The doorknob slipped in my sweaty palm, but I wrenched it open and fled, out onto the landing and up the stairs, tears gathering in the corners of my eyes.
He called my name, but he didn’t follow me, thank the gods, and I ran all the way to my own room and shut myself inside, turning the key in the lock and then sliding down to the floor, back to the wall, burying my face in my knees.
I stayed there for a long time, simply trying to catch my breath.
The house lay in almost complete silence. What would Stefan be doing now? Brooding in his study? Going out to find someone to relieve his unsatisfied arousal? I’d hardly even blame him if he did. After all, the consort he hadn’t wanted inthe first place had kissed him, tried to seduce him, nearly lit his breeches on fire with him in them, and then gone mad and run away.
The worst part of it might be that I hadn’t wanted to marry him in the first place, either…but I could easily imagine another set of circumstances in which I’d have chosen him.
In another world. Another life.
No, theveryworst part had to be my certainty that he still wouldn’t have chosen me in that other life.
My magic, a supposed gift from Dromos, had never felt like one. A curse, a burden, the reason for my separation from my mother and my sister. For one shining moment today—literally, when that beautiful summoned globe of light had gleamed in my hand—it’d seemed like a true gift at last.
But it’d come at too high a cost. The desires surging through me had to be suppressed. Before, I’d hated my magic and its curse for depriving me of that far more common gift most of humanity took for granted: the ability to give pleasure to another person, and to receive it.
And now I knew the bitter truth. Desire was its own kind of curse. Pleasure didn’t give happiness. Taking Stefan into my bed hadn’t put me at his mercy because he could refuse to soothe my curse and allow me the use of my magic; it had put me at his mercy because of how much I wanted him, and only him, to do the soothing, while he’d be equally pleased with my body or that of a whore.
How the Lord Chancellor would laugh.
I couldn’t let this consume me, and if I waited any longer, allowed myself any further indulgences, I’d never stop voluntarily.
My potion would end this. Both of my gifts, washed away. And then perhaps I’d be myself again—the self I’d gotten used to. The one with control.
I pushed up off the floor and went to my dressing table, where the potions had been put away in one of the cabinets below. Bracing myself for the vile taste, I lifted one of the bottles to my lips, closed my eyes, and swigged deeply.
And then the bottle fell from my hand and crashed to the floor, spattering the potion everywhere, as I ran for the bathroom. I made it barely in time to vomit up every drop of the potion and half a decanter of wine.
For the third time that day, I collapsed to the floor, this time panting and wiping my chin with my sleeve.
Oh, gods. What now?
Chapter Seventeen
Vomiting, crying, and panicking didn’t leave me looking my best, although I did manage a shaky laugh at my swollen, watery eyes and red-pale-streaky skin in the bathroom mirror when I imagined what Madam Carmela would say.
I bathed my face in cold water, cleaned my teeth, and prepared to pretend not to have been vomiting, crying, and panicking.
Lord Benedict might be an expert, and he might be very clever, but he’d clearly been wrong about the poison’s effects lasting only a few hours. On the one hand, I could take some comfort in that. Maybe I didn’t need to blame myself for my frantic need to climb on Stefan’s cock after all.
On the other hand, that left me with an imminent frantic need to climb on Stefan’s cock.
On the other, other hand…rationally, I had to admit that what I’d felt an hour ago hadn’t been the same thing I’d experienced last night, and it hadn’t even been quite what I’d experienced this morning when Stefan had come to my bedroom. There hadn’t been any pain. No sense of discomfort or illness or even unhappiness.
I’d just wanted him.
Damn it.
He needed to know about the potion, though, as little as I wanted to speak to him about it.
It had also occurred to me, during the crying and panicking stage of affairs, that I hadn’t told him about the house being under surveillance.
And so, after changing my shirt and putting myself in order, back downstairs I went, my stomach a seething, hissing mass of nerves, like a bundle of snakes had taken up residence.
Tapping on the door got me a curt, “Go away!”
Surely that didn’t apply to me, seeing as I owned half the study.
