Chapter 24 Frogs and Cages #2
“I am, of course, teasing you.” He let go of my hand as he finished speaking, settling back into his seat as though the space between us had been his to control all along.
“Are you?” I challenged, though it lacked its previous bite, my voice catching in a way that was embarrassingly breathless. As for the cause of my heart now hammering in my chest, he simply gave the smallest shrug.
“Trust me. Either outcome would be far kinder than what would happen if such an attempt came from someone else,” he replied, once more bringing me back to how this conversation had started and the threat of hitting him.
However, his response drew me in again, prompting another question, just as he had likely planned.
“What do you mean?” I asked quietly.
He held my gaze without flinching.
“What do you think would happen to someone who attacked me?”
The question settled heavily between us as my mind raced back to the punishment he had inflicted on the guy who had touched me in his club. If he could do that, I dread to imagine what he would do to anyone foolish enough to try to take a swing at him.
I cleared my throat, twisting my hands in the material of my skirt and said,
“Right, well, let’s not test that theory, shall we?”
A faint curve returned to his mouth like he had just won this round.
“Please,” he said, inclining his head slightly.
“Continue. I believe we were at the flattened amphibian.”
I shot him a dry look.
“Ha. Ha,” I mocked a laugh, and he winked at me, before waiting for me to continue.
“Why are you so interested?” I couldn’t help but ask, truly curious.
My question seemed to take him by surprise, as if he were now asking himself that very same thing.
Instead of telling me why, he inclined his head once more and said,
“Indulge me.”
So, I shrugged and did exactly that, without really knowing why.
“Okay, well, I saw this poor frog and then ran to my mom, hysterical, convinced I’d committed some unspeakable crime.
She took me outside, and we had this little pond in the garden.
That’s why there were always frogs around.
Anyway, she told me to place him on a lily-pad.
Said it was the proper way to say goodbye,” I said, my voice softening without meaning to.
“I laid him there. I cried. Like a lot… I remember being convinced the other frogs were judging me,” I added after a small laugh, shaking my head at myself and the innocent memory of it. A faint sound escaped him, not laughter, but something gentler that warmed the space between us.
“The next morning,” I continued.
“I went back to check on him, and he was gone. But sitting right there on the lily-pad was this tiny ceramic frog. It was the first one my mom ever bought me,” I told him, smiling faintly at the memory.
“She told me, sometimes when you make a mistake, you replace it with something better. Something everlasting, a lesson learned, and in this case, a gift given, so I would also remember to be careful around those who were vulnerable.”
He granted me a soft smile, and there was something in it, something almost tender, that caught me off guard. The car hummed steadily beneath us as I added,
“After that, it just became my thing. Lily-pad as a nickname and frogs every birthday, every Christmas, every holiday. It just stuck.”
He was silent after that, and when I looked at him, something in his expression had softened in a way I hadn’t seen before. The usual control remained, but it had gentled around the edges even more.
“That is possibly the most adorable thing I have ever heard,” he said quietly, and heat rushed to my face instantly.
“It is not adorable,” I protested weakly.
“It is,” he replied without hesitation, and the way he said it, without mockery or teasing, made it impossible to argue against.
For a moment after he called it adorable, I found myself completely at a loss for words.
The compliment lingered between us disarmingly, and in a way I hadn’t expected from him.
Meaning, I suddenly felt far too seen in the quiet space of the car.
I turned my gaze toward the window, feigning interest in the passing buildings, but the warmth climbing into my cheeks betrayed me.
I glanced his way, finding him watching me for a few seconds longer before speaking again, his tone gentler than it had been earlier.
“Tell me more about your family.” The shift caught me off guard and I stiffened almost immediately. The ease from moments before evaporating.
“I’d rather not,” I said, the words coming out sharper than I intended, and he went still beside me, but this time I couldn’t figure out why. Was he angry that I had denied him? Was he insulted? Disappointed? I didn’t know. But after a pause, he inclined his head slightly.
“Very well.” His voice lowered a fraction.
“However, I hope that, in time, you will begin to trust me enough to do so.”
A humorless breath escaped me.
“That’s a bit difficult when you’ve essentially kidnapped me,” I reminded him, and he shrugged slightly before agreeing.
“Fair enough.” A faint curve touched his mouth as he held back a grin, but the admission surprised me.
“But in time,” he continued, gaze steady on mine.
“You will understand why this was necessary.”
I huffed at that,
“You say that a lot.”
“Then you aren’t the only one keeping things close to your chest,” he replied calmly, making his own point, and the meaning was clear enough.
I met his gaze fully then, recognizing the quiet challenge in it.
He still didn’t know who had helped me that night.
Didn’t know how I had escaped him that first time.
But most of all, he didn’t know who I was protecting.
