Page 45 of Falling in Love with A Tiny Bat

My chin lifts.

“Castor is literally the stupidest goofball I have ever met. What in the world is wrong with him?”

I smile as my prickling nerves ease. “I think he’s gone a bit mad from the isolation.”

“Makes sense.” Her lips purse. “Do you know what happened? Cael and Pollux don’t seem like bad people. I can’tpicture them abandoning Castor for something unimportant if they were friends once.”

“Sorry.” I close my hand into a fist. “I don’t have any details, but you’re not wrong. I’m not prepared to suggest any of them are blameless. Conflicts among people who are good at their cores rarely wind up one-sided.”

“Is Castor good at his core? Wouldn’t Cael or Pollux be able to sense that kind of thing? They’ve both got some of your emotion prowess, don’t they?”

I chuckle, daring to move a step closer to my beautiful, rogue soulmate. “Yes,some. Pollux knows fears. Cael dissects brokenness. He can feel Castor’s anger, his malice, his hate, all the things that have left him shattered. Cael has lost all kindness for Castor over whatever happened.” I take another step toward Zahra. “Pollux, on the other hand, feels Castor’s anguish, his terrors linked to loneliness. They were closer, as far as I’ve come to understand, because what Pollux can sense leaves more room for mercy.”

Zahra’s eyes lift when I’m a mere foot away. They meet mine. And…I think the purple’s growing on me. If it were mixed with her usual green, her eyes would reflect the Northern Lights. And it would suit her too well. “What do you feel in Castor?” she asks.

“Pain.” Cautiously lifting a hand, I pinch two fingers around the hem of her hood and smooth it down toward her chin. “Hurt people hurt people, Zahra. We give what we experience ourselves, in a desperate effort to connect to someone else in this uncertain world. When we aren’t self-aware enough to manage the implications of our actions, we do it subconsciously.”

Her gaze flicks toward my hand as I draw it away. Stern, she puts a foot of distance between us and mutters, “Aren’t you a little young to have come to these kinds of conclusions?”

I close the distance between us again, locking my hands behind my back as I do. “Am I?”

She regains the distance. “Less than a year old, I’m told.”

“That rhymed.” I lift my foot.

“Stop cornering me. You’re going to wake Ash again.”

I put my foot down. “You’re tired, snowflake. Why don’t you retire early tonight? We can talk more about anything worrying you in the morning.”

Sighing, she nods, bids me goodnight, and leaves my room.

In the vacuum of her absence, I turn myself toward the window just in time for Castor to materialize out of the dust. Rolling my eyes off him, I go back to my bed. “You’re still blond.”

“Am I not always blond?” he asks.

I lie down, back to him. “I consider you moredevoid of color.”

He hums, and his weight settles by my feet when he sits.

“How much did you hear?” I mumble, folding an arm beneath my head, removing my phone from my pocket, and opening up my Finch app to check on my little birb.

“Oh. Enough.”

“How embarrassing.”

His low laughter, for some reason, makes me smile.

I change my little birb’s outfit from his day clothes to his PJs and give him his toothbrush. “Did you have fun playing pretend?”

“It was a riveting experience.” A pause. “I quite enjoy the company of your soulmate.”

My smile widens, and I turn my attention toward him. “She’s cute, isn’t she?”

“Certainly entertaining. When do you plan to take her humanity?”

I roll to my back and look at the ceiling. “I don’t know that she wants me to right now.”

“The star nymphs are masters of disguise, even without contracts to bring other powers into her solar system. It’s likelywhy she entertains so much dress up. She’d retain her ability to walk among her horde of children at that school of Kass’s, should she so desire.”

---