Chapter Five
FIVE
Evander isn’t used to it, this devouring thrill of defiance.
He has no idea what he’s doing, proven by the fact he’s running to the place he fears most. Although this feels less like a decision driven by mutiny and more an animal instinct to go to ground, to burrow, to slip out of this skin and into another so he doesn’t have to face the truths hounding his heels.
His guardian is dead.
Hazelthorn is his.
And everyone hates him.
His head hurts and his mouth feels like it’s full of broken twigs and he is tired of trying to make sense of it all. He shoves everything away and focuses all his frenetic, discordant energy on the only thing he can: his ravenous desperation to eat.
He is so hungry that it takes next to nothing for that feeling to eclipse his overwhelm about Hazelthorn and Lennox-Halls and fake aneurysms and potential murderers. Think only of this: putting the whole world in his mouth and cracking open its bones with his teeth.
A mottled, dusky light has fallen over the outside, the sun low enough to kiss the rolling green hills of New England.
Shadows cling to the spaces between trees and overgrown hedges as Evander slows his headlong sprint and limps deeper into the gardens.
Dogwood grows next to stone walls covered in maidenhair ferns, and untrimmed hedges spread over paths carpeted in thick moss.
Weeds shoot up between garden beds, and trellises lie cracked under massive vines.
Thickets of roses stretch to unreal heights.
Everything is beyond vicious and so incredibly, ruthlessly alive.
He can feel it breathe as it watches him, this untamed garden with thorns for teeth.
Evander finds an archway smothered in wisteria and ducks beneath it, entranced by how the petals cascade and catch in his curls.
He has no idea where he’s going.
No one has chased him.
The cobbled path gives way to a small copse of wild plum trees and what would be a circular lawn if anyone ever mowed.
Yellow grass reaches his thighs as he wades through, his palms open to brush the soft seed heads.
He pretends he’s not totally winded and that his bare feet aren’t stinging from sharp-edged rocks and thistles.
He doesn’t belong out here. He should be inside.
Yet his panic has grounded itself—and he didn’t expect that.
He thought being out here would trigger every monstrous memory and hysterical fear, and he still isn’t sure why instinct propelled him into this frenzied flight outdoors in the first place.
But maybe he needed to see the garden again, needed to know if his childhood terror had lost its bite.
A wall rises ahead, covered with so much verdant ivy it’s hard to see the stones. He pauses next to a mossy marble carving of a faun and leans against it, kneading the stitch in his side. How does one even navigate a maze of a garden like this? It feels like it was designed to confuse.
Perhaps he is Ariadne and behind one of these walls is the minotaur.
do not go into the gardens
Mr. Lennox-Hall will be so pissed when he finds out Evander has—
The thought stops, shudders, disintegrates like wet paper.
Very suddenly, he thinks he might cry and then even more suddenly, he thinks he might roar.
The garden hums, crickets chirping, and the wind stirs up dead leaves in delicate twirls. He can taste it, the startling riot of clean, green wonder.
Evander cuts a nervous glance over his shoulder at the looming mass of the Hazelthorn mansion and the way it sags in streaks of golden afternoon light.
From this angle, the ivy looks less like it is climbing the walls and more like it wants to throttle the house.
But at least he’s not lost. He can find his way back.
It isn’t like he has grand plans to run away.
He wants to be alone, just for a minute.
Or maybe a small part of him wants to remember that day, the pain, the betrayal. Maybe he needs the reminder of how dangerous Laurie Lennox-Hall is so he can forget those blue eyes and that beautiful mouth.
Nothing is familiar as he ducks under low hanging branches and heads toward a broken-down greenhouse.
It makes sense why Mr. Lennox-Hall forbade him from going outside—he could get lost, step on a snake, have an allergic reaction to pollen, hyperventilate himself into an episode, or just generally freak out because that is what he does.
He wishes he wasn’t like this, wishes he could stand even parallel to normal and be someone who fits next to those his age, who goes to school and kisses an appropriate amount of pretty people and isn’t bothered by things like an odd seam in his clothes or the very existence of socks.
He wishes his brain moved in one direction, not a dozen all at the same time, and that he didn’t pull apart in a panic if even one thing goes wrong.
