“She has a serious nature,” Asa explained, then paused. “And the pregnancy affects her emotional state, as you’ve experienced.”

Nic raised a brow and waited.

“All right, she also wasn’t happy about leaving Convocation Center,” Asa allowed. “She’s too diligent in her duties to complain, but I knew she enjoyed the whirl of the city and society there. I think she could learn to like it here, though, and I had to take the opportunity presented to me. It’s good for both of us. I wouldn’t have gotten a position this good, so high up in the hierarchy of a new potential High House this quickly anywhere else.”

“Did you discuss that with her?”

“She understands. Laryn knows how the Convocation works as well as either of us.”

Nic restrained a sigh. “That’s not the same as including her in the decision, Asa.”

Asa studied her, his keen intelligence evident as he sorted and rearranged his thoughts. “And you think that, if I include her in decisions, it will encourage her affection for me?”

“I think that, if you treat her like a thinking, feeling human being who has an equal say in your lives that it will, if not encourage her affection for you, at least mitigate resentment that will build to utterly destroy it.”

Asa looked vaguely green. Clearing his throat, he said. “This brave new world of yours and Lord Phel’s is not an entirely comfortable one.”

“And you’re saying the Convocation is?” Before he could answer, she pressed. “Or is it that the Convocation is comfortable for you?”

He clearly didn’t like that, his posture going rigid as he gave her a formal bow. “Lady Phel. I’ll be at your service when you and Lord Phel are ready. It needs to be soon, while she’s still calm.”

He strode off with a stiff gait—but he did go to Laryn, at least, saying something to her that had a surprised look lighting her face. Nic turned away, giving them that much privacy, and went to Gabriel’s side. In deep conversation with his parents, he enfolded her under his arm, an absentminded gesture of welcome that meant everything. “You can’t be here,” he was saying. By the tone of his voice, it wasn’t the first time, either. “We’re moving out the other patients and will be warding the room. We can’t risk anyone being hurt by the magical backlash.”

“I don’t even understand what that means,” Daisy argued.

“Think of it like removing a lid from a pressure cooker left too long on the fire,” Nic suggested impulsively. She’d spotted the old-fashioned, manually locking pressure cooker in their kitchen. “To release the steam, someone has to carefully unlock that lid. But you can’t have people standing around watching because they might get scalded.”

The pair of them studied her shrewdly. “Or the whole thing blows,” GF observed astutely, “hitting everyone with shards of metal.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“In this case, Dad,” Gabriel put in, “we cannot simply turn off the flame. I can do this. And afterward, you can both visit Selly as much as you like.”