Chapter 1
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Ah, yes. The sound of frail hope breaking…
Castor
“I would assume that the reason I didn’t turn to stone when I met your eyes is the same as the reason a dream eater’s fear-soaked presence doesn’t affect me,” Pila murmurs, cradling her fussing baby, Terra.
The wee dryad began complaining the moment I entered her sister-mother’s small, single room home nestled into the trunk of a tree in Willow’s woods.
Needless to say, Terra is almost as bad as Ash once was when it comes to hating me.
Seated atop one of the toadstools Pila directed Zahra and I to earlier, I cross my ankles and attempt to collapse in on my flesh. Unfortunately, for me and the infant, the request to vanish into nothingness goes unanswered.
Gently, Pila continues her task of crushing my hopes and dreams. “That is to say…my immunity isn’t because I’m a dryad.
Forming a contract with you, Zahra, and allowing your ability as a star nymph to facilitate sharing my powers with Castor won’t work because it isn’t a power that can be taken or bestowed. ”
My bones crack as I clench my fists.
“You’re our only hope right now, Pila,” Zahra urges, on my behalf, and it hurts to swallow because of how right she is. Pila…is my only hope. And that hope is slipping through my fingers. “Is there any way at all to package your immunity?”
Pila—heartless, probably—frees a quiet laugh. “It’s not impossible to achieve; it’s just difficult and risky to test.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, voice tight. I have spent ages calculating and testing magics, seeking loopholes and cures, to no avail. If what Pila speaks of now is something achievable, I am not above breaking myself into pieces in order to obtain it. No amount of risk will sway me.
I would do anything to safely see my soulmate. Anything.
“Pollux says I’m unaffected because love is stronger than fear. He says that every so often, a being born of love enters the world. He says I am such a being. The answer you’re looking for, Castor, might be love.”
My heart jerks, and I rise, toppling the toadstool.
Terra’s fussing transforms into wailing cries.
I flinch.
“Castor,” Zahra snaps, “what are you doing?”
My mouth opens, but words don’t come readily. Shaking my head to clear it, I finally say, “The solution isn’t here. After everything I’ve done that has affected you, I appreciate your time and willingness to meet with me, Pila. I think I should stop troubling your infant now.”
Like a saint, the dryad woman murmurs, “All things happen in good time for unseen reasons, and I am in no place to judge you for situations I do not fully comprehend. Since Zahra asked an audience with me today on your behalf, I have given much thought to what has happened because of you, and I have reached the decision that you are not my enemy. Ash is not a dryad. You did something to force his sapling into bearing his fruit. Life as innocent as that little boy doesn’t sprout from a place devoid of effort or care.
In the time I have known you, you have hurt no one.
You expressed terror and regret when you thought you had hurt me.
You have helped Alana. You have befriended Alexios.
You have found Dani—your soulmate. That in itself proves something has changed within you between the time when Pollux and Cael sought to distance themselves from you, and now.
If I might be so bold as to ask that you communicate better with those of us who belong outside your checkered history, it may do you good.
Your enemies’ allies, after all, make the best friends. ”
She absolutely isn’t wrong.
However, I am not the best at making friends.
Filling my lungs with burning air, I say, “I will think on your counsel,” then I march, hoping to put as much space between us as possible.
“Castor,” Zahra calls, catching up to me after I’ve left Pila’s on my way back to Willow’s so I can retrieve my beloved, whom I may never ever see. Grabbing my sleeve, she dares to stop me in my tracks. “What has gotten into you?”
I rip my clothes out of her grasp. “You have to ask? I’m never going to get to see my soulmate. I’m never going to sleep outside of a cage again for the sake of her safety. I will never believe she is safe with me. I will never—”
“We found one thing that doesn’t work. So what? It’s a place to start.”
Laughter shreds painfully through my chest. “One thing, Razah? One?” I swallow, wetting my lips as I separate us, for her own safety.
I am shaking, and I do not know what I might do.
“This is nowhere near my first attempt. For a time, even Pollux was trying to help me. We said we’d find the cures for our unique constitutions—together.
