Page 80 of Consort's Glory
Margot shifted under him,her limbs curling tightly inward, and only then did he realize that she must be freezing. He lifted his head to scan the room.
That really was a wall of rusty lockers he saw. Besides a workbench and a couple unused medical beds, there was little else. The place she chose to hide out in — and didn’t that thought make his teeth squeak — was stark, cold, and just a step above derelict.
It was not, in any way, a place fit for his consort to even glance at.
“Let’s go,” he announced, reluctantly drawing up to straighten his clothing. “We need to get back to the Tower so I can get things in order, and you need to eat, take a shower, and then rest.”
Despite the fact that she had no visible bruising and she looked far healthier — and well-loved — than she had just days before, Theodore could not forget the fact that Margot jumped out of his car. He didn’t think he would ever forget the terror that gripped him when he woke up as the car pulled into the Tower’s underground garage and discovered that she was gone.
Worse was realizing what exactly she must have done to get out of the vehicle without either of their escorts noticing.
He shuddered just thinking about her wandering the streets, bloody and exhausted, with no money, since she was a healer and couldn’t take the usual ID chip, and no way to contact anyone for help. Theodore wanted to turn the car right back around and find her, but logic — and a hard shove from Kaz — convinced him that the best way to protect her was to make sure she was safe from all other angles first.
A few hours on the streets wouldn’t kill her, but ignoring the rabidly curious inquiries from the press after their joint statement as well as Sophie’s public declaration of support, and the fact that he knew for certain the Solbournes had a traitor in their midst would.
So he briefly met with his PR team to send out a flurry of statements to the press. He took some elf-approved painkillers for the massive, full-body ache that bonding with his witch left him with. And then he set Kaz and Valen to the task of rooting out the rat in their midst, starting with the one woman who had every reason to want to hurt him.
Marian, his widowed aunt and mother to his twin cousins Camille and Cameron, was a vicious woman. Blaming his half of the family for her consort’s death had led to no less than three coup attempts and one direct threat on his life over the years. The only thing that spared her from swift, brutal punishment was the fact that they were family.
No matter what Marian thought, the Solbournes didn’t turn their backs on blood.
But if ever there was an elvish woman who wished him a quick, agonizing death, it was Marian Solbourne. Killing his consort before he could have her would be just the sort of thing she’d relish.
But that wasn’t his problem right now. He trusted Kaz and Valen to take care of things in the short time he’d be away. Now, all that mattered was Margot.
When the said center of his universe, bloody beating heart of him, did not immediately rise to get dressed, he frowned down at her. “Come on, darling. It’s too cold for you here. Let’s get back home so—”
Margot braced her palms on the mattress and levered herself upright. Immediately, he recognized the mulish set of her jaw. “No.”
“No?” He forced himself to keep his eyes on her stubborn expression and jutting chin, not the mess he made of her beautiful thighs and soft, perfectly formed stomach. Not her breasts, either, Teddy. And not all those lovebites. “What do you mean no?”
Margot shook her head. Her hair, a tumble of red silk, shone even in the blue-black shadows of the dark room. “I mean no, I don’t want to go back to the Tower.”
She sat up completely to reach for her discarded sleep shirt, lost at some point in their delicious tumble. Theodore’s eyes followed her movements greedily. Was there a lovelier sight than watching the graceful roll of her shoulders? The soft movements of her small, rosy-tipped breasts? The fluttering of her stomach muscles as she primly cleaned herself with the wadded up shirt?
Yes,he thought, scowling, all of this would be better if she were in my bed back in the Tower.
“Darling, we can’t stay here.” He gestured to the room. “This place is barely habitable. You’ll freeze to death, and even if you don’t, I won’t fit on that bed.” Theodore added a playful note to his voice when he complained, “I’d really rather sleep with you again. It wasn’t so bad last night, was it?”
Margot snagged her crumpled underwear from the floor and shimmied into them before she stood up. She wrapped her arms around herself, saying, “I figured we wouldn’t stay here. But I… Listen, the Tower is safe for you, but until we—” she swallowed hard “—get married, I’m not safe there. That’s why I ran in the first place. Not because I was panicking about you or anything… Okay, I was doing that, but it was mostly the Tower I was worried about.”
“Not safe? The Tower is the most defensible place on the West Coast.” Frowning at the goosebumps breaking out over every inch of her skin, he almost shrugged out of his suit jacket before he spotted something better. “That’s where my jacket went.”
Pulling it off of the bed, where she must have been using it as a blanket, he held it out for her until she slid her arms through. With practiced efficiency, he buttoned the high collared, double-breasted jacket quickly. It came to his mid-calf, but on her it touched the floor. The sleeves were already rolled up to fit her and he noticed several tears and dirty patches that were certainly not there when he saw it last.
Lips thinning, he asked, “Were you wearing this when you jumped out of the car?”
She looked at him through her lashes. “…Yes.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. She made it. She’s fine. No need to point out how easily the coat could have gotten caught in the door and dragged her onto the road. No need to tell her she could have gotten hit by any number of vehicles if she miscalculated. She’s fine. She’s fine.
“Where are your shoes?” Theodore smoothed his hands over her shoulders, petting her and soothing himself.
“I’m not going back to the Tower,” she insisted. Her scowl was a match for his.
“It’s perfectly safe and it has my personal Temple and it has my bed. Why in the gods’ names would we not go back to the Tower tonight?” He shook his head. “No, darling. The Tower is the safest place for us.” Even with the traitor in their nest, Theodore was certain the Tower was safe for her.
No one but a select few could get past the hundreds of layers of sigilwork in the walls of his home — which was part of the reason it was up to Delilah to execute their father when the time came. No one else, not even Valen, could get through the security in time to save Theodore and Sam before it was too late.
