Then, as if sensing her gaze on him, he turned to her. “Are you all right?” he asked, gaze flicking to the now-sobbing heap of young blond wizard at her feet.

“I’m fine.” She managed a smile. Her reaction was her own, and she wouldn’t put it on Gabriel. Besides, for all the apparent barbarity of Gabriel’s actions, it had been a clean death, and far more merciful than Sammael—or truly, most Convocation wizards—would visit on their enemies.

“Let’s take back our arcanium then,” Gabriel said, holding out a hand to her.

She took it, grateful for the steadying contact. “You haven’t cleaned your sword,” she noted. He always immediately cleaned his weapons.

He didn’t bother to glance at it. “I want to meet your father with Sammael’s blood fresh for him to see.”

She nodded, understanding and also terrified of his intentions. “Do you plan to kill him, too?”

Gabriel stilled, searching her face. “What would you have me do?”

Nic pressed her lips together, the emotion rising up, turbulent and unnamable. If her father died, Maman would be free. But… he was still her father. “I don’t want him to die,” she whispered, aware of the plea in her voice.

Nodding, unsurprised, Gabriel released her hand and caressed her cheek. “We’ll find a way, then.”

Finding her eyes had filled with tears, she laid her hand over his, mutual understanding humming between them. Love, respect, and magic.

~ 23 ~

“What do we do with her, though?” Nic asked him, and Gabriel reluctantly took his eyes off his beautiful wife—too pale, her eyes bright with shock—to glance at the pitifully sobbing Sabrina.

It was tempting to simply run her through also, if only to shut her up, but that, Nic wouldn’t forgive. If he were honest with himself, once the murderous fury left him, he’d regret it also.

“She’s still a child,” Nic explained, though she hardly needed to. “Yes, she’s a monster, but she’s been raised by monsters.”

“If we send her home,” he reasoned, meeting Nic’s emerald-green, somber gaze, “she’ll only continue down this path.”

“She should be back in school,” Nic replied, her face filled with compassion as she looked at the girl. He was tempted to tease her about where her practical nature had fled to now, but he restrained it. Nic had never had the hardness and cruelty of these people. She’d simply learned to hide her soft heart away, carefully protecting it behind the façade she’d used to masquerade as one of them. Nic looked at him again. “Though, if we send her back to Convocation Academy, there won’t be anyone to teach her she doesn’t have to be what they’ve shaped her into.”

“Will you take on that project?” he asked, intending to point out the absurdity of it, but Nic considered it thoughtfully.

“I don’t know. Can I decide later?”

“We’re already harboring at least one traitor,” he reminded her, making the warning clear. “We can lock her up like Laryn and figure out next steps once this is done.”