Telling him the full truth won’t make him happy. Refusing to tell him anything won’t make him happy either. Lying isn’t anoption, just in case he’s able to talk to Willow and our stories don’t match. So I look down at my phone and murmur a half-truth, “She told me a little bit more about soulmates.”
“What specifically?”
I shift my position again and speak as though what I’m about to say is the only thing Willow said that affected me. “She said I’d grow to want you.”
Castor doesn’t appease as easily as I’d hoped. Crossing his arms, petulant, he snaps, “Why would she say something like that? What was the context?”
The context was that she’s not convinced I’m really your soulmate, but if I am, we’ll fit together, eventually. The context was that she thinks you’re desperate, but if I’m not just a convenient human with abilities that allow you to pretend I’m yours, then my future is exactly what we talked about after shopping. I will either come to want you and accept you as my soulmate, or I will explore my other options. I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know. She’s kind of intense.”
“That much is true, but there still must be more to it. She wouldn’t have told me to leave the room just so she could tell you that you’d grow towantme someday. That’s common sense. A basis of soulmates.” He tenses. “Unless… Was she warning you? Encouraging you to side with them, withCael? To leave me before it was too late? To foster indifference while it’s still possible?”
This guy is a Jenga tower of insecurities, isn’t he? “No. Nothing like that. Cael…is the moth prince from before, isn’t he? The one we saw when you took me to the mountains in Russia?”
Castor sneers. “He’s a pompous, self-righteous fool. Once, I thought he was my friend. But he never actually liked me. He strung me along with pictures of grandeur, and every time I failed to meet his unreasonable expectations, he’d punish me.”
“Punish you?” I echo.
Castor’s muscles ease as his head droops. Softer, he says, “Well, notintentionally. But when you love someone, it destroys you to disappoint them. Cael was so…brilliant. He was blinding. A paragon. I aspired to have half of what he did that made him so…lovable.” Castor’s head shakes, and he unravels his arms to pull the locks of his hair over his shoulder. “He’d run his fingers through my hair before he’d pull me into a hug and tell me I coulddo better.” He grips the strands. “But I never could.”
The audio from my phone melds together into a single sound until I press the lock button to turn it off. Scooting across the bench, I touch Castor’s hand, coaxing it free from his perfect white hair.
“My hands are filthy,” he whispers. “You shouldn’t touch me while I’m covered in dirt.”
I twine our fingers anyway. “I don’t mind dirt.” Using my free hand, I tuck his hair over his long ear, let the silk slip against my skin. “I know a thing or two about never seeming able to live up to expectations. I know a thing or two about giving everything…and it never being enough.”
Turning toward me, he rests his forehead against mine. “I don’t want you to feel responsible for my emotions, my feather. They will surely exhaust you, and you deserve better than to play babysitter for yet another person whose job is to take care of you.”
“Ouch.” I don’t know why, but I smile. “Harsh.”
His hand tenses. “Being harsh was not my intention.”
“What was your intention?”
He kisses my cheek, the caress featherlight, as though I might break. “To inform you that it’s your turn to be cherished. Your turn to be protected and loved. I am bitter, but that bitterness is not for you to fix. For you, I would craft wings of wax and soar into the sun. Even when my skin burns and the wax fuses with my flesh as I fall, it would be worth it to try again, andagain. For you. If Cael was right, if I can dobetter, if the person he believed I could be is the person you want, I will figure it out, or I will die trying. Because you, Danielle Storm, my love, my feather, myMine…you are worth being better for. So, please.” His nose grazes mine from tip to bridge. “Please, just don’t give up on me like he did.”
My heart cracks, and when my lips tremble and part, I lose my smile. Awestruck and far too close to a man I barely know, my chest grows warm. It’s insanity. I know it is. It’s practically the undeniable femaleI can fix himurge that should never, ever, be entertained…but…
“If we ignore the whole kidnapping thing and some potential anger issues mixed up with insecurity,” I say, knowing full-well it means a great deal that I feel safe enough to list his sins to his face, “what’s so bad about you?”
A pitiful laugh leaves him. “Many, many things. I’m holding myself back.Behaving. I assure you, there is so much about me that you would considerbad. You sense it even when I’m trying so hard to keep the worst parts hidden. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have felt the need to ask that I not harm your mother a moment ago.”
“Would you have done something had I not said anything?”
Tone bleak, he utters, “Not…yet.”
“That’s foreboding.”
“Mayhaps. I know it ultimately would lead to nothing, but her pain when she has caused you so much harm feels like justi…no. No, not quite justice. I cannot fool myself into believing such a thing fully. What it feels like is…control. Yes. That’s more accurate. Control, when I have had none. I could not spare you before now. I cannot change the past. But, in some ways, the idea of making her pay feels like control I will never actually have.” Pulling his hand free of mine, he stands. “I wish you wouldn’t be so careful around me.” He tugs free the cord holding his sleevesback and stuffs it in his pocket. “It….troubles me. I don’t know which of your reactions are my fault and which belong to your upbringing.”
To be fair, at this point, neither do I. Because—kidnapping thing aside—he’s not made his anger issues or insecurities my problem. He’s verbalized clear intentions to spare me from his unsavory parts. He’s communicated his thoughts whenever seems reasonable. He’s said, as a being that can’t lie, that he’d prefer I kill him than leave him behind.
I am not trapped here.
I’m not sure why I’m being so careful whenhehasn’t exactly given me reason to.
Dropping my attention to the black screen of my phone, I say, “If it’s any consolation, I never felt safe enough to watch my Zahra streams around my mother. She’d take my phone away if she thought I was on it too much. She’d say it was distracting me from being productive or doing my chores. She’d say it would ruin my eyes or my posture and confiscate it randomly, sometimes when I wasn’t even on it.”
“You have excellent posture,” Castor murmurs.
