“I can.” She turned away from him, then spoke over her shoulder. “You should’ve paid my dowry.”

~ 24 ~

It took the rest of the day to simply reestablish a semblance of normality.

They released the prisoners in the workshop, and Nic made Gabriel sit down right there for Asa to heal his wounds. He was covered, head to toe, in shallow slices and angry burns. How he’d stayed on his feet, much less unleashed that storm of magic on her father, Nic would never know. Though he fretted at having to sit, he yielded to her insistence.

While Gabriel was being taken care of, she set teams to work, cleaning up the blood from the library, confining Sabrina to her assigned room, and disposing of Sergio’s corpse by sending him back to House Sammael in the carriage he and Sabrina had taken to House Phel, much as her father was sent, bleeding and broken, back to House Elal. Alise happily instructed the air elementals to travel without pause to deliver their passengers, along with the implicit message that House Phel was not to be trifled with.

As soon as Alise finished with that task, she joined Nic in helping settle Maman. Alise gave over her spacious rooms to Maman, saying she could set herself up elsewhere. Maman was nonresponsive. Not asleep, but also not seeming present at all. Her cat’s eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling and, when Asa arrived—greeting Nic’s raised brow with the assurance that Gabriel was fine and had gone to deal with the mess in the arcanium—he examined Maman. After bolstering her vitality, he pronounced nothing else physically wrong with her.

“Her magic is already regenerating,” Asa explained, “which is, of course, an excellent sign. The impact of alternate form on her psyche, however—well, there’s no precedent that I know of. Perhaps with time and rest, she’ll recover on her own.” He met Nic’s eyes, his own full of reticent sorrow. “She’ll suffer, though, being parted from her wizard. I know you know that, but we can’t pretend that’s not the case.”

Nic nodded thoughtfully. “If I told you that I have an idea, something that might sever the wizard–familiar bond, would you be willing to let us experiment on the bond you have with Laryn?”

Asa sucked in a breath, eyes going wide. “How would you do this?”

“Not me,” Nic answered, then turned to her sister. “Alise would do it.”

Alise, who’d been sitting on the bed, holding Maman’s hand, jerked her head up. “Me?” she squeaked. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“I think you can do it,” Nic said. “I had a lot of time to think in that tower, and I mulled over some of the things we’d been talking about, pieces coming together. I can sense Elal magic, and it seems to me the method you use to bond spirits and elementals is very much the same as the wizard–familiar bond.”

Alise slowly stood. “They do look the same, but that doesn’t mean…”