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Whispering a curse, he forced himself to fold the washcloth and put it away, then he marched to the liquor cabinet he kept in the corner of his bedroom.
After opening the ornate door, his lungs filled and released as he swore again. Every bottle smelled like her. She’d touched them. And he put his mouth in the places where her delicate fingers had perused.
Mercy.
He knew going through the motions to chase a numbness he couldn’t, as a dream eater, find with things like alcohol wasn’t healthy, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to quit at this exact moment.
“Daddy?”
Pollux cussed and turned on his heel, finding his little girl soaking up the shadows behind him. “Meda.” His heart was on the ceiling. Just a red, oozing glob. “What’s wrong, dear one?”
Andromeda’s big blue eyes stared at him as she inched across his black carpet, cautious. “Did I…scare you?”
“At the very least, you startled me. I was thinking inappropriate things about Kassandra and was sorely unprepared for a minor to appear behind me.”
“Oooooh.” Andromeda’s beautiful shining eyes sparked as she planted a hand in front of her curling lips. “Tell me everything.”
“Absolutely I will not.” He coughed. “You’re not old enough to comprehend these matters.” He popped a cap on a random bottle and took a drag. Whiskey. Something Willow had brought him. Being around Willow with Kassandra present to remove the fear he caused in the part-human, part-dryad, part-pixie amalgamation that was Willow would be…interesting.
Frightening, maybe.
Willow was…
All the words Pollux could come up with lagged, slogging through his brain like slugs.
…Willow.
Willow was Willow. Nothing else adequately described her. The woman visited him, by herself, for funsies.
“You’re really lost in your thoughts, aren’t you, Daddy?” Andromeda murmured.
“Yup.”
“R-rated?”
“No.” Thankfully.
“What’s it like having a soulmate?”
“You’ll find out when you’re five hundred. Minimum.” Striding to his bed, he sat on the slick, silk comforter and leaned back against the pillows, doing his best to ignore the way everything still smelled like Kassandra, Kassandra, Kassandra.
Andromeda bounced onto his chest after about negative three seconds.
Unburdened by the fully human guise they both presented in front of Kassandra, her wide blue eyes rested in pools of black that matched his. It wasn’t their true natural form, but the sharp teeth and disconcerting sclerae were how they generally appeared in front of their fae friends. After all, claws were inconvenient in daily life.
Andromeda grinned daggers at him.
A smile of his own tugged on one corner of his mouth. “What?”
“You’re such a daddy.”
He grunted, rolled his eyes, and took another sip of the whiskey. The burn as it soared down his throat and into his chest drew some attention away from the ache that rarely left. Even though it was liquor, if he’d not trained himself to find something akin to comfort in the taste of fire, it would do nothing to a dream eater’s system at a cognitive state.
Effectively, it was his placebo.
Some people didn’t know how physical loneliness was. Andromeda helped. So much. But centuries without her had created a lesion on his soul. If left undisturbed, the sensation of emptiness kept him wondering why, why, why he was alive.
The least he could do was send fire down to keep his misery company.
