12. A Toad Mistakes a Human for a Faerie #3
“Why do you hate me so much?” she finally asks in the quiet of the storm. She shivers beneath the cap, her arms crossed over her knees and teeth chattering as she spills out all of her thoughts. “I never asked to be here. Isabel is the one who saved me that day. I didn’t force her to.”
Sapphira hadn’t meant to ask this, but the cold and the near-fatal incident they just experienced caused the words to slip from her lips.
“As if you don’t hate me too,” he says.
“Just answer the question, would you?” Sapphira grumbles, throwing up her hands in exasperation.
From the day she met Kaelen, he hasn’t liked her.
He speaks about her as if she were a pest. And the way he looks at her .
. . well, it brings up all of Sapphira’s insecurities earned over years of dealing with her family.
Over not feeling good enough. And sarcasm has always been her defense.
Kaelen is silent for a moment, only the thundering sound of the plodding rain and their chattering teeth filling the air.
“Fine,” he sighs. “I never wanted you to stay. I mean, you pulled a blade on Isabel after she saved you—”
“I was scared.”
“And you acted spoiled. You had no respect for our home or how we do things. It’s only been Isabel and me for so long, and I didn’t want anything to change.” He heaves a long sigh. “I . . . I saw the way she looks at you and how happy she is with you around, and I didn’t want you to replace me.”
Sapphira sighs, her head resting on her knees as she fiddles with a long blade of grass taller than her head.
“I won’t,” she says, swallowing the lump in her throat.
“I promise I’m trying to change. It’s just .
. . when you said that I was abandoned, back when we first met, you weren’t exactly wrong.
I’d been shut off from the world for so long, I forgot how to talk to people, and . . . just . . .”
She takes a deep breath, wrapping her arms around her knees, like that might hold her together.
“I’ve only had one friend. Our relationship is different.
We grew up together, sort of like you and Isabel, and our friendship runs on quips and jabs.
Literally.” She laughs, thinking of Dorian.
She’s tried not to allow herself to think about him too much because if she does, she’ll have to think about how he’s probably dead.
“You remind me of him, a bit,” she finally says.
“Yeah?”
She nods. “Yeah. Or, you’d absolutely hate each other. It’s a gamble.”
Kaelen bursts into laughter, and she looks over at him, noticing his soft, boyish face and his light-pink hair sticking to his pale skin. He is kind of adorable.
“I promise, though, that I won’t get in the way of what you and Isabel have,” she says. “I can keep my feelings to myself.”
She hates the thought but doesn’t want to intrude on Isabel’s life. And she hadn’t considered how it would affect Kaelen, which was selfish. She feels guilty that she hasn’t thought of anyone’s feelings but her own.
Kaelen gives Sapphira a confused look. “What are you talking about?” he says. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. Isabel is allowed to have other friends. I shouldn’t have been so jealous.”
“I get it.” Sapphira looks over at the man. His head is hung low, hair dripping into his eyes. “If the situation were reversed, I wouldn’t want the person crushing on my girlfriend to live in my house.”
Kaelen’s mouth drops open, his eyes nearly bulging from his head. “My g—” he chokes out. “No, no, no,” he says, waving his hands. “I don’t think we’re on the same page here at all. Isabel is not my girlfriend.”
Sapphira raises an eyebrow. She didn’t expect that answer. “Oh? Then what is taking so long? Are you afraid it will ruin the friendship?”
Kaelen looks at Sapphira like she has grown a second head. “You are not getting it. I do not have any romantic feelings toward Isabel at all. She is my best friend. Only my best friend.”
“I don’t understand,” Sapphira says, her head spinning. “How is that possible?” Kaelen rolls his eyes. “But you live together.”
“Yes. As friends. And as a bonded pair. I am Isabel’s draek?n, and she is my human.
We have a deep, almost familial, bond, but it’s completely platonic.
No offense, but I am not even into women.
Isabel is beautiful, but she isn’t my type.
And honestly, I don’t mind your teasing too much.
Actually, I think I would be freaked out if you were ever actually nice to me. ”
Sapphira collapses back against the mushroom stalk. This changes everything.
Gods, I want to kiss her pretty, freckled mouth. Would Isabel let me? Would the perfect little bookworm let me kiss her and mess her all up? Sapphira feels sick. It’s a foolish thought. The fates would never let her have this. The ice princess and the bleeding heart.
Sapphira begins laughing uncontrollably. The mushroom shakes above them, swaying to and fro, and Kaelen glares at her until she stops. “I’m sorry, it’s just . . . I was so cold to you because I was jealous. And all this time, I had nothing to worry about.” Nothing can get in her way except herself.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Kaelen grumbles, crossing his arms. “With that attitude, maybe you should be more worried about yourself than me.” That stings. That somehow Kaelen was able to pinpoint her exact fears.
Sapphira claps Kaelen on the back, bumping his shoulder with her own. “Come on, don’t be like that. You know, I think I might actually like you now. Anyone who almost gets eaten by a toad and lives to tell about it is good in my book.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Kaelen says, though a smile curls his lips.
They huddle close for warmth, sheltered under the mushroom and drooping with exhaustion.
It’s a while longer before the rain stops and the clouds begin parting to let the sun shine down upon them.
As evening falls, they begin to grow back to their regular sizes.
Kaelen shouts out in relief, and Sapphira runs her hands along her body to make sure it’s real.
“Let’s get out of here, please,” she begs, standing, and Kaelen quickly agrees. She jumps onto his back once he has shifted, and he lifts them out of the Jakartha jungle.
Sapphira insists that they go straight back to the cottage, but Kaelen wants to get the baskets they dropped. As they fly back over Bastama, he swoops down into the jungle, and Sapphira grabs them before climbing back onto his back.
I hope Isabel loves this food, she thinks as she grips the takops’s back with one hand.