Chapter 1
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There are eggshells on the floor, aren’t there?
Pro: I do not have a hangover.
Con: I literally have no idea what happened last night.
Fighting eyes nearly glued shut from sleep, I squint through the bars of my bird cage, staring at the cloud cover washed across the sky. Castor took me to Russia. I met Zahra in person. Baby Ash. A fire. A bottle of wine.
He’s not bad.
Dragging my arm up, I swipe a fingertip across my lip and wish that I meant I had no recollection of last night when I said I have no idea what happened, but that isn’t the case.
I remember everything.
I just do not rightly know what came over me.
The man drugged me so I could talk, and talk, and talk. I distinctly recall him pouring me the glass of faerie wine, smiling, and saying, Here, Mine, this will help loosen your lips.
How dare he get me in a position where I couldn’t shut up while he obsessed over imprinting menial shapes into the memory of my tissue. His fingers sliding across the silk of this infuriating nightgown is going to haunt me forever and a day.
Who am I?
Who am I?
I mean—Hello! He snatched me out of a bar and dumped me in a cage.
He tells me we’re soulmates and promises to dismember anyone I deem unworthy of their limbs.
He throws knives at things when he mopes!
That is not the kind of man I should be getting drunk around.
That is not the kind of man I should wake up and think about.
Firmly, I shake my head to rid it of giddiness where it concerns Castor’s hyper-protectiveness. Primarily because it should not make me giddy.
A possessive, violent man is not charming. I’m one mistake away from finding myself at the wrong end of his temper. And then what?
People with unstable characters only ever make one thing consistent: the eggshells scattered perpetually around them.
That’s why I jerk upright and throw my legs over the side of my swinging bed when the bedroom door slams open.
My head whips to find Castor sliding into the room, a tray in his hands, and music spilling from what I can only imagine is the phone in his pocket.
He is…singing along.
To “The Red Means I Love You” by Madds Buckley. And. It is…
It is an incredibly chilling bundle of lyrics—filled with desperate, manic infatuation.
A shiver rocks my spine as he balances the tray in one hand and lets the key for my cage appear between the fingers of the other.
The lock clicks, and he swings the door open as the chorus dims into a new verse.
Planting the tray on my lap, he presses a long, deep kiss to my forehead. “Good morning, my precious heartbeat.”
My heartbeat skips, trips, stumbles, and collapses in a frantic heap.
Shoulders bunching I pull back, wide-eyed. My gaze drops from him as he returns to…singing demented lyrics. When he spins and collides with the foot of my bed, the chains swing, and I have to brace the tray so the food won’t spill.
The food is an array of dinosaur pancakes.
With strawberry spikes and sliced banana scales.
As the song ends, Castor frees a sigh and fumbles a moment to locate the pause button on his phone.
Then, it is silent, and the bed sways, and I’m looking at his smile while I hold what seems to be my breakfast.
Is it worth crunching eggshells in an effort to see where my limits with this man lie?
Maybe, just maybe, his breaking point will lie far, far outside anything I would ever do, and I can exist in peace for the rest of my days?
Or maybe he’ll snap my neck in a fit of rage.
Mm. Yeah. The pros and cons on this one are rather unappetizing, aren’t they?
Best not to press it until I have more information.
“You…made this?” I ask.
He grins, lifting his fingers into a heart shape. “With love.”
Yeah, yeah, okay, sure. With “love” and skill.
I mean.
These are very clearly dinosaurs.
I could not manage this with both my eyes. If he did it blindfolded, I’ll admit I’m impressed.
My spine arches when his fingers graze my back. The next thing I know, he’s toying with strands of my hair. The sensory experience is lost in a zone between I’d rather shave my head than let this continue and please don’t ever, ever stop.
“Have you any desires I might be able to fulfill today, Mine?”
Is the Mine thing really going to stick?
I’d chafe at the ownership if it weren’t my own fault.
Soft affection is safe, and if his idea of owning lands heavily on protecting like it seems to, I’ll be okay as long as I don’t ever indicate that I like something else more than him or the things he provides for me.
So, you know. No pressure. Totally…safe.
If his reaction to my awe of the moth prince’s castle last night is any indication, envy is on my list of things to be careful of.
Lucky for me stroking egos is on my resume.
Or, at least, it should be. Instead, my resume is full of pictures of me in my underwear.
And those pictures are all over the world at any given time.
I suppose, with that knowledge, there are worse things than having a powerful faerie soulmate who seems willing to burn the world for me…
I might need that kind of fire to cleanse me of my past.
Come on, me, we can make the most of this.
Setting the tray down, I lie back, resting my head on his shoulder and turning my face to meet his. My nose grazes his cheek, which promptly floods crimson, so I adjust myself slightly and ask, “Do you have any desires?”
“We…” He frees a short breath then clears his throat. “We could go shopping. Razah suggested I should give you an opportunity to get things that are familiar. To help this place feel like home.”
The last thing I want is for anywhere to feel like the home I know.
That said, getting some things is probably in my best interests…
My mother didn’t like the idea that my periods might interfere with casting calls or chance leaks during jobs, so I’ve been on the shot for years. Because of…the wedding…and Rodrick’s potential interest in…heirs…my mother said whether or not I continued my birth control was up to him.
I’m due to run out soon.
I need to prepare for withdrawal bleeding and then the inevitable return of the glorious hormone cycle.
“Love?” Castor murmurs. “You seem distressed? If you’d rather not, we don’t have to.”
I feign a nervous smile—wait, no, that’s genuine. I’m feigning the reasoning behind it. Gently, I say, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but do you have…human money?”
He huffs. “Unlike some people, I do not have the luxury of minions to run my financial schemes in the other realm. However, I do have someone whose friendship I would like to test. And that someone has a credit card she is wont to use irresponsibly whenever it is most funny.”
Oh fantastic.
I don’t have great options here.
If I say I don’t want to go, I won’t have any supplies when I need them.
If I say I do want to go, I will be pad and tampon shopping with a faerie man.
And, another thing, who knows if faeries even have periods?
Frelsi hasn’t had one, but I don’t know if that’s because she’s too young or if she won’t ever get them.
If the fae don’t get them, I might find myself explaining the menstrual cycle to a handsome faerie man.
I do doubt I’ll be able to contact Zahra for help here.
Asking if I can use Castor’s phone to message her would leave a trail of my messages.
Deleting them afterward may raise suspicions if he checks to see what we talked about later, and he definitely seems like the type to check on that.
He’d overhear a phone call, and I can’t exactly trot off through the trod to her house unattended, considering he seems very unwilling to let me go outside arm’s reach if I’m not behind bars.
Castor’s mouth shifts into a frown as his lips part.
Before he can speak, I interject, “Hey. Where’s Frel?”
“The hatchling woke before you and fell asleep after eating a stack of tiny pancakes taller than her.”
I blink, and some of my anxieties shrivel up. “You…made her a stack of tiny pancakes?”
His smile is nearly tender. “Of course I did. She is quite dear to you, is she not? That makes her quite dear to me, and feeding someone is the most basic of ways to care for them.”
The words blindside me and my heart considerably—on multiple levels.
Without much warning, his lips find my forehead as his hand braces in my hair. “Eat your breakfast, my feather. Assuming Willow was up late reading, as she normally is, she may just be contemplating existence at a functional level soon.”
What a mood.
“Willow?” I ask. “The…person you steal eggs from?”
Beaming, he says, “Well, technically I steal them from her chickens. But, yes. Precisely.”