But Alise might do it. She’d been a wizard only a little longer than Nander, but Alise was older, more mature, and less taken by the sudden elevation in status, even though it meant their papa was now grooming Alise to be the next head of House Elal. Unfortunately, Nic and Alise didn’t have a close relationship. They hadn’t talked in ages.

It could be that Alise felt bad that it was her and not Nic who’d manifested as a wizard. They hadn’t really spoken about it. Looking back, in fact… the lack of communication was probably Nic’s fault. She’d been so crushed at the oracle’s declaration that doomed her to be a familiar, so humiliated that all her grand dreams were nothing but dust, that Nic had thrown herself into finishing her studies. She’d cranked through the advanced courses for familiars in record time, taken her final exams, graduated, and promptly locked herself into the Betrothal Trials, determined to get the rest of her life going, however dismal it might be.

Now she considered that, even if the rumors of Nic’s unwise escape attempt and subsequent recapture by her vengeful wizard husband hadn’t gained much traction in the wider gossip circles, it was likely that Papa had at least contacted Alise about it, if only to interrogate her on what she might know.

Which would be nothing, because Nic hadn’t confided in Alise. In fact, Nic couldn’t recall the last real conversation she’d had with Alise, the kind that didn’t involve polite greetings and discussion of family business. She should write to her sister. Nander, too, regardless of whether he’d care. With a twinge of unaccustomed guilt, she realized she should’ve done so a long time ago.

There: Gabriel would be pleased. She’d engaged in some self-excoriating philosophizing worthy of her wizard at his most angst-ridden. She had to say, she didn’t at all understand his fondness for the depressing preoccupation.

As they came down the hall toward the front of the manse with its expansive front porch, it seemed little had changed in their absence. Though the great front doors were closed, the flanking wide windows—newly unboarded and glassed in by the Byssan sisters, bless them—gave them a good view.

Everyone remained out front, on the porch or on the soggy lawn beyond. It had stopped raining, and some of the House Phel denizens appeared to be engaged in a game where a ball was volleyed or kicked about. The Convocation proctor had taken a seat, if stiffly, on the wide porch steps, the oracle’s tabernacle beside her. Gabriel’s parents stood to one side, looking worried.

“Will your parents be prepared to see me take alternate form?” Nic whispered to Gabriel.

He’d already fastened his wizard-black gaze on his folks, his pained expression a mirror of theirs. “They’re not prepared for any of this, unfortunately.”

She squeezed his hand in sympathy. All the people of Meresin had been so uninvolved in the Convocation for so long that they were largely ignorant of so much of what was common knowledge in Elal, where Nic had grown up. Their ignorance may have been bliss for centuries, but things had changed, and the monsters they didn’t know about absolutely could and would hurt them.