I think, there’s a small, small chance, that I might be giddy and delirious from the day’s events.
Castor’s fingers lift to graze his damp blindfold. “Even if we don’t exacerbate the situation, we still are what we are. There are still pieces of us that we can’t escape from. I am dangerous, and my mind has spent too much time in the dark. It’s too late for me to become good or right. I am warped. I am selfish, but I love you. And love cannot exist with my selfishness. I likely shall never see your face in the flesh, Mine, and something about seeing a picture of you runs against the grain of my nerves. I don’t want the temptation it might cause. I don’t want the pale shadow of reality to haunt me. I am doomed to forever long for things I can’t have.”
“And…that makes you angry?” I ask.
His forehead drops against my shoulder before his arms snake around my waist. “You can tell?”
“It’s a hum beneath everything else I’m learning to sense. You are furious. Before, your anger came out to shield the fear. Now, the positions have switched.”
“You have already learned to read our bond?” he murmurs. “Did the cat teach you?”
“He told me to practice feeling the magic all around, so I could weave it into spells.”
Castor mutters a curse. “Foolishness. The magic all around is weak. You don’t seek outside of yourself for spellcasting. Spells areart. Like writing, or drawing, or music. Unlike art, where the mediums are apparent and physical, the medium for magic is confined by your aptitude for creativity alone. You turn your own thoughts and feelings into spells or displays. You should not rob the world of its power. It loses much of its potency when you do, though it does figure such a parasitic approach would be the vampiric method.” Castor’s breath fans against my neck when he sighs. “What else did you learn?”
“I healed my finger after he pricked me.”
Bristling, Castor pulls back. “That is what caused the scent of blood? The cat harmed you?”
I hum, glancing sidelong off my overprotective soulmate. “For science.”
His voice hardens. “No,scienceis something else. He harmed you formagic. Which is far less important given how it’s utterly unnecessary.”
“But I can heal myself now.”
He scowls. “When you have fully embraced your faerie blood, healing will be something you fight against. It’s so natural a consequence that we don’t choosetoheal but rather tostophealing. Therefore, you have been harmed for no reason at all.”
I feel like I should be taking notes on whatever Castor says right now.
“What else?” he snaps.
“Your hairpin. I turned a shadow rose he made into that.”
Taken aback, Castor blurts, “You stole the cat’s magic? You usedrebirthon an ancient?”
“Huh?”
His jaw locks. “Zylus is seventeen hundred years old. And a head official in Cael’s court. And now he has seen you heal as well as rebuildhismagic.” Rising, Castor pulls me to my feet. “I have been stupid. I had thought you were more subdued from your past, less determined. I had hoped, anyway, on some level…” He twists toward the cage exit and begins pulling me through the halls, toward his library. “I find myself at odds with my wish that you might become gloriouslyyouand that you might remain helpless enough that I never have to worry about you straying from my side. This change in you…it’s beautiful. Vibrant. Ravishing. But it has come so quickly. I was not prepared.” Reaching the stacks of books in the room filled with nothing but shelves upon shelves, Castor coasts his fingers along a series of leatherbounds with embossed lettering. Then he tilts one forward.
A staircase opens in the floor, spiraling down.
Excitement ignites.
Castor doesn’t take the chance that I’ll trip if he drags me down the steps, so he whirls, settles my body in his arms, then carries me into the belly of the secret passage with a chilling confidence.
Once at the bottom, a vast room cluttered with all manner of trinkets and tools makes itself known. Magic buzzes in the air, fire and ice, electricity and currents. Weapons behind glass glint in the faerie lights that burst to life around us. Whispers of power trickle behind my ears.
Castor dumps me into a large chair while I attempt to process everything swirling before my eyes.
I locate an ornate door past the menagerie. “There’s more?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Castor asks.
I point. “What’s through there?”
“Probably the bathroom,” he notes, flippant. “It’s not important to your education.Don’tgo in there.”
Don’t go inprobably the bathroom, huh? Something tells me the wordprobablyis doing a lot of work and that place isn’t a bathroom at all.
