Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“Did you kill Byron?” Evander’s jaw clenches.
“Of course not,” Dawes says easily, and Evander hates him so much his vision speckles red.
“However, I wasn’t going to sleep on an opportunity.
I figured out how it all worked, by the way.
The garden, the blood, the rubies. Took me an age to sort through dear Byron’s paperwork, but I must say it’s very useful that he was fond of journaling his insanity.
Also, did you know all the plants from Hazelthorn die the moment they leave the grounds?
Hard to start a new garden that way, let me tell you. ”
“You’re trying to grow another Hazelthorn?” Confusion furrows Evander’s frown even deeper. “But you can’t.”
“Not with a normal cutting from the plants, that’s for sure.” Dawes’s smile is private and reserved, as if the joke is not worth explaining to someone as stupid as Evander.
Evander glances quickly back at Laurie, who has closed his eyes as his chin tucks low to his chest. His breathing has gone shallow, his grip on his wound loosening as if he’s on the cusp of passing out.
“He n-n-needs help.” Evander swallows back the rage and takes a fierce step toward Dawes. “You’re going to call an ambulance for him. Now.”
“You are oddly assertive sometimes.” Dawes sounds almost reflective.
“See, I didn’t understand exactly what you were when I got here.
I thought you were just some spineless brat Byron was doing god knows what to, but that worked for me.
Pretend you inherited this estate and it would send this entire psychotic family into a frenzy bickering amongst themselves trying to get their cut.
It all gave me the time I needed. Then I figured out what you are.
” He tilts his chin at Laurie’s crumpled form. “Especially when left unchecked.”
There is a scream of frustration unraveling in Evander’s throat and he thinks he will surge forward and sink his thorn teeth into Dawes’s arm—but that won’t help.
He has no idea where Laurie’s phone is and if he tries to find a landline, then he’ll have to leave Laurie alone, and he can’t do that either.
Panicked tears crowd behind his eyes and he can barely hold back the cry of overwhelming frustration.
“I have a tidy stack of evidence against Byron,” Dawes adds.
“Links to dozens of missing people in this area who were last seen entering this estate. It’s all with a third party, so if Byron tried to kill me, it would be instantly released and his whole serial killer kingdom would come crashing down.
” His blackmailing cleverness clearly pleases him, but then his smug smile dips as he glances up at the heavy weight of foliage pressing down on the conservatory ceiling.
Blood pounds in Evander’s ears and he is too caught up in the grim understanding punching through his chest to note the lack of urgency, the casual chatting. As if Dawes has been buying time.
Three more shadows drift into the conservatory and the door closes behind them, the light chatter and frolicsome music cutting off with a snap.
They pick their way through the maze of overgrowth, all dressed in elegant, black evening wear that seems better suited to a party than a funeral, and they all sport a sickening amount of bloodred rubies set in gold.
Oleander strides forward in a dress that looks like the midnight sky, the train speckled with rubies.
White gloves reach to her elbows and her white hair has been bound in a high bun.
Bane is next in a lavish Italian suit, the flower in his lapel crafted from rubies.
Azalea picks her way more carefully than the others in delicate stilettos, her strapless black dress as tight fitting as a glove, a crystal flute of champagne in one hand.
The blood spattering the floor seems to disgust her and she lifts the hem of her dress, her nose wrinkled.
Evander backs up, but there’s nowhere to go without stepping on Laurie. Moth wings beat inside his rib cage, trapped and terrified, and the urge to run is shredding him. He can’t. Not without Laurie.
He has to fix this.
He has to make this all stop.
“Right, so here we all are.” Dawes spins on his heel and waves a hand gallantly in Evander’s direction, like he’s serving up a platter of something delicious.
“Our agreement still stands. I’ll destroy my evidence against your family and leave you in peace, and you’ll give me a clipping from the garden. Can I get my piece in a to-go bag or—?”
Barely concealed rage sits behind Oleander’s austere elegance, and she steps forward stiffly to gesture toward one of the work-tables scattered with floral cuttings and small flowerpots.
