~19~
Gabriel stared inawe, not quite able to wrap his admittedly addled brain around what had become of Nic.
She seemed similarly befuddled, cocking her head quizzically, her silver feathers bright, her emerald eyes the same. Shaking her head, she tried to look at herself, startling as her great wings spread wide. Turning in a circle, she tried to get a look at herself but ended up in the same place. She fixed him with a demanding look.
“You did it,” he breathed. “Wedid it,” he amended when she trilled a contradiction he nevertheless understood.
She trilled a question, listening, as if interested in her own sounds.
“You are a… very large bird,” he ventured. “I think you might be a phoenix. I’d have to look it up in the library.” A grin stretched his face, a release of its own from the sexual frustration he’d endured along with her. “Given your fiery nature, I’m not surprised. And the metaphor—you have certainly been burnt to ash and reborn a time or two.”
She listened intently, then drew a wingtip around, waving it so the silver flashed.
“I’m guessing the silver is from me, from the magic and the arcanium, perhaps. A silver phoenix. Doubly appropriate, yes?”
Trilling again, she cocked her head.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Let’s put you back and see if we can replicate it. Maybe with a little less sexual frustration. I can see why a wizard would be inclined to go with whipping instead.”
She glared green fire at him, and he could swear he heard herHa hain his head. Concentrating, he found the threads of control he’d woven into her. Could he withdraw them again? He wasn’t certain. They felt permanent, but he set that disturbing thought aside.There are good reasons the Convocation teaches wizards to control their familiars,Nic had told him. Reasons, indeed, though whether they were what anyone would call “good” was subject to debate. Certainly the power was a heady one. To control another person so completely…
Is the path to becoming a monster,some saner part of himself whispered.
If he wasn’t one already.
Yanking himself back from those dark musings, he strummed those threads of control and willed Nic to return to her human form. With startling ease, she did, standing naked before him and holding out her hands in wonder. Her deep-green eyes, huge with residual arousal and the enormity of what she’d done, filled her pale face.
“I have no words,” she whispered.
“Maybe take a moment,” he suggested, easing closer, but chary of touching her just yet, no matter how badly he wanted to take her into his arms and hold her. “That has to be mind-bending.”
She gazed at him, still wide-eyed, but perhaps a little less wild. “It was so strange. I could understand you, but I couldn’t quite think like myself.” She shuddered and pressed her hands to her face. “When I think about Maman, being trapped all this time…”
He judged it better to act than not, and in two strides, folded her into his embrace. “You don’t know that,” he murmured. “Don’t dwell on speculation over something you can’t control.”
She lifted a tear-stained face to his. “We have to rescue her.”
“All right,” he agreed immediately. “We’ll find a way—either to ascertain that she’s well, or to bring her to safety.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, huddling into him, pressing her cheek against his chest. “I know that’s not the most important thing right now, but…” She let out a long, ragged breath.
“You’ve been turned inside out, almost literally,” he told her softly, kissing her hair, inhaling her scent. Love struck him hard, clenching his heart in a fist and wringing him dry. “Of course it’s important. Just one of many important things,” he added ruefully.
She sighed. “I really hate that we have about ten crises on the breakfast table and no time in the schedule for self-excoriating philosophy.”
He laughed, surprising himself with the bell-deep ringing sound of it. “We willmaketime for that, my heart.”
She laughed too, though not as heartily, smiling up at him. “I suppose we should practice the transformation a time or two with my clothes on. I don’t fancy parading around naked in front of that prune of a proctor.”
“Agreed,” he said with fervor. “Let me find your gown.”
“First things first,” she declared, raking her nails down his chest and undoing the laces of his pants. “Lie down, wizard. You owe me.”
Obediently, willingly, he sank to his knees and then to his back. Nic straddled him, outlined in silver fire. And when she sank over him, taking him inside her, the silver web of connection tightened, threading through, in, and around them.
No one could fault this bonding.