Stands
I was sitting cross-legged in the center of my bed, the room dark, the lights of the city the only illumination.
And I was deep in my thoughts.
It was a week and a day after the first Wednesday I spent the night at Berg Castle with Tanyn.
Gayle was still at Spikeback. She’d resumed her daily routine, just going home from work to a castle.
And I was spot-on about her text. Listless was the only way to describe her.
She was getting on with it, but how she was doing it, she was still breaking all of our hearts.
Also on that, we could say Cormac was enraged Gayle had been rescued.
Fortunately, Tanyn, Aleksei and Bainon were correct. Cormac’s father, King Niall, made a stink about it, but he didn’t push it too far.
The worst part about that was Cormac had no communication with Gayle about any of this after she was rescued.
It was all done directly—with Cormac comming the males and sharing a piece of his mind—and through reps—with them blustering about foreign invasions committed by allies, saying Cormac’s was justified, he was seeing to his mate, and theirs was not.
Nevertheless, the diplomats managed to battle this out behind the scenes, and that had gone quiet.
But the hits kept hitting Gayle, since Sirk showed at Spikeback the Friday after she returned for some private time with her.
Time he used to break up with her.
Although I could see his reasoning, his timing pissed me off. She was barely home two days before he put an end to them.
Sure, if he intended to seek his mate, the end was always an eventuality, but the male could have given her a few more days to deal before he lowered that boom.
As such, I was pissed at Sirk.
Thus, I got his sequence from Laura and shared that in a text.
He didn’t dodge it, he replied, You must know, it’s for the best. And it didn’t do either of us any good to put it off.
I did know that, but he was being deliberately obtuse about the timing.
I let it go.
It wasn’t my battle to fight (as Tanyn reminded me when I complained about this to him). I said my piece. I took my gal’s back. There was nothing more I could do (all of this also what Tanyn told me).
So with no other choice…
Onward.
On his weekend with me, Tanyn and I hadn’t spent the entire time in bed.
After hours, I’d taken him to my gallery so he could see it and be suitably impressed.
He was.
And he was this so openly, it meant the world to me.
He wasn’t just impressed, he was proud.
Of me.
And that felt awesome.
Further during his visit, Laura and Aleksei invited us to dinner at Spikeback.
Now it was me worrying about timing, because I’d shared with Gayle when I saw her Thursday night that things with Tanyn were serious, and getting more so quickly, but I didn’t want to force her to witness it.
She would have to eventually.
But to my way of thinking, now was not the time.
It was Monique who intervened in that, telling me maybe Gayle should see two beings falling for each other, those beings not fated mates.
Maybe it would give her hope.
So we went to dinner.
Gayle didn’t give much away.
This wasn’t a surprise.
I’d noticed she’d been retreating behind a wall of faking it. I worried about this, but I also thought she should have some time to deal how she needed to deal, and if that time became too long, I’d do something about it.
For now, we all just had to let her do what she had to do.
Our second Wednesday night together, yesterday, didn’t involve Tanyn and I spending all of it in his bed.
Oh sure, most of it was in his bed (and I enjoyed every second of it), but we did get out of it to go to the king’s dining room to have dinner.
And he had a comm scheduled with someone in the Six Realms (in other words, someone in a different time zone), but he took me to his study, and I hung out with him and played with Hurley while he made it.
And I was learning that together time worked for me, even if his attention wasn’t on me.
And he was hot as all the hells when he was sitting at a kingly desk being king.
All the bids were in for the work on Sigil, some of it had already started (glaziers were hard at work replacing windows and masons doing repointing).
This meant I had a budget, Jorda had set up the warehousing, and working with Zyra, who I’d roped in (well, not really, she was ecstatic to be asked), I was buying all sorts of amazing things that would furnish and decorate once the building was renovated, updated and cleaned up.
They were saying this would be done by Dead Winter.
Speaking of Dead Winter…
The last big thing that had happened, I’d broken the seal and gone to dinner at Mom and Dad’s.
I was me. Dad was Dad. He’d ticked me off and made a grave mistake. He knew it. I knew he knew it. He didn’t apologize for it. I knew he wouldn’t. That said, I also knew he told Tanyn he’d use the entirety of the Truelock fortune to extricate me from it, if necessary.
So there was that.
