Page 63 of Consort's Glory
Finger combing her tangled, dirty hair away from her face, Margot trudged across the checkered floor to root around in one of the plastic bins, searching for the snacks and canned goods she kept there for emergencies. It never occurred to her that she may need them, but that didn’t matter now.
Sitting on the edge of one of the creaky medical beds, she unwrapped a power bar and ate the pasty thing in two huge bites. That done, she forced herself to get onto her sore feet. The door wouldn’t ward itself.
Her chalk was mostly dust, destroyed by her leap from the car, but she managed to get a crude set of sigils burnt into the old door anyway. They weren’t neat and they wouldn’t hold up to anyone who really, really wanted to get to her, but they would at least give her a valuable warning.
Theodore never triggered my wards, she realized dully. I didn’t notice before, but every time he entered the suite, he never… Oh.
Which meant that he never had any intention to hurt her. No one with ill-intent could have passed through the doorway without triggering the wards.
Think about that in the morning.
Feeling too drained to do much else, Margot pushed one of the beds in front of the door for safe measure and then scrubbed her face and hands in the bathroom. The water was ice cold, but she barely felt it.
It was strange, feeling a different sort of fatigue than the one that had struck so much fear in her for so long.
This wasn’t burn out. The ache in her limbs and the pounding in her head wasn’t a death knell. It was merely exhaustion, magical and physical, after a day full of impossibilities.
After sifting through her stash of secondhand clothing she kept for patients, Margot slipped on a large t-shirt better suited to someone of Theodore’s size and painstakingly unfolded the rusty cot. She planned to bring extra blankets the next time she came into the clinic, so there were none besides the starched ones on the medical beds.
Not wanting to take those in the off-chance they would be needed by the sick, Margot laid her coat down on the threadbare mattress of the cot and then curled up under Theodore’s.
With the dim light from the bare, flickering bulb extinguished and the muffled sounds of the vibrant Market beating like a drum through the walls, Margot closed her eyes and tried her hardest not to think.
It was surprisingly easy to push aside thoughts of the future. It was not nearly so easy to get rid of thoughts of Theodore.
I kissed the sovereign today.
She could still feel it, the firm press of his smooth lips on hers, the slide of his tongue along the seam of her mouth, the sharp bite of his fangs on sensitive skin. Margot imagined that she could still taste him.
She curled up tighter under his coat, the silk lining warm and luxurious against the bare skin of her arms and legs. Her heart beat faster.
Alone, Margot could admit to herself that she loved kissing Theodore — not simply because doing so had saved her life, but because it was…
It was wonderful.
It didn’t matter that he was the sovereign or an elf or anything else. When he plunged his hands into her hair and kissed the breath out of her lungs, he felt like he was hers.
It was instinct to bury her nose in the high collar of his coat, seeking the comfort of scent her other half demanded. Cedar and Theodore and that indefinable, luxurious quality that made her bare toes curl. If only it was real, she thought, biting her lip hard.
The urge to be grateful for her new lease on life was strong, but so too was her bitterness at having her chance at love, at that one, great connection between magical beings, swept out from under her by a man she could never truly have. Bonding with Theodore, for all that it had saved her life, also stole her chances at a real relationship, a family. Because she could never have those things. Not with him.
I didn’t even realize I still had dreams of finding that sort of thing,she thought ruefully. But I must have, to be this broken up about it.
No matter how right Theodore was, no matter how much her elvish blood keened for him, she was smart enough to know that nothing like what she wanted could exist between them.
Love. Family. Trust. A home. A feeling of safety that meant she would never have to look over her shoulder again. Maybe children, if she and her partner wanted them.
With Theodore Solbourne, son of Thaddeus Solbourne II, head of the Solbourne family and Sovereign of the Elvish Protectorate? None of that was within her grasp.
But you’ll live,she reminded herself. Isn’t that enough?
Margot turned her face into the lining of his coat, pulled it over her head, and tried not to cry.
* * *
Margot.
A fizzle of energy under her skin, a prickling awareness, and the echo of Theodore’s voice woke her.
