I want to be crushed into dust and turned into a blazing star.
“My love,” Castor whispers into the murkiness of my dancing thoughts, “do you dislike my touch?”
My lips part, but it’s anyone’s guess what I say before the darkness takes me.
Chapter 10
~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are eggshells on the floor, aren’t there?
Pro: I do not have a hangover.
Con: I literally have no idea what happened last night.
Fighting eyes nearly glued shut from sleep, I squint through the bars of my bird cage, staring at the cloud cover washed across the sky. Castor took me toRussia. I met Zahra in person. Baby Ash. A fire. A bottle of wine.
He’s not bad.
Dragging my arm up, I swipe a fingertip across my lip and wish that I meant I had norecollectionof last night when I said I haveno idea what happened, but that isn’t the case.
I remembereverything.
I just do not rightly know what came over me.
The man drugged me so I could talk, and talk, andtalk. Idistinctlyrecall him pouring me the glass of faerie wine, smiling, and saying,Here,Mine, this will help loosen your lips.
How dare heget me in a position where I couldn’t shut up while he obsessed over imprinting menial shapes into the memory of my tissue. His fingers sliding across the silk of this infuriating nightgown is going to haunt me forever and a day.
Who am I?
Who am I?
I mean—Hello! He snatched me out of a bar and dumped me in acage. He tells me we’re soulmates and promises to dismember anyone I deem unworthy of their limbs. He throwsknivesat things when he mopes! That is not the kind of man I should be getting drunk around. That isnotthe kind of man I should wake up and think about.
Firmly, I shake my head to rid it of giddiness where it concerns Castor’s hyper-protectiveness. Primarily because it shouldnotmake me giddy.
A possessive, violent man is not charming. I’m one mistake away from finding myself at the wrong end of his temper. And then what?
People with unstable characters only ever make one thing consistent: the eggshells scattered perpetually around them.
That’s why I jerk upright and throw my legs over the side of my swinging bed when the bedroom door slams open.
My head whips to find Castorslidinginto the room, a tray in his hands, and music spilling from what I can only imagine is the phone in his pocket.
He is…singing along.
To “The Red Means I Love You” by Madds Buckley. And. It is…
It is an incredibly chilling bundle of lyrics—filled with desperate, manic infatuation.
A shiver rocks my spine as he balances the tray in one hand and lets the key for my cage appear between the fingers of the other. The lock clicks, and he swings the door open as the chorus dims into a new verse. Planting the tray on my lap, he presses a long, deep kiss to my forehead. “Good morning, my precious heartbeat.”
My heartbeat skips, trips, stumbles, and collapses in a frantic heap.
Shoulders bunching I pull back, wide-eyed. My gaze drops from him as he returns to…singing demented lyrics. When he spins and collides with the foot of my bed, the chains swing, and I have to brace the tray so the food won’t spill.
The food is an array of dinosaur pancakes.
