Are you jealous?
Not in the least.
There was a pregnant pause during which Theo laughed into my head.
Oh, all right, perhaps a little, but it"s justified. I know you"re trying to get us out of this situation, but it...oh, never mind. Just get it over with.
"On what grounds do you ask for leniency?" the mare asked, thawing just a bit more under the influence of his smile.
The air grew thick, but not with static. I fought to control my anger, aware that it was triggering the ministorms around me. Once I got my emotions under control, everything would be fine.
I noticed the mare kept her eyes on Theo, not paying me much attention. It irritated me that he was using his masculine wiles to sway her almost as much as it irritated me that I was bothered by that in the first place.
The a.n.a.lytical part of my brain pointed out that I"d only known Theo a few days, and been intimate with him only one day, all of which hardly added up to deep insight into his nature. Oh, sure, we were talking about following the steps to a formal binding, but so far, that was just talk-we hadn"t taken the last couple of steps. What if he never intended us to? What if we did, and I found out he was really a jerk? Perhaps he was one of those men who felt it acceptable to flirt with every female. Perhaps he was nothing more than a tomcat, on the prowl for the next conquest. Perhaps he didn"t believe in things like fidelity and honor.
Perhaps I needed to stop worrying about Theo"s intentions toward me, and cope instead with more important issues, like keeping myself out of heavenly prison.
What if he didn"t love me?
The air grew cold around us.
"I ask that leniency be shown to Portia due to her inexperience with Court matters."
"Ignorance is not suitable grounds for clemency," the mare said, her voice turning icy as she looked at me. "I am not ignorant," I answered, trying to tone down the indignation in my voice.
Tiny little pitter-patter sounds followed a shower of minute hailstones.
Portia, you are not helping the situation.
I"m not doing it on purpose!
The mare looked up at my cloud, then at me, with a look that spoke volumes.
"I"m sorry. I don"t seem to have very good control of this whole weather business yet," I said stiffly, trying to dissipate the cloud.
"As for the other, I am simply inexperienced in the ways of the Court. I did not ask to become a virtue, but I have decided, after much thought, that I am willing to take on the job. Since no one bothered to explain to me the rules and regulations governing virtues, I"m pretty much feeling my way blindly here, and would appreciate it if you could recognize that fact."
Sweetling, you must temper your tone. It is borderline hostile. And stop the hail! It"s spreading to the mare"s desk.
I"m sorry about that, but I will not stand by while you prost.i.tute yourself in order to get this woman to understand I haven"t done anything wrong!
He sighed into my head.My using a bit of charm on the mare in order that she might understand our point of view has nothing to do with our relationship. You have no reason to feel threatened by other women.
The mare lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. The hail was growing in size and scope, until the rug in the entire room was covered in a white blanket of ice the size of small marbles. The bailiff looked questioningly at the mare. The latter looked angry.
Portia, stop the dramatics!
I can"t! I"m trying to make the cloud go away, but it won"t!
I can a.s.sure you that the sovereign takes very dim views of people who treat officers of the Court with such antipathy!
The hail came down even harder.
The mare suddenly picked up a book and slammed it down onto her desk. "Cease this display!" she bellowed.
"I can"t! I don"t know how!" I yelled back, waving my hands desperately as if that would help disperse the cloud over my head.
"Such insolence!" the bailiff said, jerking me back when I moved forward to brush the hail off the mare"s desk. "This will not be tolerated."
"Your grace, please-" Theo started to say, but the mare interrupted him.
She pointed at me, her voice loud enough to rattle the windows in the room, looking like some sort of Nordic G.o.ddess as the hail swirled around her. "You are out of control and a danger to others, as well as yourself. For that reason, and that reason alone, I will bypa.s.s the justice calendar and commit you to an immediate hearing concerning the charge of murder that has been leveled against you. You will report to Pet.i.tioner"s Park at Nones. You will not leave the Court without permission. You will not discuss your case with anyone but the appropriate authorities. You will not utilize your Gift without permission. Do you understand what I have said?"
I blinked a couple of times, surprised that she didn"t order me clamped into irons and thrown into the nearest dungeon, to be left to rot for a few years before someone remembered me. "I...yes. Thank you."
The mare took a deep breath. "Now get out of here!"
Reluctantly, the bailiff released my arm.What just happened?I asked Theo.
