Chapter 38
~~~~~~~~~~~~
If only we did not need to face the past to obtain the future…
Castor
“I thought you were here to make amends,” Pollux grumbles, seated at his desk in this creepy laboratory-slash-therapy-office of his. Like a proper patient with approximately all his screws loose, I lay on the metal table, fingers laced atop my stomach.
The bitter scents of magical agents being processed enter my lungs. I free them. “I am. Am I not doing that properly?”
“You’re treating me like your therapist.”
Well, sorry. I thought that was what your new friends did. “Don’t be ridiculous.” I turn my face from the big grumpy dream eater. “If anything, you’re a psychiatrist. Mere therapists are not regularly licensed for the administration of drugs. Anyway… Where was I?”
“You think you’ve found a cure for turning people to stone.”
Aw, so he is listening. I’d expect nothing less of my dear Polly. “Right. Yes. That. I believe I’ve found the cure, and I’d like to test my theory. On you.”
“What?” he grunts.
“Someone—and I’m not naming any names because you don’t know them and it’s better that way—recently told me that this thing that has plagued me my entire life is all in my own head to an extent that suggests I am at liberty to be my own cure.
They supplied that Pila didn’t survive my gaze because she is a being of unfettered love, but because I myself had no interest in harming her.
To that end—” I clear my throat. “—would you be willing to conduct science with me via peering longingly into my loving gaze?”
Pollux rises, to hit me I suspect.
The last thing I anticipate is for him to rip off my blindfold.
Eyes firmly shut, I launch myself upright on the table, away from him. “What are you doing?”
“Science.” His hefty presence corners me, and his hand shackles my wrist. “Open your eyes, Tor.”
“Are you insane?” I keep my eyes squeezed together.
“If you open your eyes, you’ll be able to see what Kassandra calls my mad scientist lab,” he taunts, like I’m a child.
“Have you no fear of death?” I blurt.
“Xios says your eyes don’t kill. Worst case scenario, I turn to stone and trust the two of you to figure out how to fix that.”
Worst case? I scoff, because he must be mad. “And what of your mate? Your daughter? You’d condemn them to life without you until such a time as we figure it out?”
“You wanna know a secret, Tor?” he asks, voice kinda too deep for comfort—given that he’s just pinned me to his crazy metal lab table.
I hiss, “Sure.”
“I’ve seen your eyes once already.”
The fight leaves me. “What?”
“I convinced myself I hadn’t, because I didn’t turn to stone.
You didn’t seem to realize, either, so I thought I was delusional.
But this makes sense. It was when we first met, before you bothered to cover your eyes.
You were being haphazardly careful, and I was probably being idiotically curious.
We weren’t friends then, but you knew I was unseelie.
One of the first you’d met with half their brain in use.
You were already lonely by that point. You wouldn’t have wanted to hurt me. ”
I choke on my words. “Don’t you understand what all this means?”
“It means, open up.” His hand lifts, reaching toward my eyes.
I dodge my head away from his threat. “It means that every single life I have put on pause, every statue I have created, I did by my own will.” Breaths saw through my lungs.
“The years I’d just…go into human lands and watch flesh turn to rock…
You were there. You know. My fits of violence like that were eventually what drove you and Cael away from me.
I was angry. Always angry. And I hated those strangers who seemed to have things I couldn’t find.
I felt so lost in my rage, and I took it out on innocents. Over and over and over again.”
As gentle as he is firm, Pollux says, “You’re a basilisk, Castor.
You were born of nothingness. Your existence came to be in emptiness.
All of us have done things we’re not proud of.
All of us have faced a past that’s unforgivable.
All of us have long since outgrown those moments and become something new.
I believe you’ve changed. I believe in you. ”
I bark a laugh to cover the knot in my very soul. “What have you ever done that’s so unforgivable? You’ve always been truly soft, truly kind, truly good. The love I’ve felt from you has always exceeded what Cael has managed to offer because your love has never come laced in the shame of his.”
“I killed my origin.”
My heart stops. “You…what?”
Slow, he repeats himself, “I killed my origin, Tor. He died of fright—of me. His pure fear of being unable to help people killed him, and that pure fear…was me. The stark realization is what led me to evolve, right on top of his dead body.”
My stomach twists, sickened at the very thought that my kind friend would have been subjected to that in his first moment of true awareness.
