“Where is she?” My voice quivers the moment I’ve pushed inside to find the calm cottage home devoid of any sensation of my love’s presence. A touch of her scent lingers, but it’s not full enough to suggest that she’s been here within…within the hour.
“Somewhere in Cael’s palace, probably.” Willow stifles a yawn and stretches out in her usual place on the couch. “Iwanted to take her on a tour, but Cael whisked her away before I could even show her the job board. Jerk.”
The remaining half of my soul removes itself from my body. Fury flashes, red hot, in my brain, and I struggle to hold onto my impulses.
“Whoa,okay.” Zahra’s voice breaks through the static growing mold in my brain. “This is a fixable problem, Castor. You stay here with Willow. I’ll go get Dani. It’snotan issue.”
“Not an issue?” I snap. My breaths shorten. “She’s withCael. Sweet, kind,perfectCael.” Venom clings like plaque to my tongue. “By now, he’ll have offered her everything she could ever want, without strings or threats attached. She will have no reason to come home tome. She can roam free there, in his domain, in thesun.” Twisting, I pace, slam my hand into the wall beside the door so I won’t put it through any bodies, sputter, “How could you? How could you take her toCael? I trusted you!”
Everything inside begins to break down as panic overwhelms.
“Calm down,” Willow drawls. “Is sheyoursoulmate, or Cael’s? If she’s yours, nothing Cael offers her will compare to being with you. So there’s nothing to worry about…right?”
Air abandons me. My lips part, go slack. Hoarse and hollow, I whisper, “You…don’t believe she’s my soulmate, do you? You’re testing me. Testing our bond, a bond she can’t even feel in her human body.”
“Testingyou is a little dramatic. I don’t know and don’t care if she’s your soulmate. All I know is that she’s scared and you’re desperate, Castor. We both know Cael won’t hurt her or force her to do anything. Loving her means letting her have what’s best for her; therefore, if he can really offer her everything she wants and you aren’t a part of that, so be it. ”
So be it?
So be it?
“However,” Willow says while I’m fighting every urge in me to remove her head, “if she does pick you—after everything—it will confirm to all of us that she is yours. It will confirm to her that you are someone important, even if she can’t feel the soul bond in the way fae blood can. It will change the dynamic between you two for the better.” Entirely calm, the woman mutters, “She needs a choice.”
“She has a choice. She has access to every last one of you,” I spit. “She knows exactly where the trod to Razah is. I don’t keep her chained in my castle!” I keep her cagedat nightpurelyfor her protection. Which I am nearly positive I told her.
“You don’t need chains when everything about you exhibits power. It’s hard to leave an abusive situation. It’s hard to get past the hurdle of inconveniencing near-perfect strangers. It’s easier to accept help from a prince as pragmatic as Cael when it’s already been placed in front of her.” Willow stands. I feel the tension in the motion, but it does not come paired at all with the fear it should as she closes some distance between us.
My fingers sink into the drywall to keep my nails from finding a place in her throat.
If I kill her…that’s it. That’s the end. No more hope. For anything. Danielle would never forgive me. No one wouldeverforgive me.
And, truly, I would never be able to forgive myself, either.
“Castor,” Willow says, as though she has any right to speak my name in such a reprimanding tone, “Dani has been abused her whole life. She’s in survival mode. That isn’t going to change unless she has the opportunity to choose you—when she doesn’t feel like she has to, when maybe it would be easier not to.”
“I will always be easier not to choose, Willow.Always.”
Willow’s hand against my back makes every muscle in me constrict. And I…
I can’t understand why she thinks this is safe. Why she thinks she can approach a wild animal and treat it like it’s tame.
But she does.
She does, and she says, “I’m not so sure about that,” as though she believes it.
Human as she is, I know she can lie, but perhaps in becoming a vampire’s thrall she has gained some part of her soulmate’s ability to write truth into being, because her quiet, confident words almost convince me it could be true.
“Loving someone is about choosing what’s best for them,” she continues. “Even when that goes against our own desires. What Dani needs is a place to heal and take charge of her own life. If she’s your soulmate—”
“She is my soulmate,” I hiss. “I feel her heartbeat in my chest. I taste the sweetness of her scent on my lips. She ismine.”
“—then you will one day appreciate knowing that you didn’t manipulate her into caring for you. You will one day appreciate having been chosen.”
What alovelydelusion.
It hurts to swallow. It hurts to pry my fingers out of the wall. It hurts toexist. But I manage to throw open Willow’s front door anyway, even knowing that I have never once in my entire life beenchosen, by anyone. Striding down the porch steps, heading toward the nearest trod that will lead me to my vacant home, I say, “Sheismy soulmate.”
So the least she can do is break my heart herself.
