“Yes, you do,” she answered firmly. “I did my part by filtering the invitations to attract the right sort, but you must be the one to decide if you can work closely with another wizard, to the point of having them live in your house and sit at your dinner table nightly.”
“Nightly?” he echoed, appalled. “I thought there was this whole plan to sequester that lot to the north wing and feed them separately.” Like a kennel, or a stables, but for irritating wizards.
“Perhaps not nightly,” she conceded, “but often enough. You’ll want to keep an eye on them. Even without dinners, you’ll be working closely with these people. Some more than others, but look at how you reacted to Asa.”
“I approved him,” Gabriel protested.
“Exactly, even though you don’t like him. I can’t possibly predict that sort of thing.”
“I don’tdislike him.”
Nic, very pointedly, didn’t say anything.
“I like Sage and Quinn.”
“Even a broody and reclusive wizard like you has to like Sage. What did you think of Laryn?”
“I think thatyoudon’t like her.”
Nic glanced at him in surprise. “Was I that obvious?”
He considered the question. “Not to anyone else, I think. I just know you—when you’re pretending and when you mean it.”
“Hmm. Something for me to remember.”
“You should tell me, though, if you dislike someone. You have an equal say in our household.” He braced himself for her argument, but she surprised him.
“Thank you. I very much appreciate that consideration. But I don’tdislike Laryn. I don’t,” she protested at his dubious glance. “Not really. It’s more that she dislikes me, and I react to that. I suspect her feelings have more to do with her own misery than anything I’ve done. Is it arrogant to say that I think she’s always been jealous of me?”
“No, especially since I think it’s true.” He could see how attractive and well bred but unremarkable Laryn would be jealous of the vivid, spirited Nic.
“Jealousy is a bitter and poisonous thing to live with,” Nic said in a reflective tone. “She makes herself unhappier than I ever could, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t think I want. What I’d like is…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“You’d like what?” he prodded, wiggling her foot by the boot heel he still held.
“I’d like to see what the House Phel new regime could do for her,” Nic answered hesitantly, almost shyly.
“The ‘new regime’?”
“Your whole take on the wizard–familiar dynamic.” She waved a hand at the glorious sky like it demonstrated something. “Partnerships,” she clarified, saying the word as if he’d made it up. “Someone like Laryn, she has to hate feeling powerless to control her life, carrying a baby she likely resents—she’s really not the maternal sort—and dragged off to the swamps of Meresin where she won’t even have the pleasures of Convocation society to soothe her.”
“With her nemesis as lady of the house she serves in,” Gabriel added.
“Yes.” Nic rolled her eyes dramatically. “Horrible, arrogant Veronica Elal, familiar to the lord of a High House, running poor Laryn’s life. Quelle horreur.”
He chuckled. “You’re not like that.”
“No,” she replied in a thoughtful tone, “though arguably I was once quite full of myself. Confident, certain of my rosy future, probably to the point of being insufferable. And people have a tendency to project,” she continued before he could say anything to that. “If our positions were reversed, Laryn would no doubt use her power to torment me, so she expects I’ll do the same.”
“But you’re not tempted?”
“No. In fact, I talked to Asa about her already.”
“Did you now?”
“Yes, do you mind?”
“Why would I?”