Chapter 1 #2
A small smile lightens the weight in my chest. Turning my face, I kiss his palm, his wrist. I feel his body shudder as I trail my kisses against his veins. Letting his hand slip free, I wrap him in a hug. “Are there rules you expect me to follow in order to maintain your devotion?”
Voice rough, he says, “No.”
“Not a single one?”
“I can nurture my love well enough on my own, Mine. It is not your responsibility to make sure I continue to love you.”
When I kiss his neck, he swears. When I speak, my words are wet. “Do you have any idea what that means to me?”
“Mayhaps, in some part.” A quivering breath rocks him.
“We have both lived beneath the burden of expectations that promise us a place, yet nothing we do ever seems to consistently live up to the pressure. I intend to marvel you, in every state, when you are polished and practiced, and when you are raw and breaking. I am desperate to figure out which I prefer, yet terrified what you might think of me should I go drunk on the idea of you helpless for me…”
“What if you don’t like who I am when I’m not trying to be what you want?”
“Who you are is exactly what every part of my soul yearns for. That’s what it means to be soulmates. We are destined to complete each other.”
I cannot begin to express how much peace I find in that concept. “How do you know I’m your soulmate?”
“Because, I am selfish.” Breath fills him.
“I am selfish, but the moment I found you, the moment your scent invaded my lungs, I knew I would die for you. My reaction to your existence was visceral and crippling and selfless. Never in all my ages had a mere scent taken hold of my mind and body so violently. Before you, I thought I’d felt everything.
Now…I’m not sure I’ve felt anything before in my life.
No emotion compares to what you bring to my heart.
No sensation can hope to graze my skin in the way your lips and heat have.
There is no contest, no correlation, no condition that exists to express what you do to my very cells. ”
While I understand Willow’s concerns where this man bleeds desperation, I am also very content with this explanation.
He’s a faerie. He can’t lie to me. He can’t lie at all.
So this has to be his truth. Despite my ability to see beyond fae glamour, my humanity must yet keep the sensation of a soulmate bond out of reach.
I…do wonder what it might feel like, though.
Would it be just as crippling? Would I lose myself to it just as violently? Would I welcome the ability to fall into the intoxication?
Am I not already toying with the idea?
“My feather…” he whispers, “…can it be… Are you considering accepting me as your soulmate?”
That question stalls in my thoughts, and my brows dip. “It’s something I have to accept? It’s not just something that…is?”
“Acceptance is not forced. Rejecting me would erode our connection until nothing remains. You…” He swallows. “You would slip away from me. If I let you.”
A prickle of unease attempts to settle in my stomach, but it cannot hope to mingle with the prickle from before, that prickle—perhaps—of desperation. I ask, “Would you let me?”
He, so gently, kisses my cheek and whispers, “No. Until my final moment, I intend to be with you.”
“So even if acceptance on a cosmic scale isn’t forced, you’re still forcing me?”
“I could never force you to love me. I simply can no longer tolerate the idea of a world without you. If you wish to reject me, it would kill me, my love. Your rejection would multiply the pain of loneliness that I have suffered for centuries. It would be the unfettered truth of what I already believe about myself—which is that I am unworthy, unwanted, and unloveable. Such a confirmation is not something I could bear to exist beyond.”
So. Rejecting him would mean killing him? “Isn’t that…emotional manipulation?”
“Only if my death means something to you.”
“Wouldn’t anyone’s blood on my hands mean something to me?”
He laughs.
I stay silent.
His smile vanishes. “Oh. You were serious.”
Uh. Yes. I was. I was serious, and now I’m worried about how much blood is on this madman’s hands and how much of it meant nothing to him.
“Life is precious,” he says. “Within it, I have known good, which I have come to love, mourn, and pity. I have also known wickedness, which I have come to despise. Finally, however, there is life I have not known. Such existence I am indifferent to. Those I have never known vanish like an inconsequential ripple in the ocean. Whether their end comes by my hand or another’s matters not, for nothing about them matters to me at all.
It’s true that in recent years I have gained more appreciation for the value of life in general, but there are too many souls who have met their end in my apathy.
” His fingers dance through the waves of my hair.
“Love me, Mine, and make me yours. Or hate me, and make me suffer for eternity beneath the agony of your ire. Either is fine. Only rejection would cast me to indifference, and if you have the heart to reject me, then, no, I will not be someone whose blood settles on your hands. My life would slip through the cracks of your fingers, as inconsequential as it has always been. Moreover, it would hardly be your fault that I was not strong enough to go on without you. Rest assured, if such is the path you choose, I could in no right mind plant the dagger in your hand.” He kisses my nose, smile forlorn.
