Page 109 of These Vile Hearts

A deep rumbling emanates from the coarse wood that stretches and groans on the inhales and contracts on the exhales, thin streams of air spilling from pores in the trunk.

For a moment I can’t remember how I got here. But then it all comes flooding back. Slowly, I sit up, anxiety settling over me.

“He was telling the truth, you know,” a poison-dipped voice says. “Your guard lover.”

“Tam isn’t my…” I begin, then realization and panic and a host of other feelings take over, sizzling through me like shards of ice crashing through my veins. Slowly, I turn my head to take in my brother, standing just outside of the wooden bars of my cell. His golden crown looks even bigger from this angle, his perfect face distorted. “Where is he?” I ask, looking around, as if I’ll somehow find him in the same tiny cell as me.

Arms folded, Durian leans casually against the bars, watching me with a look of immense entertainment. “He’s being held in a cell for now. I’m deciding what to do with him. On the one hand, he is a rather skilled healer, and the citadel is in need of another. But then I’d have to let him live.” He moves his hands up and down like unbalanced scales. “Tricky decision.”

“What did you mean he was telling the truth?”

But I already know. I can see it in his eyes: the twinkle of a game won.

Revolving to face me now, Durian wraps his long-fingered hands around the bars, pressing his forehead to them. Like a crown submerged in salt water, the king’s usual glimmer is tarnished by madness. “Your curse. I’m honestly surprised you never figured it out yourself. Those foolish woodlings can be rather clumsy at times. When they took the life of your lover boy, Jace, they nearly woke you up.”

Spots explode before my eyes and nausea roils. A fog of disbeliefsettles around me. On hyperspeed, my mind goes over every memory. Every death.

A montage of moments I’d chosen to ignore, chosen to forget, come crashing back. Small smiles on Durian’s face at my friends’ and tutors’ memorials. The way Durian was the first one to put the idea in my head. That I was cursed. That everyone who loved me would die. He said it so much I began to believe it, and so did everyone else.

“It was all…alie?”

It’s as if I’ve been reading the same book all my life, and suddenly someone has handed me a pile of missing pages that change the whole story.

There is the briefest flash fire of relief—Tam isn’t going to die from my curse—but then it fizzles out to fury. Just because he isn’t going to die from a curse doesn’t mean he’s any safer. Not with Durian as king.

A sickening laugh leaves my maniacal brother’s throat. “I may have been the one killing those who got close to you, but one look at your rotten heartwood and you can see that the Sovereign Tree never wanted you to begin with. You were never a true Sempervirens, no matter what Cyperus made you believe.”

Tears prick my eyes, my teeth gritting together so tightly I think I hear one crack. “You were always so jealous,” I whisper. “Because Cyperus cared about me and despised you. He always knew what kind of king you would turn out to be.”

“Why do you think he adopted you?” Durian seethes, green eyes darkening to onyx. “It wasn’t because he merely wanted to continue the Sempervirens line. He wanted there to be achoice. He intended to groom you to be king.”

“Me?”

I recall a time, long, long ago, when Cyperus sat beside newlyadopted me and said, “Someday this kingdom will all be yours, Castor.” Once people close to me started dying left and right, though, he stopped saying things like that.

“I know. I also found it absurd. Which is why I knew I had to do something about it.”

“Ah, right. Cyperus intended for me to be king, so you just decided it would be a good idea to murder everyone who got close to me and blame it on an imaginary curse?” I say. “Well, you certainly proved him wrong. Clearly, you’ve always been perfectly mentally fit to rule the Redwood Kingdom.”

Bitterness and loathing fill my stomach, threatening to spill from my throat like bile. I swallow them.

“Don’t go getting a big head now, little brother. You may not have been cursed in the way you thought you were. But you were still cursed. No dryad wants to befriend someone who can rot them from the inside out.”

“Yes, they much prefer someone who can squeeze them to death with strangling vines,” I intone. “And don’t act as thoughyouhave friends, Durian. You have servants and people who fear you. No one actually loves you. In fact, more people have loved me—the supposedlycursedprince—than have ever loved you.”

Durian straightens, the cruel smile on his face slipping. Seems I’ve struck a nerve. I would gloat more, but I am also the one locked in the cage.

“Yes, perhaps I should change that…starting with your mortal lover.”

My heart sinks into my gut. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, since she will be living for a bit longer than expected, I figure I should keep her around. I could use the company, and I’m sure she could too. I hear she has a thing for kings.” He winks at me. “Besides, with you in here, I’ll have no one to play games with.”

“Maddox isnotstaying here,” I growl, moving toward the bars. Durian takes a step back. “She’s returning to the mortal lands.”

“I suppose you won’t know what she does, as you will be locked in here.” He runs a finger lovingly down one of the bars.

“My curse wasn’t evenreal. You can’t lock me in here if the pact was nothing but a game!”