Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 417

ARIA

Margo beat me to the clinic by approximately four minutes.

I knew this because when I arrived at the clinic door, I could already hear Ivory's voice through it — not the clinical tone, not the professional register, not any of the controlled versions she used for most communication. The laughing version. The full version that I'd heard exactly once before, briefly, in the east courtyard when she'd been reading Kael's note about the botanical books and his eyes unable to unsee things.

This was louder than that.

I came through the door and found the healer standing near her plant with the expression of someone who'd been trying to maintain a professional environment and had been defeated by current events. The healer's chart was in her hand but she wasn't writing in it. She was watching Ivory with the expression of someone caught between medical concern and the genuine difficulty of not joining in.

Margo was standing near the bed. Her expression was the one she wore when she'd delivered information and was watching its reception — complete satisfaction with the quality of the reaction she'd produced.

Ivory was on the bed — still on the bed, which was positive — but she was not lying down in the prescribed manner. She was sitting up, both hands pressed over her mouth, her shoulders moving with the specific shaking quality of someone laughing hard enough that containing it had become the primary physical activity.

"She sent Sera—" Ivory started.

"She did," Margo confirmed.

"And Sera—"

"Curtseyed," Margo said. "Full curtsey. Read the document aloud."

Ivory made a sound that was muffled by her hands and was nonetheless entirely audible.

"Luna Aria is better than Sera," Margo said, with the savoring quality of someone who'd memorized a thing they intended to repeat regularly. "To the Luna's satisfaction."

Ivory took her hands away from her mouth and looked at the ceiling with the expression of someone needing structural support.

"The poly," Ivory said.

"Was Margo's favorite part," Margo said.

"The poly—" Ivory started again, and then the laughter came back before she could finish the sentence.

I stood in the doorway.

"She's been like this since I told her about the plants," Margo said to me, brightly. "The delivery part — that's what started it."

"The plants dragged him," Ivory said, to the ceiling. "To the gate."

"Yes," I said.

"They dragged him," she said.

"With some thoroughness," I said. "He arrived at the gate horizontal."

Ivory made the sound again. "Horizontal," she said. "He came in through the back like—" she stopped, composed herself, attempted a sentence. "He planned this. He planned the approach. He thought he was—" the sentence dissolved again.

"Please be careful of the shoulder," the healer said, from near the plant.

"The shoulder is fine," Ivory said.

"The shoulder is not—"

"He tried to sneak in," Ivory said to me, still toward the ceiling. "Through the botanical perimeter. The plants he didn't know about."

"The plants you built specifically for situations like his," I said.

"The plants I built for exactly this situation," she said. "I'd been wondering which approach vector he'd use if he tried direct access. I'd assumed the east secondary gate. He went for the back wall." She pressed her hands over her mouth again. "The back wall has the aggressive vines."

"I noticed," I said.

"I made those ones particularly thorough," she said. "Because the back wall approach requires the most commitment. Someone going through the back wall has made a deliberate choice to avoid the gate. I wanted the response to reflect that commitment."

"It reflected it," I said. "He arrived at the gate looking like he'd lost a fight with something that had opinions about him."

Ivory's shoulders were shaking again.

I went to the chair. The chair. My chair, at this point — I'd spent enough hours in it to have a reasonable claim. Sat in it with the rope in my lap, which produced an immediate response from Ivory when she registered it.

"Why do you have rope," she said.

"Nina said to bring it," I said.

"Nina thinks I'm going to—"

"Try to come to where Alric Vesper is being held," I said. "Yes."

"I wouldn't—" she started.

"Margo," I said.

"She was trying to get off the table when I arrived," Margo said.

"I was adjusting my position," Ivory said.

"She had one leg over the side," Margo said.

"The position adjustment required—" Ivory started, and then the sequence caught up with her — the rope, Margo's account, the healer's expression — and the laugh came back before she could finish the position adjustment argument.

"The shoulder," the healer said.

"It's fine," Ivory said. "It's genuinely fine, the laughing isn't—"

"It's aggravating the—"

"The laughing is healing," Ivory said. "Medically. There's literature."

"Not for shoulder injuries," the healer said.

"Tangential literature," Ivory said. "I'll find it."

The door opened and Jordan came in. He had the specific quality of someone who'd been in a corridor with Alric Vesper and Kael for the past thirty minutes and had emerged with things to report.

He looked at Ivory. At me. At the rope.

"Good thinking," he said to me, about the rope.

"Nina's thinking," I said.

"Nina's good thinking," he said, and came to stand near the bed. "He's secured. He's going to need the arm looked at eventually. Kael is—" he paused, "—still having feelings."

"About the arm," Ivory said.

"About several things," Jordan said. "The arm was the most recent." He looked at Ivory. "How much did Margo tell you."

"The plants, the gate arrival, the corridor, the arm," Ivory said. "She was getting to the blast when you came in."

Jordan looked at me. The expression he'd had in the corridor — genuine and slightly awed — came back briefly.

"Tell her about the blast," he said.