“So pretty,” Faolan whispers, gazing at you lovingly. He wants to reach out and pet you, but he’s aware you won’t appreciate it. That’s only natural, he supposes. Living creatures will always crave freedom. “Are you hungry?”

He treats you sweetly, tries to, anyway, when you allow him to. You’re a phoenix, the creature he’s been obsessed with for years. Everyone but his older brother, Kane, had written him off as a fool. The phoenix did not exist, and it certainly couldn’t be caught they told him. How wrong they’d been.

Faolan had tracked your movement for months, studied you without coming too close. It’d been luck, or perhaps fate, though, that had gifted you to him. The feather on his necklace is proof of who you belong to. Once someone came into possession of a phoenix’s tail feather, the two were bonded until the feather was returned. He has no plan of doing so. Faolan hardly wants you featured in the circus at all.

Bishop’s Circus had once been loved. During their great-grandfather’s time they’d been a beast in every cage to wow guests. Now, however, it held little of its former glory. Chelan, the merman, attracted visitors, but after a while guests had grown bored of him.

His brother wants you to be shown off at the circus. Kane thinks you’ll make them profit.

Faolan frowns at the thought. He’d been the one to find you. He’s the one able to get you to shift between forms because guests are always more impressed when they see you go from human to phoenix. Faolan doesn’t enjoy forcing you to do things you don’t want to, but it’s necessary. And he’s taking care of you, brings you whatever you want.

“Please eat,” he says, crouched to peer into the cage Kane demanded you kept in. “I don’t want you to starve.” You’re too beautiful for this circus. Faolan wants to be the only one allowed to look at you.