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Alexios adjusted his sleeves and the metal pieces Pollux had made in order to help mitigate scents and sounds for him. “No. I am dependent upon the way they make the world almost bearable and I would not like to be without them for even a minute.”
“Then quit complaining.”
Alexios rose. “I can hardly wait to steal a soul and make myself someone’s favorite. Watching you two makes me desperate for a relationship with someone who would set fire to rain for me.”
Pollux let those words echo a time or two in his skull. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I just like fire. And impossible things.”
Andromeda tucked her necklace away in her shirt and trotted up to Alexios. “Yama-nii-nii, if you’re touch-starved and need a hug, you can say that.” She lifted her arms. “I love you.”
He glowered down at her several moments before lightly touching her curls. “I love you, too, tiny monster. But I think in this you are the younger one between us who has yet to understand the connection I am starving for. Come now. We need to convince Sephin not to be in bed at his usual hour, and we’re losing moonlight.”
And indeed they were.
For Pollux, however, Kassandra probably wouldn’t be asleep for another hour or two, so he’d have to burn a little more moonlight before he could hope to visit his wife in her dreams.
Chapter 15
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Apparently, I’m a narcissist.
Endless water. I’m dreaming again, after what feels like both only a few days and a thousand years since the last time I fell into a world of my own design. Breathing deep, I look up at the infinite blue sky and feel the caress of the waves around me. It’s all so…blue.
Melancholy.
Within my dream, my thoughts are fully awake, and I see Zahra begging the silence around us to pay attention to her in the woods. It worried me in ways I don’t know how to explain. Zahra is my best friend, and she’s so stable and confident that sometimes I don’t see how utterly shattered she is.
She’s little more than a million fragments melted down and turned into something else.
I haven’t heard the half of her story, but the parts I have heard are horrors concealed as morbid jokes.
She grew up as the lesser of two children in a family that barely took care of either. Her mother was controlling. Her father was an addict. He drank. He gambled. He smoked. He did drugs. Anything that let him chase a high. Zahra was the accident after her older brother, so she was taught to obey, obey, obey, take up as little space as possible, and serve, serve, serve in order to earn basic human needs.
I’ve never seen her like she was in the woods.
Broken.
The quiet around me stirs, and I sit up in the ocean, wading effortlessly. The air shifts, bringing with it an amount of heat that overrides my thoughts. My breath catches as tar invades my perfect blue waters, giving way to a large masculine form. “Dreamboy,” I whisper as he fully takes shape.
While monster-Pollux gathers his bearings, I skim through the rainbow of oily dark water to him.
“The sea?” he asks, deep voice a rumble that raises the hair on my arms and neck. “Why are you…” He stills when he finds me so near. Lifting one claw-tipped hand, he cups my cheek. “Your hair.”
“I know. I lost my nightcap. It looks a lot longer when it’s wet, doesn’t it?”
His fingers slip through the soaked waves of deep auburn. “I’ve never seen it down before. It’s so much darker.” He swears. “You’re so beautiful, Kassandra. I can hardly believe you’re mine.”
“You’re so beautiful I can hardly believe my dumpster fire of a brain didn’t make you shirtless in this environment.”
A slash of heat weaves itself beneath the streaks of ink marring his cheeks.
I lose my air as I fit myself into the safe cocoon against his chest and wrap my arms around his waist. I’ve missed him so much more than I want to admit given that my brain has Pollux of all people playing this role in my head. “It’s been such a day.”
He holds me, and his arms are exactly as strong as I remember.
“I’m going to hate myself in the morning for all of this…”
