Page 83 of Consort's Glory
A little bit of her horror, her panic, began to lose its grip on her heart. Margot inwardly touched the bond. She tested the strength of it, the sincerity thrumming through it, and understood that this was a step toward something she could have only dreamed of before.
Total trust.
With the sovereign? Yes. Because he was her bondmate, and because she wanted to trust the man who looked at her like she shaped the world with her hands.
Sucking in a deep breath, she nodded haltingly. “Okay. I won’t share it. Just… please explain. You have to know how terrifying it is to walk in here and see this.”
Theodore pursed his lips. A look of consternation made him seem very young when it crossed his expressive face. “Yeah, I can imagine. I wouldn’t have them up if I knew, but Delilah doesn’t—” He let out a huffing sigh. “What she chooses to tell us and why has always been a mystery. Why she lets certain things happen, why she doesn’t, none of us knows. My sister doesn’t explain herself to anyone. Not even her consort.”
Winnie Solbourne, Margot recalled, vividly reminded of pop culture feeds and the fashion programs her cousins liked to watch. Winnie was famous. Really, really famous. There was a whole industry devoted to following her fashionable exploits, her latest shoe choice or which up and coming designer she chose to sponsor that season.
Yes, I know her. She’s the most beautiful elf in the world.
Dropping his hands to guide her toward one of the velvet loveseats, he continued, “My sister has Foresight. That’s the big secret. She can see up to twelve futures at once.”
Delilah Solbourne had Foresight? Margot rubbed her forehead. Of course.
That explained the slightly unhinged, distant look in her eyes. So too did the number twelve. Most foreseers could only manage three to six time streams at once. Twelve was on the upper end of the rarest of the rare.
Margot couldn’t imagine how valuable she would be, how sought after, if the news got out that she could handle so many time streams at once. The odds of a failed prediction lessened dramatically with each stream, after all. A foreseer with the ability to balance a paltry four had a roughly sixty percent success rate. Margot could only imagine what Delilah’s rate was.
Sitting down heavily on the squishy cushion, Margot gestured vaguely to the paintings. “So, these are…”
“Another way for her to get predications out,” he finished for her. Theodore sat down beside her on the loveseat, his greater bulk taking up most of the space, and gathered her into his lap shamelessly. Margot’s other half preened, while the rest of her froze, uncertain about so much casual affection so soon. She certainly craved it, but that didn’t mean she was used to it.
In the middle of arranging her legs so she was draped across his thighs, Theodore paused. In a worried voice, he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask. Are you okay with me touching you like this? Do you want me to stop?”
Margot considered his question for a moment, her thoughts and feelings tangled by more than her fatigue or a couple bone-melting orgasms. Her competing natures dueled it out, too. The elvish half of her wanted to strip naked and rub itself all over him until… until something happened, but the witch half of her was shy, touch-starved, still wigged out by the way her life had taken such a dramatic heel-turn in a matter of days.
It felt a bit like going from famine to feast with Theodore, and she wasn’t yet sure if that was a good thing.
At least he doesn’t seem to notice I smell weird, she thought, forcing the tight muscles bracketing her spine to unlock so she could relax into his embrace. Amazing that the one man I actually need to tell my secret to is the only person on the planet who can’t seem to tell something is off about me.
Which made it somehow harder to get the words out, didn’t it? He didn’t notice, and if he did, Theodore didn’t seem to care. That was nice. Really nice. Margot was loath to ruin any part of this fever dream with the introduction of cold reality.
So she didn’t tell him. Instead, she tentatively tucked herself under his chin as she toed off her shoes. That done, Margot curled her legs up and braced her bare feet on his thickly muscled thigh. “No,” she whispered, “this is nice. I’m just not used to it. No one touches me outside of healing. All this contact is…” She let out a shuddering breath. “Nice.”
His collar pin dug into the side of her head, and his high collar was stiff against her cheek, but the sound of his hard swallow? The thunder of his pulse? Margot could have sat there for days, listening to him breathe, basking in his glow.
“Well, I need contact with my consort and I want to touch my witch, so you’ll never go without again.” Theodore rubbed the underside of his chin across the top of her head. His arms curled around her, tucking her close. “Anyway, to answer your questions, no, we aren’t watching the Goodes and no, we don’t use Delilah’s ability for nefarious purposes. Mostly.”
He scoffed, muttering, “For Glory’s sake, I didn’t even know these paintings were about you. You know how I would have obsessed over them if I did? I would have had them moved to some place I could look at them every day, not here.”
Warmth, golden and sweet, spread through her chest to infuse every cell in her body. Theodore’s affection, his honest, unvarnished yearning, came through their bond like a burst of sunlight.
Compelled to put her hand against his heart, she felt it’s steady beat under her palm as she asked, “Does this mean she knew who I was this whole time?”
“I learned a long time ago that it’s useless to try and get information out of my sister if she doesn’t want to give it.”
Old bitterness colored his voice, telling her a story without words. How many times did he ask his sister about his consort? How many times did he feel desperate enough to beg, to yell? In his place, could she forgive a sister for withholding information like that?
It struck her then that Margot, too, had reason to be bitter.
If this was true, if this was all real, then Delilah had deprived both of them of something life-changing. It was hard not to wonder what her life would have been like if Theodore had showed up on her grandmother’s porch when she was just a bit younger, ready to tell her she did have a place in the world, if only she could be brave enough to accept it.
No more fear. No more suffocation. No more shame. No more burn out.
Sensing her sudden tension, Theodore distracted her by unbuttoning several of the topmost buttons of her pilfered coat. Warm, dry air filtered through the gap to kiss the naked skin of her collarbones and chest.
