Bright Familiar by Jeffe Kennedy

Author:Jeffe Kennedy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: Jeffe Kennedy
Published: 2021-07-03T16:00:00+00:00

“Narlis’s strawberry pie is now my favorite thing in the entire world,” Nic announced as she mounted Salve. “The entire meal was delicious, in fact.”

The pie had been especially good, redolent of spring sunshine and sweet cream, the pastry flaky with butter. “Mom was very flattered that you were so complimentary.”

“I wish she wouldn’t worry so much about me being a fine lady, blah, blah, blah,” Nic said, drawing up the hood of her cloak against the persistent drizzle. “Her food and the other meals people have been sending over are as good as anything ever served at House Elal.”

“I wonder if we could get the recipe for that gravy we had in Ophiel?” Gabriel asked.

Nic grinned at him. “And the garlic-infused mashed potatoes. We need those recipes. I’m going to investigate.”

“I wasn’t serious,” he protested, realizing belatedly that he needed to be careful about expressing desires of any kind. Between her magically induced desire to please him and her innate determination, she took his least yen as a directive to make it happen.

“I am,” she replied, undaunted. “House Phel will serve delicious food if I have anything to say about it, which I do. Why not collect the best recipes we encounter? There are a few I’d like to extract from Missus Ryma back in Wartson, too. I know a few magical conveniences that might tempt her into a trade, too. Hmm.”

“Perhaps we should concentrate on the tasks before us?” he suggested.

She sighed. “Are we going to argue about whether or not to try to lift the house out of the swamp again?”

“Well, no, because you took care of that—didn’t you?—by enlisting my parents to the cause.”

She shrugged, a dim figure in the rainy twilight. “That wasn’t my intent. They’re proud of you, Gabriel, and they deserve to be. And you deserve to feel good about your wizardry once in a while, instead of forever agonizing over it.”

“Ah.” Now her ulterior motives became clear. “All of this is by way of luring me back into the arcanium.”

She huffed a sound of exasperation. “It’s your arcanium! I shouldn’t need to lure you there. It’s just a tool, Gabriel. Nothing more or less. A tool is only what you make of it.”

There was a cold logic to that, he supposed. Though he wished on one level that he’d never insisted on finding the arcanium. Then it wouldn’t pose such a temptation, wouldn’t be filling his mind with alluring and perverse images of what could be. He couldn’t regret the result—he’d wanted to try a reciprocal bonding instead of making Nic into some kind of mindless and subservient tool in her own right. And that had worked, hadn’t it?

“We haven’t really talked more,” he said quietly, “about the reciprocal bonding and what it means for us.”

She didn’t look at him, the cowl of her hood creating a still and abstract profile. “We can’t know what it means—if anything—if we don’t work on magic together,” she finally replied.

“We worked together all day today,” he pointed out.

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