Chapter Nine Lysander
The first thing Oliver Lysander is cognizant of is the sound of birds.
One bird, to be exact. A wood thrush, perched just outside his window. He can’t see it, but he can hear it. The flutelike ee-oh-lay pervades the air. Stops. Starts again.
Ee-oh-lay. His head snaps up. Ee-oh-lay, ee-oh-lay.
His brain feels as if it’s been pared open with a knife.
His wrists are cuffed in leather bands, ankles similarly strapped.
His chest, bare save the intricate workings of a rib cage done in grayscale ink, is belted tight.
He’s on the ground level of Mercy Ridge, in a cold, cluttered room, restrained against the unyielding steel of a standing cot.
The bed is walled in thin, clinical rails.
The walls are stone, thick enough to swallow a scream.
He swore he’d never need to use this room for its intended purpose.
Up until now, he hasn’t.
It’s become a gallery of sorts, in its years of dereliction.
A shrine to his fixations, or else a dumping ground for oddments.
Bones on shelves and beetles in shadowboxes, a hex jar full of dried dianthus and butterflies of all shapes and sizes, each one housed in an elegant glass cloche.
He names them one by one. Grayling. Green hairstreak.
He tries not to think about the previous night. Painted lady. Viceroy.
When he last saw Shea, she’d been bleeding.
Ee-oh-lay , goes the wood thrush.
His head pulses. His hand closes in around nothing.
He never knew bones could snap so easily.
He never knew how satisfied he would feel.
How like a god, ripping up a life by the root.
Common brimstone. Holly blue. Something is different.
Something new is among his things. Something that doesn’t belong.
He can feel it, like a sour note. It takes him a moment to spot it—a jar that hadn’t been there before.
Someone has filled it to the brim with pickling brine. In it floats a heart, dark with Rot.
“Do you like it?”
He cranes his head around and finds Viola seated at the far side of the room, hard at work on a cross-stitch. The needle is threaded with red, the fiber thin and dark as sinew. On the sill, the thrush lets out another tremulous ee-oh-lay .
“Did you put that there to mock me?”
“Mock? Never.” She tugs the needle skyward, thread pulling taut. “I thought it would make a nice addition to your collection.”
“My collection,” he echoes flatly. It sounds so trite. So childish—like he’s still a little boy with his bin of old Matchbox cars. “I killed him. Do you understand that? The boy who belonged to that heart is dead.”
Viola sets her embroidery hoop into her lap and looks up at him, blinking oddly. The faraway gleam in her eyes makes him feel as though he’s swallowed battery acid.
“I killed him,” he says again, and this time his voice cracks. “I killed him with my bare hands, and you’re not even angry.”
She gives a single owlish blink. “Do you want me to be angry?”
“Yes.” It feels like there are a thousand lifetimes packed into that little word. A thousand hurts. A thousand nights spent curled inward, his hands over his ears, a shout rattling through the dark: Get up, Oliver. Get up and face what you’ve done.
Viola’s mouth curves into a smile. “You were just a little boy. Such a lovely, sweet little boy. How could I ever be angry with you?”
He watches, saying nothing, as she resumes her cross-stitch, pushing the needle methodically through the linen. Stab. Push. Pull. Stab. Push. Pull.
“Do you want to keep her?” she asks without preamble. “Shea?”
“No.” The lie is a sharp stone in his throat.
“I like her. I like having her here. I like her for you. I want you to have someone you’d put a heart in a jar for. It means you’re alive.”
The guilt that cracks open within him is sharp as glass. Suddenly, he can’t bear to look at her. Like a coward, he turns his face away.
“The stars have gone red again,” she says. “I don’t like it when they watch us so closely.”
“It’s day,” he reminds her tiredly. “There are no stars.”
When Viola finally departs, she goes without a word—without offering to untie him. She leaves her hoop behind. It sits unfinished on her chair, the thread hanging loose. Cyrus appears moments later, slinking round the corner as though he’d been waiting.
“Took you long enough,” gripes Lysander. “Let me out.”
“I have something to say to you first.”
“While I’m strapped to a bed? How intrepid of you—”
“We need to consider the possibility that Mercy Ridge has been compromised.”
Lysander’s molars grind hard enough to hurt. “It hasn’t.”
“And you’re basing that on what, exactly? Ego? Pride? Willful ignorance?”
“Enough.”
It comes out a register too low, remnants of last night still coiled in his chest. Cyrus takes a step back. He schools his expression into a careful blank.
“There’s a reason Sullivan went after Shea last night.”
