Page 96 of These Vile Hearts

Tam stiffens beside me as he spreads a thick substance over my stitches and moves to address the cut along my arm in silence.

The door swings open suddenly to reveal a squat woodling with red eyes. “Your Majesty?” he directs at Durian.

“Not now, Agaricus.”

“Pardon, sir, but you directed me to inform you when the Myrtle Queen arrived.”

If I were able to move, I would jolt upright. But I just lie on the table as stars fill my head and spots of panic appear in my vision. The Myrtle Queen ishere? Does she already know that I’m a useless human who can’t even manage to go after the right brother?

Stupid, stupid mortal girl, I’m sure she’s thinking. And she’d be right. How could I have trusted so much? Despite their elaborate hoax with dozens of people in on the act, there were signs that it was all a show. If I’d peeked behind the curtain and gotten out of my murderous head long enough, I’d have seen that I wasn’t the only con man around.

“Where is she?” Durian asks Agaricus.

“She is waiting in the throne room, Your Majesty.”

Durian heaves a great sigh. “I’m afraid I must leave you here, Maddox. Importantprincelyduties to attend to.” He starts to leave but pauses at the door. “Oh, Tamarind? Didthe kinghappen to receive the bottle of wine that came for me this morning? Must have been delivered to my rooms by mistake.”

If I wasn’t already paralyzed, I would be now. Panic. White-hot panic shoots through me. No. That can’t be right. How could my poisoned wine be delivered to the citadel? I didn’t tell anyone to deliver it. I just left it on the counter by all the others.

With a note labeled,For the king.

“He did, Your—uh—Highness. It arrived just as I was summoned here.” Then he adds an almost inaudible “He needs it today.”

“Ah, excellent. There was a very sweet message tied to it that I’m sure will lift his spirits. He’s seemed rather stressed lately, don’t you think?”

“He has,” Tam agrees solemnly.

Durian heaves another sigh. “Yes, I’m sure he’s halfway through the bottle by now.”

No.What have Idone?

Durian’s satisfied smile is the last thing I see as he slips out of the infirmary.

I want to scream at Tam, to tell him to leave my arm alone and give me the antidote now. A violent tremor that the toxins won’t allow to move through me hums just beneath my skin. For once I don’t give a fuck what my blood sugar is. I don’t care about the pact or that the Myrtle Queen is here, learning of my failure any moment now. All I care about is getting off this table and finding Castor before it’s too late.

For what feels like hours, Tam works quietly on my arm. I try to make eye contact with him, but he’s focused, as if in a siren’s trance. Tears leak from my eyes. It’s been so long. And I know how much Castor loves Aronia wine. I knew when I steeped the poison and dropped a pair of leaves into the bottle. I knew when I wrote that note and signed it with a heart and my initial.

“Nearly finished,” Tam says without looking up. “Been a while since I’ve healed a mortal, to be honest. During healing school, they require a year of shadowing a mortal doctor, in case something happens to them when they are in a tieg state. I was assigned to a young man named Dr. Robert Parkey. Brilliant mortal. Surprisingly humble. Evidently, that is not always the case in mortal health care.”

It’s certainly not.

I hear scissors snip and see him reach for the same paste he smoothed along my stitches. Then, maddeningly, he takes a cloth,douses it in alcohol, and begins cleaning the blood from my arm and face.

If these were any other circumstances, I’d be more than interested to hear about his time learning from a mortal doctor. Before I fucked around a bit too much in high school, I thought I would go into the medical field myself. Being a diabetic sort of forces you to learn the lingo at least enough to understand what’s happening inside your body.

But, as it stands, I fear I’m drifting slowly into madness. The longer he talks, the longer Castor has to drink his poisoned wine. Two more tears fall.

Please, I think at Tamarind.Hurry.

But reading minds is not one of his powers.

“Healing mortals is not all that different from healing dryads or arborfae,” he continues. “All organic material is related in one way or another. I was surprised to learn how similar we are biologically. Both dryads and humans have eukaryotic cells; both need to respirate, reproduce, metabolize. We both bleed red. Our DNA structure is even the same. The only true difference that stands out is dryad magic, but that’s likely due to the fact that the fae have existed far longer on Earth than humankind. There are even legends that state mortals were created by fae.”

Something in his words feels like he’s trying to convince me of something. Like he knows I came here hating them. And maybe he did know. Maybe he’s one of those souls who can read people’s energies. But if that were the case, then he would know that my current energy is a sky of darkest gray shot through with furious lightning because I’m stuck in my worst nightmare: where I have zero control of my body or situation. For an anxious person, this would be extremely uncomfortable. For a controlling monster whose—friend? Lover? Cursed fae prince?—is in mortal danger, though…this is the deepest pit in hell.

“There we are.” Tamarind tugs off his gloves with a sharp snap. “Now for the antidote. It works rather quickly, but you’ll want to remain lying down for a few minutes to get the full feeling in your limbs. And your wounds are nearly healed—the vervain salve works quickly—but I wouldn’t make any sudden movements for several hours.”

After how terribly I treated him last night, I should feel guilty when I ignore every bit of his professional advice and sit bolt upright the moment the feeling returns to my body.