Page 118 of These Vile Hearts

Why would she leave me like this?

A sharp rap sounds on my tiny window, and a shadow blocks the light outside. Then I see the glint of red hair.

“Dad?” I breathe.

He shakes his head, his weathered face a mask of disappointment. “You should’ve listened, Maddox. I told you. I told you to never trust a dryad.”

“Help me,” I cry out to him.

Needles in my neck now. In my chest.

“It’s too late for me to help you now.”

I’m drowning in a sea of syringes. I curl forward into a ball, the way I would if I was locking down. Trying to protect my face, myeyes.

An empty house with doors and windows flung open. That’s all I am. I just have to close them. But I tug on the handle and the door won’t budge. I try to pull the windows shut, but they’re stuck. The inside of my house fills with empty insulin vials. Needles rain down on me. I try to run, but there’s nowhere to go. Tears track down my cheeks, and a sob escapes my throat.

“You’re even weaker than I thought,” says a voice that doesn’t belong to either of my parents.

The needles pricking my skin vanish. I uncurl. I’m no longer in my childhood bedroom. I’m back in my empty cell.

It wasn’t real. None of it was real.

Durian grasps the wooden bars, which are once again cylindrical, his hands sliding slowly down. I touch my cheeks, and they come away wet.Fuck this tree.

Beyond him, Castor sits on the ground, back curved as he stares into the middle distance. Despite my anger toward him, something deep in me longs to pull him into my arms. To offer comfort and safety like I did less than twenty-four hours ago.

“I’d love to know whatyouwould see in here,” I say to Durian, wiping my tears away as I stand to face the king I couldn’t kill. “The horrors this tree would conjure for you. Or would you merely end up in a dark room with no gold or people to fawn over you?”

Durian strokes the bars of the cell, looking at them like fond friends. “Luckily, the tree is unable to imprison a Sovereign king. But when I was a child, my brother Cyperus had me locked in here a few times. Believe it or not, I was just as afraid of monsters as any other young dryad.”

“So you turned into one.”

“It’s easy to act as though I am the only monster here, but let us take a look at you, shall we? Not exactly the image of goodness and morality.”

I swallow at the truth in his accusation. If I’m being honest withmyself, I have never been all that fond of “goodness.” I equated it with spoiled brats. It’s easy to be good when you have a good family with good jobs and a good upbringing. I believed that forgiveness was weakness. That being selfless was for those with no self-worth. That being generous was the mark of a person who had too much to begin with. I’ve never understood people like Fern who have lost everything and still found it within themselves to be giving and kind.

“I may be a bitch, but I’m not a monster. Not like you.”

His chin tilts down, half-gilded sandalwood horns poking through the bars while his mouth curls into a sinister grin. “Perhaps. But you are the one in the cage.”

“Andyouput me here—put your own brother here,” I snarl. Castor lifts his head at this, listening. “Because you are sick and twisted and would rather play games with people than show them decency or compassion or any other human emotion.”

“Ah, well, that’s the problem, you see. I am not human, am I? I am adryad.”

“Castor is a dryad, too, and he can’tnotshow his emotions. I tried to teach him how to hide them, but he can’t. He’s basically one giant teardrop.”

“Thanks,” Castor mutters.

Durian snickers at this. “He’s always been weak. That’s why he is the one behind bars, and I am standing out here.”

Castor and I may be selfish, desperate assholes who have made questionable life choices…but neither of us is weak. And we are practically angelic next to Durian.

I recall Evodia’s fervent words to Fern:

Castor’s pact is over at the Sylveris Solstice. If he doesn’t get Maddox to say she loves him by tomorrow evening, he will be locked in the Bloodwood Tree for a year. Do you know what that tree does to people? He willneverbe the same.

I’ve been in here ten minutes and I’m already seeing things. I can’t imagine a year of this. Not that I have a year left without my insulin. I’m down to counting the hours. Again.