Page 38 of Strange Familiar

Crushing shock scattered every thought as the door opened and Cillian walked into the room.

Alise actually choked on her wine, bobbling the glass and spilling the crimson down the front of her pale gown. The nearest of her boys leapt to her in concern, patting her back and taking the glass from her hand. Another scurried to a side cart to get a towel to clean up the spill. Two others exclaimed in dismay and the musician stopped playing in a horrified, discordant strum.

The happy smile Cillian had worn walking into the room fell away. He stopped there, at the far end of the long dining table and stared, his gentle black eyes going cool as he took in his five near-doppelgangers. Alise flushed with shamed embarrassment. Feebly—because she was still choking on the wine and had yet to draw in a full breath—she batted at the boy trying to help her. The familiar who’d fetched the towel returned with that and a bowl of iced water, dabbing solicitously at the broad stain on her bosom, clucking in distress, even though she tried to get him to stop also. Cillian observed both her half-baked efforts and those of the two familiars with chilly cynicism.

Yeah, all right. It looked bad.

Her father stepped into the dining room behind Cillian, looming over the shorter and slighter wizard, his smirk at Alise’s discomfort clear on his face. Several realizations slammed home in that moment and she struggled to assimilate them all at once, not easy while trying to suck in a breath and squirm away from the two attentive familiars.

Cillian had come for her.

Her father delighted in her misery.

She’d been a fool.

If withering away to slide under the table in a puddle of ectoplasmic goo was an option, she would have seized it without hesitation. Feeling the contempt in Cillian’s unrelenting gaze, seeing the expression of jaded betrayal on his face that a heart as pure and noble as his should never experience, Alise wanted nothing more than to disappear.

Cillian’s frozen hesitation evaporated and he made to turn, as if to immediately leave, but Piers clapped a meaty hand to the librarian wizard’s shoulder, stopping him. “Don’t run, boy. We set a place for you to have dinner, so you don’t want to waste that. And here is Alise, as you demanded. Plead your case.”

He steered a now unresisting Cillian to a chair before one of the empty place settings, the lookalike familiars giving him a friendly smile that Cillian couldn’t seem to muster to return. Alise’s father raised his brows at her, fulminating anger boiling through his magic and looking to her like crimson bubbles forming around him and popping to shower lava-like drops. “This nobody of a wizard has something of yours,” he informed her in silky tones. A small gremlin appeared, snatched a card of some sort from Cillian’s fingers and ran it down the table to her.

Oblivious to the fraught undercurrents, several of the familiars laughed. Alise had finally managed to clear her windpipe. “I’m fine,” she told the ones hovering so embarrassingly. “Leave me be.”

They looked like wounded puppies at her sharp tone, but obeyed immediately, settling back into their chairs. Cillian observed that, too, looking from one to the other, then returning his acid-drenched gaze to hers in patent disgust. She tried not to wither beneath that unflinching inspection, keeping her spine straight and chin high, taking the card from the gremlin with as much dignity as she could muster.

She read it, not quite able to comprehend its meaning at first, blinking as though focusing her vision was the problem though she could see just fine. Her handwriting. Promising Cillian a favor to be named later. With a spiraling sensation, she remembered that night, her desperation to protect him, to push him away, how she’d recklessly offered a favor and how he’d asked her to write it down. Always the record-keeper. And he’d sealed it with his archivist magic, the paper encased in a perfect magic shield. She’d forgotten about it entirely, never once dreaming he’d use it against her.

Lifting her gaze from the note, she found Cillian’s eyes boring into her. “I decided to call in the favor, Wizard Alise,” he said with distant formality. “As you can see.”

Dumbly, she nodded, still holding the note with numb fingers. “To have… dinner with me?” she squeaked. It didn’t seem likely. Armed with the power of a favor like that, Cillian could have requested House Elal provide him with an army and a fortune. No wonder her father was so enraged.

