Page 2 of Consort's Glory
Exiting a roundabout with a tastefully lit, burbling fountain at its center, she drove with her windows down to let in the cool, eucalyptus scented air. Luckily for distracted witches everywhere, the entire Protectorate had an m-grid, allowing the sigil-lined, exhaustless engines of even the oldest vehicles to lock onto the streets and nearly drive themselves. It brought the chances of a collision to nearly zero.
Passing large, mostly arrant-owned houses with their sprawling lawns and huge, old growth trees made into silhouettes by the dark, Margot considered just how much time she had left.
Six weeks at maximum,her healer’s training helpfully supplied. With symptoms first appearing last year and increasing in severity approximately every four to five weeks, I’m looking at total burn out in two months — if I’m lucky.
There was no use wondering what would become of her then. She was a gloriana, the most powerful caliber a witch could be born into. If she were only a minor witch, a brightlingor a brilliant, she might have just suffered permanent nerve damage or the crushing loss of her abilities.
But she wasn’t, and that meant there was only one way things could end: Nerve damage. Internal bleeding. Loss of neurological function.
Death.
The only way to save her pitiful, squandered life was to find a bondmate, someone to filter her power through to diffuse the damage done to her cells every second of every day; a sort of magical dialysis that would bind her very soul to another. It was a bond that would save her life and make her partner incredibly powerful in return.
If only I could find him.
So far her search only revealed what Margot always feared: her bondmate couldn’t just be anyone. There would be no hasty, ill-thought out, shotgun bonding for her. Margot Goode's bondmate would be one man and one man only.
Unfortunately, the compulsion to find him, that prickly sense of knowing, pulled her towards San Francisco for nearly a year, but gave her little else to go on. She was certain he lived in the city, but so did nearly a million other sapient beings.
Even if she had all the time in the world, the chances of running into her bondmate were slim to none.
Margot pulled into the driveway of the Healing House and killed the engine of the zippy little m-car, a thing that, like the house, belonged to the neighborhood. The Healing House and its amenities belonged to the people it served. It, along with everything within and without, wouldn’t miss her when a blood vessel popped in her brain and the lights simply… went out.
Feeling suddenly, immeasurably tired, Margot let out a long sigh and leaned her forehead against the steering wheel.
I’m running out of time. And… damn it, I miss my family.
She knew it was foolish to keep her impending death from her grandmother, to lose precious time with her family. Sophie Goode wouldn’t be able to fix Margot’s problems, but she would do everything in her power to try. Even before Margot left Washington, the matriarch of the Goode family had begun shoving eligible men in her direction — young and mature, powerful and less powerful, witch and shifter, hybrid and even an arrant or two.
But that was why she took the job in San Francisco — that urge to find him, to satisfy that clawing need to hunt him down and clutch him to her chest and never, ever let him go. Even if she could explain it, Margot wasn’t sure her family would understand that the normal rules didn’t apply to her and never had. They couldn’t. They weren’t like her.
No one was.
They would never understand the compulsion to be exactly where she was, and if she confessed about her condition, she feared they would hog tie her and drag her back to the Coven to force the issue of her bonding to the first willing partner.
Because they love me, and my death will hurt them in ways I can’t imagine. Uncurling one hand from the steering wheel, Margot rubbed at her stinging eyes. Get home. Get in shower. Get to bed. You aren’t giving up right now, in this stupid tiny car.
Forcing herself to move, Margot popped open the door and swung her legs out into the chill of the February evening. Her light jacket and floral print dress did little to seal in warmth, so she hustled up the path through the small garden, through the traditional iron gate, and up the low ramp to the covered stoop. Like always, the slight bounce of her steps surprised her.
Every time she thought she was used to the way magic settled into the sidewalks and soil of San Francisco, she had to consciously adjust her gait once more. The sponginess of the ground tended to change day by day, hour by hour, like the temperamental weather the city was so famous for. It was just another quirk of the old, strange city, like the sentient fog and water teeming with bloodthirsty waterfolk.
Natives had no trouble changing the way they walked at a moment’s notice, giving them the famous San Francisco Gait, but Margot still occasionally struggled with the loping, bouncing movements necessary to walk down the street on a magic-heavy day.
Stepping lightly toward the door, Margot didn’t need to fish for keys in her purse or pocket. The doors to a Healing House were always unlocked, even when the resident healer wasn’t in.
The Allied Charter listed all Healing Houses as sacrosanct. Not even the lowest criminal would stoop to stealing from one, not simply because doing so was the quickest way to spend a lifetime in a miserable, sigil-lined prison, but because they were declared holy sites after the Great War nearly wiped out healers altogether.
The gods Glory, Grim, and Blight claimed healers for their own. To harm one, even indirectly, was blasphemous in the extreme.
That was why Margot didn’t think to check her home for intruders when she stepped through the door and dropped her purse onto the little entryway table.
Only her bedroom was warded against outsiders, her sigilwork painstakingly etched into the walls and door frame to keep out anyone who might wish her harm. A normal healer would never think to take those kinds of precautions, but Margot wasn’t anywhere close to normal.
Moving to close the door, one hand extended to flick on the light. The hair on the back of her neck, exposed by her neat chignon, rose with sudden, prickling tension.
Margot turned her head slowly, her senses on high alert as she scanned the entryway and the darkened rooms that made up her living room, as well as the sterilized clinic just beyond it.
Her hearing was better than the average human’s, but she heard nothing. No squeaky floorboards, no foreign breathing. There was a thread of scent, something sharp and chemical, but this was the city, not her home in the lush forest of the Pacific Northwest, and that wasn’t necessarily unusual.
