Chapter 6 #2
His head cocks back from the force of my grip, and he swears. “—love. You didn’t even ask first.”
I snap my fingers open, brace myself as best I can against the mountain behind me. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He rocks his neck. “I didn’t say you had to stop.”
Inexplicably, I shiver.
“Earlier,” he mutters. “What of earlier? What about the…moth dweeb…concerns you?”
I whisper, “I’m sorry I messed up.”
“Yes, well, not knowing your own name is more problematic for you than it is for anyone else, isn’t it?”
“I just…” I deflate—oh-so-pitiful and pitiable and forgivable and pathetic.
“…I had been going by Storm since I left home, but you’ve never called me that.
And, if I’m honest, the people who knew me as Danielle I never want to see again.
I don’t want to be Danielle anymore. I don’t know if Storm is right, either, but it was available, and I’d like to be strong like it. I’m sorry I got…stuck in my own head.”
Castor reaches for my hand, draws my palm to his lips, and kisses a trail across my life line, up my wrist, to the ticklish spot of my elbow. His tongue flicks out there, licking, and I tense. Releasing me, he hums, lowly. “Did you like that?”
I did not expect it. At all. “I…I don’t know.”
“Would you let me do it again?”
My throat closes. “Yes.”
“Would you want me to do it again?”
Just that? I can survive that much. “I…guess?”
He sighs. “My feather, you do not act like a storm. If you are to claim a new name, it must be one you believe in, lest it become meaningless. You are frightened. You live in a state of fear. Do you believe storms are ever scared?”
No. I believe they are free. Going where the wind blows, gracing the earth with their life-giving rain in the same breath as they destroy it. I want to be as powerful. I just also don’t want to peeve this weird faerie man off and be thrust from this cliffside.
Priorities, you know?
Assuming it’s not a sheer enough drop for a sudden death on impact, I’ll roll painfully down sharp rocks for a while, obtain a traumatic brain injury, and probably sadly bleed out for hours before I finally die. Which is, obviously, not ideal.
Unlike a force of nature, I am fragile. Unlike an agent of destruction, I have spent my life submitting in order to survive. Unlike a storm, I am not free. “You’re right… Storm doesn’t suit me, but neither does Danielle. I’d like to cast off both. Will you give me a new name in their place?”
His lips part, and a swear whispers past them as he lifts his shaking hand to my throat.
“Please?” I ask, hoping he won’t cut off my air.
“What happened to you?” he murmurs. “How many bones must I rip from the bodies of those who have hurt you?”
“What?” I whisper.
“Bones,” he states. “How many will be enough to craft you a spine?”
My mouth opens.
But I can’t find a response.
I was not expecting a roast this early in the morning. Or, I guess, this late at night.
He huffs into my shocked silence, then he kneels, precariously, on the lip of stone beneath where I’m sitting.
Pebbles careen down the mountainside as he lifts my bare foot in his hand and bows.
“My love, I am yours. Your mewling does not appease me as you think it does. I have a temper. I know it. But you are safe. I will not lay my hand on you in anger, not in any way that would harm. Please believe me. I cannot lie, least of all to you.”
I thought I had no words before.
Now, I am truly lost.
I’m not sure I can call this dog people are crazy again.
Sun bathes him as it fully rises above the mountains in the distance, and my breath catches in response to how it illuminates the picture before me.
He is so beautiful.
Down there.
On his knees.
For reasons unknown, I pull my bare foot from his grasp.
His head lifts, and I do wish he weren’t blindfolded.
I am near desperate to see the look in his eyes right now.
I wonder, sadistically, if it might be begging, or pleading, or agonizing over some twisted want of me that he’s not giving in to.
I can hardly comprehend how lovely that might be—to see desire tempered by self-control.
When I curl my toes beneath his chin, he swallows, and I watch the muscles in his throat and jaw tense. Lips parting, he takes in short breaths. Desperation sparks, setting fire to a lust so deep I cannot imagine his self-control will hold.
I jolt my foot away from him. “What is wrong with you?” I ask, heart panicking.
“Does my queen petition a list? Shall I write it in my blood?” He grips my ankle, presses the bottom of my foot to his chest, and teeters on the edge of this cliff.
“If I do not suit you at any moment, remove me from your sight. There is no part of me you should fear. No reason you should ever hold your tongue or worry I might act against your will. I am your slave. Treat me with confidence.”
I am your slave.
My heart thuds.
This should not be the hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed.
It shouldn’t. I’ve been made to kiss models in their underwear while people take pictures from every angle.
