Page 115 of These Vile Hearts

Durian’s brows lift as he turns his gaze on the queen. The dryad cluster parts. “You know this mortal girl, Amanita?”

The Myrtle Queen takes a slow sip of cherry wine, face impassive. She licks her red-stained lips. “I’ve never seen this girl in my life.”

36

Castor

I’m in a room filled with a hundred corpses.

The bodies are laid out on flat stone altars in an endless row. All of them have faces I recognize—faces I once loved. Numbly, I travel down the line, taking in every frozen relic.

My fingers brush along the stiff shoulders of Cyperus, his usual broad smile replaced with vacant nothingness. I move on to Laurel, her long black hair cascading over the stone like a dark waterfall. Then there’s Jace. My heart palpitates as I take in his ashy blond curls, his high cheekbones. Falling for him was nothing like falling for Maddox.

With Jace, everything was an explosion of fire and sound and light. All-consuming and overwhelming. But with her, it was slow…somehow. Despite the brevity of our dalliance. And most of the time it didn’t feel good. But I guess love doesn’t feel like one thing. Sometimes it catches your world on fire, and sometimes it floods it, slowly and covertly, until you find yourself suddenly unable to breathe.

Of course, it was difficult for me to recognize at first. I’m never fully able to breathe.

The next body in line forces me to stop in my tracks.

Face the shape of a lovestruck heart. Hair the color of flames in the middle of a frozen wasteland—the only source of warmth in this room. Spots covering her visage like an inverted night sky. Her eyes are closed, but beneath the lids, I know there are silver irises glinting like starlight.

“Maddox,” I whisper, kneeling beside her. The name feels like thorns raking against my vocal cords. My horns grow heavy, curving my neck forward. I press my forehead against the stone altar, wrapping my fingers around hers. They’re cold and stiff with death.

Hot tears spill from my eyes, stinging my numb cheeks. I can’t remember how she died or when, but I know it’s my fault. It’s always my fault. I wear death like a billowing cloak and everyone in my vicinity perishes. Everyone. Something tugs at my mind—a recent revelation, but I can’t recall it.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so, so sorry.”

My fingers tighten around her hand until the smooth stone feel of it disintegrates into dust. Lifting my head, I take in the crumbling remnants in my palm. Gaze sliding up to Maddox’s face, I watch fissures appear in her skin, tracing constellations through her speckled cheeks until her skull collapses in on itself. I scramble backward, knocking into the altar behind me. A cloud of ash and blond hair rains down on my shoulders, and I breathe in a lungful of Jace.

“No!” I sob, covering my head with clawed hands, rocking back and forth as my lungs spasm, trying to expel the literal ghosts of my past.

No. No. No. No. No. No.

“Gone mad already, brother? That was rather quick.”

I jolt upright.

All the bodies, the ash, are gone. I’m back in my small cell, and Durian stands before it. Suddenly, everything comes flooding back,and I remember. Those bodies I saw were all because ofhim. Because of his envy and narcissism. I wish I could pull him through these bars with me and trap him in here forever. Yes, it would make things more miserable for me, but at least I’d know he was miserable too.

The light from the lantern he carries casts devilish shadows over his sculpted face, still handsome all the same. Perfect and striking and golden. The light to my darkness, or so I thought. Because his beauty, his perfection, hislight, shines only on the surface. Beneath that golden exterior is nothing but decay and disease. A shiny apple with a rotten core.

“I brought something for you.”

My words come out in a strangled growl, a rabid beast who’s gone too long without tasting blood. “I want nothing from you.”

“Oh, I think you’ll want this. Though you may change your mind after you find out what she’s been doing.” He turns to someone unseen. “Come into the light so he can see you.”

Tugged into my line of sight by a snakelike vine is a bound and gagged Maddox. She struggles in her bindings, wild silver eyes landing on me. But the tenderness they held last I looked into them has been exchanged for ire. My stomach twists and sinks.

She knows.

“Maddox, darling,” Durian purrs, running a finger under her chin as her mutinous gaze darts back to him. The vines gagging her slither away, and she coughs before baring her teeth. “Why don’t you tell Castor what it is you were doing outside the throne room?”

For once, Maddox looks almost guilty. For the briefest of moments, at least. Then the guilt burns away. “Why doesn’t Castor tell me about the pact the two of you made?” she spits in my direction. “How did that go again? Find a stupid mortal girl to fall in love with you and die so you can be cured of your bullshit curse?”

I move closer to the bars, swallowing her words like poisoned wine. “Maddox,” I whisper. “My curse isn’t—”

“—real?” she finishes. “I know. Tam and I figured it out a few hours ago. Right after…” Her sentence drops off. She doesn’t need to finish it. We both know what she was going to say. “Not that it matters now—your sadistic brother is going to have both of us locked up in this fucking hell tree.”