Ironically, Armin hadn’t asked for consent. Though it wasn’t his rank or position that stopped me from pushing him away.
I want things crystal clear between Mirth and me.
Mirth smooths a hand over the blanket. The ostentatious emerald-and-platinum ring on the ring finger of her right hand catches a slice of the daylight filtering in through the half-shuttered windows.
“But your mother was a fabricator mage. Like Sully.”
I laugh quietly. “No one is like Sully.”
Lord Savoy is yet another subject I don’t feel at all ready to dissect, which just adds to my verging-on-being-overwhelmed state. I gave him that ridiculous to-do list so I have an excuse to check in with him whenever I want. A contract with his name on it is one of the many documents currently on my desk. One I’m hoping Mirth’s keen eyes didn’t note before I can broach the subject with her.
Her first, then Sully.
Sully is not going to like anything contractual between us. Sully won’t be contained by any of the terms I would put on those pages.
I already know I can’t ask Mirth to abide by any of my regular rules around sexual contact. Not only does she outrank me in society, in the bond group — and no doubt in sheer power. I still don’t have a firm grasp on what her purple eyes denote, though I do know it’s more than mere empathy. But also, I don’t want any rules etched across a page between Mirth and me. And that mere thought, that mere desire, has shaken me as well.
“Fabricator mage is a broad classification.” Mirth grins up at me.
Her violet eyes are shockingly vibrant. I wonder if I could capture the light from within them — not diminishing it in the least by doing so — and harness it. What blade of power could I create with that mere glint? What shield?
Mirth blinks, her grin dimming.
I haven’t kept up my side of the conversation.
“The blanket is my mother’s work,” I say, forcing myself to stop tucking it in around her. It’s perfectly tucked already, but doing so again is an excuse to hover around Mirth but not quite touch her. As if another touch might send me to my knees, reaching to pull her down on top of me. “Textiles were just a hobby for her, though. She always complained that my father’s office was too chilly.”
Mirth casts a deliberate look around the room, freeing me from her gaze. “You haven’t redecorated. Just removed all the …”
“Clutter?” I say mockingly, straightening but now feeling a little unmoored. I had all these lists, plans, on how to properly court Mirth —
“I’m sure a councilor is always in need of … books,” Mirth says primly, defending my father though he has no need of it now.
I want to retreat behind my desk. To place a firm barrier between us. To collect myself. But I’ve bungled this entire interaction. Though Mirth did trigger all of my disconcertion by walking unannounced through my wards with only the barest whisper of her passage. No one— not even my father, my earliest mentor, with whom I shared essence on a primary, DNA-encoded level— could do that.
Aware of Mirth watching me, I cast my gaze over the paperwork covering almost every centimeter of my desk. None of it is for Mirth’s signature, though. It’s up to me, to all of us, to establish a bond group worthy of her consideration. The ties between her bonded must be unbreakable, unquestionable, so that she’ll never doubt us. So her father will never doubt us.
“Do you mind if I watch you work for a few more moments?” Mirth asks sweetly, nothing remotely demanding in the question.
I glance at her, too many responses whirling in my head to address at once. I pluck up my phone and cross back to the seating area. I want to sit on the couch, in the hopes that Mirth will cuddle into me like she did on the terrace at Lake Thun. But it was Christoph, and Sully for that matter, who had smoothed that into a possibility. So I take the matching leather chair, unbutton my suit jacket as I sit— and at the last moment, tug the chair just a little closer to Mirth.
I set my phone on the arm of the chair. “These I replaced.”
“Same color leather, though,” Mirth says teasingly.
I narrow my eyes at her, understanding that she wants to play for a bit, even though the touch of her grief is still heavy within my chest. And I’m no empath. I’m the opposite of empathic. A defense mechanism, I believe. From watching my father slowly die for over a decade.
“Am I interrupting?”
“I’m actually almost done,” I say, knowing that Sully, and maybe even Bolan, has already mentioned what all this planning is about. “There are a few lingering contracts, but the structure is in place for the formation of the bond group.”
“The Savoy bond group.”
“Yes.”
“And how did you get Sully to agree to that?”
“Why would you assume it was me?”
