Page 79 of These Vile Hearts

A second passes. Perhaps two.

Then Castor’s lips capture mine—or maybe it’s the other way around. I can’t really focus. Everything is too hot, my head pounding from my sky-high blood sugar, my heart beating too fast.

Our kiss is filled with every unspoken hateful word each of us wants to say but can’t. Instead of screaming at him, I bite down on his lip. Instead of cursing my name, he takes my hips in his hands and lifts me onto the half-ruined piano. My legs wrap around his torso, pulling him forcefully closer.

I gather clumps of his hair in my hands, squeezing tightly. He winces, but instead of moving away, he groans into my mouth, sending a shock of pressure between my legs. Pooling warmth sits heavy in my stomach, tightening like choking vines.

Fuck.

I need to focus. My plan is working a little too well. He’s distracted.I’mdistracted.

My fingers inch to the clasp at my waist where my blades are hidden, waiting to be buried in Castor’s heart, waiting to fulfill this pact so I can go home. But then his hands cascade from my face, brushing over the curve of my breasts and down to grip my thighs. My focus wanes.

With one hand he pushes the fabric of my gown up, fingers inching higher until I let out a startled gasp.

Fuck.

His tongue flicks out to caress mine, and the image of the weapons sinks into the quicksand of my mind. I slide my hands up from his hair to the base of his horns, grasping them to control the kiss. He moans again, and this time it sounds like a growl. His fingers turn clawlike at my hip, bruising, inches away from the place that’s aching to be touched. Touched byhim. Not anyone else. This realization would devastate me if I had control of the direction of my thoughts.

“Maddox.”Hot breath caresses my ear, sending a shock across nerve endings. His mouth holds my name like I’m his idol to worship on sinful knees. My hand slides from his chest to find the hard length of him betraying his interest. Not an act, it seems, though the slickness between my own thighs might say the same about me. Pressing against him, I crack a smile as Castor sucks in a breath. “Fuck, Maddox.”

I quite literally have the king in the palm of my hand. All I need to do is focus long enough to—

Suddenly, a loud crack rends the air, and Castor pulls me to him, holding me as the piano collapses to the ground. A cacophony of clanking keys and groaning wood roars like a sinking ocean liner. The next moment, the doors to the smoking room are thrown open and Tamarind, followed by two more guards, thunder in with weapons raised.

I realize several seconds too late what they are now seeing. Me, straddling the king, my gown pulled up to the middle of my thighs and my lipstick tattooed across the bottom half of his face.

Slowly, and somehow gracefully, he sets me on my feet, hands still on my waist. If he moves them any farther south, he will feelthe hard outline of my weapons. I take a step back and his hands fall away.

Castor stares down at the ruined piano. “That was my fault,” he tells them. “Everything is fine here. Carry on, gentlemen.”

My chest rises and falls like I’ve just sprinted to Magesté and back. My lips tingle with the memory of his. The dagger and axe and bag of diabetic supplies feel heavier than ever. This pact feels heavier than ever. Suddenly, I’m Atlas and the world is on my shoulders.

Kissing Castor did not get me any closer to killing him. If anything, it pushed me to the very edge of the plank with my name written on it in blood.

Calypso’s haunting eyes meet mine from her painted prison. It almost looks like she’s trying to hold back a knowing smile. One egocentric goddess acknowledging another.

25

Maddox

Murder is hard. Murdering someone you enjoy kissing is much harder.

I had him. I had him right there, trapped between my legs like a helpless rabbit in a hunter’s cage. It would have been so easy to keep him distracted while I unsheathed my dagger. Would have been simple to trace the blade across his throat just like the statue in the citadel sunroom. Itshouldhave been simple.

But it wasn’t. Not at fucking all.

Ashardas I like to think I am, it turns out the idea of murdering someone in cold blood is a bit more than I can stomach. I’ve wondered and wondered how my dad did this—even with his Myrtle Queen pact. He still had a conscience. He still knew what he was doing.

But he didn’t murder the king, not really. He cut down a heartwoodtree. Granted, his act ended the previous king’s life, but he didn’t stab someone in the gut or slice a blade across their throat.

Action movies and thrillers make it seem so simple. So easy. Knife goes in, blood comes out, bad guy dies, good guy wins. Turnsout, it is nothing fucking like that. I may be able to take someone out in self-defense or to protect someone else…but I’m no murderer.

No matter how much I try to convince myself that Castor is an evil dryad king who deserves this, I can’t bring myself to kill him with a golden dagger. I can’t look him in the eyes and watch the light go out. Just the thought of it makes me want to vomit up the feast that just wrecked my blood sugar.

I have to figure out another way.

Magesté is still in full swing when I return. In fact, it’s bursting with visitors. I’m not ready to go from being Maddox to Oleander. Not yet. My gaze moves over the line, over the luminescent Magesté sign, over the bushes of my namesake flowers just outside my window, over—