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“Married couples generally live together. I had not yet gotten an opportunity to offer you a room in my home, but I have been preparing one. And…” He swears and moves his hand to cover his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Kassandra. You terrify me, and I am unused to the sensation of my own fear. I build terror and experience the full saturation of it dozens of times nearly every night. Yet…you. You.” His phone angles off him, at the chandelier on the ceiling. His voice breaks as it comes through the speaker. “You shut my thoughts off. You make it hard to breathe. I don’t fear death, or pain, or suffering, but the agony of not knowing how to express myself to you in a way that could somehow present the case that I am worthy enough to be yours…scares me.”
I bite my cheeks to keep from blurting something incredibly stupid. I have long since trained my inside thoughts to not become my outside regrets. But. Also. Dang. He’s a woman’s dream come true, isn’t he?
I scare him? This man made of fear? This man whose presence without me, his cute little soulmate in a sweet little blue nightgown and matching night cap, horrifies people?
Excuse me a moment while I enjoy that.
“You want to live together,” I say.
“Yes. If you’d like to. At some point. There are many things I’d like, but I require your consent to proceed on them.” A shaking breath hits the speaker. “I have no idea how exactly I am meant to meld the customs you know with the ones I do. I want to make things comfortable for you. But none of this is why I called. Please do think about it, though. Are you free today for any more important questions, after school perhaps?”
“It’s still break,” I say. “I’m free now.”
The camera refocuses on his face, and there’s a spark in his red eyes that seems wholly boyish in its innocence. “Now?” he asks, tone hopeful. “Would you like me to make you breakfast?”
Yes. I would like that. However, problem. I have parents. Nosy parents. Nosy parents who are invested in us getting human married on top of accidental fae married. Lying and saying I’m heading to Zahra’s is not an option.
Because lying on such a large scale is very wrong.
Silence stretches.
Caution mutes the lovely spark as Pollux murmurs, “Did I make an error in assumption?”
“I am attempting to figure out an acceptable way to inform my parents of why I won’t be joining them for breakfast.”
“Is there any particular reason you aren’t telling them that Chai was a proposal kitten?”
Several, actually. Top of which is they will admit me to a mental ward.
Which could be fun.
A nice little vacation.
“Um…” I pull my thoughts off white coats and padded cells and school days that I’m sure I would still somehow need to make up. “I’m not sure they’d understand.”
“I haven’t known quite how to ask before now…but why did you accept my proposal so quickly?”
Because. It was a kitten. Because. I thought you were drunk and would accidentally kill it if I let you wander off with the tiny baby. Because. It was a kitten.
Honestly, screw the fae and their stupid rules about selling souls for thank yous and getting married over kittens. It’s as though the entire culture is fashioned as an attack against me specifically.
I stare down at Chai and rub his soft little belly. Somewhere in my stupid brain a stupid worth it appears. I squash that idiot thought down. “It was an accident.”
“An accident?”
“I didn’t know what I was doing.”
His eyes widen. “Were you inebriated? That party did carry with it a scent of alcohol, but it wasn’t on your breath. I apologize if I petitioned you in a state of intoxication. That wasn’t my intent.”
This sweet man. I feel awful telling him I had no idea that accepting a kitten meant I was getting married. He literally proposed to his soulmate, expecting to be rejected, and wasn’t. Afterward, he was so dumbfounded that I had actually accepted, he walked through a bush.
Because, as I now know, stimulants do nothing for him and he couldn’t have been drunk.
Come on.
I’m not a monster.
I’m married, and we’re just going to roll with that punch along with all the others. Not like I couldn’t have done a lot worse when it comes to a husband. Right?
