So Frelsi huffs and ducks back out of sight.
Now wholly leaning his full weight against me, Castor pouts. “I always feel like I’m the odd one out. Even in the moments when I try hardest not to be. And I have been trying, very hard.” With a sigh, he kisses the corner of my eye, unravels, and steps back. His hand cups my face, the touch fragile as his face turns away from mine. “Please never treat me like an outcast, dearest heart.”
Slowly, my hand reaches to press his fingers deeper into my skin. “Please always treat me like a person.”
A frail smile lifts his lips. “I fear that may be difficult. You are far more than a merepersonto me. I can treat you as nothing less than my salvation. I love you, my feather. So much more than words can express. You are the air in my lungs and the blood in my veins. You are the moon in my sky and the endless sea of stars. Just your voice…your touch…incites in me realms of magic untold.Youare more precious than life.”
Being someone’s salvation sounds like a heavy burden to bear.
I’ve never been something so important before. I’ve never been treated like I’m important at all. Not as a human being is meant to beimportant, anyway.
All my life, I’ve been an object. A marketable image. Someone that adult men have judged and jeered at constantly. I spent my childhood wondering if my nose was too small, or too large, if my lips were too thin, or too thick, if my ears satright, if my face was the right shape. It took me years to realize thatperfectfor one job wasrepulsiveaccording to the board on another. There isn’t a single part of myself that I haven’t heard criticized. Openly and publicly.
Somewhere along the way, my anxiety turned into apathy. The fear of failing my mother and losing her love if I didn’t fit what random strangers wanted disappeared.
I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but at some point I realized that if love can be lost, it isn’t love at all.
“What is love to you, Castor?” I ask.
Without hesitation, he says, “Devotion and loyalty. Love is commitment to you, to your needs, to your wants, to your joy. Love is choosing you, above all else. No matter what.”
No matter what?
No matter how I look?
No matter what I do?
“That sounds like obsession,” I whisper, carefully.
“Yes, and?”
A small smile lightens the weight in my chest. Turning my face, I kiss his palm, his wrist. I feel his body shudder as I trail my kisses against his veins. Letting his hand slip free, I wrap him in a hug. “Are there rules you expect me to follow in order to maintain your devotion?”
Voice rough, he says, “No.”
“Not a single one?”
“I can nurture my love well enough on my own, Mine. It is not your responsibility to make sure I continue to love you.”
When I kiss his neck, he swears. When I speak, my words are wet. “Do you have any idea what that means to me?”
“Mayhaps, in some part.” A quivering breath rocks him. “We have both lived beneath the burden of expectations that promise us a place, yet nothing we do ever seems to consistently live up to the pressure. I intend to marvel you, in every state, when youare polished and practiced, and when you are raw and breaking. I am desperate to figure out which I prefer, yet terrified what you might think of me should I go drunk on the idea of you helpless for me…”
“What if you don’t like who I am when I’m not trying to be what you want?”
“Who you are is exactly what every part of my soul yearns for. That’s what it means to be soulmates. We are destined to complete each other.”
I cannot begin to express how much peace I find in that concept. “How do you know I’m your soulmate?”
“Because, I am selfish.” Breath fills him. “I am selfish, but the moment I found you, the moment your scent invaded my lungs, I knew I would die for you. My reaction to your existence was visceral and crippling andselfless. Never in all my ages had a mere scent taken hold of my mind and body so violently. Before you, I thought I’d felt everything. Now…I’m not sure I’ve felt anything before in my life. No emotion compares to what you bring to my heart. No sensation can hope to graze my skin in the way your lips and heat have. There is no contest, no correlation, no condition that exists to express what you do to my very cells.”
While I understand Willow’s concerns where this man bleedsdesperation, I am also very content with this explanation. He’s a faerie. He can’t lie to me. He can’t lie at all. So this has to be his truth. Despite my ability to see beyond fae glamour, my humanity must yet keep the sensation of a soulmate bond out of reach.
I…do wonder what it might feel like, though.
Would it be just as crippling? Would I lose myself to it just as violently? Would Iwelcomethe ability to fall into the intoxication?
Am I not already toying with the idea?
