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But I don’t feel terrified at all. Only angry that Lux lied to me.

“You’d never kick Castor out of the manor, would you?” I clench my jaw. “That was just another lie.”

Castor arches a brow.

Lux sighs, “We may have our differences, but I can’t see a future where we wouldn’t see each other every day. He’s more than just a brother to me. He’s like… he’s like a part of my soul.”

My heart sinks. “May as well be courting you both then.”

“That can be arranged,” Castor chuckles.

“That cannot,” Lux snaps at him.

I glance between them both. “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t keep me trapped here.”

“Eden,” Lux sighs. “Even if I wanted to send you home, I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Our bond.” He scoops me back into his arms. “It’s powerful. Powerful enough that if you were to walk further than half a mile from me, the pain would almost kill me.”

“Pain?” I squeak. “So you’re telling me, you’ve cast some magic spell without my permission and now we cannot separate?”

“We’ve conjured the bond,” he corrects. “I asked you last night, and you accepted.”

“I didn’t know it was magic!”

“You never asked.” He smiles while walking back towards the field. Castor trudges along beside us, his hands in his pockets.

“You…” As I glare at Lux, my anger turns to tears. “You lied to me in your letters.”

His face hardens. “I never lied, Eden.”

“Yes you did! You never told me you were a faerie.”

“Half-fae,” he reminds me. “And again, you never asked.”

“You would’ve told me if I did?”

“Probably not,” he chuckles as I frown. “I had to make sure the bond was created first.”

“But why?” Memories of the obsession I felt when I touched his shirt creep into my mind. The vengeance too… “Do you even like me?” I hate how weak my voice sounds.

“Like you?” Lux stops as Castor laughs. “Eden, of course I like you! I wouldn’t have brought you out here to give you the human proposal you always dreamed of if I didn’t like you.” Sadness twinges inside me. “I wouldn’t have bought you all that fabric. I wouldn’t have danced with you last night. My heart wouldn’t be aching at the thought of you in pain right now if I didn’t like you⁠—”

“Then why didn’t you tell me what you really are?” I glare at him. “Why didn’t you just tell me from the start that you were half-fae or whatever that even means?”

Lux is quiet for a moment before he continues. “All you need to worry about, Eden, is that I do like you, very much. And I will never ever hurt you.” I feel his grip tighten around me. “Or let anyone else hurt you for that matter.”

I roll my eyes. He’s hiding something, but I’m not going to find out what it is like this. I have to be clever. Blossom would have a plan by now. Or I could be like Dahlia and charm it out of him.

If he’s as obsessed with me as I felt with my gift last night then it wouldn’t be hard.

But my cheeks heat at the thought of throwing myself at him, so instead I choose my words carefully. “You… you said that it would hurt us to be apart.”

“It would hurt me,” he corrects as we emerge back into the vast sunflower field.

Wait. “Hurt you? Not me?”