Sloane made a heartbreaking sound in the back of his throat. Reaching over with his free hand, he cupped her cheek. “You’d really stay?”
Her throat tightened to an almost painful degree. Fighting to get the words out, she whispered, “Yeah, I would.”
“Fuck.” Sloane dropped his hand. Hunching his shoulders, he braced his elbows on his knees and lowered his head. “My leave is ending and I can’t go back on duty, Cece. If I do… If I do, they’ll separate us.”
“What?” She made a face. “Why? I thought elves were allowed to have relationships with other people now.”
“We are, butwe —my team and me — aren’t. It’s strictly forbidden.” His claws flexed between his spread knees. “That’s another reason I didn’t approach you. I knew that if I got too close, they’d take you away from me.”
Her mind whirled. “Wait, your team— I didn’t know you had a team.”
Sloane made that strange, sad sound again. “There are seven of us. Eight if you count the former sovereign. All of us were conscripted into service when we were children. Protocol doesn’t allow us to keep consorts.”
There was too much to digest there. She could barely wrap her head around the idea of running away with him, let alone the fact that there were seven other people — includingDelilah Solbourne,apparently — who’d been put through the horrors he had.
“But…why?”she asked, clinging to what seemed like the simplest and most absurd part of the story.
“We’re too dangerous,” he answered in a flat voice.
She sat with that for a moment, letting the truth settle into her. Fresh memories of blood splashing across her apartment’s floor rushed to the forefront of her mind.
She couldn’t downplay that. She couldn’t pretend like Sloanewasn’tincredibly dangerous. The higher-ups who made the call to keep him and his teammates from their partners no doubt knew exactly what they were doing.
But that didn’t mean she thought it was right.
Taking a deep breath, Cecilia reached for his hand again. Holding it tightly, she didn’t look at him when she asked, “Are you close with your team?”
His fingers squeezed hers. “Yes.”
“And you’d give them up to run away with me?”
Sloane bent at the waist to lean his broad shoulder into hers, giving her just a little of his weight. “Would you give up being a teacher in the city for me?”
Her heart stopped.
All she’d ever wanted was to be a teacher. Shelovedkids. She loved watching their brilliant little minds work and change every day. And it’d been a dream to work in such an incredible city with a famously choosy education system. She wanted to be the best of the best so she could give her best, and she’d worked damn hard for the opportunity.
But when the heat of Sloane’s hand radiated through hers, it seemed… less. Not less important. Not less possible. Just less urgent.
Less once in a lifetime.
Thisthing, the man holding her hand, who was willing to put himself through just about anything to make her happy and give her the chance to choose him, was a true once in a lifetime possibility.
Cecilia sucked in a deep breath.
“I don’t believe either of us has to give what we love up,” she argued, turning her head to look at him. “There has to be a way to fix this. We can petition the sovereign, or we can go all the way to the United Court if we have to.”
Sloane stiffened. “Cece…”
Before he could continue, she gave his hand a sharp squeeze. “But right now I’m going to trust that you know what you’re doing. If you say we can’t stay here, then we can’t stay here.”Bringing his hand up for a gentle kiss, she announced, “So let’s go on vacation, baby.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
Everything he’d grabbedfrom her apartment and a single black duffle bag of his own went into the back of a small, nondescript car parked in the very back of the garage. The vehicle didn’t look like much from the outside, but when she slid into the passenger’s seat, she was confounded to realize it was fully modern and equipped with extras she was pretty sure were illegal.
Like the black tinted windows, for instance, and the windshield that projected a different image onto the inside of the car so no one could actually see who was driving it.