Evander is struggling to keep up with what’s going on, his heart sledge-hammering its way out of his chest while his eyes dart between them all.
Dawes just said the plants in Hazelthorn wouldn’t grow outside the grounds, so what the hell is he doing?
Bane prowls carefully toward him, his eyes blotted into dark pits, and Azalea stands to the side looking put out as she sips her champagne.
“You’re a psychopath.” Evander’s voice shakes. “You all are.” But then he sees what Oleander is pointing at.
Dawes picks up a terra-cotta pot. The stick planted directly in the center must be an attempt at propagation, though it’s barely developed any shoots. It looks dead. The ivory color is at odds with the flaking bark texture, but worse is the way looking at it makes Evander feel—
Split.
Severed.
Violated.
Bile rises in his throat and his whole body starts to shake as he watches Dawes set the pot down with a dismissive, “Eh,” and pick up the next one, twisting it this way and that as he checks to see if it’s sprouted yet.
Those are rib bones.
There are dozens of pots here with the same ivory sticks in various stages of flowering.
His palm presses to his chest, to the cavity still open and spilling dribbles of mud and sap at each pulse of his frantic heartbeat.
The only thing that stops the scream building up in his lungs is Laurie’s careful hand wrapping around Evander’s ankle. He rubs a thumb in slow, soft circles. Grounding him. Saying, I’m still with you.
But he can’t hold on forever either.
“Honestly, I’m not convinced.” Dawes sets down the pot with a shrug.
Oleander stares at him with burning hatred. “What do you mean, ‘not convinced’? A piece of the boy is exactly what you wanted.”
Azalea makes a face, careful not to spill any of her champagne. “I still can’t believe he fooled us for so long with that fake will reading. It’s embarrassing actually. Are you sure we’re just letting him walk?”
“Yes,” Dawes says, his smarmy smile turned to flint. “Unless you want to lose everything.”
Azalea sighs and rolls her eyes. “Well, since Father’s buried and this nasty business is all tied up, I’m on a flight out of here tomorrow.”
“Good riddance,” snaps Bane. “I can have some peace.”
Oleander’s lips curl. “Bold of you to think I’ll let you stay, son. But I suppose there is an opening for a butler.”
“What—” Indignation splutters from Bane and his face twists, but Oleander ignores him.
Laurie’s hand feels so, so cold against Evander’s ankle. “Run,” he breathes.
Evander keeps looking between them all, repulsed and stunned, too terrified to think.
But this has always been his life anyway: being trapped, being used.
Byron had been cutting out his ribs and experimenting with them for years, telling him the surgeries were for his own good while choosing bones Evander wouldn’t be able to see he’d lost so he wouldn’t understand what was happening to him.
Keep him confused, disorientated. Keep him quiet.
“You said his ribs grow back, right?” Dawes is saying. “What about other parts of him? I want something with fresh roots.”
The noise that escapes Evander is strangled and terrible.
“The ribs flower just fine,” snaps Oleander. “And might I remind you that Byron was only in early stages of his attempts to propagate a second Hazelthorn.”
“I read his papers,” Dawes says coolly. “It’s different when the roots are straight from the boy.
He said so. He wouldn’t have sunk the last seven years into this if it wasn’t going to work.
” He waves vaguely at the pots of rib bones.
“Let’s just hope starting from scratch gives me a blood garden with a little less attitude. ”
“Take the rib and go.” Bane looms closer to Dawes in an attempt at intimidation.
“But I want a guarantee,” Dawes says, cool. “Don’t give me an old stick. I want fresh roots.” He looks straight at Evander. “What about a hand?”
Molten terror unspools in Evander’s gut. His hands have begun to flutter before he clenches them into fists and folds them hard around his heaving chest. “St-stop. Stop talking like this. St-stop all of this.” It sounds so pathetic. A child’s plea.
But this needs to stop.
He can’t do this.
