Chapter 24 #2
Castor’s fingers lift to graze his damp blindfold.
“Even if we don’t exacerbate the situation, we still are what we are.
There are still pieces of us that we can’t escape from.
I am dangerous, and my mind has spent too much time in the dark.
It’s too late for me to become good or right.
I am warped. I am selfish, but I love you.
And love cannot exist with my selfishness.
I likely shall never see your face in the flesh, Mine, and something about seeing a picture of you runs against the grain of my nerves.
I don’t want the temptation it might cause.
I don’t want the pale shadow of reality to haunt me.
I am doomed to forever long for things I can’t have. ”
“And…that makes you angry?” I ask.
His forehead drops against my shoulder before his arms snake around my waist. “You can tell?”
“It’s a hum beneath everything else I’m learning to sense. You are furious. Before, your anger came out to shield the fear. Now, the positions have switched.”
“You have already learned to read our bond?” he murmurs. “Did the cat teach you?”
“He told me to practice feeling the magic all around, so I could weave it into spells.”
Castor mutters a curse. “Foolishness. The magic all around is weak. You don’t seek outside of yourself for spellcasting.
Spells are art. Like writing, or drawing, or music.
Unlike art, where the mediums are apparent and physical, the medium for magic is confined by your aptitude for creativity alone.
You turn your own thoughts and feelings into spells or displays.
You should not rob the world of its power.
It loses much of its potency when you do, though it does figure such a parasitic approach would be the vampiric method.
” Castor’s breath fans against my neck when he sighs. “What else did you learn?”
“I healed my finger after he pricked me.”
Bristling, Castor pulls back. “That is what caused the scent of blood? The cat harmed you?”
I hum, glancing sidelong off my overprotective soulmate. “For science.”
His voice hardens. “No, science is something else. He harmed you for magic. Which is far less important given how it’s utterly unnecessary.”
“But I can heal myself now.”
He scowls. “When you have fully embraced your faerie blood, healing will be something you fight against. It’s so natural a consequence that we don’t choose to heal but rather to stop healing. Therefore, you have been harmed for no reason at all.”
I feel like I should be taking notes on whatever Castor says right now.
“What else?” he snaps.
“Your hairpin. I turned a shadow rose he made into that.”
Taken aback, Castor blurts, “You stole the cat’s magic? You used rebirth on an ancient?”
“Huh?”
His jaw locks. “Zylus is seventeen hundred years old. And a head official in Cael’s court.
And now he has seen you heal as well as rebuild his magic.
” Rising, Castor pulls me to my feet. “I have been stupid. I had thought you were more subdued from your past, less determined. I had hoped, anyway, on some level…” He twists toward the cage exit and begins pulling me through the halls, toward his library.
“I find myself at odds with my wish that you might become gloriously you and that you might remain helpless enough that I never have to worry about you straying from my side. This change in you…it’s beautiful.
Vibrant. Ravishing. But it has come so quickly.
I was not prepared.” Reaching the stacks of books in the room filled with nothing but shelves upon shelves, Castor coasts his fingers along a series of leatherbounds with embossed lettering. Then he tilts one forward.
A staircase opens in the floor, spiraling down.
Excitement ignites.
Castor doesn’t take the chance that I’ll trip if he drags me down the steps, so he whirls, settles my body in his arms, then carries me into the belly of the secret passage with a chilling confidence.
Once at the bottom, a vast room cluttered with all manner of trinkets and tools makes itself known. Magic buzzes in the air, fire and ice, electricity and currents. Weapons behind glass glint in the faerie lights that burst to life around us. Whispers of power trickle behind my ears.
Castor dumps me into a large chair while I attempt to process everything swirling before my eyes.
I locate an ornate door past the menagerie. “There’s more?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Castor asks.
I point. “What’s through there?”
“Probably the bathroom,” he notes, flippant. “It’s not important to your education. Don’t go in there.”
Don’t go in probably the bathroom, huh? Something tells me the word probably is doing a lot of work and that place isn’t a bathroom at all.
“So, you want to learn magic,” Castor mutters, distracting me.
My heart flutters. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I repeat.
“Why do you want to learn magic?” he clarifies.
“To become strong enough to feel safe on my own.”
He tuts, disgusted. “Repulsive,” he hisses. “You want to learn magic so you can be alone? Do you really want to be alone, Danielle?”
There it is. My name again. Rougher this time. Provided through gritted teeth and harsh emotions.
It makes my flesh warm.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to be alone. I just want to know I could survive it if I had to.”
“You will never have to. Not so long as I am here. So try again. Why do you want to learn magic? Why, when everything is to be provided for you and you are to be loved to the point of bruising, do you care about harnessing the power within you?”
Because it’s cool. Because it’s alluring. Because power will always be seductive.
And power is something I have never had the luxury of before.
But he’s right.
If I don’t need it for safety and stability, why do I want it at all?
Castor’s already said that magic is utterly unnecessary. But for something so unnecessary, he sure seems to have a lab full of it under his castle.
Why?
I pry at our bond, searching for clues, until—violently—my access shuts down.
I startle.
“No cheating,” Castor murmurs.
My heart trips, lonely, in my chest, and I choke on the feeling. “Stop it,” I plead, stumbling to my feet. “Don’t do that. Bring it back.” Frantic, I grab his arms. “I’m sorry. I won’t cheat. But bring it back. Please.”
He catches me, whispers a swear, and does not do as I ask. “You feel me this strongly already? My absence already sets you off like this?”
