Chapter 19

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Magic. Isn't. Real.

After dropping Pollux and Andromeda off at their home, I head back to the school. Whether I'm procrastinating letting my parents know what I've done or if what Andromeda said earlier has stuck, I'm not sure.

I shouldn't even be entertaining the nonsense possibility that faeries are real, but here I am in my office pulling up the backyard camera footage from last night.

"Let's see how they did it…" I murmur as the video scrolls back.

Playground. Playground. Zahra and me at the playground. Kids on the playground for today's recess. Playground. Playgr—

Nothing.

My heart thuds.

I pause, bring the feed right up to the moment the playground just appears, and…watch a crackle of static take place before it's simply there. Rewinding, I watch it. Again and again. I check the hours, make sure no time was lost, I scan the video for any proof of tampering, any small visible motion that cuts out the second the playground appears out of nowhere.

It's stupid, of course, to think that someone would build me a playground then hack into my cameras to mask the whole event, but I'm grasping for an answer that isn't Silly Kass, that's when Cael dropped his faerie barrier, duh.

My eyes narrow on a single leaf blowing in the back corner. The static hits. And…

The little leaf finishes settling.

I swallow, lean back in my chair, and stare at the wall above my monitor. My ironic Hang In There cat poster mocks me, weeping eyes staring feebly from where the little gray thing clings to a tree branch.

I whisper, "Magic isn't real."

I stand and repeat the words.

Walking to my car, I get in and drive home and make it up the steps of my parents' little brick house. I hesitate at the front door, my hand inches from turning the knob. I'm being an idiot. Somehow. Because magic isn't real. It can't be real. And if it were real, it wouldn't include me in its escapades. I'm average. Unassuming. The most interesting thing about me is my wardrobe. Apart from that, I'm just like any other thirty-something stuck at home with her parents because she traded out her dating years in favor of crying over student essays.

Magic isn't real, but I do need to talk to my parents about the questionable decisions I've made this evening.

I push inside. "Mom? Dad?"

"Living room," Dad calls, so I head there and find my father peering at a sudoku puzzle. Brows raised to the line of his fading red curls, he marks in a number, glances my way above his glasses, and lowers the book. "What's wrong, Kasserole?"

I'm losing my mind. That's what's wrong. I'm going bonkers.

Is this how Zahra has felt for her entire life?

I pin a weak smile in place. "One of my students is from a single-parent household, so I invited him and his daughter to our Thanksgiving. I hope that's all right?"

"Him?" My mother's voice creeps from behind me, and I turn to come face-to-face with her. My mother is everything I am—except for our hair. The same brown eyes, slender frame, smile. Her head tilts. "There's a him coming to dinner next Thursday?"

"And this is the first we're hearing of it?" my father chides. "Aren't we supposed to know about these things before it's serious enough for meeting the parents?"

"It's nothing like that." I squash my brain's depiction of Pollux down somewhere the light will never see it. "I just didn't want them to be alone on the holiday." I yawn. "I'm actually pretty tired, so I think I'm going to turn in." And have a conniption in private. Like one does.

"It is pretty late for you to be getting home." My father closes his reading glasses. "Do you not want dinner?"

"No, thank you. I got something earlier, then finished some stuff up at the school. I thought I texted. Sorry if I forgot."

He hums. "That's all right. I'm glad you made it home safe."

"Is your student's single father cute?" Mom asks.

I gasp. "Mother. Dad is right here." And then I yawn again. For effect.

"Are you feeling well, honey? It's very early for you to be going to bed." Mom touches my forehead with her frozen fingers. "You're very warm."

I step back. "Actually, you've just teleported here from the arctic. I'm fine. Promise. It's just been one of those long days."

Concern fills Mom's eyes, but she shifts her attention back to the single dad I'm inviting over. "Do we need to get a small turkey for your single father?"

For starters, he's not my anything.

Backing down the hall, I clear my throat. "Um. No. They're also vegetarian."

"Marry him," my father says, helpfully.

I let a dry laugh free. "Good night." Tucking myself into my room, I find my sweet little Chai curled up on my pillow and sigh.

Vampire cat.

No, vampires aren't real, and if they were, they'd be bats. Because they're always bats, and I don't want to talk or think about it. Period.

