Chapter Twenty-Five #3
And maybe this is the best way to destroy the boy he’s hated for so long—to kiss him helpless, senseless, to make him desperate for more from the person he made the mistake of failing to kill.
Laurie sags, his legs gone weak, and his brace knocks papers off the desk.
They flutter to the floor in a snowy avalanche and Evander glances down on instinct.
The Lennox-Hall letterhead glints in the dim afternoon light.
He decides the worst and most satisfying thing he could do to Laurie right now is this: kneel down, lift his shirt just enough to trail six burning kisses from his hip across the sensitive skin below his navel, and stop just before his jeans halt any descent.
Then Evander pulls away and crouches down to gather up the papers.
The choked sound Laurie makes as he covers his face with the crook of his arm is very, very pleasing.
“You menace,” he mutters.
Evander smiles to himself as he sorts through the papers. “What?”
“Don’t even pretend to act innocent.” Laurie drops his arm from his face and glares, flushed and sweaty and wrecked. “I need to know how you learned to kiss like that.”
“I might have thought about it,” Evander says. “A lot.”
He ignores Laurie’s stifled snort and focuses on skimming the papers.
A note has been stapled to the top of one page, the handwriting eerily familiar, and not just from the disturbing ramblings on the walls.
Evander grabs for the discarded field guide, flipping pages until he finds those cryptic notes scattered amongst the poisonous flower sketches.
A perfect match. He’s thinking again, inexplicably, of that journal entry he read.
Dug up new plant in the garden. Took samples and will propagate it within the conservatory. The boy was playing with it and seemed unaffected by skin contact, but will still run toxin tests. Thorns are easily removed.
Something about it has sunk barbed hooks into Evander, but he can’t quite connect the pieces, even though his mind churns so fast the molten heat of it pounds the inside of his skull.
He picks up the papers again, staring at the Lennox-Hall letterhead and the signatures at the end.
It looks too important to have been lost amidst the mess of the desk.
Unless it wasn’t lost, but locked in a drawer in a hidden room where no one else should’ve been able to access it if Laurie hadn’t gone digging.
Byron’s stapled note is simple:
Godfrey, the following documents are in order and signed with Carrington as witness. Please file this as my official will.
Sincerely, B
Godfrey, the original lawyer, the one who was too “ill” to take the lead on the affairs of the estate.
The one Dawes possibly poisoned. Evander knows he’s jumping to conclusions here, but he thinks it’s a fair deduction to pursue, especially given the litany of evidence piling up against Dawes right now.
But this is the will. The real will.
Evander skims the pages fast, his heart a staccato beat in his throat, his fingers trembling slightly as he claws through the legal jargon until he finds the name of the single heir—because Byron had never wanted to divide this property up amongst his family.
Laurence Evan Alexander Lennox-Hall.
“What is it?” Laurie is still leaning heavily against the desk, trying to catch his breath. “Is that the same will Dawes read to us?”
“I remember you used to read to me,” Evander says, trying to sound neutral. “Through my door.”
Laurie rubs at the back of his neck with a sheepish smile. “I made up the stories. I tore out the pictures and—”
“Slid them under the door.”
“I should have realized your room was in a different place now, but the north wing was so creepy and gloomy and everything looked the same to me as a kid. Grandfather stopped me sneaking up there years ago and I guess I forgot how it used to look. What did you even do with those pictures?”
“I ate them,” Evander says, distracted.
He’s still staring at the will, his pulse hammering in his skull as he tries to decide what this means.
What any of it means. Bryon abused Laurie, constant and vicious, and was threatening to kill him—yet he left everything to him?
It doesn’t make sense. Although Evander suddenly understands how easy it would’ve been for Dawes to sit in that office and read out loud a will, swapping out names without hesitation in front of two boys, one who was conditioned never to ask questions and one who couldn’t read.
