“Did Sergio Sammael intend to deliver Lady Phel to Convocation Center?” Gabriel asked on a hunch.

“No,” the hunter replied. “They took her to House Sammael.”

~ 18 ~

The next time Sergio Sammael came to visit, Nic was prepared to do battle: mentally and physically. To give herself more confidence, she’d used her time to improvise a more modest outfit from her bedsheets, thanking her past self for all those long hours spent doing needlework. Not that she had any sewing supplies, but she felt comfortable folding and manipulating the fabric.

She’d also selected a few implements that could be used as weapons and hidden them around the tower room. Sergio could paralyze her with pain, of course, but she could hurt him back. She didn’t need magic to do that—something she’d learned from Gabriel—and Sergio was coward enough that a little damage would make him think twice the next time he tried to force her.

None of that took very long, so she spent her copious remaining time in meditation, exploring those nonphysical channels that opened when she voluntarily gave away magic and concentrating on strengthening her skills of keeping them barricaded shut. Her sanity was a small price to pay for depriving Sergio of the least drop of her magic. Petty of her, perhaps, but it also starved him of magic. She didn’t have much power in this situation, but whatever leverage she could use, she intended to.

She’d come a long way since she’d believed her only power in life would come from manipulating her wizard master. If she’d learned anything from Gabriel, it was that controlling one’s own life was a choice. She didn’t have to accept that not being able to wield magic equated to having no power at all except through whatever wizard bonded her.

One thing she was sure of: She would never allow another wizard to bond her. Part of her hoped—perhaps irrationally, and perhaps as an early sign that her sanity was eroding—that Gabriel would wake up, somehow figure out where she was, and come to rescue her.

That was the Lyndella fantasy, however, captured by her wizard’s enemies and wasting away while she awaited the rescue that came too late, for both of them. Tragic foolishness.

And Nic was no Lyndella.

If they couldn’t triumph, she could at least take their enemies with her. She’d learned from poor Selly. If Nic could build up enough magic inside of her for long enough, the wizard who eventually forced their way in to tap into it would get an ugly surprise. She might never match the sheer compressed volume of years of magic going stagnant, but Nic was the most powerful familiar in the Convocation, with years of practice at cultivating magic. And Sergio was no Gabriel, nor did he have the help Gabriel had had.

With a bit of luck, if and when she broke, her magic would kill or maim Sergio at the same time. It wouldn’t be an unequivocal victory, but it was better than submitting to defeat. So when Sergio unlocked her tower door, she was ready for him.