He doesn’t want to be in this nightmare anymore.
wake up wake up wake up
None of them look at him, all focused on bickering semantics about his flowering bones.
Laurie’s fingertips are tugging at Evander’s ankle now. “You h-h-have to run.”
But Evander can’t do it. He has always been drawn to Laurie, addicted to him, and it is only now that he understands why.
He belongs to this boy in the way a flower belongs to its god.
With a choked sob, Laurie tries to push himself upright, his struggle made worse by the blood-slick tiles beneath him. Evander instantly drops into a crouch to try to steady him, his trembling hands hovering above the ravaged open wound, unsure what to do.
“You all are going to-to stay the—the hell away from him.” Laurie sucks in an uneven breath, but there is blood on his lips.
“For god’s sake,” Oleander snaps. “Azalea? Deal with your nephew.”
Azalea blinks rapidly, her hand pressed lightly to her throat. “What, me? This dress costs thirty thousand dollars, Auntie. I couldn’t possibly.”
Oleander almost growls and then storms forward with a muttered “I must do everything myself.”
Evander’s focus is so consumed by Laurie that he misses the moment Bane slithers forward and grabs a fistful of his dark, tangled curls. He yanks so hard Evander’s legs go out from under him and his cry is a cutoff garble as he’s dragged backward across the floor.
Laurie snatches for him, his eyes blown out with fear. “NO—”
Evander writhes, trying to grab Bane’s wrist to loosen some of the pressure on his head, but Bane only shoves him to his knees so he can crush an arm around Evander’s neck. Air is severed. He’s choking, clawing at Bane’s arm.
Bane tightens his fist in Evander’s hair and jerks him around so his back is to Laurie and Oleander. He can’t twist free. Can’t see. Oleander swoops past in that voluminous navy gown, every ruby sharp and glittering, before Bane shifts and blocks all view.
“Laurie. LAURIE. Don’t touch him.” Evander’s voice tips so high it cracks and then he is nothing but a hoarse gasp, almost soundless as he keeps trying to scream despite the crushing pressure on his esophagus.
A low wail pulls from Laurie’s throat. It is a terrible sound, bone-chilling and animal, and it escalates fast. Too fast. The sheer panicked pain of it cuts through Evander like a knife and stokes a terrified rage in him so brutal his world shifts to a bloodied red.
He roars, throwing himself so hard against Bane that they both stumble backward and crash into the table.
Bane swears. “Would you just—Dawes. Stop standing there, you goddamn idiot.”
Dawes had been focused on Oleander, his expression complicated, but he shakes himself and picks up a pair of pruning shears from amongst the flowerpots.
But all Evander can focus on is Laurie’s cry and the way it turns to gasps, short and muffled and—
Cuts off with a crisp finality.
It will live in him forever, that cry, the desperation in it, the sheer undiluted fear. He will be forever haunted by that pain.
But more than that, he is haunted by the silence.
He screams for Laurie, his eyes blurring, but he can see nothing except Oleander walking back into view looking calm and unhurried. She flexes her hands as if, only seconds before, they had pressed down so very tight and hard around a throat.
“Get on with it,” she says. “We have a dinner to attend in my brother’s honor and I want you off my property for good.”
“LAURIE. What did you do to him? What did you do!” Evander tries one more time to fight free, but Bane twists his neck at a terrible angle. All he can do is choke on his own hoarse sobs as Dawes grabs one of his arms and forces it straight.
Evander’s struggle is feeble, his vision so blurred he can barely see the pruning shears clasped in Dawes’s hand.
“Nononono—” His sob falls from his mouth, sickened with bile, his moan inhuman. “I’ll b-b-b-be quiet. I’ll be quiet.”
They’re just threatening him.
They won’t actually do it.
They won’t.
They—
Dawes snaps the pruning shears closed over Evander’s wrist. The pain is so excruciating, so monstrous, that it is impossible to quantify. There is only this hysterical scream that trips through him as everything inside him shatters.
The worst part is how there is no clean severing.
The pruning shears are blunt.