Chai stretches, coos, and comes half awake as I drop my purse in the chair at my desk. I slip out of my shoes. Once I've sat down on my bed, he happily bounds to me and bonks his head into my side. He's floppily wiggling in my lap before I can hope to stop him. He doesn't bite or scratch when I rub his little tummy. And he hasn't bitten or scratched the entire time I've had him.

So if he is a vampire, logic demands he's starving.

Where did Pollux even get a cat?

And why did he give it to me?

Andromeda probably would have loved a cat. Clearly, he bought food for it, so it makes no sense that I ended up with it.

Nothing makes sense.

My head hurts.

"Faeries aren't real," I whisper. I've grown up. I know better.

I…

Need to talk to Pollux.

So I get ready for bed, close my eyes, and dream.

?

Pollux swears as he collides in my consciousness. Whipping around on the shore of my island, he finds me and stares. "Dearest…"

I march across the sand, which is swiftly turning gray beneath his bare feet. "I looked up the video footage."

"The…video footage…"

"Of the school yard last night."

His sharp teeth click before he says, "Ah."

"It doesn't make any sense. None. Magic isn't real."

Swiping his hand to the back of his neck, he grumbles, "Well, not with that attitude."

A deranged laugh spills from my chest, and I rake my fingers through my curls while I pace on the beach. "I mean, if magic were real, and if you were really Pollux, how come I controlled the fact you're here right now? Hm? It's super early because I am utterly exhausted. I doubt you're already out gallivanting and doing whatever it is dream eaters do."

"To say I'm surprised you could summon me from the physical realm to the dream plane would be a lie, so I'll just say I hope the reagent I was testing is not overly flammable." He flexes his fingers, takes a step forward, and stops my frantic pacing. Arms braced at my elbows, he murmurs, "Focus on me."

I lift my attention and feel a palpable ease melt into my flesh. If magic is real, this is real. He is real. And…

Nope.

Actually, that ease was panic in disguise.

I rub my knuckles together so fast it's shocking they don't catch flame.

If this is real, this man thinks we're married and soulmates. He's knelt at my feet and done things that haunt me constantly. He haunts me constantly. I'll never find rest again if a supernatural monster creature wants me for some reason.

Lowering his face to my neck, he plants a dreadful kiss against my skin. "Take a breath."

I let air fill my lungs and grow dazed with the way the tip of his nose grazes my throat.

"Good girl." His voice rumbles.

My stomach dips, and there it is…my good girl. More proof I'm somehow in control of this, even though it doesn't feel like I am at all.

He wraps me up in his arms. "You told me last night you wished these things were real. What's wrong now?"

"They just can't be."

"Why?"

"Because." I press my face against his chest and break my hands apart so I can cling, absorbing his warmth. "If it is, everything I've been taught to know is wrong. If it is, I've spent decades fitting myself into something I don't…I don't think I am. If it is, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, who I'm supposed to be, how I'm supposed to continue being mature and responsible and right. Not when everything has changed. How will I keep being a teacher? How will I get up every morning and drive to school and teach kids about science and math and grammar and not about an entire world just out of sight?"

"You can teach them about it."

I grip his shirt in my fists. "Right. Sure. Because their parents would like that. Faerie doesn't seem to be common knowledge among humans, and one can assume there's a reason for that. Don't be ridiculous."

"Faerie isn't about magical forests or unusual creatures. It's not about spells or powers or unique abilities. It's a land as vast as imagination and belief, full of diversity and emotions so condensed they birthed living beings. You teach Faerie whenever you teach kindness, respect, and consideration for the oddities that are present in your world. You teach Faerie whenever you let a child know they aren't too much. You teach Faerie with encouragement and gentleness, when you let the wild and free spirit be."

A tear slips down my cheek and soaks into his shirt. "I wish…someone had taught me Faerie. I've spent my entire life stuffing myself into the expected boxes, monitoring the correct responses to every line, practicing expressions in the mirror, stopping myself from being too hyper or too talkative. It's the female experience. I've written it all off as the lot many women are just born with. It's the role I have to play to keep the peace in my life. But now I don't know who I am, Pollux." I lift my face to find his. "Do you?"

Cupping my cheek, he swipes a tear away with his thumb. "Yes. You are mine."

"That doesn't really help me with my whole identity crisis here, dreamboy. I cannot find myself if myself is reliant on you."

