Page 31 of Consort's Glory
At least, they were supposed to.
Margot knew for a fact that not every elf abstained from liaisons with other races, but none of them were Theodore fucking Solbourne.
Slow down,she firmly instructed her racing mind. Slow down. There’s no way he means that, and even if he did, that’s not how this works. It’s definitely not how it works for me.
Yes, his presence and his touch did… things to her that it absolutely should not do, but she wasn’t about to forge a bond with him. Knowing her magic, when she met the right person it would simply snap into being, anyway, so her bondmate certainly couldn’t be him.
A large part of her was glad he wasn’t. Bonding with him would save her from death, but for how long? Her very existence was… well, not quite illegal, not quite an abomination, but close. If word got out about her and she was bonded to the sovereign?
Memories of that dark, padded room, of that all-consuming terror and pain made her shudder. Disaster.
Bonding to Viktor or someone like him would have been ideal. He never would allow her to come to harm, and would be open minded enough to accept all of her. But Theodore Solbourne? No. Even if she could believe for half a second that he actually wanted her for her, she could never, ever trust him with both parts of herself.
“I’m not joking,” he replied, shaking his head. The curl resting against his brow fluttered with the movement. “Just like I wasn’t joking with your grandmother this morning when I told her the only way she’s getting you back is by tooth and claw — after she refused to tell me what exactly the threat against you is.”
Theodore tilted his head, a very cat-like movement, before lowering his voice to ask, “I wonder… does it have something to do with your search for a bondmate? That would explain her reluctance to tell me, I suppose.”
Margot felt like she’d gotten verbal whiplash. “I— You spoke to Sophie already?” All the blood rushed away from her face. “You told her to fight you?”
“She told me you were in danger and then refused to tell me the truth as to why. And like I said, I know when I’m being lied to.” He shrugged, but nothing about it seemed casual. Every movement Theodore made carried the sensual lethality of a predator. “Now, are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to uncover the truth myself?”
The swiftness with which this encounter with the sovereign got out of hand left her reeling. Margot had no idea what to say. For once, her genius intellect and her overly intensive conditioning failed her.
Theodore had her trapped neatly between those terrifying claws.
No matter what she said, she would be forced to reveal information she couldn’t risk getting out. Margot hadn’t even told her family that she was on the hunt for her bondmate — she certainly didn’t want to tell this incredibly powerful man, a dangerous stranger with undefined motives, that she was actively dying. He could use it against her and her family; perhaps even blackmail her by threatening to reveal it to her grandmother.
Neither could she tell him the truth about the threat that hung like an axe over the back of her neck every day of her life. But explaining that her search for a bondmate had nothing to do with that threat confirmed that it existed in the first place, which would demand the explanation she could not give.
Margot sat in her seat, paralyzed.
Theodore watched her for some time, his half-lidded gaze so focused on her face that she imagined he was trying to crack open her mind with the look alone. When the minutes ticked by and her throat did not stop its panicked constriction, he finally broke the spell.
Letting out a frustrated breath, Theodore skimmed the pads of his fingers over the back of one hand, then the other. Two tiny flares of magic later and the blood on his claws disappeared. Sigil lined gloves, she noted numbly. Expensive. Must be custom made. I wonder why he wears them.
Pushing back his chair, he stood up to circle around the table. With apparently no effort, he grasped the back of her chair, pulled it a little ways out from the table, and spun it slightly to the side, angling her toward him. Margot sat frozen, her heart hammering against the cage of her ribs, and waited for violence, for coercion, for the charming facade to fall now that he knew he wouldn’t get his answers so easily.
But Theodore Solbourne didn’t wrap his fingers around her throat or bare his fangs terrifyingly close to her face. He didn’t rage at her at all.
Instead, he dropped down into a kneeling position by her feet and gently cupped her tightly balled fists, his gloved hands engulfing hers in gentle warmth.
Margot stared down at the sovereign, one of the most powerful men in the world, as he knelt at her feet, and watched her world narrow into a pinprick. Her breath rasped in her nose. She couldn’t understand what was happening, who he was, what he wanted.
“This is not how I wanted things to go,” he quietly admitted, eyes down. Deep lines of discontent formed between his heavy brows and at the corners of his mouth. “I had so many plans. I had a strategy. I thought…” He sighed, and she could feel it against the pebbled skin of her arms.
“Fucking Blight,” he swore, tightening his hold on her fists, “you’re shaking.”
Margot opened her mouth to tell him it wasn’t because of him, but nothing came out. Her throat was closed, her ability to process language obliterated by the sight of the sovereign on his knees before her.
Theodore lifted his head to look into her face. His expression was strained, hardly the cool mask of controlled contempt he showed to photographers and politicians, making him something entirely new.
A self-deprecating smile curled his lips and deepened his dimples. “You don’t have any reason to trust me. I’m a stranger with an infinite capacity for harm. I know that. I really do. My siblings have warned me for years that I might come on too strong.”
He lifted her balled fists to his mouth, and for a strained moment she thought he would kiss her knuckles, but he simply hovered there, his breath puffing against her sensitive skin with a wispy caress.
He looked up at her through his lashes, so long that the light caught the tips and turned them green, violet, and yellow with that peculiar elvish iridescence. “I don’t hold your caution against you, even though it feels like a knife to the ribs every time you look at me like you’re waiting for me to claw you.”
A single word managed to squeak through her closed throat: “Why?”
