Chapter Five
Marquis
Every day for a week, he’d showed up at the center, had breakfast or lunch with Mads, and left after an hour.
It’d gone well, and Dr. Vans had called it a success, as Mads hadn’t had an episode once and was improving.
In his opinion, the mate bond helped stabilize the mental fortitude of its partners.
It certainly amplified healing capabilities.
“Professional opinion?” Marquis sat in his office, drumming his fingers on the doctor’s desk.
“My professional opinion is that he’s fit to go on timed, controlled excursions. I would hazard to say a date isn’t out of order. You want to resolidify your bonds, correct?” Vans stared him down, and Marquis sighed heavily.
“My heart pines for him in ways I never knew it would. I wanted to be rid of his betrayal, but the only betrayal was my lack of action. I’m torn immensely.
” Marquis didn’t look at Dr. Vans. He was well aware his discussions with the male were a type of therapy for himself.
After all, Marquis may very well have been addled by Doris, too.
“That’s a mate bond for you. And he’s supposedly a familiar.
” Dr. Vans stood and pulled an old leather tome from one of his small shelves and flipped through a few pages.
“I came across this in the archives. It says that a familiar’s choice in form is what inspires them.
It’s something they form a connection with.
Likely, you’ll find all the familiars you know had some affinity for the animals. ”
“I understand.” Marquis nodded.
“Mads is of yet unmanifested. Do you know any animals he had an affinity with?” Vans pulled out a notebook and tapped a pen on a blank page.
He thought back to all those years ago, sneaking in windows, the jokes that weren’t jokes about thievery and penny witchery. Mads had lived a hard life. “I have an idea…”
“It’s not a tiger or something we’ll have trouble corralling?” Vans tapped his pen again before clicking it and writing down a few things.
“No. He was an American born and bred coven. Some Native American, some white. They’re a real amalgam.” Marquis cleared his throat. “Poor.”
“Pennywitches?” Dr. Vans said the word quietly and Marquis nodded.
Despite being an ugly word, it was still the accepted term for covens that operated outside of the accords and councils, beholden only to the laws of mages and nothing more, no protections or resources.
Very few of the groups existed anymore. Fortunately.
Any time the council got called in on exposure to mundanes, nine times out of ten, it was pennywitches.
All the power of the world at their fingertips and still they lived in poverty.
It went to show, one could have everything and nothing at all.
“So, what is it? What would someone like him connect with?” Vans spun the pen on his fingers, a spark of magic flicking as he did so. Wandless magic, likely involuntary, kept it spinning unaided.
“I feel horrible saying it aloud, but I had to stop him from adopting an orphaned one when we were first together—a raccoon.” Marquis laughed.
“Ah, nature’s little thieves.” He made a note in his book and nodded. “He doesn’t have a wand anymore. Do you still make wands?”
Marquis nodded. “It’s been a long time and since Baron no longer holds a monopoly, I can.”
“Do so. Also, mine is looking poorly.” Dr. Vans handed his to Marquis, handle first, and grinned the grin of someone well-compensated but unfathomably cheap.
Marquis turned it in his hands and let his magic flow through the wood. It was not the wand that was poorly. Marquis had, over the years, perfected an ambivalent expression. “What are you experimenting with?”
Dr. Vans shrugged. “Some simple transfiguration experiments with—”
“Stop doing it. You’re killing yourself. Your wand is merely warning you.” Marquis handed it back. “See a physician.”
Dr. Vans was more of a psychotherapist, focused on mages, a Doctor of Psychology and had general medical training, specific to mages, so he wouldn’t have the necessary knowledge to treat himself.
He cleared his throat. “Absolutely. I’ll see to that.”
“Greater mages than yourself have made cancer from mice.” Marquis offered a half smile.
“I’ll see to this immediately, then. While I’m out today, take Mads out. Have him home by four.” Dr. Vans stood and tucked his wand away before opening his office door. “It was very informative seeing you. Thank you.”
Marquis nodded sagely and left, pondering where to take his mate.
“Mads!” Marquis jumped as he spotted the omega in the hallway, dark eyes wide and curious.
“I felt you around and they allow me to wander some of a morning. You’re nervous.
” Mads pushed up on his tiptoes to tidy Marquis’s collar and tie with gentle and familiar motions.
He really had taken to domesticity well.
A feral omega, tamed in his hands. That said, he was a far sight daintier and more curtailed than he had been all those years ago.
