Chapter 33 #3
Tense, I watch Pollux leave, shutting the door behind him, then I fix my gaze on Castor.
The air twists, heavy in my lungs, and I try to shake off the looming memory of my mother whenever she was angry.
I need Castor right now, with me, in my heart.
The sensation of his distance is letting unwelcome moments back into my skull.
Everything I’ve shut out over the past few days as magic and mayhem filled every one of my waking thoughts is slipping into the absence our soul bond has left behind.
Castor’s grip on his legs loosens, and a spark of hope rises in my chest until he grips the underside of the table and sends it—with everything atop it—flying across the room.
I flinch as broken glass rains and food speckles the wall.
His hand shakes as he turns on me.
I flinch again.
He grips my cup of tea, pulls it from my fingers, and sends it launching behind him.
The shatter vibrates in my skull as he plants a hand on the armrest beside me and drags his knee up onto the cushion, trapping me. Tone deadly, he says, “Lie down.”
“Ca—”
“Obey.”
I do as I’m told.
He buries his face against my neck, kisses, then runs his nose down to my heart. “You are not supposed to be afraid,” he murmurs. “This is a moment of worse, Mine. You are meant to delight in it.”
Swallowing a lump, I say, “You took your heart from my chest. How am I meant to delight in anything without the sensation of you flooding every inch of my body?”
“My emotions right now might hurt you. They are hurting me. I don’t want to hurt you.
Not like that. Not without purpose, intent, and wish.
” He draws a nail down my arm, opening a line of fresh red in the wake of it.
“I am intentional with you,” he whispers, moving his face and healing me with the caress of his tongue.
“I will always be intentional with you. You are not to be treated like an afterthought. You do not take the stray cuts.” He grips me just above my knee and runs his touch up my thigh, under my overall skirt.
The sensation of his hand on me pushes at the worry in my brain, shoving it out a bit at a time, and I seep deeper into the couch.
“There we go,” he says softly and darkly, mouth moving against my bicep before relocating to my throat.
“I am not a good person, my love. I have a temper. I’m selfish.
I am not naturally inclined toward thinking in the ways that bring others a sense of comfort.
I am unpredictable in nature and aggressive in practice. ”
I swallow. “I…know.”
“Yes, you do.” He nips me. “Tell me now…tell me to take everything out on you. Tell me you are willing to suffer for my sake. Tell… No. Beg me for it.”
My eyes close. “Hurt me, Castor. Please. Use me as a vessel for your pain. Let me hold your hurt in my body, in my heart, in my mind until you don’t need it anymore.
” I lift my arms around him, draw him close.
“Let me take your agony. Please.” A tear forms on my lashes.
“I cannot bear the idea of you hurting alone. Please, Castor. For my sake, let me hurt with you.”
He crumples against me, fingers digging into my thigh.
Voice broken, he whispers, “I would have accepted hollow human words, but your very soul echoes the sentiment of what you have spoken. Your very soul is begging for me back, no matter how badly it hurts.” Hot breath hits me when he struggles for air.
“What have I done to deserve this? What have I ever done to deserve you?”
I tether myself in his hair. “I don’t think that love is ever something we get because we deserve it. It’s given instead in spite of what is or isn’t deserved, because it’s not a reward; it’s a gift.”
“Danielle.”
I tense. “Yes?”
“Do you love me?”
My heart trips on that question. Do I? Might I? I’d like to, I think. I’d very dearly like to. But, right now, I’m not sure, which can only mean one thing: “Not enough. Yet. But I want to.”
He swears against my skin. “I can feel how badly you long to. I can feel it. You want to love me until loving me consumes every inch of what you are. You want to love me until little else remains. You want to put your love for me in place of every time you loved and were taken advantage of instead of loved in return. You want to trust me with your love, because you believe that not only am I capable of reciprocating, but also that I would love you well.”
“Yes,” I whisper, “that sounds about right.”
He sighs. “Brace yourself, my darling. This will not be pleasant.”
As the floodgates of his presence reopen, there is little but agony, guilt, shame, suffering, and anger that meets my senses. Knowing fully that not a scrap of the anger is directed at me settles peace back in place, even as the overwhelming level of pain aches in my bones.
“Talk to me,” I whisper, throat raw. “Until you run out of words.”
His breath shakes, but he obeys. “I have heartlessly killed many. I used to challenge fae to battles before I had learned how to wield magic like a second set of eyes. I’d blind myself and challenge them to train my senses, to revel in the thrill of the chance I might be killed.
I thrived in bloodshed. And while I have outgrown that violence, I still have no regrets where it concerns the bloodbaths.
Both parties made their choices and bet their lives on it.
Many times, I’d enter such a display without a singular reason to live.
I’d bank my entire existence on the fight.
I’d resign to the possibility of death so fully I cannot spare a thought for any who agreed with less conviction.
But that is not the worst of me. There are others I killed, others who have seen my eyes and turned to stone without even knowing they should look away.
There was a time I didn’t hide my eyes at all, because I did not care.
At all. It was only when I met Polly and Cael that I became aware of caution.
It was only then that I’d met someone I did not want to risk losing.
