Reading something of his regrets in him, Nic gave him an assessing sideways look from her canny emerald-green eyes. You’re the one wanting to dash yourself brainless fighting the Convocation, she seemed to say in his mind, though they did not have that kind of telepathic communication. He didn’t need Nic’s remonstrations in his head for her to make her opinions clear. The look in her brilliant, knowing eyes was more than enough.

How he loved her.

“Lord Phel,” the Convocation Proctor declared, as if identifying an odd species of fungus, rising to her feet. The ornate tabernacle containing the oracle head sat on the wide porch rail, its doors locked again. “Where is the rogue familiar you promised to retrieve?”

He banished the urge to cringe like a disobedient schoolboy caught out by sharp-eyed tutor. Instead he fluttered the fingers of his free hand, imitating what he imagined a lordly noble might do. Nic’s fingers remained firmly entwined with his other hand. She’d repeatedly warned him that keeping physical contact with her made it look as if he were prepared to access her magic as his familiar—a sign of weakness or aggression—but he didn’t care. He liked holding her hand, and doing as he liked was the soul of wizardly arrogance, wasn’t it?

“The incantation has been enacted,” he intoned, trying to sound powerful and enigmatic.

The proctor narrowed her eyes at him. “Forgive me, Lord Phel,” she said, her tone clearly unapologetic, “but I am well aware you did not attend Convocation Academy and lack, if not the training for a proper incantation, then at least the language to describe what you’ve done. But indulge me. What sort of spell, precisely, have you enacted to retrieve the rogue familiar you endangered through willful concealment?”

Nic’s magic warmed his hand, filtering into his blood with rose-dark, bloodred warning. Make up something arcane and twisty that no one will understand. He raised a hand and pointed to the moon, invisible behind the cloud cover, yet vivid in his mind. He always knew where the moon was. “The moon shines her face upon the land and none may hide from her reflection.” He swept a hand at the lake and the marshes beyond. “Likewise, water infiltrates all, seeping into every crevice, and no force may keep it out.” Beside him, Nic snorted softly in wry agreement. He’d been sure her alternate form would be a feline, like her mother’s, what with the way Nic loathed getting wet. “And none may hide from it,” he finished on a low note.

The watching wizards—among them Asa, the Refoel healer; the glassmaker, Sage; the furniture maker, Wolfgang; and the enigmatic El-Adrel spy, Jadren—exchanged bemused glances. At least they seem suitably confused.

The proctor waited a beat longer. “That’s all you have to say?”

Gabriel pulled icy arrogance around himself. “I don’t expect a mid-level wizard such as yourself to understand.”

She huffed out a breath, setting a hand on the tabernacle containing the oracle head as if considering asking it. “How long am I to wait for a result?”