady stream of passive income.

All of that was beside the point, however. What mattered was those boundaryless days in the Elal arcanium, working magic with her father, learning proprietary techniques and tricks she couldn’t have guessed at. Looking back at how she’d struggled to hold a dozen spirits at once, she almost pitied her past self and that striving. Powered by the arcanium and quickly mastering what her father demonstrated, Alise could now handle ten, a hundred times what she could before. She understood why her father scoffed at her insistence on graduating. Yes, she’d need that certification at some point, but it really was superfluous. Even Professor Cixin couldn’t teach her what Piers Elal had.

Of course, Professor Cixin had been a House Elal wizard before he left to take the teaching position at the academy, but not family. He’d never learned what she now knew.

“Excellent work,” her father said, giving Alise a real smile as he untied the sagging Brinda from the framework that served to channel magic directly from her body and into the very structure of the arcanium. His familiar gazed at him wearily, though no less worshipfully, allowing him to sweep her into his arms, then laying her head against his shoulder. He kissed her on the forehead, the picture of a loving… something.

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