He stills. "What about it."
"She said it wasn't the bond that took her apart. It was the performance. The bond just removed the performance." I keep my face against his throat. "I'm wondering whether there's a real version of me underneath all the covers. And whether that person is the one who keeps sayingyoursinto your throat. Or whether that's just what the magic made larger."
A long pause.
"I can't answer that for you," he says.
"I know. That's not why I said it."
"Why did you say it?"
"Because Rosalind is happy. Actually, visibly, not-performing happy. Eight months pregnant and sitting in that chair like someone who has found out exactly what she is." I breathe. "And I came here to rescue her and there's nothing to rescue and I'm lying here with your marks on my skin and I have not been able to find the floor under any of this for weeks and I needed to say that out loud to someone."
He is very still for a moment. Then his arms tighten around me—not the warmth of the magic, not the approval pull working, just the specific cold certainty of arms that know where to be.
"The floor is there," he says. "You've been standing on it since day one."
"I don't feel like I'm standing on it."
"No," he says. "I know."
He runs his mouth down my throat again, the marks responding, and I stop thinking about the floor. Not because I've found it. Because some nights the looking has to stop.
He takes his time. He always takes his time and it always dismantles me and I am aware of this happening and I let it happen. Both cocks. Both vibrations. The full stretch. The knot. His court magic in the release and then the seed after. The bondrunning wide open. I sayyoursinto his throat and he makes the sound that is not performed and his hands are in my hair.
I lie there after with the Lena thought sitting in my chest, unsmoothed, still the actual size of it. The magic is not running. I can tell by the absence of easing. Either he's not running it or I am getting better at feeling through it, and either way the Lena thought is there, large and waiting, and I am not done with it.
I close my eyes.
In the morning I will start the list of what he knows that I don't.
I've been not-building that list for two weeks. I know why. I know the shape of what I'm going to find when I build it—the grid references, the dates, the relay points—and I know the list is going to end in a conclusion I am not ready to reach. I have been using the warmth and the bond and the specific pleasure of being seen as a reason to delay the conclusion.
That ends tonight.
Not because I'm not afraid of the conclusion. I'm afraid of what comes after—the choice I'm going to have to make in the morning with the full picture assembled and no magic running and no bond warmth softening the edges. Just me and the arithmetic and what I do with it.
He said:the floor is there. You've been standing on it since day one.
I am going to find out what the floor is made of.
I close my eyes. His hands are in my hair. The Lena thought sits in my chest, unsmoothed. The list assembles itself in the dark behind my eyes, entry by entry, all the things I have been not-looking at directly.
In the morning I'll know what I'm working with.
I hold still. I breathe. I let the grief be the size it is.
I let myself want what I want.
Both things. At the same time.
19
CLAIRE
Istay in the workroom after he goes to bed.
The lamp is on. The mist moves past the window, slow and deliberate—not at me, just pervasive, the court's magic running through everything the way it always runs after dark. I've been here enough late nights now to know the difference between when it's aimed at me and when it's just present. Right now it's just present. He dropped the magic this morning and hasn't brought it back, and the air has a different texture without it—the bond sitting between us like a wire with the current off. Channel open. Nothing pushed through.