Page 98 of Feed Your Fiends

“Immersion therapy. See, after the accident, I can’t even sit in a car. Just like you can’t bear the touch of a little spider. Since we’re bonding, I figured we could do it together. It’d help if you wore yours too so I wouldn’t feel so alone.” I hold up the top so he can get a better look. “Étiennetook great care to make them.”

Sylo’s horrified gaze flickers from the dead spiders sewn on his pajamas to me as he slips off the bed and onto his ass, his left foot tangled in the sheets. “Fuck off!”

“You don’t like them?” I ask innocently, slipping off the bed to join him.

“That accident gave you severe brain trauma,” he hisses up at me.

“How did you know?”

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

“At the moment? You not wearing your special order jammies. Put them on—”

“Fuck off!”

“Or I’ll put them on for you.”

“What do you want?” He gasps, throwing his hands up to ward me off. “Seriously, just tell me what the fuck you want?”

I lay out his pyjamas and sit on the edge of the bed. “I just want to know you better, Sylo. That’s all.”

“No…” he says, realisation washing over him. “You want answers.”

“A cosy cousin chat.” I smile and stroke a spider.

Sylo follows the motion and swallows because while these are dead, he knows where I keep thousands of live ones. And they’ll be waiting for him the second we step foot onto Beaulieu’s campus if he doesn’t oblige me.

“What do you want to know?”

“Seeing Delphine is like seeing my mother in the flesh again,” I say. “ Sometimes, it’s too uncanny, and I just want to get away, but then I fall into her green eyes, and they put me at peace.”

“Congratulations.”

“They don’t put you at ease, though.” It isn’t a question.

Sylo’s eyes snap to me then. “What are you talking about?”

“I see the way you interact withDelphinewith cold tolerance.”

He says nothing.

“You ruined all her raspberry lemonade tarts, purposefully left dregs in every cup of tea you bought her, and listened to your music and podcasts for my entire visit.”

His expression gives nothing away, but I know he hadn’t thought I’d noticed.

“You seem as comfortable with Delphine as I seem with her. Like she’s just an estranged aunt. It’s a juxtaposition to her story of falling in love and creating a manifestation of it via you.”

A long silence stretches between us. At first, I’m patient, then I grab my star torch and flicker it on and off, waving it around to create shooting stars across Sylo’s face.

His talons sink into my wrist to stop the motion. “Was… was your mother okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“My mother was fixated on Marisol andyou.”

“Everyone is obsessed with me. Ask Elle.”

Sylo rolls his eyes.

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