He tries, but somehow even trying means he’s failed.
The unfairness of it all adds to the growing agony pulling him apart from the inside out. He breathes in the outdoors with a hard, quick gasp. At least he hasn’t forgotten this part of that day: dirt in his mouth, blood pooled black in his cupped hands from his torn-open stomach.
A small frown crosses his brow. It occurs to him, only now, to wonder how a ten-year-old child with a tall-handled shovel nearly severed him in half.
But the evidence is on his skin, so he can’t doubt it.
He picks his way inside the greenhouse. It must have housed vegetables once, but all that remains are rows of raised wooden box beds filled with dead sticks of basil and withered pumpkin vines.
A few wild tomato plants have thrived despite the neglect and Evander doesn’t stop to think.
He rips a malformed tomato off the stem and stuffs it into his mouth.
It explodes on his tongue, sweet and tart all at once, the seeds slick as they catch between his teeth. He scrabbles through the leaves for another, and another, shoving them as fast as he can into his mouth. What does it matter if he’s acting a little wild? No one is here to see.
He wipes his mouth and gives a quick glance around the greenhouse. Every glass panel looks cracked, the roof half–caved in, dirt and glass littering the floor. Hedges and vines press at the walls on every side as if the garden is watching him with brutish, unrelenting intensity.
He slows his feral feasting and prowls down the aisles, picking his way around cracked terra-cotta flowerpots and sacks of potting mix and fertilizer.
Carrington would have a conniption if he saw sickly, fragile Evander poking around out here.
Evander, with his bones made of glass and his tremulous mind.
Not to be trusted alone. Not allowed to make decisions.
Not allowed out of his room in case he gets hurt.
Now he owns this.
He owns all of this.
It has to be a mistake.
Yet something sparks in his chest, too small to properly cup and flame alight. Excitement, or maybe panic. He can’t tell the two apart.
He is still so, so hungry.
He strips a half-dead basil plant, swallowing each leaf, and then starts poking about the potting mix sacks in search of wild vegetables, concentrating so hard that he almost doesn’t register the sound of voices.
Low murmurs. Shoes crunching the garden path.
There’s a light grunt, as if someone encountered the sharp hooks of holly leaves.
It hits him then, a swift uppercut to the jaw, how foolish he’s been to run into the garden and invite a Lennox-Hall to hunt him down. This time, there is no guardian in the house to hear the screams and run out to save him.
The low mumble of voices clarifies outside of the greenhouse. Shadows moving beyond the filthy panes turn into shoulders, golden hair, a hand raised to push aside ivy tumbling over the doorframe.
Evander throws himself behind the sacks of potting mix, squeezing in tight and pulling his knees up to his chest. He is made entirely of anxiety, his stomach knotted as he cups a desperate plea to the universe in the bony cage of his fluttering fingers.
Don’t let him find me.
Or hurt me.
Not again.
A rusty trowel lies at his feet and he carefully picks it up.
They’re in the greenhouse now, scuffing about noisily over the trash-strewn floors, glass crunching and dead pumpkin vines snapping underfoot. Evander hunkers even lower behind the sacks and watches two brown oxfords cruise right past him.
“Stop fussing, Benedict. He can’t have gone too far.”
“Look, I’m just concerned is all.” But there’s more than a little agitation in the attorney’s voice. “Your grandfather seemed pretty strict about keeping him … inside.”
“And you knew my grandfather that well? What really happened to Godfrey?”
There’s a tired sigh from Dawes. “I told you, he’s unwell. There’s no conspiracy here. I already work for your grandfather—”
“Worked,” Laurie says, flat. “Remember? Something got him.”
There’s a long, tense pause and then they start moving again, though not before Dawes says, with cool precision, “There’s something wrong with you.”
“Want a gold sticker for figuring that out?” Laurie’s amusement is pure vinegar.
Evander doesn’t move. It’s interesting to watch how they act while they think he can’t see, and he tries to focus on that, not the way gorging himself on tomatoes has left his stomach in an acidic swirl.
The attorney has dropped his easygoing tone and seems pissed at Laurie to an unprofessional level.
“Just find him,” Dawes snaps, but his voice is farther away. “I need him to trust me, so I can…”