Chapter 32
Present Aeon
When Lila swung open the door to her house, Castor was sprawled out on the blue chaise lounge he favored, a chalice of wine in one hand.
“Where have you been?” he grumbled, his pale cheeks flushed with drink. “You’re missing all the festivities. Eva said you stayed on Earth after she left.”
“Oh, um…Yes, sorry. I got a little carried away. Was everyone at the feast?”
“Not everyone.” He shot her a glassy, accusatory stare.
“Well, I really am sorry. I lost track of time.” Lila began moving around their shared living space, and he followed her with his eyes. She took off her pearl and gold earrings and opened the lid of her desk to put them away.
To her shock, and then to her horror, she saw that all of her sketches were missing. Every last piece of parchment. Her sketches…and her application to the architect program. Her original proposal for the Garden that she’d copied into a proper blueprint for Luc. Only specks of sawdust remained.
Dread pricked at her skin.
“Castor…” she began, with her back turned to him, “did you move my sketches?”
“Did I? Let me think…Oh, yes, those. I…put them somewhere else.”
“Where else?” Lila twisted around. Castor never touched her things except to spite her. This didn’t bode well.
Rising from the chaise, Castor approached her. He chuckled, the edges of his voice deepening in a way Lila didn’t like. His eyes were too focused on her face, like she was a piece of wood he was carving.
“I put them…into the Void.” His voice grated over the last three words as he stretched his arm out ceremoniously. He took a sip of wine, and Lila’s head spun. Her world tilted on its axis.
“W-what?” she asked, certain she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“I flung them into the Void!” he announced, flinging his arm out. “You wouldn’t believe how they disappeared. Like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Lila flinched. Her back hit the desk, leaving her trapped between it and the wall of Castor’s body. It was an all-too-similar position to the one she’d been in a short while ago, and yet, it felt entirely different.
Lila had been trapped for her entire existence, but she’d never felt it as acutely as she did at that moment.
“You can’t do that!” she cried. “Those were mine!”
“Do you know what you cannot do…Liiila?” Castor swayed as he leaned in, unsteady on his feet. “You can’t do metalworking. You’re not a blacksmith. You’re not an architect. You are just the other half of my soul.”
“They’re just…hair pins,” she protested, hating how weak she sounded to her own ears. “I can’t believe you would do this.”
Castor snatched the earrings from her hand. He threw them on the ground and crushed them underfoot, as if to confirm, ‘Why, yes, Lila, I would.’
Eyes wide with fury, Lila shoved him.
“I hate you!” she screamed.
Castor fell back, but he only laughed. It disturbed her more than if he’d lashed out at her, and she stilled. Braced for what, she didn’t know. Her spine tingled.
“They’re not just hair pins, Lila!” Castor accused, his demeanor souring. “You thought I wouldn’t find out about him!”
“Him? Who?!”
“You know who!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Lila clenched her fists.
“I saw you…going in his house on my way home from the banquet. Your…your…little crush. Is that where you’ve been disappearing to for an aeon? Sword-fighting? Hair pins? Is that what you’ve really been doing?”
“You’re out of your mind. I only went to tell Luc that Earth is beautiful beyond belief, which you would have known if you’d bothered to come see it with me.”
“Then what was his architect pin doing in your desk?” Castor held Luc’s old pin aloft, the one he’d given her right after they’d graduated, and she snatched it away. She clenched it in her palm like that might save it from Castor’s wrath.
“See, you say that, but you…were always looking at him,” Castor sneered. “During lessons. You were.”
Lila swallowed. Her face heated, but she hardened it, neither confirming nor denying the statement.
“You know, I do feel sorry for you, Lila.” Castor’s honeyed tone didn’t match his words.
“I’m sorry that you’re stuck with me for eternity, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I’m sorry that no matter how many lessons you take, you will never be anything more than what you are right now. A stupid, useless whore.”
His words crashed into Lila like he was a hammer and she was a nail he kept beating into place. Beating into submission. But where she once might have swallowed them, she spit them out.
Because Earth was beautiful beyond belief, and she had done that. Even if no one knew but her and Luc and Eva, she had done that.
She might be a whore—she’d give him that—but she was neither stupid nor useless. A fact Castor would do well to remember, or he’d lose what little standing he had in their community. Their shop always produced the finest wood pieces, and that was her work, not his.
At one time, she’d done Castor’s work, Luc’s work, and her own work. The work of three angels, all by herself.
And at one time, she’d designed a whole damn world.
“Did you really fling my belongings into the Void?” Lila lowered her voice to a deceptive calm. “Or did you just bribe a warrior to do it?”
Castor scowled at her implication; he was a coward, and he knew it. Everyone did. He made a move toward Lila, but she shoved off the desk and entered his space instead. Caught off guard, he staggered back.
“You think I’m stupid?” Lila drew herself up.
“Fine. I will not lift another finger to do any work in our shop. You think I’m a whore?
That’s fine too. You never have to touch me again.
In fact”—she traced a delicate finger down his cheek—“if you do touch me, I’ve been told I’m quite handy with a sword.
” She smiled with false grace. “Perhaps I will give you the pleasure of experiencing pain.”