“There was blood,” says Lysander. “He lost control.”
“And the rest of us didn’t?” asks Cyrus. “ You didn’t?”
Lysander thinks of Shea in the rain, her throat gleaming red, the smell of blood sticking to everything.
The memory leaves an ache in his gut. A gnawing sense of hunger that isn’t entirely his own.
He takes a deep swallow of air and slides his gaze toward the shelves.
Adonis blue . Mountain ringlet. Swallowtail.
Across the room, Cyrus is watching him too closely.
“That girl has you so turned around, you can’t think straight. You’ve been tripping over your own two feet since the night she turned up, and everyone sees it.”
Luna moth. Lulworth skipper.
He feels like he’s been dropped from some great height, the Rot seeping out of his cracks.
“The other day, you asked me where I’d push you if I wanted to make you break,” says Cyrus.
“I told you I’d push you off a cliff. What I should have said was this—if I really wanted to mess you up, I’d go after Shea.
We need to face the facts—Paris Keeling tugged at your leash last night, and he used Sullivan to do it. ”
“Last night was an accident. It had nothing to do with Paris.”
“What about what Paris did to your mom? Was that an accident, too?”
The air in the room seems to fold in on him. He regards his lieutenant coldly, his lungs constricting.
“Careful.”
Cyrus doesn’t heed the warning. “All I’m saying is, he’s forced you to fall in line before.”
“And I’ve taken the necessary precautions to make sure he never does it again. We’re done with this conversation. Untie me.”
This time, Cyrus obliges. Loosening the first strap, he stands aside and lets Lysander do the rest himself. Every muscle in his body aches, and it slows his progress considerably. He’s annoyed all over again by the time he finally steps free.
“It’s not just you anymore,” says Cyrus, the moment he’s loose. “You owe it to the rest of them to get your head on straight.”
“My head is fine.” Lysander locates his T-shirt and tugs it on, snatching up Viola’s embroidery as he does.
The cross-stitch is aimless. Disordered.
Just an errant cluster of red snarls on white linen.
Reaching for his hoodie, he tosses the hoop on a shelf with the others.
A half dozen linens stitched in similar, frenzied fashion. Nonsense, all of it.
Do you want to keep her?
And what if he did? What if he tried? It would ruin him, that’s what. Here, on his shelf, sits the raw and bloody proof. His best intentions, rotting in a jar.
He zips his hoodie and reaches for his jacket, shrugging it on as he heads out into the hall. Cyrus follows.
“Speaking of your head, you might want to take a look in the mirror.”
Lysander doesn’t slow his pace. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ah.” Cyrus sucks air through his teeth. “I don’t want to say.”
“Five minutes ago, I couldn’t get you to shut up. What’s changed?”
“What’s changed ,” says Cyrus as they turn a corner, “is that now you and your shitty attitude are within striking distance.”
Lysander skids to a stop. “ Say it , Cy.”
“You have horns.” It echoes horribly.
“Horns,” Lysander repeats.
“Very small ones,” Cyrus amends, as if it’s any better.
Cautious, Lysander probes at his temples. What he’d thought was the worst headache of his life is, in fact, a coarse bit of bone, piercing his flesh on either side. The skin is tender around the base, gored open and fevered to the touch. He drops his hands. His stomach roils.
“I’ll shave them down.”
Cyrus lifts a brow. “And what about the next time?”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“Sure,” says Cyrus. “Unless my theory is correct, which would mean Paris convinced Conall Sullivan to go after Parker. And if he got to Sully, he’ll get to someone else. You showed your hand last night. It’s only a matter of time before it happens again.”
The ache in Lysander’s gut has become a Gordian knot. The only way to handle it is to slice it clean in half. It might not dull the hurt, but it would simplify it. He takes off down the hall, pulling his hood over his head.
“Get me Poppy Zahar. I’ll meet you in the boardroom in twenty minutes.”
“Where are you going?” calls Cyrus after him.
“To make sure what happened last night doesn’t happen again.”
···
Asher Thorley’s room is a glorified custodial closet.
Lysander’s doing—he’d been feeling petty the night the soldier arrived.
He’s not too proud to admit it. The narrow space boasts a cinder block floor and a single egress window, a mop in one corner.
Boyce sits just outside, whittling some sort of indefinable creature out of wood.
A bear, maybe. Or a wolf. He tosses it down as Lysander rounds the corner, flicking shut his knife and rising to his feet.
“Take a break,” says Lysander. “Go find something to eat.”