He chuckles. "Being mine means you must undoubtedly be a terror to behold, a strength unlike any other, a majestic, untamed creature of unfathomable beauty."

"Modest, aren't you?"

"Quite. The fae cannot lie. To be mine, you must match me in equally opposite pieces. Our shapes must pair and fill one another perfectly. We are what one another needs, desires, and wants. You are everything I lack and a better imagining of everything I am."

I glance at his claw. "How messed up am I if what I need, desire, and want is a monster?"

"I'd dare to suggest that your ability to overlook my monstrous parts makes you far less messed up than many."

I stare at him. "No. See. I'm not overlooking them."

His head tilts.

"I'm attracted to all of…this."

His brows rise.

In order to clarify, I say, "Smash."

It takes him a moment to understand I'm referring to smash or pass, but the second he gets it, red plunges up his neck and out along his pointed ears. "Oh." He presses the back of his hand to his mouth and averts his eyes. "Well."

"Just so you know, if this is real and I'm actually saying these words to a real person, I will shoot myself."

"Please, please don't do that." His throat bobs, and he can't seem to bring himself to look at me anymore. "I just… I'm not certain you understand how tremendous it is for me to be…wanted, like this." He shivers before dragging his attention back to me. "I am not usually someone so easily welcomed. I serve a purpose. I have a use. I play my role in the shadows and watch others shine."

"It's hard to constantly be playing a role, isn't it? I would know." I exhale a laugh. "After all, that's my name."

"Is it not human custom in this country to take on the male's last name when wed?"

"I could hyphenate." I pause. "Wait. Why are you so convinced we're married?"

"Because we are?"

I let out a big breath. "You know what? I can only handle so many layers of insanity right at this exact moment. Can we bench the relationship, soulmate, married stuff until I come to terms with the other stuff being maybe real?"

"I am in no rush to savor you."

Hot dang. Isn't that just a statement?

Hooking a finger beneath my chin, he peers at me with so much tenderness in his expression it's a miracle I don't melt into a puddle. "How can I help make things easier for you as your beliefs transition?"

"I'm tempted to ask for proof. Something solid that I can't hope to deny."

"I'm hesitant to provide it."

My eyes roll. "Because your magic is spooky? I don't think I care." I reference my pretty perfect island. "Turn this into a horror film. I fell asleep when Zahra tried to show me her favorite, most chilling, most gruesome movie ever. She took selfies of me snoring and captioned them Just an eepy bean unfazed by the pretty entrails."

Pollux's smile grows warmer before he kisses my forehead. "Every moment I stop myself from claiming you is a physical pain. My soul is desperate to bind yours to mine."

"Can you explain what you mean?"

"When soulmates find one another, they must choose whether they want to accept the bond or not. The process of acceptance is to claim. Claiming can be either verbalized or marked with a kiss here." He touches a nailtip to my bottom lip. "Soulmates are sacred. Precious. It is a bond like no other. Until very recently when Cael received his, I did not think it possible for an unseelie to have. You are a blessing I have only just begun in the past few months to expect."

"Wow. That seems kind of racist or something, to not let the unseelie have soulmates."

"Many unseelie are not worthy of the love that comes with a soulmate."

I grimace. "What are you talking about? Everyone is worthy of love. Even the worst people in the world are worthy of it, regardless of whether or not they deserve it. I believe everyone has an innate worth. Living up to that potential sometimes is where we fall so short."

"Perhaps in a certain sense. The love I refer to, however, is the sort that asks another being to sacrifice for someone who would hurt them. Many unseelie are crafted to erode precious things."

"Why not just pair two equally toxic people together?"

"It is not a cosmic rule bent on mutual destruction. It is an opportunity for growth and healing that can sometimes only be found with help."

"Cosmic therapy."

"That is Willow's opinion of it at any rate."

I let my mind stroll through the idea that I've been cosmically designed for someone who fulfills all the pieces of me that seem to be missing. It's a lot. On top of the other concepts, it's a lot. "I asked you to leave the soulmate stuff alone for a bit, but you derailed the conversation right back into it."

He tenses. "My apologies. I did not mean to. I am poorly equipped to regulate discussion of my interests. I craft entire worlds around them and bury myself in my ideas. Suffice to say, you are a primary interest, and I want you, desperately." Taking a breath, he drops his hands to his sides and steps back onto the damp sand. My ocean licks against his heels. "Proof. We were discussing proof. The proof that you want. Because, like me, you demand clear answers to theories and hypotheses and speculations, and I will manage how that knowledge undoes me for your sake."