No, only I knew that.
And the irony was that neither of us truly knew why, despite the fact that I had asked myself that very question more times than I cared to admit.
Why was I protecting Bo? Why was I refusing to tell Oblivion about him, even though I had been the one to start this, the one who had gone looking for him and put myself firmly on his radar?
Yet here I was, shielding Bo without any clear reason.
I exhaled slowly and admitted,
“I suppose we both are.”
But I didn’t know what else to say, so I looked out of the window once more when I felt the car begin to slow.
I hadn’t realized how far we had travelled, how gradually the buildings had thinned and the streets grown quieter.
My stomach tightened as recognition dawned.
The warehouse district loomed ahead, stark and industrial, the same grim facade I had walked toward days ago with far less understanding of what waited beyond it.
The car pulled to a stop in front of the abandoned structure.
My breath caught.
“Oh no… no… What are we doing here?” I murmured, shaking my head instinctively. He turned toward me, his expression unreadable but not unkind.
“Be at ease. No one inside will touch you. You have my word.”
“Nobody?” I pushed, lifting a brow, purposely testing him, and the corner of his mouth tilted into a knowing grin.
And my answer to this was a deliberate wink before he stepped out of the vehicle.
The driver opened my door, but Oblivion was already there, offering me his hand.
The street was quiet, the building looming overhead in all its bleak, decaying glory.
But I didn’t take his hand.
“This isn’t a good idea,” I said, panic threading through my voice despite my effort to control it.
“Isn’t there somewhere else we could go? Why have you brought me back here?”
He leaned slightly closer, lowering his voice so that it belonged only to us.
“Eliza,” he said softly.
“Put your hand in mine.” There was something in the way he said it, as if the order was laced with concern. Like he was dealing with a cornered animal that needed taming.
I started to shake my head, not above pleading with him, when he told me sternly,
“Anyone but me touches you, and they die… now give me your hand, my Inanna.”
I swallowed hard, and against my better judgment, I placed my hand in his.
After which he helped me from the car, and the moment my heels touched the ground, he shifted position, stepping in behind me.
The size difference between us became impossible to ignore.
Even in my heels, he towered over me, his presence enveloping instead of just sharing the space.
His hands came around me with careful slowness, his arms wrapping easily about my frame until I was fully encased against him.
I could feel the solid warmth of his chest against my back, and the unmistakable strength in his abdomen and arms as they curved around me. It was not crushing. It was controlled… completely intentional.
A cage made of flesh, so that this little mortal couldn’t run.
Then his palm rose and gently covered my eyes, startling a breath from me.
“What are you doing?” I demanded quietly.
He leaned down, his breath brushing the shell of my ear as he murmured,
“Trust me.” Those two words settled into me before I could resist them.
Then I felt it.
A subtle ripple in the air, like static before a storm, brushed across my skin and lifted the fine hairs along my arms. The temperature shifted slightly, not colder, not warmer, just charged somehow. The sensation made me shiver instinctively against him.
“No need to tremble in my arms,” he murmured quietly. But before I could respond, his hand dropped away from my eyes.
I blinked once, twice, trying to make sense of what I was now seeing… or should I say not seeing. The warehouse was gone. And in its place stood something so breathtakingly out of place that, for a moment, my mind refused to process it.
Rising before us was a sprawling manor of dark stone and arched windows, its architecture both ancient and impossibly pristine.
Vines curled elegantly along carved pillars, and lanterns glowed warmly beside a grand entrance.
A pair of wrought iron gates framed a sweeping path that had not existed seconds ago.
It looked less like a hidden home and more like something drawn from legend, a castle concealed within the bones of the city itself.
“How…?” I breathed, unable to tear my gaze away.
“How is this possible?” I whispered in astonishment as he stepped beside me now, no longer restraining me against him but close enough that his presence still felt like that of my captor.
“People see what I allow them to see,” he said simply.
“Nothing more,” he replied smoothly, and my mouth gapped.
“Hiding in plain sight,” I whispered.
A faint smile touched his lips.
“Precisely.” He took my hand again, this time not to steady me but to guide me forward.
The great doors ahead were nothing like the battered metal slab I had once pounded on. They were tall, intricately carved, polished to a deep sheen that reflected the lantern light like molten gold. My pulse quickened.
“So, shall we see how comfortable your gilded cage truly is?” he said lightly, though the edge of something darker threaded beneath it, and my look said it all.
His eyes glinted with amusement.
“After all, every rare bird deserves a home worthy of her,” he added, lowering his voice as he guided me toward the entrance, earning a low growl from me that only made him laugh in return.
But then, as we got closer, I couldn’t help but fixate on his words, asking myself, if this was my cage…
Did that make me his…
Human pet?