Piers had seated himself at the other end of the table, at the head, eating from a plate he’d already filled. Or that someone had filled for him. She couldn’t quite look directly at her father. With Cillian three people down and to the side of her, she could keep her line of sight angled away. Dealing with her father’s repercussions would come soon enough.

“No, not to have dinner with you,” Cillian answered slowly, as if she were dense. “Lord Elal was gracious enough to invite me to stay for dinner and to rest the night here.”

Her father grunted, making his level of graciousness abundantly clear. “The boy wants a private audience with you, Daughter,” he said, every word ripe with disappointment. “I calculated that it’s a small enough price to pay for something that could have cost us a great deal more.”

She knew it. But what was Cillian’s game, coming here now, calling in that favor? It wasn’t like him to use something like that—something they both knew had been part of a much more intimate exchange than a negotiating token between high-house scions—as political leverage. Unless Lady Harahel was behind this. Briefly closing her eyes to clear her mind, she opened them again and made herself face Cillian squarely.

“Of course I’m happy to grant you a private audience, Wizard Harahel. Since you’re only staying the one night,” she added, figuring it couldn’t hurt to repeat that stricture, lest he get ideas about remaining underfoot, “shall we discuss after we eat? Unless you’d prefer morning, before you leave.”

She maybe didn’t need to say that last bit, as Cillian gave her another of those long, cool looks, clearly communicating that he saw right through her. Well, she didn’t care if he did. He’d been the one to lie about his grandmother’s rank—even if only by omission—and he’d never tried to reach out to her before this oh-so-convenient calling in of the favor he’d manipulated her into writing down. Really, this current ploy called into question their entire relationship. Maybe Cillian had been using her. His unswerving attraction to and pursuit of her had never made much sense. Alise knew full well she was no raving beauty, with her odd face and boyish figure. Cillian certainly possessed the brains for this kind of long-term strategy, and the fact that he’d concealed his lineage went a long way toward calling his motives into question. Maybe he’d been more conniving in that relationship with Szarina than he’d made out.

Maybe Szarina had been the smart one, to use him first, before Cillian could use her in whatever scheme he and his house had planned. Well, as her father had been reminding her, House Elal had thrived all these centuries through cleverness and healthy suspicion. The Convocation was a competitive and often cutthroat society. Wizards didn’t share power if they could help it, and apparently even benign houses like Harahel carried on with deep agendas, their own interests always in mind.

“No time like the present,” Cillian remarked. “After supper would be ideal.”

“Fine,” she replied. To show it didn’t matter at all to her, she reached for her wine glass, then paused, having forgotten she’d spilled it all down the front of her gown. So much for regal dignity. One of her boys hastened to fill the glass, murmuring an apology. Cillian tracked the interplay, raising a brow and smirking at her. She didn’t care what he thought.

In the morning he would be gone and she wouldn’t have to bear witness to the condemnation in his eyes. She’d told him from the beginning that she had no good in her. What she did have was a healthy portion of Elal wiles. If Cillian thought to shame her into playing along with whatever House Harahel wanted, well he’d discover just how hard she could be.

Better for him to learn that as soon as possible and depart, leaving her to her fate. Her glass filled, she toasted him with it, then looked away, not quite able to bear the brutal knowing in his face. Yes, better for him to know the worst of her and go away. Forever.

~ 20 ~

Cillian didn’t know exactly what he’d expected to find when he finally laid eyes on Alise again. Being who he was, he’d naturally spun a few fantasies of their reunion. He was no raging Silas and Alise was definitely no fragile, helpless Lyndella, but he’d still leaned heavily in the direction of storming in to find Alise weepingly grateful to see him, perhaps rushing into his embrace. He’d imagined holding her tightly, murmuring to her that she was safe now, that everything would be all right.

Alise seated at the opulent dining table, radiant with magic and elegantly gowned and jeweled, being fawned over by a group of male familiars, had never entered his imagination.

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