Page 82 of These Vile Hearts

Its hand is made up of multijointed fingers that curl inward like a moth’s tongue. I might even think it looked comical if it weren’t closing around my throat, cutting off all the air I’ve managed to gulp down.

Blood from its ruined wing drips onto my cheek and slides down my neck, drenching my hair and turning it redder. I claw at its spindly arm, but it grips harder.

My head begins to swim from the lack of oxygen. My lungs ache for air. The needle juts out of its beak just as I jerk to the right to dodge it. It punctures the wooden floor and sticks. The fingers around my neck loosen slightly. But not enough.

While it’s distracted, I stretch my hand down, twisting awkwardly as I struggle to grip the dagger sheathed at my hip. The edges of my vision darken, narrowing with each passing second. Fumbling my fingers around the handle, I wrench the dagger free, bringing it around with as much force as I can muster. The blade sinks into the blood nymph’s side, and it lets out a deafening screech. Its long-fingered hand leaves my throat and knocks the dagger away as it bends my wrist back. A sizzle of pain radiates up my arm.

But the creature is weaker now, stab wound and wing both gushing blood. A spray of red joins the freckles on my face as the fae opens its beak and coughs. Taking advantage of the distraction, Ibuck the nymph off me, turning onto my stomach to crawl away. And I almost do.

Curled fingers tangle in my hair, yanking my head violently back so it almost looks like it’s assisting me with an upward dog pose.

There’s nowhere for me to move. It has me pinned, holding me by the back of the head. A scream pierces the air, and my focus is tugged to the doorway, where two dryads have just stepped through. My heart leaps.

Fury burns in the king’s brown eyes like embers eating away redwood logs. They land on me and turn to a bonfire. Blackness covers his hands, veining up his arms and spilling from his palms in waves of smoke. Everything the smoke touches molds and decays in seconds. The chaos explodes into madness.

Dryads scream and scramble to get away. Arborfae take flight into the rafters. Evodia shouts something at Castor. But his eyes are on the blood nymph. A wave of rot rumbles toward us, and I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting to turn to dust as it crashes over me.

The blood nymph’s spindled fingers fall from my hair; its weight leaves my back. I wonder if maybe I’ve died. The screams build to a crescendo.

I knew I’d end up in hell.

“Oleander,” I hear. My eyes fly open to see Evodia’s panic-stricken face before mine. “You have to stop him.”

Her hands slide beneath my armpits, lifting me to my feet. The screams turn deafening. Spinning around, I see why.

Castor stalks toward the other blood nymph, which has flown toward a scrambling group of dryads. Throwing his hands out, the king rots the life from it, skin and muscle turning to ash, leaving behind a crumbling, blackened skeleton.

But then he keeps walking, and the rolling fog follows, inching toward the cornered group of petrified visitors.

Tamarind appears beside Evodia and me, wide-eyed and ashen. “Evodia, I’m—”

“Not now, Tamarind,” Evodia snarls before turning to me. “Stop him, Oleander, before he destroys all of Magesté.”

“Whyme?”

“You’re mortal. His power won’t touch you.”

An arborfae crashes between us as they flee from Castor’s wrath, and Evodia pushes me forward.“Go!”

Visitors try to use the curtain as a rope to climb to safety, but the beams snap, tumbling onto the stage with a tumultuous crash. Meanwhile, Castor continues forward, with a wake of fogging decay trailing him like a billowing cloak.

“Castor!” I shout.

He doesn’t seem to hear me.

“What is he doing?” I ask Tamarind. “Why won’t he stop?”

“He…may have consumed a bottle of tieg wine on the way here.”

Evodia curses.

Jesus Christ. My throat aches. My wrist throbs where I’m pretty sure the blood nymph either sprained or fractured it. My tongue is sandpaper. My brain is fog. Adrenaline pumps through every inch of me. And, of course, my mind momentarily flits to my blood sugar. I’m sure it is still outrageously high.

But who has time for high blood sugars when a dryad king is rotting every last thing in this establishment?

I leave Tamarind and Evodia and weave through the fleeing crowd, which has mostly dispersed to the edges of the theater to escape Castor’s plague.

“Castor!” I shout. “Stop!”