In a way, Marquis missed the impropriety, the brashness and vulgar language.
He missed the Mads that snuck through his window looking for a crumb of affection wherever he could get it.
“I was meeting with Dr. Vans.” Marquis fidgeted with his collar a bit, prompting Mads to huff and fix it again.
“And? Asking him to spill all my secrets, tell you if I’m all there.” Mads said it with a playful tone, but Marquis could sense the bitterness in it.
“In a way. I was actually making sure that it would be safe to take you on a date. If you’re interested.” Marquis cleared his throat and avoided Mads’s gaze.
“Really? I can—we can go outside? Can we go see a picture show? Please?” Mads caught Marquis’s gaze, glancing back to catch his pleading look.
“I don’t think they’re called picture shows anymore.”
“I tried to learn how to work the television in my room, but it was the worst magic I’ve ever seen and everything had people having boring sex.” Mads sighed. “Back in the day, we had real sex… Not this…” He flipped his hand a few times, thinking.
“Not what?” Marquis raised a brow, feeling his face twitch, a grin trying its best to escape his flat facade.
“Missionary humping. Even the male pairings!” Mads never referred to two men as homosexual, as the term didn’t apply to alpha-omega pairs. He never viewed himself as gay or heterosexual. They were mages. Mages were attracted to other mages.
Except he was no longer technically a mage by category. He was a familiar—one who hadn’t found his form.
“I’m afraid the movie theaters are no better. I could take you out to get a good meal, or maybe I could persuade you to travel the riverbed nearby with me to find you some wandwood since you don’t have a wand anymore.” Marquis cleared his throat.
“Wandwood? What wou—Baron isn’t ali—” Mads stared Marquis down as realization hit him. “You want to make my wand?”
His original wand had been made by hand from a coven member with the skill for it. When Marquis proposed, he’d had Mads select one from Marquis’s father’s collection.
Marquis nodded as Mads took a few steadying breaths. “But like…I don’t need a wand unless I have a mage that fuels me and lets me focus them.”
“I’m proposing we learn to love one another again. If that is permissible.” Marquis cleared his throat nervously. He’d never been that insecure, even as a young man courting.
“You never had to ask, Marquis. I’ve been yours since the day I snuck in your window.
Regardless of what happened, I wanted nothing more than to come back to you.
” Mads reached out to take Marquis’s cheeks in his hands.
“I remember your face. I dreamed about you. There were days I was in a deep haze and thought I was with you. I didn’t know if it was a coping mechanism or something they did to me. ”
Marquis had touched on the topic, danced around it, really. “I feel like… I’m uncertain if Doris manipulated me. I know she did to an extent, but if there was magic involved? I’m unsure.”
“Fresh starts. Let’s go down by the river and find ourselves a stick!” Mads grabbed onto Marquis’s arm and swept away.
It felt wrong, taking Mads out of the facility.
He squinted at the sky, almost afraid of the sun as they made their way to his car.
The older town car was a little over twenty years old, but some good preservation charms went a long way in keeping a suitable vehicle to standard.
Mads went to get into the back seat, but Marquis put him in the front, opening the door for him in a sweep.
The gesture seemed to trip him up. But, with minimal coaxing, he slid in and fumbled with the seat belt as easily as if he’d done it a thousand times before.
Little things like that made Marquis wonder how much he really remembered, how much he’d blocked out, and how much he lied about.
As if he noticed Marquis staring, Mads shrank in his seat. “I know. I know time has passed. I know it seems odd, but it’s like everything was shooting by like a star, my mind included. Moments of lucidity flash in and out, you know? I think it’s whenever the spells ran thin.”
“Why didn’t Baron use wish to maintain it?” Marquis didn’t think before he spoke and cursed himself as he did so.
Mads’s face hardened. “Because every flake of it he had went up his nose.”
Marquis shook his head. “Remember when we went to that formal dinner a few months after we were married and you put your elbows on the table and Father told you to go eat with the servants?”
“Yeah. I left my plate full and walked out. Said the servants probably had better food. And they did. Your father thinks sugar is spicy. How’s the old fuck doing?”
“Dead. A few years after you left. It’s how Baron took everything over.” Marquis smiled to reassure Mads before closing the car door and walking around to the driver’s seat.
“I don’t remember going to his funeral…” Mads frowned, and his brow creased, little lines forming between his brows.