” My voice breaks. I battle to get my emotions under control.
“Now look at us. Together is just as much of a fantasy as a cure.”
“Pollux found his soulmate in Kass, and she was his cure. How do we know that Dani won’t be yours? For all we know right now, she’s already immune to you.”
My teeth bare as I hiss, “True. Yet do you believe I would ever test such a thing? She is everything. My everything. If I am wrong, watching her face turn to stone would—” I gasp breath, throat raw. “—it would do worse than kill me.”
Unwisely, Zahra marches up to me in her obnoxiously large boots and pulls me into a hug.
The fight evacuates my limbs as I hang limp in her embrace.
“It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs, naively, fingers combing through my hair, as though I’m a child. The sensation is so reminiscent to how Cael would hold me…but there’s no judgment or expectation in Zahra’s arms.
Tears prick in my eyes, leaking to soak my blindfold.
She squeezes me. “I know okay isn’t the best language for a faerie and in your culture equates largely to nothing, but please try to know I mean it in a human context.
Things will work out for the better. You’re family, Castor.
Whatever happens, you are not going to face it alone, all right?
You’ve got Xios and me. Maybe Willow. Probably Alana.
Definitely Pollux. People care about you.
We’re not going to let you end up alone again. ”
Definitely Pollux?
What a cruel thing to…
Every day, for a week and a half, Pollux has used Finch to send me encouragement. Does he…still care? Does it matter if he does? Time erodes many things. Maybe he’s forgotten why it’s a very bad idea to care about someone like me.
“I’ve been abandoned before,” I whisper. “What’s stopping it from happening again?”
Zahra shrugs as she pulls back. “Who knows? If I had to guess, I’d say all of us. All of us have to stop it from happening again. A good place to start is probably with communication, so lay it on me, bro. What’s going on upstairs?”
Given that I am many centuries old and this woman is barely a quarter of one makes this whole situation surreal. Regardless, I murmur, “I’m scared. I do not want to lose Danielle. Or you. Or anyone. Not again. Not anymore.”
“Is there anything you can do to make sure you don’t, and is there anything we can do to support you?”
I grumble, “Is Xios’s therapeutic tendency contagious, or are you two simply just this alike?”
“Yes, anyway. The question?”
I plant a palm over one eye, feel the heel of my hand in the socket.
“I could gouge them out again. They lose their power once they’ve died…
but they grow back when I heal, like a curse.
I’ve never managed to get the—” I swear.
“—things to scar away, and not even I can bleed forever. I will always be a danger if I can’t fix this.
I will always be one mistake away from disaster. ”
Deep unsettle rises into the air between us, the scent catching on the tip of my tongue.
I deflate. “My apologies. Was that too gruesome to describe in casual conversation?”
“I play horror games. Not much is too gory for me. I’m just…stuck on the again. How many times have you…gouged out your eyes?”
Who’s to say? I have forgotten. Dropping my arms, I link my hands in my sleeves.
“It’s of minimal importance. I won’t give up just yet.
At least not while you still believe in me.
” I force a frail smile. “I’d like to go home now, though.
Now that I’ve found my soulmate, it makes me anxious to be away from her for too long.
I’m also worried. She gave me the impression recently that she finds Willow somewhat intense, and I doubt either of us knows what the woman might do on a whim. ”
Zahra laughs.
But when we make it back to Willow’s quaint abode with its scent of plants, and earth, and chickens, I am not laughing.
“Where is she?” My voice quivers the moment I’ve pushed inside to find the calm cottage home devoid of any sensation of my love’s presence. A touch of her scent lingers, but it’s not full enough to suggest that she’s been here within…within the hour.
“Somewhere in Cael’s palace, probably.” Willow stifles a yawn and stretches out in her usual place on the couch. “I wanted to take her on a tour, but Cael whisked her away before I could even show her the job board. Jerk.”
The remaining half of my soul removes itself from my body. Fury flashes, red hot, in my brain, and I struggle to hold onto my impulses.
“Whoa, okay.” Zahra’s voice breaks through the static growing mold in my brain. “This is a fixable problem, Castor. You stay here with Willow. I’ll go get Dani. It’s not an issue.”
