“Oh?” I say breathlessly. The warmth in my cheeks is definitely not from blushing. The air is just extra chilly tonight.
“You don’t have to answer—”
“Yes,” I whisper and turn once again toward him. He towers over me. His eyes flick to my lips as he leans in.
I sway to my toes, closing the space. He presses his lips to mine, and we kiss. It’s the opposite of what I would expect. Sweet and warm and soft and overfar too quickly.
Castor pulls away slowly, releasing his hand from my hair. He watches as my dark tresses fall reluctantly out of his fingers. “Goodnight Akemi,” he rasps, then strides out the door.
I flop onto my bed and toss and turn with excitement, the echo of our kiss still lingering on my lips. Castor, asking me on a date? If there were princes in the human territories, he would be one. I’m too restless to sleep. Too tense to relax. I would have let him kiss me longer, explore more places, I realize.
I would have let him… and I would have liked it.
The thought has me pacing. I leave my room, ride the glass box down to the first floor. The fireplace is still cracking. Turning, my feet take me down a familiar pathway along the empty corridors. My thoughts race with pictures of Castor in my room.Castor leaning over me. Castor’s fingers laced through my hair. Castor’s gentle kiss, sweet as honey.
I walk absentmindedly as my thoughts continue to spiral until I’m standing next to the edge of one of the larger glowing springs beneath the library.
I pull off my cloak and night dress and set them aside, placing my dagger neatly on top of the pile. Eagerly, I step into the hot, bubbling water and moan. Once the water is to my shoulders, I tuck my knees and drop beneath the surface, fully submerging myself into the bubbling current.
I almost cannot believe that water—the same element that used to be a source of fear—is now a source of pure bliss.
The image of Castor finally fades from my mind. Beneath the water, it is just me. I float, free from my past, free from the pressure of the Presentation, the Summit, being someone worth weaving into Marrow’s patchwork cloak. I release the tension in my body, submitting fully to the spring, letting myself float until my lungs sting and I can no longer hold my breath. I rise to the surface and wipe the water from my eyes.
“Hello, lovely,” a low voice grumbles in a smooth, lilting accent. “You are in my hot spring.”
The Underling warrior I saw a few days ago sits at the other end of the spring.
I am going to die. I am going to die. I am going to die.
Yep, that seems like a totally rational thought to strike through my brain over and over like a damn motif in one of Marrow’s Tellings.
I wheel around, grasping for my small pile near the water’s edge. My heart lodges into my throat.
“Looking for this?” the white haired male says, swirlingmydagger in his hands. The dagger I was gifted from Bane looks like a butter knife compared to the killing aura surrounding this male. He flips it between his fingers in some sort of infinite loop.
I was wrong with my assessment when I first glanced at him across the cave. He isn’t large, he ishuge. He must be nearing seven feet tall. His white hair lays in messy layers at his shoulders. Inky black swirls crawl up and down his arm, chest, and neck, and continue down beneath the bubbling surface. His jaw is strong and angled, eyebrows surprisingly dark for his light hair, eyes, and skin.
Skin like white marble, so light that I wonder if he has ever seen the sun.
His ears are pierced multiple times with silver metal, gleaming the same silver of his eyes—otherworldly eyes—that are staring right into mine. There is a glint of amusement on his face as he continues swirling my dagger. A challenge.
“Give that back!” I command, surprising myself with how calm my voice sounds considering I’m about to have a heart attack.
“Just so you can stab me? No thank you,” he replies, flicking the dagger with his thumb, sending the blade spinning high into the air.
“No!” I panic.
The bubbles on the surface would make it impossible to find the blade if it drops below. I cannot fathom losing that piece of home. Not by the same ilk that ruined it in the first place. He is an Underling, a creature from the Underworld. A cold, calculated killer that doesn’t care about the livelihood of humans.
That fucker. I clench my fist. My fingers shake at my side, spread like claws.
“That ismine!” I sprint to catch it, but the water resistance makes my attempt painfully slow.
Just as the dagger reaches the surface, the Underling whips his hand forward so fast, I can barely see it. A glint of silver flashes between his fingertips. Did he just catch it? Sure enough, pinched between two large fingers is my dagger. My heartbeatquickens at the sight. Not because his hands are so big that he dwarfs the blade, but at the sheerspeedof his movements. No creature this large should be allowed to move like that. My body trembles as I try to regain control over my breathing again. I almost lost a piece of me just now. A piece pinched between twogiantfingers.
“Hmm,” he grumbles. “This is important to you.”
It’s not a question.
