Page 92 of These Vile Hearts

“My mortal disease.”

Her giggle dances with mine. “How verythoughtfulof the Myrtle Queensy.”

The song in my head intensifies, pumping through my veins like a heavy bass drop. My back arches slightly as I ride the wave of music, Cheshire cat grin stretching my lips. Lorelai leans forward, pressing a palm to my thigh as her other hand slides along my other leg and plucks the golden dagger from its holster.

She flashes her dazzlingly sharp teeth at me. “This looks like fun. Shall we play with it?”

Her song recedes to a delicate melody, and I nod eagerly, watching as she runs the glinting blade down my arm, dried remnants of the blood nymph still clinging to the metal. A sharp sting draws my eye to a line of red running like a vertical constellation connecting my freckles. I press my finger to the line, and it comes away wet.

“I’m bleeding.”

Lorelai takes my hand in hers and brings my blood-covered fingertip to her lips. A forked tongue flicks out of her mouth, wrapping around my finger and sliding up until the blood is gone. “Mmm.Sweet blood.You’re positively delectable.” She moves forward until she’s straddling me, pressing the tip of the blade to my cheek. Another sharp pain. Another trail of blood dripping down my face. Another giggle.

The dagger traces a canyon across my cheek and carves a line along my collarbone. Lorelai’s black tongue laps up the spilled blood like a hummingbird seeking sweet liquid in a honeysuckle. It tickles a little. My gaze casts down to see my chest bathed in red, ivory blouse now crimson.

“Could this kill me?”

She places the tip of the knife to my neck, pressing slightly, and her sweet breath pools in my ear.“Absolutely.”

Does dying feel like this? This simultaneously weightless and heavy feeling of being drunk on song and bathed in blood? It isn’t so bad, really. I don’t know what I was so afraid of. At least I won’t have to hurt anyone.

A distant sound meets my ears, but I’m not really listening—not until Lorelai is wrenched from my lap and the music disappears, replaced by sharp, throbbing pain down my arm, across my collarbone, and along my cheek.

The dizzying drunkenness dissipates and my focus zeros in on Lorelai waltzing around…

“Durian?”

In a handful of seconds, I register the hole in the foliage behind him, the discarded samara, his golden hair, his sandstone horns, and the bleeding cut on his cheek. Though, judging by the steady stream coming from my own, I’d say I probably look worse off.

But also. What the actual fuck is the cursed prince doing here?

“Who allowed you into this kingdom?” he growls at the siren. “Your kind is banished from here.”

“I’m not scared of you, dryad kingsy,” Lorelai snarls back. “Your laws mean nothing to me or mine.”

The magnitude of her monstrous appearance hits me all at once—her fathomless beetle eyes, claw-tipped hands, and shark’s teeth peeking out of a pool of charcoal smoke spilling to the ground.

Without looking at me, the cursed prince says, “Maddox, take the samara and go back to Magesté.”

“Maddoxwants to stay with me,” the siren purrs, sending a soft lullaby into my skull.Don’t you, my love?

“I—”

Vines burst out of the branches beneath the bed of moss on which we stand, and the song turns to wisps of smoke. The siren laughs, dancing out of their reach. The way Durian’s hands are pressed out before him tells me Castor isn’t the only brother with a deadly skill.

Tell the king you want to stay with me, she sings in my head. Then out loud, “Or are you in a hurry to complete your little mission?”

The siren is speaking in riddles again. I wish my head would stop swimming long enough for me to focus on her words. Did she call Durianthe king?

Durian’s furious gaze travels briefly from Lorelai to me and back, the vines halting their dance with the siren. “What mission?”

“Have you not told him about your mortal ailment?” Lorelai asks me with a mad cackle. “Does he not know?”

I swear I can feel my blood sugar rising from the adrenaline.

What did I say to her before? What did Isay?

I sink to my knees, chest heaving as I try to keep up with the oxygen my body clearly needs to calm my racing heart. “I—um—”