“Maman never would!” Nic fired back, her magic, untapped for days and days, billowing up and burning the inside of her skin. “She loves me,” she added, searching Maman’s face for any evidence of the mother who’d cherished Nic and taught her everything she knew about being a familiar, worlds of wisdom the Convocation Academy could never teach.

“Did you think I wouldn’t discover how she helped you?” her father ground out, his carefully banked fury finally burning through his façade. “Not only was that a profound betrayal of my trust, she nearly irreparably harmed our future. She could’ve ruined all of my plans, and for what? A moment of caprice. If you were smart, if you’d truly absorbed what I attempted to teach you when I thought you still might amount to something, then you would hate her.”

“You are the one I hate,” Nic whispered, fisting her hands at her sides, unable to continue her pretense at idiotic obedience.

Her father smiled thinly, then lifted a hand to caress Maman’s cheek, turning her head so she gazed at him. She did so with perfect obedience, but without reaction, much like one of those El-Adrel automatons. “I have you to thank, in truth, kitten,” her father murmured, still stroking Maman’s cheek. “If you hadn’t enraged me so, I’d never have kept my precious in alternate form for so long. When I finally brought her back to human form, she was… changed. And compliant as never before. I’m writing a paper on it for the Academic Society of Wizards. It’s quite the breakthrough in control of familiars. And all because of you.”

Nic had difficulty mastering the illness oozing through her. All of this because she hadn’t had the courage to face what Gabriel represented. Unbelievable now that she’d thought she’d wanted a Sergio. Instead she’d been so afraid of how Gabriel opened her heart, how he so easily found and slipped through the cracks in the tough hide she’d developed under her father’s tutelage. Terrified of the change he represented. Change she now embraced—and would continue to fight for, even if he was parted from her forever.

“I have complete access to her magic now,” Lord Elal continued, still stroking Maman’s cheek in a parody of affection. Or, perhaps, in the very real affection of a madman for a prized possession. For her father was crazed, that was clear to her now. Maybe he always had been, or he’d been growing more twisted over time, but he’d tipped over some threshold and become the monster Gabriel had so feared becoming, and never could be.

“Which is why she will be useful to me here,” her father said, dropping his hand and leading Maman to her. “Though I have little psychic magic myself, at least of the sort suitable to thought-seeking, precious here has significant scores in it, from the Hanneil side, you know. I’ve discovered, with my increased access to her mind and will, that I can use that magic, amplifying my abilities considerably. I hope you understand how truly important this breakthrough is. We stand on the brink of a new society. We will usher in an exciting era of bolder magic use.”