I believe she realized the truth in what we were saying about you not having any experience with the powers of a virtue.
Just because I couldn"t control the hail?
Yes. Anyone who intended to become a virtue would have a basic understanding of the role, and better control over those elements in her domain. This may actually be a good thing."Thank you for your generosity, your grace."
The look she gave Theo as he made another bow was enough to raise my hackles, but I gritted my teeth and reminded myself of what Theo had said.
The cloud disappeared as I left the room.
"We really do need to get you through the rest of the trials so you can take control of your Gift," Theo said in a low voice as he hustled me out of the library.
"You"re telling me. When is Nones?"
Theo glanced at the sky. "Another hour. Time enough for us to get some answers...and food. You are hungry."
"So are you," I said, aware of the hot need that growled inside him.
"Yes. We will seek the dapifer. This way."
A dapifer, it turned out, was some sort of steward responsible for caring for visitors to the Court. Or so Theo explained as we met with a small bespectacled man who wrung his hands when we asked for a room and food.
"We don"t normally allow nephilim in the apartments, but if her grace said it was all right..."
I bit back the desire to state the obvious about such a ridiculous policy.
"I don"t suppose there are any phones here?" I asked instead as the dapifer showed us to a room in the keep that housed the n.o.ble apartments. It was furnished in an odd mixture of old and new, with a huge, canopied bed, candles in sconces on the wall, and an armoire that contained a TV, DVD player, and popular video game machine. A small, modern bathroom led off the main room. It was comfortable, though, and I certainly wasn"t in any position to comment about the eccentric decorating schemes of the sovereign.
"Gracious me, no, no telephones are allowed! Contact with the outside is strictly prohibited in the Court," he told me, looking horrified at the very thought. He gave us both a curt little bow. "I will have a meal delivered to you immediately."
I thanked him, sinking onto the bed with an exhausted sigh as he left. "I wanted to call Sarah and tell her I"d be late, but I guess that"s out. Unless your cell phone..." I looked hopefully at Theo.
He shook his head. "Won"t work here. Only certain officials are allowed access to the outside world."
"d.a.m.n. I hope Sarah doesn"t worry. We were supposed to go to another haunted house tonight."
Theo stretched, pushing aside a heavy maroon curtain to look out the double-glazed, diamond-paned window. "Time operates differently in the Court than outside. We could be here for days, and only an hour or two would pa.s.s outside. Or a year. It just depends."
"Depends on what? How can the time variable be so diverse?" "It depends on the whim of the sovereign, I suppose. I knew a man who was here for a few days, and only an hour pa.s.sed outside.
His wife, who was with him, left at the same time only to find three years had gone by in her absence."
"That doesn"t make any sense." I spent a few minutes trying to calculate the equations necessary for such an impossible thing, but gave it up when a headache bloomed to life. "No, that can"t be right. It"s not logical at all."
"Shades of grey, sweetling, shades of grey."
"Oh, I"ve been shades-of-greying ever since we met that demon, but that is asking too much. Even here, even in this Court, there has to be an underlying, fundamental structure of physical properties upon which reality is built. To say that no laws keep the structure consistent is impossible."
"That"s where faith comes in," he said dryly.
I let the matter drop. It didn"t do any good to argue with Theo. I was willing to accept that a different set of physical laws applied to the Court, but exist they must. And I was just the person to explore what sort of glue held together this bizarre world I had joined.
"The only other time I was in Court, I was not allowed to stay in the keep," Theo said after a few minutes of silence.
"Why not?" I asked, pushing aside my concerns to watch him. So many emotions rolled around inside him that I had a hard time separating them.
"I was considered unworthy." He turned to look at me, a smile on his lips. "If nothing else, sweetling, you have elevated me beyond obscurity."
I made a face. "I"m willing to bet you would have preferred not being known as the boyfriend of the woman who hailed on a mare."
"Boyfriend?"
"Well...what"s the male equivalent to Beloved?"
"Dark One."
"That"s rather a general-purpose label, not one indicative of a man so completely wrapped around his woman"s little finger."
"Is that what you think I am?" he asked, one eyebrow c.o.c.ked in inquiry.
I smiled, kicked off my shoes, and slid back on the bed, wiggling my toes in invitation. "Aren"t you?"