In full view of the public, I’ve touched abs shredded from dehydration.
My entire life, I’ve overheard lewd, mature comments about me when I was too young to understand what they even meant.
This is nothing.
This should be nothing.
My heart should be quiet and numb to all sorts of advances.
What is going on?
Eerily, liquid calm flows through my veins.
I relax.
“You…aren’t going to hurt me?” I ask.
“It is not my desire to push you away from me.”
I wet my lips. “And…you aren’t going to force me to do anything?”
“Not if you aren’t well enough to defend yourself.”
“That’s…not a comfort, exactly, is it?”
“I dislike constraints.”
“You keep me in a cage.”
“For your safety. Like in the Eros and Psyche retelling.”
My brow furrows. “What?”
“He’s monstrous. She doesn’t know. He keeps her locked up, so she won’t find out. Then, when she gets him to trust her enough to give her freedom, it third-acts.”
“Third…act break up?”
“Yes.”
I shake my head, unwilling to ask how he knows about that. He reads. Of course he knows reader terms. What an absolute enigma. “So you’re keeping me in a cage because of a book you read?”
“Because if I make a mistake, if you grow curious about my eyes and metaphorically sneak into my room at night to check, the repercussions will not be momentary. You will die. Because, if there are not bars between us in the moments when there might be a lapse of judgment, I do not know what might happen.” His grip tightens on my ankle, grinding bone, and it occurs to me he did not in any way promise not to hurt me.
Still, conviction vibrates in his voice when he says, “I am not willing to lose you. Ever. Least of all by my own hand.”
Humans only live a hundred years or so. Many faeries, according to Frelsi, are not so finite. One way or another, time will take me from him eventually. Unless…he has a way to keep me for as long as he wants.
Feeling bold, I ask, “Why don’t you lock yourself in the cage then, and let me have the key?”
“Your cage also protects you from the nasties that roam my domain. Have you ever woken to a goblin in your bed?”
“Um. No?”
“Is that an experience you want to have?”
I pout. “Probably not.”
He smiles. “You are entrancing. And new. The lesser unseelie and the beast unseelie may find you fascinating. I’d rather them know you cannot be reached so easily.
Trust me, my feather. I will take you anywhere, kill anyone you ask me to, do anything you wish.
You are not trapped in a cage. You are trapped with me. ”
“Always?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I let that roll over in my brain.
Built-in protection in the form of a pretty faerie bodyguard.
There are…worse things.
“Are you thinking of escaping?” he asks.
My head shakes. “No.”
“Please tell me your thoughts.”
Forcing myself to breathe, I look at his hand around my ankle. My foot on his chest. The vast expanse of air behind him. It would be too simple to push. But then I’d be stranded up here. In Russia. Without any way to translate anything. No money. No extra clothes.
My mother would find me before I could figure out what to do next, and by that point, who knows what might have happened to me?
Escaping from Castor is a very brief solution.
I am powerless alone.
“What worth do I have?” I ask.
“Worth?” he echoes.
“Why are you so committed to me? What do I offer you in return for this level of loyalty?” I square my shoulders. “What do you expect from me?”
His smile fades. He strokes a tickling caress up the arch of my foot. “Expectations…” His head turns, and a breeze teases his hair. Long moments pass, sun warming my skin. “I think,” he says finally, “probably…I expect love.”
Love.
He expects love from me?
Don’t kick him off a cliff then, I guess?
I’m almost positive that’s not loving behavior.
Looking around, I locate a ledge with more space. I point. “Can you take me over there?”
He rises, and his hand traces across my arm, to the point of my finger, then moments pass. “Ah,” he says after a bit. “To the flatter ground. Yes. Easily. Hold on.”
A beat passes, and I’m in his arms again.
Then, he leaps blind, gliding us both to the ledge as though he can see.
Setting me down safely on the plateau, he tight-ropes the edge, balancing.
“Why did you want to be here? Does it make you feel safer to have more stable ground to enjoy after you throw me off?”
“Stop that,” I hiss.
He plants his feet firm. “My apologies.”
I close the distance between us and take his hand.
As his shoulders go rigid and his fingers hesitantly thread with mine, I inch closer, let myself trace the shape of his jaw.
“Danielle…” he breathes. “No. That name troubles you, doesn’t it? What should I call you?”
“Anything. You have already called me by a dozen endearments. What would you name me?”
He utters a curse, running the tip of his nose up my bridge. “Mine.”