"Why are you hesitant to give me information?"

"Because. I have told you that you are a fearsome creature. There is a barrier you have crafted inside yourself that locks who you are at your core away. I do not know what might happen if a shock shatters it. I worry you might go off like a bomb. I worry what Cael may do if only he knew what lay in our midst."

"Meda talks about Cael as though he's a sunshine and rainbows sort of guy."

"Because Meda's picture of Cael is random presents and encouragement of her mischief. She has seen far less of his leadership role."

"He was jealous of a burrito."

Pollux clears his throat. "He's…interesting in his duplicity. He would not harm you, but I do not like the potential he may seek to contain you for the safety of others."

Yeah. I'm not really a fan of that idea either. Tangling my fingers together, I say, "I'm spooky?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure? Because when I'm stressed, I crochet succulents. And that feels like very unspooky behavior."

"When you're stressed, you have found an acceptable outlet of repetitive actions in order to filter the excess energy you hold onto, the excess energy you would otherwise funnel into correcting what is causing you stress. Years have put this barrier in place. I would prefer to slowly unravel it. Cautiously. Through events like tonight, where your dreams provide a method of introducing you to ideas that you can then process more casually while you rest."

"So I don't explode?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

I laugh. "Wow. Okay, then. Nice to know. You know. Maybe. I really was quite the imaginative kid growing up. Obviously, I'm just relapsing a little. No problem."

"Who stopped you from being who you were as a child."

"What do you mean? No one stopped me. I grew up. It happens."

Pollux searches me for several long moments, then he shakes his head. "Something collided with you and trained you to believe things about yourself and the world. Many fae are born in full. Too young and too old, by your world's standards. There's a level of maturity that does come with age, but it does not usually override simple, childish joys."

My mouth opens. I close it. Clasping my hands together and tapping my thumbs, I say, "Pollux, it sounds like you're suggesting I'm fae."

"Did I not make that clear?"

"No, not really."

"Oh." He blinks. "An accident. What…did you assume I meant every time I've said you are an unfathomable creature of horrors?"

"I assumed you were really bad at flirting. Or really good. I don't know. It kind of sends a shiver down my spine when you suggest I'm something powerful and capable of more than cleaning up after a group of gremlin children."

"The concept of flirting baffles me. I do not understand the merit in dancing around the truth of attraction. You consume me. I love you. Your beauty haunts me like one of my most terrible renditions of a wraith, yet I welcome it."

I step forward, onto the wet sand, and cover his mouth. "Please. Stop."

"Right." He murmurs against my fingers. "My apologies. My feelings for you are unfamiliar, and I do not know where to put them."

"I tend to put those kinds of feelings in a box."

"I would like to suggest that isn't healthy. I would also like to suggest that you are an uncountable number of closed boxes. I worry they might crush you if you do not take care in unpacking them as soon as possible."

Dropping my hand off him, I tangle my fingers together. Tight. "How am I supposed to do that and still maintain everything else? I need to be the person I've become in order to fit the space I've found."

"People should not be made to fit into spaces. Spaces should be large enough to fit people."

I smile. "Faerie sounds more beautiful by the moment."

"At least some parts abide by such rules. There are all sorts of domains and characters who exist in them."

"Like Castor?"

He flinches.

"What's the deal with Castor? Earlier today, at dinner, you seemed to know him well. At least at one point."

"There is no deal with Castor. I do not recommend making any agreements with him ever."

"I'm sensing this is a touchy subject."

A short growl emanates from his throat.

I sigh. "If you are hesitant to give me hard proof, what is the next step?"

He swears and seems to look somewhere outside the island landscape surrounding us. "The next step for me is to clean shattered glass out of my lab."

"What?"

"The reagent was flammable. Explosive, actually."

"What?"

He unravels my hands, squeezes them, and says, "Unpack a box. Get to the bottom of why you've felt a need to contain yourself. Remember who you are at the core of who you are. Be comfortable with yourself before thinking about getting comfortable with everything else. I will see you again soon, in this plane or the other."

"How do I—"

Kissing my forehead, he vanishes.