Page 106 of A Requiem of Fire and Ice

We park near the back, where it’s darkest and less elemny to notice us. At first, I don’t want to leave the confines, but after seeing Pandora lean out like a fucking dog, I probably should give this creature the best experience.

I open the car door and hop on the bonnet. A moment later, Pandora slides on it, pushing herself up with her palms until she sits beside me. She tucks her legs up to her chest, wraps her arms around them and rests her chin on her knees. A sparkle in her eyes reflects from the massive screen until she notices me staring at her.

“Why did you bring me here?” she asks.

Turning away from her, I lean back and wonder if I want to answer her question truthfully or keep what’s burning up inside me to myself.

“There’s something about you I can’t shake, and the more I ignore it, the more you consume my mind. So that’s why I brought you here.”

When I look back at her, she smiles. “Ah, so you are catching feelings for me! How fucking cute.”

“Pandora,” I sigh. “Keep this up, and I will strangle you.”

“Is that a kink?”

I face Pandora’s smug look. Raising my arm, I poke her on the forehead and say, “Enough. You’re an annoyance.” I remove my hand and stare back out at the screen. “I’m not falling for you because I don’t know how. King Ragan trained me to kill shit, not to…” My eyes narrow. “Like everyone else, you’re twenty-four years too late to fix who I am.”

Pandora frowns. “It’s never too late to change.”

A look of frustration plagues her face as she turns to look at me. Her smile, either cheeky, sly, or filled with happiness, tightens around the edges as if struggling with her emotions. If I can guess, she’s thinking of her situation and the woman she was when she was underneath everyone’s strings, to whoever she wants to be now.

Pandora shifts until she’s staring at the large screen after I don’t have a follow-up question or answers to give. “What movie are we watching?”

“They change it every week,” I say.

“If it’s romance, it’s going to bore me,” she says.

I sigh. “You have got to be the most complaining elemny I have ever fucking met, Pandora.”

She barks a laugh. “Says the brooding, grunting Monster Dick beside me.”

I press my fingers and pinch the bridge of my nose. “And what is a ‘monster dick’? This is the fourth time you mentioned my cock as such.”

Pandora stifles a laugh. “Well, Sara and Kylie showed me a book they were reading, and it was a monster with a dick as big as yours! And he had two dicks.”

I side-eye her. “Why would he have two?”

“You know, one for each⁠—”

I poke her on the forehead and say, “Don’t finish that fucking sentence if you want to live.”

She laughs even harder. “It’s so easy to make you uncomfortable.”

A grin spreads across my face. “Okay, then. Let’s play a game.”

Her smile broadens even more, amusing me. Whenever I played a game with anyone at the castle, they held suspicious and questioning eyes. Walkyer downright flees because he finds my games triggering. Mother orders me to leave, and every game I play with any other elemny ends with tears in their eyes. But when I look at Pandora, the questions I want to ask fade as I imagine the tears in her eyes.

“The game is like Connect Four, but without the game. You can go first.”

“Okay,” she says, and purses her lips. “How old are you? You said twenty-four years too late. Does that mean you’re twenty-four?”

“I’m twenty-six, and you’re twenty, nearing twenty-one.”

“You’re not much older than me. The way you hold yourself…I thought you were older, so it shocked me a little when you said that before.” She breathes a nervous laugh. “It makes me curious.”

“About what?”

“What happened to you for you to be like this…” Pandora frowns, deep in thought. She’s likely wondering about my past. But before she gets too deep in thought, she perks up and says, “My turn!”