“Yours, then,” I say, ignoring the way his nearness is getting under my skin.
I know love. The kind you can see, anyway.
I’ve been told countless times to look in love during photoshoots.
I have never before actually been interested in someone.
I have spent most of my life pretending I’m not violently uncomfortable.
Maybe the fae have something about them. Something hypnotic.
Maybe pretending this time will be more than easy.
I kiss his jaw, let my lips graze his ear. “You’ll protect me?”
“Yes.” The word leaves him raw.
“And you’ll take care of me?”
“Always.” He sinks his free hand into my nightgown, gripping the fabric. “I will give you anything you want at any time you want. Simply say the word.”
“And, in exchange, I just have to love you?”
He laughs; the sound is nothing short of deranged. “Oh, Mine.” He kisses my temple. “You need only exist. My expectations are practically hopes, and they are not the price you must pay for my devotion. Meet them or don’t, I have chosen to cherish you.”
What a…confusing thing to say.
I rest my cheek against his chest.
His heart thunders in my ear.
He gently clutches his fingers in my hair and tugs my head off him. “Hey, now,” he murmurs, “you don’t need to listen to that. It’s overeager at the moment.”
“Because of me?” Because of a human woman you stole from a pub two days ago? A human woman who had not showered consistently for two weeks when you met her? A human woman whom, as far as I know, you haven’t even seen?
“Revel in it,” he says.
I would. Really. If it weren’t so mindboggling.
All my life, I’ve been pretty.
All my life, it’s been clear that I’m not supposed to take up space. Now that I’ve gotten older, my mother started worrying about how long she’d be able to keep me pretty, so she arranged to have me sold off. It was the perfect plan.
If I were sold, my prettiness could shrivel. It wouldn’t matter. I’d take up less space in her house, and more in her bank account. Which is what she’s always wanted.
This man doesn’t know what I look like.
This man doesn’t know that I’m pretty.
This man, in the middle of the night, made time to take me to see the sun.
For reasons unknown, he prepared a place for me in his home.
He showed me nearly every room, told me they were mine.
He fixes me breakfast and runs me baths and treats me with a precision I wouldn’t think possible for someone his size.
I don’t understand any of this.
He is holding my hand and my hair. He is close and in control.
But he has not moved me in closer or touched me inappropriately even though he’s blindfolded and could blame a lot on being unable to see if he wanted to.
Even just earlier today, when he asked me to check his messages, he accidentally touched my stomach when he handed me his phone.
And he apologized.
“I don’t…” I shudder when a breeze hits me, and he blocks the wind with his long sleeve.
“You don’t?” he coaxes.
“I don’t understand.”
“You were made for me. What else is there to understand? Of course you are precious and deserving of everything.”
“Made for you?” I echo, sniffling. I don’t understand why I’m having a breakdown right now. On a cliff. Where people should absolutely not have breakdowns. I’m probably just tired.
Or, you know, maybe I was kidnapped a day and a half ago.
Yeah, on second thought, having a breakdown right now seems reasonable enough.
Fighting through the brokenness, I say, “Like…a soulmate?”
The words sound stupid leaving my mouth.
And the longer silence fills the space between us, the stupider I feel.
I drop my face. “I-I’m sorry. That was dumb. I don’t know what I’m saying. I—”
To bring my face back up, he pulls my hair.
An unwelcome sensation flits through my brain, shutting me up.
“My love,” he says, filling his chest with air. Letting the breath out slowly, he murmurs, “Have I… Did I not tell you…we were soulmates?”
I blink.
Um.
No.
Can’t say that’s come up.
I whisper, “No?”
He swears.
Untangling us, he clamps a hand to his mouth and begins pacing around me. Heat highlighted by the rising sun deepens his cheeks until the porcelain is splotched with red.
Planting his back firmly to me, he jerks his phone out of his pocket, presses the lock button, and snaps at Siri to call Xios.
The phone rings.
A grumbling distant, “Hello?” works its way through the line.
“Xios. Are you up?”
“Mmph. A ringing phone will do that to a person.”
A feminine voice I know very well mumbles, “Who is it?”
Zahra.
I step a little closer to Castor, heart racing, stomach tumbling.
“Razah, go back to sleep,” Castor says.
“Are you taking care of my Dani?” Zahra quips, her voice fuller now. “Why are you calling so late? Did you lose her? Castor, I swear if you’ve lost my friend—”
“I’m coming over,” he snaps. “Tell Xios to be up.”
With that, he cancels the call and grabs me before I have a chance to compute what’s happening.