“Azafris. Rare, expensive and unpredictable. Like you, I think, Mage Lindin.”

A note in Morgan Danfey’s voice shocked her. Not scorn. Not impatience. Instead she heard affection. Startled, she looked at him… and felt her blood thicken like syrup. His face, his eyes, were unguarded, and in them she could now see something other than grief. Fresh heat flashed through her, dangerously close to pleasure.

No.

He had a beautiful mind to match his beautiful face, but if she let either seduce her then he would win.

She tapped his notes. “I need pen and paper.”

He fetched them for her from the cupboard, and watched without comment as she fiddled his sigil’s construction, feeling her way through the changes that were needed for it to perform in seamless tandem with the transmutation incant he’d reworked.

“There,” she said, breathless, when at last she was done. “There’s an odd gap that won’t close, but even so it will hold. Although…”

“I know,” he said as she bit her lip, suddenly uncertain as she stared at her reworkings. “There is a small instability within the harmonics.”

“One that might well cause counter-instabilities elsewhere,” she said. “Have you considered that?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“And I think that just as a pond ripples then stills after a thrown stone, so will the syllabic harmonics smooth themselves out.”

“Hmm.” She tapped the notebook, thinking, then nodded. “Yes. Doubtless, you’re right. So. Remake your sigil, Councillor. And then we’ll see, won’t we, if I’m as good as I say.”

Her turn to watch, then, as he gathered the catalytic agents he needed for the task. Stepped well out of the way, she drank in his neat, precise ordering of the workbench. Shivered a little to feel the slow building of his power. She’d never constructed such a complex sigil before. Never thought to harness so many disparate elements and energies. What he was attempting…

He’s mad even to think of it. But it’s a wonderful madness. I want to be mad like that.

He laughed when the reworked sigil coalesced and hung in the air before him, shining. She’d never imagined he could sound so joyful or carefree.

“Now try the full incant,” she suggested. “I think you’ll find the sigils and syllables will mesh properly now.”

Nodding, barely aware of her, the councillor banished the summoned sigil and began the incant from its beginning. Inscribed the air with the first sigil. Watched it blossom and hold. Recited the first syllables of his new incant. Smiled as the sigiled air tightened, vibrating. He summoned the second sigil. Completed the incant.

And the tightened air rippled in a soundless explosion of power.