25. Margo

25

MARGO

F aery was full of wonders, but none of them was quite as wonderful as being with Margo's mates.

Margo had never seen the point of leisure, until she had mates to love and be loved by, and half the fun of being able to walk on golden clouds was holding onto their hands as she went, and swimming with them in a lake that sang instead of splashed. They laughed together, and told stories, comparing everything they loved and didn't.

They made love in steaming pools and soft beds of moss and fields of flowers, in pairs and together, as the mood struck. There was a library made of flower-bound books and Margo read poetry that made her heart feel like a chest full of caged birds.

They quarreled over who Bruno should choose, until they couldn't bear to speak of it, and forgave each other with kisses and assured him that they would love him forever no matter what he was forced to decide.

The second night was spent on a mountaintop wreathed in stars that would come down and dance on the rocks. Bruno and Eva slept curled together on a bed of cloudmatter under downy blankets while Margo measured the unfamiliar constellations with her outstretched hands and wondered if Faery astronomers were a thing that existed.

She didn't realize that she'd fallen asleep at their feet until she was dreaming, and the Queen came to her.

"Leave me Eva of your free will and I will not make Bruno decide between you or battle to free you and risk his own freedom," the Queen promised. "You can go in peace."

Margo pinched herself, because she wanted to make sure that she was dreaming. Her skin was like velvet and pain was a weird echo of sound. She could look down and see herself, curled at Bruno and Eva's feet. She was definitely dreaming. But Margo was equally sure that this was real.

"You'd just be asking me to choose, instead of Bruno," Margo observed. "It's no less cruel."

"Do you really think I'm cruel?" the Queen asked winsomely. "I promise, I am only trying to keep what I love!"

"You don't love Eva," Margo said, and she said it with genuine pity. "Love doesn't want to control and overpower. If you loved Eva, you would let her go."

"I can sweeten the deal." At first, Margo thought that the Queen was growing, that she was flexing her power and proving her strength with supernatural size. Then Margo realized that she herself was the one changing, shrinking and compressing into herself.

The Queen had not gone so far as to make Margo slight—she still had curves of substance and strength, but she was no longer freakishly tall or broad-shouldered. There was feminine grace to her lines, her muscles softened and her shape refined. Her wrists were delicate. Margo could not help herself from reaching for her face to see if it had changed from its familiar blockish planes, and that was when she realized what else the Queen was offering her.

She was human.

Simple, normal human—and with that came a sense of smell.

"I wanted you to know what you were missing," the Queen said in her silkiest voice. " All the little details." She gave an imperious wave of her hand and Eva's scent overwhelmed Margo.

Margo didn't have the names for the things she smelled, only the ideas, but she was sure that it must be butterscotch and clove, with hints of licorice and fresh-cut grass, complex and sweet. She opened her mouth in awe and found that there were more variations at the back of her throat, as if she was breathing Eva herself in.

She turned in wonder to Bruno and found that she could smell him as well, a hot musky wave of metal and machines, with hints of cedar and moss.

They continued their enchanted slumber and Margo realized that her eyes were welling as she gazed down at them, reveling in this new layer of their wonderful appeal. She closed her eyes so that smell was the only sense she had, and then she shook her head.

"I don't want this," she said, and she felt the truth of it as she opened her eyes. "My mates love me just the way I am. I don't need to be delicate or human or look different. I don't need to smell them to know them."

The Queen's face went icy cold and more beautiful than ever and she shivered in place and vanished as Margo woke to find herself tangled in Bruno's arms, with Eva curled between them.

Their scent was gone, but there were still tears on her cheeks.