She absolutely isn’t wrong.
However, I am not the best at making friends.
Filling my lungs with burning air, I say, “I will think on your counsel,” then I march, hoping to put as much space between us as possible.
“Castor,” Zahra calls, catching up to me after I’ve left Pila’s on my way back to Willow’s so I can retrieve my beloved, whom I may never ever see. Grabbing my sleeve, she dares to stop me in my tracks. “What has gotten into you?”
I rip my clothes out of her grasp. “You have to ask? I’m never going to get to see my soulmate. I’m never going to sleep outside of a cage again for the sake of her safety. I will never believe she is safe with me. I will never—”
“We found one thing that doesn’t work. So what? It’s a place to start.”
Laughter shreds painfully through my chest. “One thing,Razah? One?” I swallow, wetting my lips as I separate us, forherown safety. I am shaking, and I do not know what I might do. “This is nowhere near my first attempt. For a time, even Pollux was trying to help me. We said we’d find the cures for our unique constitutions—together.” My voice breaks. I battle to get my emotions under control. “Now look at us.Togetheris just as much of a fantasy as a cure.”
“Pollux found his soulmate in Kass, and she was his cure. How do we know that Dani won’t be yours? For all we know right now, she’s already immune to you.”
My teeth bare as I hiss, “True. Yet do you believe I wouldevertest such a thing? She iseverything. Myeverything. If I am wrong, watching her face turn to stone would—” I gasp breath, throat raw. “—it would do worse than kill me.”
Unwisely, Zahra marches up to me in her obnoxiously large boots and pulls me into a hug.
The fight evacuates my limbs as I hang limp in her embrace.
“It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs, naively, fingers combing through my hair, as though I’m a child. The sensation is so reminiscent to how Cael would hold me…but there’s no judgment or expectation in Zahra’s arms.
Tears prick in my eyes, leaking to soak my blindfold.
She squeezes me. “I knowokayisn’t the best language for a faerie and in your culture equates largely to nothing, but please try to know I mean it in a human context. Things will work out for the better. You’re family, Castor. Whatever happens, you are not going to face it alone, all right? You’ve got Xios and me. Maybe Willow. Probably Alana. Definitely Pollux. People care about you. We’re not going to let you end up alone again.”
Definitely Pollux?
What a cruel thing to…
Every day, for a week and a half, Pollux has used Finch to send me encouragement. Does he…still care? Does it matter if he does? Time erodes many things. Maybe he’s forgotten why it’s a very bad idea to care about someone like me.
“I’ve been abandoned before,” I whisper. “What’s stopping it from happening again?”
Zahra shrugs as she pulls back. “Who knows? If I had to guess, I’d say all of us. All of us have to stop it from happening again. A good place to start is probably with communication, so lay it on me, bro. What’s going on upstairs?”
Given that I am many centuries old and this woman is barely a quarter of one makes this whole situation surreal. Regardless, I murmur, “I’m scared. I do not want to lose Danielle. Or you. Or anyone. Not again. Not anymore.”
“Is there anything you can do to make sure you don’t, and is there anything we can do to support you?”
I grumble, “Is Xios’s therapeutic tendency contagious, or are you two simply just this alike?”
“Yes, anyway. The question?”
I plant a palm over one eye, feel the heel of my hand in the socket. “I could gouge them out again. They lose their power once they’ve died…but they grow back when I heal, like a curse. I’ve never managed to get the—” I swear. “—things to scar away, and not even I can bleed forever. I will always be a danger if I can’tfixthis. I will always be one mistake away from disaster.”
Deep unsettle rises into the air between us, the scent catching on the tip of my tongue.
I deflate. “My apologies. Was that too gruesome to describe in casual conversation?”
“I play horror games. Not much is too gory for me. I’m just…stuck on theagain. How many times have you…gouged out your eyes?”
Who’s to say? I have forgotten. Dropping my arms, I link my hands in my sleeves. “It’s of minimal importance. I won’t give up just yet. At least not while you still believe in me.” I force a frail smile. “I’d like to go home now, though. Now that I’ve found my soulmate, it makes me anxious to be away from her for too long. I’m also worried. She gave me the impression recently that she finds Willow somewhat intense, and I doubt either of us knows what the woman might do on a whim.”
Zahra laughs.
But when we make it back to Willow’s quaint abode with its scent of plants, and earth, and chickens, I am not laughing.
