Page 32 of Consort's Glory
Theodore was quiet for a moment, his eyes moving slowly to trace a path across her features, searching for something. “I don’t think you’re ready to hear that yet. I’ve pushed you far enough for a morning after a bombing.” Giving her a lopsided grin that made him look unforgivably boyish, he continued, “I’m going to earn your trust, Margot Goode. I am. A decent place to start would be seeing to your comfort. Glory knows it’ll make me feel better, at least. We should probably get on with that, don’t you think?”
Slowly releasing her hands, Theodore stood up to his full, impressive height and gestured toward her untouched plate. “Eat, Margot. I’m going to make some calls in my study before the rest of the world descends on us. I’ll have someone point you in my direction when you’re finished.”
He turned to go, and he was nearly to the door when her voice returned to her.
Sounding painfully croaky, she asked, “You’re just going to drop it? Just like that?”
“It?”
The words felt like sand on her tongue, gritty and coarse and strange. “My bondmate. The threat. Either. Both.”
Theodore turned to give her a steely-eyed look. “Oh, I’m not done. I will find out what you and your grandmother think is so dangerous about you being here. I might give you time to tell me on your own because I want you to trust me, but if it comes down to your life, Margot, I will force the issue.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “And we don’t need to discuss who your bondmate is. We already know.”
Again, she asked, “But why? Why do you care? Why does it matter?”
His lashes swept down, concealing the look in his dark eyes as he once more turned to leave the dining room. Sweeping his claws over his shoulder in an expansive gesture, he answered, “Eat. You’re going to need your strength, Margot.”
And then he was gone.
* * *
She was only alone in the dining room, left to reel, for approximately ten minutes.
Most of that time was spent staring blankly out at the rippling waves as sunlight began to break through the dense fog between Treasure Island and San Francisco, trying to wrap her mind around the strategy Theodore was playing.
It was useless.
Margot felt as though he was challenging her to a game she didn’t know the rules for or even have enough hands to play.
Nothing about her was important enough to warrant this sort of attention, let alone the bizarre machinations he seemed intent on. Even being Sophie’s granddaughter wouldn’t earn her this sort of multi-layered political maneuvering. The only thing she could come up with was the chance that he already knew her secret and planned to use it against people she had never so much as spoken to — but if that were the case, he would have just said so already.
I’m not fit for this, she thought, staring at her half-eaten fruit with loathing. At this point, I’d rather just have it out in the open and be done with the dancing around and lying. I’m dying. I don’t have time for politics.
No, she didn’t want to die, and she certainly didn’t want to see any harm come to her parents, but she also didn’t know how to handle Theodore’s talk of bondmates, his hands on her, the way her stomach tightened when he smiled at her, combined with the constant fear of exposure.
Better to have a threat announce itself clearly than play her for a fool.
Realizing she was gripping her fork so tightly she could no longer feel her fingers, Margot carefully set it down and pushed away from the table, her breakfast hardly touched.
“Oh, did you not like your meal?”
At the sound of the soft, lilting voice, Margot’s head snapped up. Her eyes landed on a tall elvish woman in the doorway, her lithe frame swathed in a crisp gray uniform and her mass of auburn curls half pinned behind her head. She was beautiful, with an air of age about her that lent her a sophisticated mien.
Margot took in the amethyst cast of her skin, her height, and the tips of her pointed ears peeking out from beneath her curls in one single look. She forced herself not to tense, but every muscle in her body wanted to lock in place at the sight of yet another predator, another one of the beings she had gone her entire life trying to avoid.
The exercise in self-control sharply illuminated a truth she wasn’t ready to face: that she had, at some point without her noticing, stopped tensing in Theodore’s presence.
“No, it was lovely,” Margot managed to say. “I’m just not particularly hungry at the moment.”
The elf drifted into the room on long legs, her movements catlike and graceful except for the smallest hitch in her gait. A problem with her hip, Margot’s years as a healer immediately supplied. It’s rotating incorrectly. Either a ligament issue or a problem with the joint. An old injury maybe. Could be a developmental issue, but that’s less likely.
Interesting that this woman would have such a high rank, as the gold Solbourne pin on her breast implied, when she had such a visible imperfection. Margot was under the impression that any outward sign of weakness was unacceptable to elves on the whole.
Eyes of pale gray settled on Margot’s face with a small, barely perceptible frown. “That won’t do. Look how thin you are — and all those bruises! How are you going to get stronger if you don’t eat enough?” Those eyes flickered toward Margot’s plate, her frown deepening. “I specifically instructed the cooking staff to make a good meal for a healer. Was their research on the subject incomplete?”
“It was perfect,” Margot firmly answered, smothering the flare of irritation she felt when the elf mentioned her size.
It raked up old, painful memories of playful jabs that struck too close to home, as well as the very real, very painful facts of her life. She might have been taller, a sturdier weight, with a period that came at an earlier age, more normal, if only—
