Page 30 of A Bear in a Birdbath

“I can sweeten the deal.” At first, Margo thought that the Queen was growing, that she was flexing her power and proving her strength with supernatural size. Then Margo realized that she herself was the one changing, shrinking and compressing into herself.

The Queen had not gone so far as to make Margo slight—she still had curves of substance and strength, but she was no longer freakishly tall or broad-shouldered. There was feminine grace to her lines, her muscles softened and her shape refined. Her wrists were delicate. Margo could not help herself from reaching for her face to see if it had changed from its familiar blockish planes, and that was when she realized what else the Queen was offering her.

She was human.

Simple, normal human—and with that came a sense of smell.

“I wanted you to know what you were missing,” the Queen said in her silkiest voice. “All the little details.” She gave an imperious wave of her hand and Eva’s scent overwhelmed Margo.

Margo didn’t have the names for the things she smelled, only the ideas, but she was sure that it must be butterscotch and clove, with hints of licorice and fresh-cut grass, complex and sweet. She opened her mouth in awe and found that there were more variations at the back of her throat, as if she was breathing Eva herself in.

She turned in wonder to Bruno and found that she could smell him as well, a hot musky wave of metal and machines, with hints of cedar and moss.

They continued their enchanted slumber and Margo realized that her eyes were welling as she gazed down at them, reveling in this new layer of their wonderful appeal. She closed her eyes so that smell was the only sense she had, and then she shook her head.

“I don’t want this,” she said, and she felt the truth of it as she opened her eyes. “My mates love me just the way I am. I don’t need to be delicate or human or look different. I don’t need to smell them to know them.”

The Queen’s face went icy cold and more beautiful than ever and she shivered in place and vanished as Margo woke to find herself tangled in Bruno’s arms, with Eva curled between them.

Their scent was gone, but there were still tears on her cheeks.

26

BRUNO

When the third day dawned, Bruno still wasn’t sure what answer he was going to give.

But he knew the answer he wouldn’t be giving. "I can’t lose either of you,” he said, pulling them both close as they walked to the Queen’s court, the golden chains at his mates’ ankles pulling them back. “I refuse. I’ll get…a Faery lawyer to handle it like a custody case or something. I’ll take on two Champions at once for both of you. I’ll eat the Faery Code and spit it out on the Queen.”

“You have to challenge for Eva,” Margo said at once. “Get her out of here. I’ll be alright. I’m stronger than she is.”

“Take Margo,” Eva protested. “The Queen can’t hurt me like she once could, and Margo doesn’t know Faery like I do.”

Bruno gathered them both into his arms, Eva tucking perfectly into all the places between Margo and himself. They were like the pieces of one of Frank’s machines, engineered to be together in every way. “I love you both,” he said simply. “I can’t choose between you. It’s the cruelest thing she could ask of me.”

Eva chuckled, muffled between them. “She thought she could tempt me back,” she observed wryly. “She came to me in my dreams and tried to offer me my heart’s deepest wishes to stay with her and rule by her side.”

“She came to me, too,” Margo said softly, stroking Eva’s short hair. “She said that if I convinced you to stay, she could make me…not a monster.”

“You aren’t a monster,” Eva protested as Bruno growled in agreement.

“She offered to take away all the things that make me feel like a monster,” Margo amended. “But I told her that I already had that, because of the way you two look at me. I don’t think she understands love.”

“She understands what people think they want,” Bruno said thoughtfully.

“What did she offer you?” Margo wanted to know.

Bruno felt his ears heat and his cave bear squirm. “I don’t want to say,” he protested. “It’s enough that I said no.”

There was a sudden disruption from the fringes of the crowd and the court parted in confusion as familiar figures pressed through.

“Move it, goat-man!” Harriet’s ringing voice sent a horned satyr scurrying away. “I’m on the clock to meet with my wedding quartet and you’re in my way. I’ve got a duel to fight, do you want to make it two?”

Tobias, despite his short stature, was not at all lost in the crowd as he strode at Harriet’s side and let her clear the way. “You really do not want to fight her,” he cheerfully warned the others.

“Harriet?” Margo’s voice cracked in surprise.

“Tobias?” Bruno could not quite squelch his sudden feeling of hope.

---