“You need to tell her how you feelbeforeyou go trying to send her back. She deserves to know how you feel, and I’m not going to deal with you being brokenhearted.” The doctor’s footsteps sounded as she approached Maggie’s hidden spot on the other side of the sleeping Lord Scylla. The doctor paused, gave Maggie a pointed look, and carried on.
For a moment, Maggie felt worse for eavesdropping, hearing all of that, but then her temper started to simmer. He had no intention of telling her that he was still fighting for her to go back to a life without him. Simply hearing the words made her realize that she didn’t want that. She was where she wanted to be, and Craig could go live with Hestia in the regular world until he was older. Afterward, he could decide if a life in Crenshaw where he was the only nonmagical person was worth it, and honestly, she suspected he’d decide to do just that.
If not, well, he could visit. The Congress had already approved Craig knowing about Crenshaw. There was no need to go to Congress, no reason to end her marriage, no reason to be anywhere but at Sondre’s side. The finish-school-over-there plan would work, and she would stay right here.
With a man who loves me.
Maggie stepped around the curtain and ran into Sondre as he was rushing toward the door. He caught her instinctively before she could fall, and Maggie wound her arms around his neck. “Hi.”
“I’m sorry, Maggie. I had a fever. And didn’t think I could ever get married—”
“Because you didn’t expect to fall in love?” she asked.
Sondre looked like she’d accused him of a crime. His expression was somewhere between guilt and denial: eyes wide, lips parted. No words escaped, though. No denial. No admission.
After a long awkward moment, he said, “Love isn’t everything.”
“Do you love me?” she asked, staring up at him.
“Maggie…”
“Doyou?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize we were married, and that I said those things about Mae, and—”
Maggie cut him off. “You’re avoiding my question, Sondre.” She pulled his head down, so they were almost lip to lip. “Do you love me?”
“Yes, but I won’t trap you here. I know how important it is to you that Craig has a safe life.” Sondre lifted her into a bridal carry and headed toward the door of the infirmary. “I’m a grown man, and I won’t fall apart because you put him first. I lived without a wife before and—”
“Shut up,” Maggie said softly. “Craig will go to school, and he’ll be in a good house, in a safe place, then when he’s an adult he’ll decide if he wants to stay here or move to college over there. Because he was given permission to live hereandpermission to go over there, I don’thaveto leave.”
“True.” The door opened at his approach, and he carried her into the hallway of the castle.
Maggie leaned closer and said, “I will make sure I can see my son when he’s finished high school, but Iplanto stay with the man I love.”
Sondre came to a full stop and looked at her, as if he was oblivious to the students in the hallway currently staring at them. “Repeat that.”
“I love you, Sondre.” Maggie had barely finished saying the words when he teleported them to their suite.
“Say it again,” he said as he lowered her feet to the floor, so they were standing chest to chest.
“I… love… you.” Maggie put her hands on his chest. “This is the part where you say it back.”
He let out the most undignified “whoop” she’d heard from him, repeated the words, and pronounced, “Then, you’renotinterested in mefinding a way you can leave. I thought that’s why you were talking to Brandeau and—”
“I just don’t like them thinking I’m a pawn. You’d have known why I was doing that, too, if you’d asked.…”
“I panicked.”
“Yes. How about we talk instead of playing guessing games and erasing memories and plotting on our own. Be a team?” She stared up at him. “Can we do that? Talk?”
“Yes, but later? Right now, I’m about to seduce the woman I love.”
“Fine. Give it your best shot.” Maggie devolved into giggles at his exaggerated frown, and then she took his hand and led him toward the bed.
32Ellie
The campus was alive with a revelry that made post basketball- or football-game madness seem tame. Ellie wasn’t a stranger to seeing students in the street with cars toppled and random brawls. In her college days, she’d made the mistake of going to a basketball game between two rivals. Drunken groups of fans—some with full face and chests painted—had roamed like lost warriors. Fights broke out; fires flared to life. It was a memory she’d never forget and an event she had no desire to repeat.