“Not an issue?” I snap. My breaths shorten.
“She’s with Cael. Sweet, kind, perfect Cael.
” Venom clings like plaque to my tongue.
“By now, he’ll have offered her everything she could ever want, without strings or threats attached.
She will have no reason to come home to me.
She can roam free there, in his domain, in the sun.
” Twisting, I pace, slam my hand into the wall beside the door so I won’t put it through any bodies, sputter, “How could you? How could you take her to Cael? I trusted you!”
Everything inside begins to break down as panic overwhelms.
“Calm down,” Willow drawls. “Is she your soulmate, or Cael’s? If she’s yours, nothing Cael offers her will compare to being with you. So there’s nothing to worry about…right?”
Air abandons me. My lips part, go slack. Hoarse and hollow, I whisper, “You…don’t believe she’s my soulmate, do you? You’re testing me. Testing our bond, a bond she can’t even feel in her human body.”
“Testing you is a little dramatic. I don’t know and don’t care if she’s your soulmate.
All I know is that she’s scared and you’re desperate, Castor.
We both know Cael won’t hurt her or force her to do anything.
Loving her means letting her have what’s best for her; therefore, if he can really offer her everything she wants and you aren’t a part of that, so be it. ”
So be it?
So be it?
“However,” Willow says while I’m fighting every urge in me to remove her head, “if she does pick you—after everything—it will confirm to all of us that she is yours. It will confirm to her that you are someone important, even if she can’t feel the soul bond in the way fae blood can.
It will change the dynamic between you two for the better.
” Entirely calm, the woman mutters, “She needs a choice.”
“She has a choice. She has access to every last one of you,” I spit. “She knows exactly where the trod to Razah is. I don’t keep her chained in my castle!” I keep her caged at night purely for her protection. Which I am nearly positive I told her.
“You don’t need chains when everything about you exhibits power.
It’s hard to leave an abusive situation.
It’s hard to get past the hurdle of inconveniencing near-perfect strangers.
It’s easier to accept help from a prince as pragmatic as Cael when it’s already been placed in front of her.
” Willow stands. I feel the tension in the motion, but it does not come paired at all with the fear it should as she closes some distance between us.
My fingers sink into the drywall to keep my nails from finding a place in her throat.
If I kill her…that’s it. That’s the end. No more hope. For anything. Danielle would never forgive me. No one would ever forgive me.
And, truly, I would never be able to forgive myself, either.
“Castor,” Willow says, as though she has any right to speak my name in such a reprimanding tone, “Dani has been abused her whole life. She’s in survival mode.
That isn’t going to change unless she has the opportunity to choose you—when she doesn’t feel like she has to, when maybe it would be easier not to. ”
“I will always be easier not to choose, Willow. Always.”
Willow’s hand against my back makes every muscle in me constrict. And I…
I can’t understand why she thinks this is safe. Why she thinks she can approach a wild animal and treat it like it’s tame.
But she does.
She does, and she says, “I’m not so sure about that,” as though she believes it.
Human as she is, I know she can lie, but perhaps in becoming a vampire’s thrall she has gained some part of her soulmate’s ability to write truth into being, because her quiet, confident words almost convince me it could be true.
“Loving someone is about choosing what’s best for them,” she continues. “Even when that goes against our own desires. What Dani needs is a place to heal and take charge of her own life. If she’s your soulmate—”
“She is my soulmate,” I hiss. “I feel her heartbeat in my chest. I taste the sweetness of her scent on my lips. She is mine.”
“—then you will one day appreciate knowing that you didn’t manipulate her into caring for you. You will one day appreciate having been chosen.”
What a lovely delusion.
It hurts to swallow. It hurts to pry my fingers out of the wall.
It hurts to exist. But I manage to throw open Willow’s front door anyway, even knowing that I have never once in my entire life been chosen, by anyone.
Striding down the porch steps, heading toward the nearest trod that will lead me to my vacant home, I say, “She is my soulmate.”
So the least she can do is break my heart herself.