Chapter 33 #2
Anansi settles back in toward the shadows, and her lower limbs change from her human legs to the abdomen and legs of a spider. Crawling up the wall with them, she tucks herself in the ceiling corner.
Castor tuts. “Let’s not talk here…” Exiting the space with Anansi, he wraps his arm around my waist. “My love, might you fancy some tea?”
“Rooibos, please.”
He kisses my forehead. “Perfect.” Cocking a long ear back toward Pollux he says, less sweetly, “And for you, Polly?”
“Chai.”
?
“What did you do?” Pollux demands the very instant Castor takes his seat beside me after setting up the tiers of tea cakes, sandwiches, and scones in my favorite of the palace parlors.
It’s warm, earthy, with deep dark shades and walls filled with books.
Despite its coziness, the couch is large enough for Castor to bury me in should the compulsion overtake him.
I value that quality and enjoy how the possibility teases me.
Lifting his black teacup adorned with small white flowers, Castor murmurs, “Why, that’s hardly a good way to start a tea party, Polly.”
Irate air exits the big man.
I find myself preoccupied comparing their shoulders.
And I realize, rather despondently, that Billy outdoes them both, and the new maximum end of the spectrum now belongs to a very pretty girl.
“Darling,” Castor turns his full attention on me. “What has so suddenly troubled you?”
Lifting a teacup that matches his, I let the warm scent of rooibos soothe my distress. “I can tell you later.”
But, hopefully, you will forget instead.
Humming, Castor allows my answer and turns a harder address in Pollux’s direction.
“As you can see, I have a very important later to get to…so would you be so kind as to explain your uninvited presence before I have a mind to do as unseelie of old would have and consider this a slight worthy of retribution?”
“We are those unseelie of old, Tor,” Pollux mutters, sighing a great big puff of steam out of his decidedly not matching teacup. “I came to check on my patient.”
All manner of antagonism melts out of Castor. “Oh.” He straightens himself on the deep ivory Chesterfield sofa. “I had not expected such dedication…but I suppose I should have.” Warmth. Happiness. Nostalgia. “It is very you.”
Pollux grunts. “I found her doing manual labor mere days after a harrowing experience that no doubt you can still tell she’s recovering from.”
Castor tilts his head. “She’s insisted she’s well enough, and I believe my mate. Is that yet ill-advised?”
Pollux grunts, again. “Yes. Very.”
“Well.” Castor sniffs, and sips, all indignation. “You did not tell us.”
“It had not occurred to me that she would be anything but confined in a cage and babied to death by you.”
Castor chuckles. “I’d be very content to oblige that; however, there’s much work to be done, and my dearness is not put in her cage when I am not there to let her out again at her bidding.”
“Speaking of the work,” Pollux narrows his eyes, “what is going on?”
“Can’t you tell? I’m building a kingdom.”
“Out of a mass of freshly progressed unseelie.” Pollux sets his cup down and leans forward.
“What magic have you unearthed, Castor? First, Ash. Now, this? We spent ages searching for the answers to questions like these, and now—within months of one another—you have pressed the limits of the known world.”
“You’re one to talk. How’s my niece doing?”
Pollux growls.
Castor sets a hand to his chest. “Fine. If you must know, Polly, in Ash’s case, I stole your mate’s magic and pushed a dryad sapling into ent soil.”
“You what?” Pollux grits.
“Yes, well. If she’s going to cry up her magic sand with its marvelous powers of turning dreams into reality all willy-nilly, it’s really finders, keepers, now isn’t it?”
“No.”
Castor, delighted, smiles and says, “No? Well.” He turns to me. “Look at that, my heart and dove, another thing he did not tell us.”
I find myself unable to hold down my own smile as I judge the very large man and shake my head. “Come now, Pollux, you must tell us things if you want us to know them. That’s…mm…common sense, I believe. And also communication. A very valuable skill.”
Pollux’s eye twitches.
My delight mixes with Castor’s, and they dance around one another, urging both to greater heights.
In unison, our smiles turn into grins with presented teeth, and we lift our teacups to sippp past them.
“This…is perhaps the most horrifying thing I have ever seen.” Pollux laces his fingers and hunches into them, elbows upon his knees.
“I am overjoyed for you, Tor,” he says, glaring at us above his clasped hands and looking anything but joyful.