Also, Tanyn and I were definitely a thing. I couldn’t hide it and didn’t. I shared we were spending weekends and one night a week together. Mom was pleased. Dad visibly struggled with rubbing it in that he’d made the perfect match for me, when it was seeming more and more that he did.
As such, there was that too.
Even so, I kept things frosty because…again, I was me.
I’d thaw. He knew it.
But appearances had to be kept, and by that, I meant grudges had to be held.
So he acted like nothing was amiss. Mom did a lot of rolling her eyes and sighing (at both of us). But eventually, we all knew the frost would melt and things would go back to normal.
My pride, though, needed protecting, so they were giving me space for that.
However, I did take advantage of this, telling him Zyra and Mangold had invited us to Sigil for Dead Winter, and Tanyn wanted us all to come.
Dad looked less than thrilled about this prospect (he was, obviously and unapologetically, a traditionalist, and our tradition was to always have Dead Winter at home).
But Mom jumped at it right away.
So we were doing Dead Winter at Sigil.
I couldn’t wait.
In the end, except for Gayle, everything was great and the future was bright.
Zyra and Mangold would be coming down with Tanyn the next evening. I’d offered them one of my guest bedrooms, which they declined not only to give Tanyn and I privacy, but to have some for themselves.
But I had the whole weekend planned.
A visit to my gallery.
Tours of not only Spikeback, but also the Celestial Palace (it was good to have the right connections).
An after-hours VIP visit to the Musée Histoire de Guerre (something Manny wanted to do).
Dinner in a private dining room at the fabulous restaurant, Dragon’s Fire (I would have taken them to Sirk’s restaurant, Stained Glass, the best in all of Nocturn, but I was still mad at him).
And Zyra and I were going to go shopping together with Mom.
I hadn’t spent a lot of time with them, but I was super excited to see them again.
And I’d have Tanyn for two whole days.
Much to look forward to.
However, there I was, ready for bed, wearing nothing but a short, silk, midnight-blue nightie, and I’d just spent a full half an hour wandering my flat in the dark.
The downstairs kitchen, living room, dining room, reading room, and the two guest bedrooms and baths.
And upstairs, my huge bedroom, closet, bathroom and serenity room.
I then went to bed.
Where I was right then.
Thinking.
Thinking that, if I had a child, the guest rooms were too far away.
Sure, I could set up a bassinet in my bedroom so I could be close until the babe was older, but still.
Then there was when the next baby came. The entire flat would have to be reconfigured so there was less open space to allow privacy, and the kids would need a romper room.
But what did I do when number three came?
Or if there was a number four?
Giving myself time to think on it, if I found a male I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, he probably wouldn’t want to move into my flat. And unless it was totally fabulous, I wouldn’t want to move to his place.
We’d find a place together. One that was ours.
And if that wasn’t right for the family we’d make, we’d find another place.
I would have to give up this flat. Move.
Life would change.
Like Laura was eventually going to find someone, and she did. And Monique would. Hopefully, Gayle would too, one day.
They might get different jobs and move far from Nocturn. They might prefer to live outside the city to raise their children.
Again, life, as it had a way of doing, would change.
You couldn’t escape it.
And truthfully, I didn’t quibble at how long it took to get to some of the theaters on the north side. They were easily forty-five minutes from where I lived. If the routes were backed up, it could be longer.
An hour-long soni-jet flight to have dinner with my gals or visit my parents was nothing.
None of this occurred to me when the changes in life wouldn’t be my choice.
All of it was occurring to me now.
Along with the fact I loved Abyssinia. I didn’t want to live there, but I loved visiting there. It was a gorgeous, cosmopolitan city with all the things I enjoyed, just like Nocturn.
But I didn’t want to live there only because I’d never considered living there.
Now, I was considering it.
And doing it calmly, in the dark, with time to turn it over in my head, I had to admit, the thought of living there didn’t suck. It would actually be kind of cool, finding new places I loved, exploring.
Was I being difficult in not taking the time to think these things through when it was Dad and Tanyn making the arrangements for me?
No.
Were some very important things occurring to me right now when Tanyn was folding me into his life, I was folding him into mine, and it seemed to be working splendidly.
Yes.
On this thought, my Palm, resting on the bed beside me, lit up.
I looked down at it and smiled.
Like he knew I was thinking about him, it was Tanyn calling.
I was mildly surprised he was, because it was late.
But I didn’t care.
I snatched up my phone just as a light came on downstairs.