So I covered myself, covered my sins, covered my blade.
Nevertheless, beneath the thin fabric and thinner masks, I remained frightfully…
me. So I lost my only friends in other ways, ways worse than death.
I lost them to the repeated exposure of myself.
” Castor turns his head, laying his ear against my chest. “I am a snake, my darling, my love, my heart and soul. In the days before Pollux and Cael, I’d shift often into that form.
It bore no pressure, no demand, no need for words.
It asked no communication or community of me.
I’d wriggle around and hang from trees in human towns, just watching.
I’d garner a twisted sense of amusement any time someone spotted me.
In times long gone, I heralded rumors of stone plagues and gathered up cults who never lifted their heads in my presence.
I nurtured an ego. I stirred up chaos. I reveled in the horrors I sowed.
I am not a good person, Danielle. It took me ages to value life.
And Pollux and Cael were patient. So…so patient.
They stayed by me for centuries. It took me centuries to change into someone who still wasn’t good enough for the spare two people I wanted to change for.
They gave me centuries of chances, my love.
And, yet, I still reveled in chaos and could not figure out how to value life well enough for them.
I still chose murder when threatened while they opted for mercy.
I still found humor in cruel jokes while they refrained.
I still couldn’t quite understand how to help people.
All the while, I witnessed how helping came as naturally as breathing to Cael.
And Pollux? Pollux longed for the ability so violently he’d often collapse beneath the weight of his own isolation.
” Castor’s thumb moves against my thigh, brushing heat into my skin despite the coolness of his pad.
“I no longer want to spend my life making cases I can’t win.
I am tired of vying for affection. I want to be loved by someone who knows my crimes and kisses my bloody hands.
I want to be loved by someone who lets me grow at my own pace.
I want to be loved without expectation or judgment.
I want to be enough as I am, even when I am horrible.
I don’t want someone to love me out of the belief of what I might become.
I want… I want to be trusted. I want someone to believe in me because of what I currently am.
” His teeth grit, and he hisses, “And I want that person to be you. I want to murder someone right in front of you and have you tell me I was right to do so. I want your loyalty to overwhelm all sense. I want to be right…but if I am doomed to only ever be wrong, I would also have your unflinching adoration of my wrongness. No questions. No why. No reasoning. Just…acceptance.”
My heart aches and whirls as my head spins with everything Castor’s just said.
He wishes for me to accept cold-blooded murder?
That’s quite the tall ask, isn’t it?
Yet, at this point, it really, really, really is too late for me.
“I trust you,” I say. “If you’d like to find someone to murder in front of me, that’s fine.
I know you’ll only pick someone very murderable.
I do think that many deserving of death find more punishment in life, but many also press their horrors on others, and it’d be nothing short of kind to spare future victims.” I kiss his hair.
“What would you think of using our very nice dungeon as a penitence chamber before you grant the murderable a rather—all-things-considered—merciful end?”
“You are surely not suggesting we take up the hobby of torturing people.”
“I am not not suggesting it—if that is what you feel you must do to attain peace.”
“My dearest, I… That is wrong.”
I let my lips part in surprise and shock. “I thought you were wrong.”
“I am wrong, but I have limits. I no longer give in to every whim or want. I have gained knowledge that proves I am no hand of justice and my actions can never be pure when they are motivated only by my own unrest. I have grown into both gentler beliefs and something of a moral code.”
“Have you?”
“I…hope so.”
“I don’t want limits.”
He tenses.
“Not when it comes to what I might excuse in the name of loving you. The devotion you want is what I wish to strive for, because I can’t promise that if you go too far, I won’t have anything to say about it, no questions, no desire for a reason…
but I can promise that in every situation I will want to understand you.
Without judgment. Without expectation. I trust the way you have felt about me from the first moment I have been able to sense your feelings.
They are constant, powerful, and consistent.
So long as they remain this stable, I would do anything, rewrite any beliefs, undo any compunction for your sake.
Better or worse together, Castor. You give me the freedom to be myself; I will not steal that same gift from you. ”
The pain in him…eases, settling like sand in the bottom of an hourglass. His breaths soften, fuller, deeper, calmer. “My feather…my strength…my healing…my everything,” he murmurs.
I reply, “My kidnapper, my savior, my foundation, my freedom…” I comb my fingers through his hair, let myself trace the snakes on the hairpin I made for him, the only one I’ve seen him wear since I gave it to him.
“You are not good, but you don’t have to be to be my everything.
I believe in you. In your now. In your future.
In the steps upward, and in the slide-backs.
I believe in your intention, and I believe in your kindness.
I believe in the warmth your cold hand in mine creates. ”
His body quakes, and he pushes himself up as he uses his grip on my leg to drag me down. Inches over me, he looms, blindfold damp, lips trembling. “You are magic.” He kisses me. “You are majesty.” He parts my lips and drowns himself in me. “You are mine.”
His.
I plant my palm against his chest when he tries to dip for another kiss.
Obedient even in this moment, he stops, pauses, reads me, and chuckles. “Yes, love. Of course. I am also yours.”
Mine.
I smile and let him kiss me.