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“Hush, nameless infant,” I mutter as I offer the cretin his bottle. “Feed.”
“Castor. You just… How do I put this delicately?” The air shifts as Alexios opens his arms for the swaddled brat. “I’d scream at you, too.”
My lips tip in a frown as I relinquish the child and his bottle. “That was not very delicate.”
“One day you’ll come to understand my comedic timing.” Alexios hushes the tiny monster after mere moments, and I do my absolute best not to be wholeheartedly offended.
Pursing my lips, I ask, “Is he cute today?”
“Sorry,” Alexios says. “He still looks like a potato.”
I scowl.
“Maybe he’ll be cute tomorrow?”
“Doubtful.” I drop into my favorite window seat, cross my arms, and wait a few blissfully silent moments before murmuring, “So…”
Alexios gasps. “Is that an attempt at empathy I hear?”
“Don’t mock me.”
“But it’s so much fun.” Alexios chuckles. “Go on. You’re doing well.”
Well, to be honest, now I don’t want to. Alas, I care about the emo nightmare seated in my nursery. Therefore, begrudgingly, I mutter, “Why are you moping today?”
“So,” Alexios begins in a tone that is the equivalent of a sunny day.
I’ve been played.
Friendship is a scam.
In a conversational manner that prompts me to flip tables, Alexios continues, “You know how Pollux and Kass forbade me from pursuing Zahra’s pretty soul, under penalty of no longer being my friends and kicking me out of my home?”
I recall the soliloquy. I was an unfortunate bystander while Alexios paced my palace halls and lamented the matter. “Mayhaps.”
“Well, I’ve behaved myself. I haven’t even stalked her.”
“Is stalking a woman you’re interested in not appropriate behavior?”
Alexios’s tone levels. “Castor, that is a very funny joke, but please mind the impressionable child who is present.”
My lips turn up in a smirk as I rest my head back against the wall and tip my face toward the window.
Again, Alexios continues without a care in the world, “This past week has enlightened me to a delightful game I could play. If…I can get your permission…and a promise that you won’t be cross with me throughout the rest of this conversation.”
“I’m too tired to entertain being cross, Xios.”
“See, you say that now, but I have reason to believe the information I have to share will make you very upset.”
“How intriguing. Do infuriate me, then, and rest easy in the knowledge I bear inexplicable affection for you.”
“Daw, so sweet,” Alexios purrs, before scratching out my jugular with his very next line, “I believe Zahra is my soulmate.”
The words settle on my ears, then I hear an echo of them, then I clench my fist and bide my time as they sink in. Voice foreign even to myself, I say, “How…old are you, Xios?”
“I have existed just a few months short of a year. Mentally, however—”
“Not even a year of consciousness…” Fury eats away at everything inside me, but it isn’t directed at Alexios, my new and—quite frankly—only friend with a mental capacity larger than a blob fish. No. I’m pissed at the universe itself. Whatever powers birthed me into this punishment deserve every ounce of my simmering rage… This is cruel. For every faerie who has waited the emotional equivalent of an eternity to find their soul’s pair, this is cruel.
