Margot’s expression brightened. “Yes! I’ve been there about a month now.”
“Couldn’t you have gotten a higher position?” Camille had trouble imagining anyone giving the sovereign’s consort ajuniorposition in anything.
Margot grimaced. “Believe me, Theodore tried to coerce me into letting himhelpwith that. I refused. I went through the entire interview process under a false name so I wouldn’t get any special treatment.”
She found it deeply charming that Margot had gone so out of her way to stick it to Theodore’s heavy-handed interference. She only wished that she could do the same. “And when they found out who you were?”
“Oh, I got a call from the board, apologizing and offering me a better position.” Margot waved a hand, her annoyance with the favoritism open. Disgust was clear in every line of her pretty face. “I told them that I didn’t want it and was insulted that they’d offer it in the first place. Good gods, what if I’d been an unskilled healer? Don’t they care about what kind of damage I could do if left unsupervised or properly vetted?” She shook her head. “It was appalling.”
Camille leaned forward, enticed by the very elvish bite she picked up in Margot’s tone. She had no fangs to flash, but therewaselvishness in the lifted lip, the way she flicked her clawless fingers. “And what happened after that?”
“Well,clearlythey couldn’t be trusted to do their jobs well, so I asked Theodore to look into the board. So far, three of the seven members have been found violating the ethics code and one was fixing contracts for a ridiculous cut. We expect their resignations soon.” Margot eyed a lemon popover on a silver dish for a moment before she chose a cranberry-speckled scone from the one beside it. While her focus was on the appetizers, her expression was still hardened with intense disapproval.
“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. Playing with lives and billions of dollars in research like that. Some of the violations we’ve found, Cammie, would turn your hair gray.”
“I believe you.” Camille watched, intrigued and a tiny bit revolted, as Margot spread some jam across a sliced half of her scone. She knew healers had trouble with meat, since it tended to“jump”in their mouths even when it was thoroughly dead, but she still struggled to wrap her head around the fact that Margot didn’t even think to try the fine cuts of veal or tender, marinated beef that sat between them.
For godssakes, there’s even fresh, lemon zested lobster tail by her elbow,she thought, scandalized,and she goes for pasty breads? No wonder she’s so small.
Camille was tactful enough to keep that observation to herself, of course, but she made a mental note to inquire into what Andy, the Tower’s Houserunner and unofficial Solbourne grandmother, was doing to help supplement Margot’s foul diet.
“Anyway, we’re working on getting things in order. My main concern right now is making sure the people making bad decisions are stopped from making any more. We can sift through the mess later. It’ll take time, but we have lots of that. I’ve also reached out to my old mentor, Healer Mason, to see if we can poach her from the hospital I apprenticed at. She’d get the ship in working order again.”
Margot nibbled at her scone and appeared, as far as Camille could see, entirely ignorant of the fact that she had effectively usurped authority of the EVP’s premier hospital without even trying.
No wonder she and Teddy are such a good fit. They’re natural-born leaders.In Teddy it at least fit with his air, his look, the way he carried himself. With Margot, it was markedly more surprising — and amusing.
“So, you enjoy being a junior healer?” Camille asked, trying to hide the unreasonable glee she felt knowing that this little slip of a halfling was effortlessly dominating an entire institution. She wondered what it would be like to be a fly on the wall in that boardroom as a bunch of stuffy, overpaid louts took orders from a woman half a step up from a green intern.
Camillehadalways been a fan of scrappy underdogs.
“Oh, I love it,” she gushed, “I liked running the Healing House, of course, but there was no challenge in it. Being a healer in an active ward means I get to push myself and actually make a difference in people’s lives. All I ever wanted was to be useful — to help people with the abilities I’ve been given. If you have the ability to stop suffering but don’t use it, the feeling of failure is like poison. It’s a slow sort of death.”
Margot paused for several seconds, her gaze lost somewhere in the middle distance. As the silence stretched, magic began to hum around her in a thick haze that smelled like bright ozone and metal. The hair on the back of Camille’s neck rose.
Of course she knew Margot was a gloriana, the most powerful rank a witch could be, but it was one thing toknowit and quite another tofeelit.
In that instant, Camille could swear she felt the witch’s power humming in herteeth.
The sensation only lasted a moment before Margot shook herself, her expression clearing. Whatever it was that held her magical focus seemed to vanish as soon as it appeared.
She took another bite of her scone before she finished, as if she never stopped talking, “It’s good to finally be able to help people, at least.” She smiled, soft and satisfied.
Camille suddenly understood why Theodore had nearly worked himself to death to have her. Margot’s aura fairly pulsed with her compassion, with a healer’s warmth and a gloriana’s blazing power.
Even if Camillewantedto dislike her, she wasn’t entirely sure she could.
“Anyway, since junior healers only work part time, I’ve been spending the rest of my days going through the archives.” Margot paused to take another sip of her tea, her eyes glittering over the rim of her cup. “Theodore’s wedding gift to me was my own clinic in the Tower. I'm trying to study up on all the secret elvish research I now have access to so I can hopefully use it for some good in the near future.”
Camille’s brow wrinkled. “What are you focusing on?”
“Well…” Margot set her cup back on its saucer with a smallclink.Her eyes lingered on the platters of food between them as her fingers skated over the finely wrought handle.“Mainly I’ve been looking into the pheromone problem.”
A chill slid down Camille’s spine. “I see.”
She knew all aboutthe pheromone problem.It was a catch-all term elvish healers used to cover both thepulland the madness that had begun to take out her mother’s generation of elves. It was rumored that they had been working for decades to find a cure for the problem — a way to eliminate the draw to consorts completely.
The concept made her stomach clench with instinctive disgust, but Camille couldn’t deny how much of her yearned for a cure. The pull was all well and good when you were like Margot and Theodore — destined to be together, willing to take on any obstacle to make it happen,soulmates— but most people weren’t.