Ever gentle, he proceeds, “When we first met, you seldom showed a kind emotion. You had filled the hollow in you with anger and malice. The malice is how Cael found you. The fear that started to grow after you’d developed something like care for us is why I fought to hold on for so long.
We left because it hit a point where it felt like we were just enabling you. ”
Mouth filled with ash, I say, “You left because Cael knew there was something wrong with me that couldn’t be fixed.
You left because you sided with him, and he gave up on me.
” It hurts to swallow. “And you were right to. You both were right about me. If it’s all my fault, I’m dangerous because I choose to be, and as recently as a few weeks ago, I turned a spider to stone.
I didn’t think I’d meant to, but clearly I’m unreliable even inside my own skull.
If I’m upset, my anger poisons everything. ”
“Or, you still believed at that point that you couldn’t help it, so you didn’t. Things change. You’ve changed. If you believe now that it’s a choice, I still believe in your ability to choose it.”
My stomach turns to stone. “What if I resent you for leaving me? What if the love I think I have for you isn’t enough?
What if I’m angry still, and a stray resentful thought activates my power?
What if I can never perfectly control myself?
What if I lose everyone—again—and I have no one to blame—again—except… myself?”
“Then I guess you lose everyone again and have no one else to blame.” Pollux releases my arms and tosses my blindfold at me.
“I still care about you, Tor. I never stopped. But you’ve got to know how I feel about self-made problems.” His tone darkens.
“Either become the solution…or quit whining.” He extends his hand.
“Now, are we doing this? Or are you too—” he cusses, “—scared?”
As it turns out.
I’m too darn scared.
?
Still Castor
Lying awake in my own cage, shielded by thick drapes, magic, and bars, I turn the afternoon over in my mind.
Pollux was willing to risk his life for me.
Pollux put his trust in a past moment between us—one I don’t even remember.
Pollux believed in me, believed that if I opened my eyes to him, he’d be fine.
If I’m honest, it freaked me out.
What right does he have to still care about me that much?
After everything I’ve done… After everything I’ve put him through…
Wincing, I manifest my blindfold, settle it in place, and unwork the charms on my cage door so I can leave.
Stepping silently from the many layers of fabric covering my bed, I listen to the soft breaths of my soulmate and her pixie.
I let the key to her cage form between my fingers, then I deliver it quietly to her pillow before I exit our chambers.
This is going to hurt.
I know it’s going to hurt.
But I probably deserve the pain.
Traversing through trods, I make my way to the moth prince’s palace and slip through the halls until I reach his grand wall of books that opens to his secret study.
It’s late. He shouldn’t still be awake in there.
But I can feel him beyond the enchantments and spells meant to conceal this place.
I can follow the twine of his magic to the correct book that works like a key for the door.
Tipping it forward, I listen for the latch and try not to feel like a human child being sent to their principal’s office.
I am here by choice, because apparently I need to take accountability for my own choices.
And that starts with taking accountability for the pieces of my past I can reach.
Even if this piece is the one I have loathed the most.
With a fortifying breath, I trudge inside.
Immediately upon recognizing my lame shuffle into his study, Cael stands from his desk and spreads his wings. Magic vibrates off him, a warning. “Castor,” he states, tone immovable, belief in me long since dried up.
I dip my chin as I close the great big door behind me and lean against it. “Hey.”
A thread of unsettle works its way into the air.
It’s obvious. Expected. Normal.
I unsettle people. It’s just what I do. It’s just what I am.
But then…
Then, something else touches the corners of his emotions, and it overcomes the unsettle almost entirely.
Concern.
A swear hisses in and out of my brain, because of course perfect angelic Cael is concerned for me. Hasn’t he always been? I’m concerning. And…this thought process is remarkably unproductive, so I fight through the bitterness to set it behind me.
“It’s late,” Cael states the obvious.
“Where’s Alana?” I ask.
He bristles, checks in with his magic moth spies to ascertain her position, then relaxes—if minutely—after learning that she’s safe wherever she is because I haven’t bothered her. “I sent her to bed. Because. It’s late.”
Yeah, it sure is. But this conversation is happening far later than it should have.
“Do you hate me?” I ask.
Baffle joins the moth prince’s emotion cocktail. “Pardon?”