Jadren bowed low, managing to make it supremely sarcastic. “As you say, Lord Phel.”

“Shall we focus on the task at hand?” Asa inquired with silky irritation. “Before I have to resort to sterner measures to keep our patient sedated?”

“Show me what to do,” Gabriel ordered, not about to apologize to the healer for the delay—or for challenging his horrible Convocation attitudes. He glanced at Jadren. “Are you able to establish wards?”

Jadren raised a brow. “A first-year wizard can put up wards.”

“Then make yourself useful and ward the room.”

Asa had him sit beside Selly, placing one hand on her forehead and the other over her heart, Nic behind him with her hands on his shoulders. She always claimed she couldn’t send her magic into him, that he had to pull it, but he felt a steady flow from her, bloodred fire, rose-red love that steadied and filled him.

“You know how to tap Lady Phel’s magic,” Asa said, fully in neutral professional mode again. “But she is a highly trained and talented familiar. Tapping Selly’s magic will be like and unlike that. The process is fundamentally the same, but she doesn’t know how to yield to you. She may fight you.”

So much for familiars being naturally willing. But he restrained the words, as they truly didn’t have time for another argument. “Noted,” he said instead.

“You’ll have to assert your control over her,” Asa continued. “Your magic will function as the reins. Do not let her magic run away with you.”

Amusement flickered through the connection to Nic, and he swore he caught from her a visceral memory of them racing at breakneck speed on Vale’s back. His own mind went to the arcanium and the sorts of control they’d been practicing. So difficult to separate those erotic games from this painfully real extremity. “Understood.”

“Proceed at your own pace, then.”

In Gabriel’s peripheral vision, Asa took Laryn’s hand and moved to the foot of the bed—several paces back from it. Gabriel glanced at Jadren. “Wards established, Lord Phel,” he reported, dashing off a faux salute.

Gabriel tested the wards with his own senses, finding them solid. Impressively so. “You might want to move a safe distance away.”

Jadren bared his teeth in a not-grin. “I’m fine where I am.”

Not Gabriel’s problem, then, if Jadren got caught in some backlash. It might even serendipitously free them of the albatross of the El-Adrel wizard’s presence in their house. He took a deep breath, calming and centering himself, clearing his mind of all else.

Well… as best he could. Various worries continued to flit into his mind like disturbed bats, inserting themselves like snatches of overheard conversation, tugging at his attention.

“Think about the arcanium,” Nic whispered in his ear, brushing the shell of it with her soft lips. “When all is calm and silent, moonlight filtering through still water. How it feels when all the world falls away and it’s only the two of us.”