My flesh prickles, unease rampant the longer the sensation of our bond is out of reach.
His lips turn down. “Imagine if you were not fledgling. Imagine the sensation of me so strong that it’s constant and present whether you’re trying to reach it or not.
And then, my love, imagine it being ripped away unexpectedly when I am not physically accessible.
That is what you did to me this afternoon. ”
Tears bead in my eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I know…and my reaction was far more violent than you could ever deserve.” He cups my cheek, catches a falling tear on his thumb, then draws the droplet to his lips.
After he’s had his taste, he closes the inches between us and opens his mouth against my skin, taking everything from the trail cascading down my cheek.
His breath and curse meet my trembling body.
I feel his lips smile against me. “Mayhaps you will be destined to need me regardless of how strong you can become. Mayhaps it is too late for us in many wonderful ways.” His mouth settles at my neck and pulls tickling wishes into my chest. “Beg for me, my feather.”
I shudder. “Castor.” My voice wobbles.
He licks.
“Please.”
The rush of his presence returns, swells, hits my heart so hard and fast I lose my air. His heartbeat nestles near mine—feeding oxygen back into my lungs. Relief pours through my mind. My limbs weaken on the stuff, and I collapse against Castor’s chest.
He laughs, the sound dark and depraved. It starts in a burst, then it settles lower, more steady.
“Of course,” he whispers, chuckling and running his fingers through my hair.
“Forgive me and my emotion-clouded judgment. I am a fool of nerves for you, my darling. Your information came from Willow. The most apathetic, independent, human I know. Her body is not evolving toward honing her fae pieces like yours. She will never know this. She will never feel her soul bond with the depth that we are destined to.” Gentle, nearly patronizing, Castor snuggles me and murmurs, “You will never be able to exist without needing me now, my precious feather. In all things that matter, it is too late. To be without me already is to suffer.”
This is very bad.
Because I think it’s very true.
A low sound vibrates through him, against me. “Now, my love, to get back on topic. Answer my question. Why do you want to learn magic? You know. I need you to know. Because I am falling in love with every new glimpse of you, very much, very swiftly, and I need more.”
My reasonably-desperate-at-the-moment mind struggles to find the correlation between learning magic and him falling deeper in love with me. Then, suddenly, it’s clear.
“I am magic,” I say. “I am part fae. I want to learn because it is a part of me. I want to embrace who I am. I want to become myself. It is something I have never had within reach before. I want to learn how to take up space. I want to learn who I am by what I can be.”
“Atta girl.” Castor’s mouth covers mine, and I fall into the kiss like I’m starving.
Our connection pulses until there are two hearts beating like one in my soul.
Desire rampant, I grip his clothes, pull him closer, as though I’d like our bodies to meld in the same way.
His hair pools in my fingers, so I twist my fist in the strands and yank them.
His dark laugh hits my throat before his own fist is in my hair, sending sharp pain through my skull, down my body, and into my toes.
This isn’t like before, on the balcony, or after, in my bed. This is more. This is deeper. This is toying with danger as though regrets don’t exist and fear isn’t real. There’s no thought in this. No consideration. No tentative caution from me. No is this okay from him.
He walks me back, like he did earlier, in the garden, and I tumble into the chair he dumped me in before. His hands brace against the armrests as our mouths pull apart.
Deep breaths fill us, in time, together, and I stare at him, leaning over me, caging me beneath his broad body and dark tousled robes.
He’s beautiful.
Gorgeous.
Beastly.
Mine.
The magic in this room, in my body, in his takes hold, coating me in sensations unknown.
I want to be devoured.
I want to be broken. And built. And burnt.
I want him to see more of me, and love me in this painful, clawing, desperate way.
I want to cradle his chaos, the tsunami of his emotions, the rampant manic, the anger, the terror.
I want him to hurt me.
I want to hurt him.
And then…then I want to watch our blood pool together in one puddle while our wounds close.
I whisper a swear.
“Yeah?” he asks, voice raw, deep, still breathless.
Frail, I echo, “Yeah…”
“Scary, isn’t it?”
“You’re so beautiful, Castor.” I shiver, and goosebumps prick my flesh. My shaking fingers lift, and I cup his cheeks. “I… I don’t know what to do with it. Please, can I see more of you? The horrible parts, too?”
Obliging, he lets his hand come to rest at my throat. Gently, he strokes my pulse. Controlling and demanding, he says, “Would you really like that? Would you…really like me?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that I’m angry, too.
I think…maybe…we should forget about being better.
I wonder… I just…” Air fills me, and I feel how easy it might be for him to cut it off as my throat touches his hand when I swallow.
“I just wonder how freeing it might feel if instead of worrying about being better or being safe we instead embrace the danger and give ourselves the permission to be so much worse.”
Castor cuts off my air, and his smile fills my head as a daze builds in the suffocation.
“You are mine,” he says. “You are truly, and utterly, mine.” A slow curse leaves him as he moves to kiss my lips, allowing me a breath once that breath is tainted with only him.
“I like this plan.” He kisses me again. “We shall try it, for so long as it brings you pleasure. I…” His smile becomes wicked, and I grow drunk on the sight.
“Oh, my beloved…” He adjusts his grasp, cupping my chin. “I thank you for it.”
Oh—
My—
My body evaporates as the sensation of Castor’s full soul rushing against me slams into my senses. Ecstasy hits, and my eyes roll back.
One way or another, I lose consciousness, but the last thing I recall before the world goes dark is my soulmate lifting me into his arms, kissing my bared throat, and laying his ear to my heart.