Chapter Twenty-One #2
Oleander surveys the cluttered mess of the bedroom with a hmph. “I hear you’ve been having midnight adventures in the garden.”
Panic splinters white hot across Evander’s vision. He’s so goddamn naive. He should have barricaded himself into his room, should have realized that the Lennox-Halls have gone from unpleasant to dangerous and being the key to their fortune might not be enough to keep him unharmed.
“I’m—I’m not.” But he stops, his lungs hollowed out.
Another jam jar topples over with a dull thump onto the carpet, a sapling spilling out in a tumble of dirt.
Oleander’s eyes narrow as she looks at the mess. “I suppose there’s no one to blame but myself.” She lets out an acidic, long-suffering sigh. “I let you wander around in such delicate health.”
“P-p-please leave my room.” His voice comes too high. He needs Dawes to come in here right now.
Dawes, who is on a business call far, far away from the north wing. No one can hear screams from behind these walls; Evander already knows. He also isn’t sure, anymore, if Dawes is on his side. If he, too, knows about the garden and revels in it.
Oleander cocks a disdainful eyebrow. “I think you should lie down. You’re sick.”
“I—I said—” The world blurs and he can taste blood, so much blood. “Leave. All of you n-need to leave Hazelthorn. You c-can take Laurie too. I never want to see any of you again.”
Oleander merely snorts. “Oh, you won’t be seeing Laurence again, don’t worry about that.”
It hits him almost too slow, what she means.
His mouth goes dry. “Wait.” Because it rushes back, that night in the conservatory with Byron, how he also said he’d be dealing with Laurie this summer.
It means something different now that Evander knows how Lennox-Halls deal with family members who don’t fit in, who fight back.
“That’s not—” His hands flutter at his sides before he squeezes them into fists. “That’s not what I meant.”
But Oleander only smiles, wide and vicious, as another shadow appears in the doorframe behind her.
Bane walks in with a nonchalant swagger and Evander forgets how to breathe.
He has always known that to scream is to believe there is someone out there who cares. People only scream with rabid hope caged in their lungs like a thousand thrashing wings because they still think someone is going to save them.
Evander has no one.
He is alone and he always has been and he might as well stay silent.
Bane has cleaned up since the murder, his skin glowing and his expensive linen suit neatly pressed.
His golden hair is artfully mussed and his smile is an array of blinding-white shark teeth.
He couldn’t look more at ease as he strolls forward with a jaunty whistle and sets a small tray down on the writing desk.
It’s a familiar sight, the tray.
A small brown bottle of medicine.
Evander pushes himself hard into the corner, his eyes flicking wildly between Oleander and Bane and the door. If he bolts, he won’t make it. Oleander is in the way.
“A sick kid like you shouldn’t miss so much medicine.” Bane’s smile pulls even wider. “C’mon over here, Evander.”
Refusal screams through his head, wild and feral, but he can do nothing. He has been speared straight through the middle, rooted to the wall by his own panic.
“Don’t be difficult,” Oleander snaps. “You’re unwell and you don’t want it to get worse.”
“I—I feel fine.” Evander swallows hard. “I don’t—I don’t need it.” Then he adds, “Thank you,” because he has been taught to be polite, to not rage, to cooperate, or consequences will hit like brands to his skin.
They can smell fear oozing from him, taste it on the air, and they exchange sardonic smiles.
“What an unsettled mind you have,” Bane purrs. “We’ll do our best to fix it.”
“I don’t need to be fixed!” It bursts out in a shout and he resists the urge to cram his fists against his mouth and bite down. “G-get out and leave me the hell alone, you murderers.”
As soon as it slips out, he regrets it, but no anger or surprise traces their faces. Bane smirks at Oleander, who rolls her eyes.
Evander is no threat to them. What he knows doesn’t matter.
He has no one to tell.
He thinks, suddenly, of a very small Laurie telling a teacher, a friend’s parent, anyone who would listen.
How they must not have believed him and instead told Byron Lennox-Hall of his grandson’s tall tales, who then turned around and did something terrible enough to Laurie that he never told again.
“Take the medicine willingly,” Oleander says. “Or be forced. I don’t have time for a childish tantrum.”
Hysteria bubbles up Evander’s throat. He can’t reason with them. They are so comfortable in their crimes and their wealth and their walled-off estate; they know they can get away with anything.
Run. He has to try. If he can get to Dawes—
But he underestimates how fast Bane can move.
In a flash, he whips forward, grabbing Evander by the throat and punching him hard in the stomach.
Air explodes from Evander in a stilted gasp and he buckles, his vision tunneling to a tar-smeared spiral of pain.
The shock of it leaves him speechless and he forgets to fight as Bane deftly slips arms behind Evander’s neck and clasps him in a headlock.
Then he twists so that Evander’s head tilts backward, the snapping force of the movement sending white fire splintering across his shoulders.
He cries out, but that leaves his mouth open.
Oleander bears down with the medicine, splashing a generous dose in the cap. “Tilt his head back farther.”
“No no no. Please wait wait wait!” Evander tries desperately to wrench free only to be met with another twist that splinters his voice into a wail. His neck is at a steep, terrible angle.
Oleander sinks claws into his jaw and pries his mouth open while he makes another frantic attempt to thrash free. But he is a thin, fine-boned creature and Bane is a heavy, relentless weight behind him.
There was never any chance, Evander against the two of them.
Thick, saccharine liquid pours between his lips, the taste gluey and revolting as it glides down his throat.
He tries to spit it back out, but he can’t breathe as Oleander fills another cap and doses him again.
This is way too much. Carrington would only give him one dose after an episode.
If this is even the same medicine. This tastes far thicker and even more bitter than what he’s used to and it coats his tongue with a mucous film.
It could be poison.
A cry tears from his throat, but it’s drowned as he chokes and coughs on the foul mixture.
Bane drags him toward the bed and flings him down, dodging any uncoordinated blows Evander tries to swing.
Dizziness sweeps over him in a wretched wave and for a second he thinks he’ll vomit.
His stomach throbs from the punch. Something is wrong wrong wrong and the world lists sideways with a sudden lurch.
The mattress sucks him down, smothers him, and he is on a carousel, his fingers slipping as he tries to cling on. Voices bicker above him, their words like shrill magpies, every letter inverted so he can’t make sense of what they’re planning.
Distantly, he can feel hands on his shirt. Unbuttoning. Air touches his hot skin.
No.
No, they can’t—Stop stop stop.
His whimper is desperate as the room gives another sickened swirl. He has lost control of his body, his mouth, his mind, and he is lit up with the absolute terror of it.
Hands are on him, all over him, hundreds of fingers skittering like spider legs across the tender skin of his shuddering stomach. Poking his scars. Digging into the knotted tissue. Touching and touching and touching.
Don’t don’t don’t touch me I don’t want to be touched I DON’T WANT TO BE TOUCHED I DON’T WANT—
“Be quiet.” The voice is sharp and nasty right in his ear. “This is what happens when you don’t do as you’re told.”
Evander doesn’t remember when he slips off the edge of infinity and falls down into the dark.
All he knows is that he holds his still-beating heart in both hands and he is screaming as white roots burst from the bloody tissue and twine about his fingers.
He’s trying to remember if the garden has ever actually attacked him or if it was just trying to take him somewhere, show him something, and the more he fought, the harder it tried.
His mouth is full of rotten roses.
And they are still growing.
And growing.
And growing.