Hunger roared through him with such intensity it made me gasp. He started toward me, his eyes black as onyx, one hand undoing his belt. "Intrigued, yes. Impa.s.sioned, definitely. Aroused..." He glanced down at himself. "I don"t believe that is in question. But wrapped around your little finger? I am not so easily manipulated."
"How about in love?" I asked, suddenly breathless as he knelt on the bed and started crawling up my legs.
He stopped, his face impa.s.sive, but inside him a great well of pain existed. "I have loved women before, Portia. I don"t think I could have lasted as long as I have without occasionally being in love, caring for someone, and receiving love in return."
A knife twisted in my heart. It was unreasonable for me to expect that Theo could live the thousand plus years he had lived without falling in love, but my heart refused to recognize reason.
"What I feel for you is...different."
Different could be good. Different could be...oh, who was I fooling? Different was horrible. I didn"t want to be different-I wanted Theo to love me just as much as he loved the other women in his life. I wanted the same place in his affections, to mean something to him other than a means to an end. I wanted him to love me as much as I was coming to love him!
"I see." My throat ached with unshed tears of self-pity. "These women you loved...were they immortal?"
"No. I knew when I began with them that the relationship was finite. I knew they would grow old, and there would come a time when they would die, and I would be left alone again." He sat back on his heels and unb.u.t.toned his shirt, tossing it onto a nearby chair. With a look in his eye that warmed me despite the pain, he continued up the length of my body. "You, as I said, are different.
Whether by Joining as my Beloved, or by acceptance into the Court, you will be immortal."
"Which means that when you grow tired of me, you won"t be able to count on attrition to get rid of me."
His breath feathered against my mouth as he settled onto my body. "I have never grown tired of any of the women whom I loved. I mourned their pa.s.sings, and felt myself diminished for a time."
"And then you got over it and fell in love again." The pain hurt so deeply in me that I wondered if there would ever be an end to it.
"Yes. But now there is you, and you, as I said, are different."
His lips brushed mine as he spoke. I wanted so badly to kiss him, to taste him, to merge myself with him that my body shook. But the pain at his confession was too much, too much for me to live with. I couldn"t do it.
"I need you, Portia."
Hot tears leaked out of my eyes as I closed them tightly, turning my head to the side to avoid the torturous lure of his mouth. Oh, yes, he needed me. He needed me for sustenance. He needed me to help him achieve his greatest wish-salvation. He needed me not in the way a man needs a woman, but as a partner, someone sharing an adventure, bonded by circ.u.mstances into a symbiotic relationship.
You, my love, will be with me forever. You will be mine to love, mine to share the joys of life, mine to explore all the possibilities that lie before us.
I looked at him through eyes made blurry with tears. I wanted so much to believe him, but the pain was too deep to be erased with a few easily spoken words.
You complete me, Portia, don"t you feel that?His eyes were filled with fire, but it wasn"t just the head of pa.s.sion that burned within him.It is true I have loved in the past, but I know now that I was only biding my time until you would come into my life. You are life to me, my love. I could not exist without you.
I burst into uncharacteristic tears at such beautiful words. I didn"t need to look into Theo"s face to know that he meant them-his emotions surrounded me, merging with my own until it was impossible to tell which were his and which mine.
His kiss burned more than just my lips; it scorched my soul with its intensity. I gave myself up to him, relinquished every last bit of me, but I wasn"t in the least bit diminished. My heart sang as I drank in the sweetness of his mouth, filling me with such joy that I seriously thought for a moment that I would burst with happiness. I wanted to tell him how I felt, what he meant to me, how the warm kernel of love was growing into a feeling that lit up the corners of my soul, but the words would not come. Instead, I poured into him every emotion I possessed.
You don"t have to say it, sweetling. Just as you know what I feel for you, so I can read your emotions.
Good, because it"s a bit embarra.s.sing falling in love so quickly with a man who I wanted to see in jail just a few days ago.
Theo chuckled in my mind as his tongue continued a lazy exploration of my mouth.Kismet, perhaps? We were meant to be together.
Do we have time for this?I asked as his mouth moved to my neck, kissing a hot trail down to my collarbone.Don"t get me wrong, I"m all for it, but if someone is bringing us food, and you said you thought there was a person whom we could talk to about the murders before the hearing, will we have time for...er...
Wild, unbridled lovemaking?
Exactly.
He froze for a moment, his head lifted and slightly tipped to the side, as if he was listening.
"We will in a moment," he said, sighing a little as he climbed off me.