“Seeing you so perfectly matched, so…happy…is wonderful. But. You already know there’s someone who will not be able to look at what you’re building here with anything but caution and concern. ”
Castor’s joy depletes, hardening. “Yes, well. Cael can get over himself, don’t you think?”
“I’m not sure.”
Losing even more mirth, Castor settles. “What would he try to do?”
“If he deems this dangerous enough…he may see fit to remove the danger.”
My stomach drops, and my heart tightens. Remove…the danger? Does Pollux mean Cael would remove the people? Our people?
Calmly lethal, Castor murmurs, “And so, villains becomes heroes and heroes villains… Is that not just the fate of a paragon who has grown too comfortable in his rightness? I suppose we have for quite some time played opposite parts in one another’s stories.
Figures, now that mine is finally underway, the world might see that dreadful moth prince for what he truly is. ”
“What he truly is is cautious. He does what he can to protect those he cares about. Cael does his best.”
“Cael is unseelie,” Castor states, and the tea in my cup trembles against the vibration of his words.
Lowering his voice, Castor murmurs, “You’re really going to sit here and play his advocate when you yourself worried to tell him about your own mate, for fear of what he might do in the presence of someone as powerful as her should he consider her a threat?
Haven’t we bowed to that anxious man long enough? ”
“Castor.”
“Haven’t we?” Castor’s nostrils flare with a sharp inhale. “Haven’t you spent long enough playing advocate, Polly? On my behalf and now his. You are not responsible for holding this shattered relationship together.”
Pollux’s glare remains for long moments, then he buries his face in his hands.
Shoulders bunched, he mutters, “I so dearly wish both of you could see each other more openly. I didn’t fear that Cael would hurt Kassandra.
I worried he’d limit her in the name of safety.
Such would be the case here as well, assuming the lack of malice I saw in the children extends to the whole.
My concerns rests in how you might present this development.
You antagonize whenever possible. You prey on his anxiety for sport.
Cael’s motivations are genuine. But you cannot reach them so long as you keep choosing to provoke him instead of see. ”
“What a horrible, terrible, dreadful, rude thing to say to a man who cannot see without risking murder,” Castor huffs.
“You are a murderer,” Pollux says, “but not because of your eyes.”
“What in the realms is that supposed to mean?”
Pollux releases a breath. “Xios feels life from your stone victims.”
Castor shuts down.
I bristle at the immediate loss of our soul bond connection.
Broken, my mate says, “Wh…at?”
“Xios has been searching for a way for you to use that information. He believes if there’s still life in the stone, there must be a cure.
He’s only waited because he hasn’t wanted to give you false hope again.
Given what I’ve seen here today, though, I think you might already have access to the kind of power you’d need to undo what you’ve done—should you make that choice.
” Flexing, Pollux straightens. “I think the cure is in reach. For the first time since the ages past when we were looking for one together, I think you are on the cusp of it.”
The handle of Castor’s teacup snaps between his fingers, leaving the cup to rest in its saucer. “Do you now?”
“Castor…” Pollux warns.
“So. I reach the cure. I undo what crimes I have hoarded away in my basement. And then what? I make a case to Cael? Present him with my repentance? Petition that I’ve changed for the better and deserve just as much place in this world as he?”
“And then,” Pollux growls, “you will no longer need to fear mistakes. You will be free from the weight of accidents.”
A wheezing laugh tumbles from Castor’s mouth.
“Accidents,” he whispers. Leaning forward, he sets his broken cup and saucer down carefully on the table, then he stretches his fingers against his thighs.
“I will not be free until my eyes and their curse is my choice to use or withhold. And, then, I will still not be free from those like Cael, who believe that even the choice of such power should not belong in the hands of someone like me.” He closes his fingers into fists, pulls them apart, grips his knees.
“This news has shocked me. I didn’t know Xios was keeping anything so large from me.
I understand why he has. If he was unwilling to give me hope without more promise it would come to anything, that is mercy.
That is kindness. That is everything he is…
yet I still find myself experiencing emotions over it. ”
“Tor—”
Castor smiles, and I shudder at the sight. “Leave now. For your own good. We will talk again when I…am less likely to kill you. Yes. At that point in time.”
“To—”
“Go.”