“No matter how dearly I would wish for your own two hands to be what cleaves my soul from the living, it is not a burden I should ever think to place on you.”
Yikes.
And, yet, this means I have options.
I can claim him as my soulmate and stay with a man who has clear anger issues, a control streak, and a pitiful grasp on reality…or I can reject him and let him die without me.
If Willow was telling the truth, then there are other powerful faeries willing to protect me from the humans who threaten me.
Not only that, I’ve seen a cherry tree palace in a brighter land filled with creatures that seemed kind.
I could live in a different part of Faerie and never have to worry about my mother or Rodrick again.
I have options.
For the first time in my life, I have options. Real solid choices that are mine alone to make.
Big and small. Options for moments of weakness. Options for where my life will go.
My attention drifts from Castor to the giant teddy bear, and I realize which arms I have already picked first.
How…frightening.
“What troubles you?” Castor murmurs, dotting kisses up the bridge of my nose to my forehead. “Your spirit is conflicted. Claiming a soulmate is as painless as rejecting one.”
I wet my lips. “I’m afraid of making a mistake.”
“Ah. That is understandable. As far as I can tell, you have been raised to doubt yourself for the sake of those who once controlled you. We both know that an insecure slave poses fewer problems with obedience.”
My stomach clenches, swirling with nausea.
Helping nothing, he spins me, clasps my hands in his, crosses them over my body, and reels my back against his chest in a hug.
“Forgive me. I’ll not be delicate with the truth even if it upsets you.
” His lips land on my neck, and I drag in a sharp breath.
Deliberately, he kisses me, and my knees weaken. “You were abused. It’s obvious.”
First, Willow calls my character fragile, and now this? Can everyone see doormat tattooed into my flesh—even when they’re blindfolded? I guess being treated like a person doesn’t erase the history that’s made me into what I have become.
I am weak.
Willow saw it.
And Castor knows it.
Lips against my ear, he says, “It would take very little to have you begging to please me. You have already toyed close to such a precipice, haven’t you, Mine? This closeness you incite with me is the same you allowed from the man I took you from at the club. Isn’t it?”
I swallow, hard.
Castor’s voice lowers. “Use me, so I can use you. It’s how you’ve survived. It’s how you’ve given yourself an illusion of control once you broke free from the clutches of your mother.”
Every muscle in me tenses.
“I may be blindfolded, but I’m not blind, sweetheart.
I understand the compulsion to become what someone else desires for the sake of self-preservation or acceptance.
However, you will never be ready to make any real decisions so long as you exist with this mentality that subdues your wants in favor of another’s out of fear.
You will never learn who you are or what you want so long as fear commands your actions.
It took me many years to come to that conclusion.
I would, if possible, like to spare you the pain of that journey. ”
“I’m sorry.” I choke on the words. “I—”
“Shh.” His nose skims my skin. “It’s all right, love.
I’m not upset. You are welcomed…nay. Encouraged to use me in any way that pleases you so long as it is not at your own expense.
Trust that, in this relationship between us, you are in control.
” Freeing me, he steps firmly back. “If you aren’t ready to accept me as your soulmate, it doesn’t need to eat you up inside.
You can take as long as you wish deciding what to do with me, and, in the meantime, I don’t require you to pander to my emotions…
even if I do like it.” Smiling deviously, he grazes his fingers over his lips.
“If you decide to claim me someday, kiss me. Until then, be at peace. Whether you love me, hate me, or kill me in the end, I will cherish this time we’ve spent together.
If I am little more than a stepping stone on your odyssey to greatness, crush me beneath your shoe.
I relish the attention of your bootsole, and it is far more than I have come to believe I deserve. ”
Before I need to figure out a response to…all that, Castor claps his hands, startling me as he sweeps out of my cage. Firmly setting the entire matter aside, he says, “It grows late. Shall I run a bath for you to enjoy while I fix supper?”
Somehow, I wind up in warm water infused with orchid. Alone with my thoughts, I grip a hand to my throat where the caress of Castor’s lips burn.
Whether you love me, hate me, or kill me in the end, I will cherish this time we’ve spent together.
Heat radiates in my face, in my chest—in my soul.
It’s not fair. Saying stuff like that to me when he can’t lie is not fair.
My love, do you dislike my touch?
As my heart flutters, I swallow, and my own drunken reply thunders in the back of my head, foreboding, foreshadowing, a prophecy suggesting that I am completely and utterly doomed.
Sinking into the water until only the tip of my nose remains above the surface, I cover my blazing face with damp hands and try not to think about how deeply nice this devotion is…or how deeply crucial therapy should be.