"You're telling me. When is Nones?"
Theo glanced at the sky. "Another hour. Time enough for us to get some answers…and food. You are hungry."
"So are you," I said, aware of the hot need that growled inside him.
"Yes. We will seek the dapifer. This way."
A dapifer, it turned out, was some sort of steward responsible for caring for visitors to the Court. Or so Theo explained as we met with a small bespectacled man who wrung his hands when we asked for a room and food.
"We don't normally allow nephilim in the apartments, but if her grace said it was all right…"
I bit back the desire to state the obvious about such a ridiculous policy.
"I don't suppose there are any phones here?" I asked instead as the dapifer showed us to a room in the keep that housed the noble apartments. It was furnished in an odd mixture of old and new, with a huge, canopied bed, candles in sconces on the wall, and an armoire that contained a TV, DVD player, and popular video game machine. A small, modern bathroom led off the main room. It was comfortable, though, and I certainly wasn't in any position to comment about the eccentric decorating schemes of the sovereign.
"Gracious me, no, no telephones are allowed! Contact with the outside is strictly prohibited in the Court," he told me, looking horrified at the very thought. He gave us both a curt little bow. "I will have a meal delivered to you immediately."
I thanked him, sinking onto the bed with an exhausted sigh as he left. "I wanted to call Sarah and tell her I'd be late, but I guess that's out. Unless your cell phone…" I looked hopefully at Theo.
He shook his head. "Won't work here. Only certain officials are allowed access to the outside world."
"Damn. I hope Sarah doesn't worry. We were supposed to go to another haunted house tonight."
Theo stretched, pushing aside a heavy maroon curtain to look out the double-glazed, diamond-paned window. "Time operates differently in the Court than outside. We could be here for days, and only an hour or two would pass outside. Or a year. It just depends."
"Depends on what? How can the time variable be so diverse?"
"It depends on the whim of the sovereign, I suppose. I knew a man who was here for a few days, and only an hour passed outside. His wife, who was with him, left at the same time only to find three years had gone by in her absence."
"That doesn't make any sense." I spent a few minutes trying to calculate the equations necessary for such an impossible thing, but gave it up when a headache bloomed to life. "No, that can't be right. It's not logical at all."
"Shades of grey, sweetling, shades of grey."
"Oh, I've been shades-of-greying ever since we met that demon, but that is asking too much. Even here, even in this Court, there has to be an underlying, fundamental structure of physical properties upon which reality is built. To say that no laws keep the structure consistent is impossible."
"That's where faith comes in," he said dryly.
I let the matter drop. It didn't do any good to argue with Theo. I was willing to accept that a different set of physical laws applied to the Court, but exist they must. And I was just the person to explore what sort of glue held together this bizarre world I had joined.
"The only other time I was in Court, I was not allowed to stay in the keep," Theo said after a few minutes of silence.
"Why not?" I asked, pushing aside my concerns to watch him. So many emotions rolled around inside him that I had a hard time separating them.
"I was considered unworthy." He turned to look at me, a smile on his lips. "If nothing else, sweetling, you have elevated me beyond obscurity."
I made a face. "I'm willing to bet you would have preferred not being known as the boyfriend of the woman who hailed on a mare."
"Boyfriend?"
"Well…what's the male equivalent to Beloved?"
"Dark One."
"That's rather a general-purpose label, not one indicative of a man so completely wrapped around his woman's little finger."
"Is that what you think I am?" he asked, one eyebrow cocked in inquiry.
I smiled, kicked off my shoes, and slid back on the bed, wiggling my toes in invitation. "Aren't you?"
Hunger roared through him with such intensity it made me gasp. He started toward me, his eyes black as onyx, one hand undoing his belt. "Intrigued, yes. Impassioned, definitely. Aroused…" He glanced down at himself. "I don't believe that is in question. But wrapped around your little finger? I am not so easily manipulated."
"How about in love?" I asked, suddenly breathless as he knelt on the bed and started crawling up my legs.
He stopped, his face impassive, but inside him a great well of pain existed. "I have loved women before, Portia. I don't think I could have lasted as long as I have without occasionally being in love, caring for someone, and receiving love in return."
A knife twisted in my heart. It was unreasonable for me to expect that Theo could live the thousand plus years he had lived without falling in love, but my heart refused to recognize reason.
"What I feel for you is…different."
Different could be good. Different could be…oh, who was I fooling? Different was horrible. I didn't want to be different—I wanted Theo to love me just as much as he loved the other women in his life. I wanted the same place in his affections, to mean something to him other than a means to an end. I wanted him to love me as much as I was coming to love him!
"I see." My throat ached with unshed tears of self-pity. "These women you loved…were they immortal?"
"No. I knew when I began with them that the relationship was finite. I knew they would grow old, and there would come a time when they would die, and I would be left alone again." He sat back on his heels and unbuttoned his shirt, tossing it onto a nearby chair. With a look in his eye that warmed me despite the pain, he continued up the length of my body. "You, as I said, are different. Whether by Joining as my Beloved, or by acceptance into the Court, you will be immortal."
"Which means that when you grow tired of me, you won't be able to count on attrition to get rid of me."
His breath feathered against my mouth as he settled onto my body. "I have never grown tired of any of the women whom I loved. I mourned their passings, and felt myself diminished for a time."
"And then you got over it and fell in love again." The pain hurt so deeply in me that I wondered if there would ever be an end to it.
"Yes. But now there is you, and you, as I said, are different."
His lips brushed mine as he spoke. I wanted so badly to kiss him, to taste him, to merge myself with him that my body shook. But the pain at his confession was too much, too much for me to live with. I couldn't do it.
"I need you, Portia."
Hot tears leaked out of my eyes as I closed them tightly, turning my head to the side to avoid the torturous lure of his mouth. Oh, yes, he needed me. He needed me for sustenance. He needed me to help him achieve his greatest wish—salvation. He needed me not in the way a man needs a woman, but as a partner, someone sharing an adventure, bonded by circumstances into a symbiotic relationship.
You, my love, will be with me forever. You will be mine to love, mine to share the joys of life, mine to explore all the possibilities that lie before us.
I looked at him through eyes made blurry with tears. I wanted so much to believe him, but the pain was too deep to be erased with a few easily spoken words.
You complete me, Portia, don't you feel that? His eyes were filled with fire, but it wasn't just the head of passion that burned within him. It is true I have loved in the past, but I know now that I was only biding my time until you would come into my life. You are life to me, my love. I could not exist without you.
I burst into uncharacteristic tears at such beautiful words. I didn't need to look into Theo's face to know that he meant them—his emotions surrounded me, merging with my own until it was impossible to tell which were his and which mine.