I snap my fingers open, brace myself as best I can against the mountain behind me. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He rocks his neck. “I didn’t say you had to stop.”
Inexplicably, I shiver.
“Earlier,” he mutters. “What of earlier? What about the…moth dweeb…concerns you?”
I whisper, “I’m sorry I messed up.”
“Yes, well, not knowing your own name is more problematic for you than it is for anyone else, isn’t it?”
“I just…” I deflate—oh-so-pitiful and pitiable and forgivable andpathetic. “…I had been going by Storm since I left home, butyou’ve never called me that. And, if I’m honest, the people who knew me asDanielleI never want to see again. I don’t want tobeDanielle anymore. I don’t know ifStormis right, either, but it was available, and I’d like to be strong like it. I’m sorry I got…stuck in my own head.”
Castor reaches for my hand, draws my palm to his lips, and kisses a trail across my life line, up my wrist, to the ticklish spot of my elbow. His tongue flicks out there, licking, and I tense. Releasing me, he hums, lowly. “Did you like that?”
I did not expect it. At all. “I…I don’t know.”
“Would you let me do it again?”
My throat closes. “Yes.”
“Would youwantme to do it again?”
Just that? I can survive that much. “I…guess?”
He sighs. “My feather, you do not act like a storm. If you are to claim a new name, it must be one you believe in, lest it become meaningless. You are frightened. You live in a state of fear. Do you believe storms are ever scared?”
No. I believe they are free. Going where the wind blows, gracing the earth with their life-giving rain in the same breath as they destroy it. I want to be as powerful. I just also don’t want to peeve this weird faerie man off and be thrust from this cliffside.
Priorities, you know?
Assuming it’s not a sheer enough drop for a sudden death on impact, I’ll roll painfully down sharp rocks for a while, obtain a traumatic brain injury, and probably sadly bleed out for hours before I finally die. Which is, obviously, not ideal.
Unlike a force of nature, I am fragile. Unlike an agent of destruction, I have spent my life submitting in order to survive. Unlike a storm, I am not free. “You’re right… Storm doesn’t suit me, but neither does Danielle. I’d like to cast off both. Will you give me a new name in their place?”
His lips part, and a swear whispers past them as he lifts his shaking hand to my throat.
“Please?” I ask, hoping he won’t cut off my air.
“What happened to you?” he murmurs. “How many bones must I rip from the bodies of those who have hurt you?”
“What?” I whisper.
“Bones,” he states. “How many will be enough to craft you a spine?”
My mouth opens.
But I can’t find a response.
I was not expecting a roast this early in the morning. Or, I guess, this late at night.
He huffs into my shocked silence, then he kneels, precariously, on the lip of stone beneath where I’m sitting. Pebbles careen down the mountainside as he lifts my bare foot in his hand and bows. “My love, I am yours. Your mewling does not appease me as you think it does. I have a temper. I know it. But you are safe. I will not lay my hand on you in anger, not in any way that would harm. Please believe me. I cannot lie, least of all to you.”
I thought I had no words before.
Now, I am truly lost.
I’m not sure I can call thisdog people are crazyagain.