It would all come out eventually, of course, especially with Oleander growing more and more suspicious and demanding to see the will herself, but maybe Dawes didn’t care.
Maybe he just wanted time to figure out how the garden worked and collect as many rubies from the estate as he could before vanishing with his gains and leaving the Lennox-Halls strewn in chaos behind him.
It makes so much sense, though, to choose Evander to “inherit.” Evander, the sickly, anxious, naive kid who knows nothing of the world, who has no family, no allies, who is easy to maneuver and control.
Laurie wouldn’t have bent an inch if he thought he owned Hazelthorn.
He hated Dawes from the start and wouldn’t have let him slither around the estate if he’d had his way.
It’s a perfect yet simple scheme. And it worked.
Tell Laurie. He needs to know the truth. Maybe his grandfather wasn’t actually going to kill him over this summer, though Evander can only think of all the cruel punishments Laurie would’ve kept receiving if Byron had lived.
“You are so weird sometimes.” Laurie seems to have gotten his breath back, but his smile fades as he forces his tone to remain unaffected. “So whose name is down to inherit?”
“Mine,” Evander says, without hesitation. “It’s still my name.”
He tastes tar and condemnation. He feels sick. But he doesn’t know what would happen, if Laurie thought this all belonged to him.
The only coward in this room is Evander.
Laurie sighs and then shrugs. “Okay, well, I give up. I don’t understand any of this.”
What Evander needs to do is lie on the carpet and just think. He feels outside of himself, his world tearing on all the corners of these brutal, sharp discoveries.
He needs to keep it together.
He drops the papers and presses fingertips to his temples, reminding himself how to breathe.
“Are you okay?” Laurie edges toward him.
“I’m—” An odd, gauzy feeling folds over Evander and he tastes loam and blossoms. A dull roar starts in his ears and he is doing his best not to fall out of his skin like an unstitched ghost. He can no longer deny what’s happening.
Episode.
Laurie skids forward on his knees, grabbing Evander’s head as it flops toward his chest. “Hey, hey. Are you okay? What—what’s wrong?”
Evander’s fingers grasp for the will again, a dull part of him thinking he needs to destroy it just in case Laurie tries to read it—but the crumpled paper flips over and he sees penciled scribbles on the back.
Though it pains me to write this, Laurie is the best option to inherit as he will keep this family’s secrets.
I have disciplined that boy to the best of my ability, I have conditioned and trained him relentlessly since he came into my possession, and even though he has clear defects, ingrained fear will eventually keep him obedient.
Hazelthorn must stay locked. It is out of control.
It cannot be sated. We have taken too much from it, yet we cannot go back.
The only concern will be making sure, upon my death, that he disposes of Evander before that situation spirals beyond control.
But perhaps, before my passing, I will have finished with Evander myself and already have done away with him.
The world blurs, listing sideways as metal fills Evander’s mouth. He is a … situation. To be disposed of. It’s him, not Laurie, who was always meant to die.
“It’s okay,” he says, dull and detached. “This is just an episode.”
Laurie starts patting Evander’s cheek frantically. “Changed my mind. I don’t want to see an episode. Stay awake, okay? Hey, hey—Stay with me.”
But Evander’s head is tipping forward again.
The estate must go to my grandson because he will stop anyone outside of my bloodline from having access to the garden. This power is mine alone. I refuse to let the world taste Hazelthorn’s glory. It belongs to me. I will raze it before letting anyone else touch it.
“You have to fight this.” Panic has lit up Laurie’s eyes to a feverish blue. “I—I think I’ve figured out what the episodes are.”
Leaves unfurl behind Evander’s eyes, briars and hollyhock and thistles, and the world blackens about the edges.
It’s almost a relief to have a break from this: from his body, from the world, from thinking.
He is dimly aware Laurie is still holding his face, trying to keep him from slumping to the floor, shouting his name.
But it’s not his name.
Then his fingers slip from Laurie’s—
—and he finishes falling all the way down.