Chapter Twelve Lysander
There’s a bottle waiting for Lysander when he arrives back to his room.
An old whiskey decanter on ice, its contents red. Red, like blood. Red, like that ridiculous fucking dress. A note has been fastened to the neck, the message tied with twine. Unlike the last note, he recognizes the handwriting on this one—he knows it cold.
The queen is valuable, but a hobbled king is powerless.
x Paris
Chess. Of course, it’s chess. It always is. He snatches the bottle off the table, uncorking the crystal finial with a pop of his thumb. Tipping the carafe to the side, he lets the contents trickle onto the rug at his feet.
He’s still standing there when Asher Thorley brightens his doorway.
“Hello, Sunshine,” he says as the liquid thins to a stop. “You’ve caught me at a bad time.”
“I’ve seen your kind kill before,” says Asher, without preamble.
“Oh, good. We’re skipping the small talk.” Pinching one eye shut, Lysander peers into the empty carafe . Asher appears on the other side, large and upside down. “Tell me more.”
“If Tristan Choi wanted Shea dead, she’d be dead. Same with Conall Sullivan.”
Lysander lowers the glass. “An interesting theory.”
“It’s not a theory. They were toying with her.”
“In your expert opinion, of course.”
Lysander sniffs at the lip of the glass. Pig’s blood. His stomach curdles.
“I know it was you who killed Sullivan,” says Asher.
The snap of bone pings across his hindbrain. He sets the decanter onto the table with more force than he’d intended. “You’re full of conspiracies tonight.”
“Drop the act. You knew this would be Keeling’s play. It’s why you dragged me into it. You said he’d go after something important, and he has. Only he’s not cutting you off at the knees, he’s drawing you out. He’s baiting you, and he’s using Shea to do it. I just can’t figure out why.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” says Lysander. “You’re not here to play detective. You’re here because of your ability to put a stake through Paris Keeling’s heart from a hundred meters away.”
“I’m here because you told me you could help find my sister.”
“Your sister’s body,” Lysander corrects him.
Asher is quick for someone so colossal. Cuffing Lysander’s collar, he rounds him hard into the bedpost. They’re brought nose to nose, the canopy shuddering overhead.
“Say that again.”
“Gladly,” says Lysander. “In just under an hour, you and I are going to head into the Gravewood to track down your very definitely dead sister. Recovering what’s left of her was already going to be a chore, but now it looks like we’re also going to be saddled with the herculean task of keeping Shea Parker alive along the way. ”
“So, you admit I’m right.”
“I’m not oblivious,” says Lysander. “Why do you think I asked you to step in? I’m not handing her over to you on a silver platter out of the goodness of my own heart. There’s nothing selfless happening here. I’m doing it for me. To protect myself.”
“From what?”
“Does it matter? This is your chance to be the hero. Get the girl. Save the day. Speaking of—you did a very okay job out there tonight. I’m impressed. A little more to the right, and you might have even managed to kill our traitorous little knight.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill Choi.”
“No?”
“No . ” Asher releases him with a shove. “If I’d been trying, he’d be dead.”
“Let’s hope so,” says Lysander, smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt. “I’d hate to get all the way to the Flatwood and find out you couldn’t even hit the outside of a target.”
Asher’s expression is murderous in the gloom. “That won’t be a problem.”
“Good,” says Lysander. “Because Keeling is pissing me off, and I don’t like to lose. Can you ride a bike?”
“I can.”
“I don’t mean one with a little bell on the front.”
“I can ride,” repeats Asher. “Why?”
“Because we’ll need to be fast, and bikes are our best option.”
Asher casts a glance toward the blacked-out windows of Lysander’s room. A frozen rain patters dully against the glass. “It’s not exactly backpack weather,” he says. “It’s freezing out there.”
“It’ll be warmer where we’re going.”
“And where is that, exactly?”
“I have a contact in Pennsylvania,” says Lysander as coolly as he can. The thought of going back to that secluded house of horrors deep in the heart of Lancaster County has his stomach in a free fall. “We can stay with him until it’s time to head south for the revel.”
“And you trust him?” asks Asher. “This contact of yours?”
“As much as I trust anybody.”
Ushering Asher out of his way, Lysander pries open the trunk at the foot of his bed. He sets to rummaging through his things, conscious of Asher still standing in his room. Still eating up his air. Still intruding on his space. Find somewhere else to get your sick little kicks.
He wonders what Asher Thorley would say if he knew Lysander counted Shea’s heartbeats even when she wasn’t in the room. If he knew he’d memorized the cadence of her pulse, the rush of blood through her veins. If he knew how hungry he is—how unsatiated—his mind all in pieces.
Lysander thinks of Viola, a rocking chair beneath her and a book in her lap.
I’ll read a verse; you recite it back. His head is stuffed with his mother’s doggerel.
Words and words and words, all of it meaningless fucking drivel.
He thinks of John Donne, an elegy for jealousy: His soul out of one hell into a new.
Someday he will lose his grip on himself completely.
Someday, but not tonight.
“We’d get lone wolf rangers sometimes,” says Asher, intruding on his thoughts. “Down in the garrison. They’d come in from the forest and spend the night—restock on food and supplies. If they came from up north, they’d tell us stories about the Gravewood Devil.”
“I hope they mentioned my good looks.”
The quip is half-hearted. He’s not thinking about rangers.
He’s thinking about Shea in the pavilion, water running down her fingers.
Shea in the garden, the curve of her hip under his hand and the slick of her blood against his tongue.
The divine wrongness of Asher watching them, color in his cheeks.
Her voice soft in the blue-green quiet: Stay.
He wonders if Asher has replayed it as many times as he has.
Distantly, he’s aware that Asher is still speaking. He zips his bag shut and rises to his feet.
“They all say you’re not like the others,” says Asher. “Like you weren’t built right or something. Like you’re some sort of mythical harbinger of the end times.”
Lysander turns to face him. “Who’s to say I’m not?”
“Me,” snaps Asher. “ I say. I’m looking right at you, and all I see is a kid with too much power and a crush, and no idea what to do with either.”
He recovers just a beat too late. “A crush implies it’s unrequited.”
A rap at the door brings their heads up. Cyrus is there, propped lazily against the frame. His eyes glimmer as they slide from Asher to Lysander before pausing over the blood-soaked floor. His gaze lingers there for a long time.
“The revel is another week out,” he finally says. “Where will you go until then?”
Lysander shoulders his bag. “It’s better if you don’t know.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Mercy Ridge is compromised,” says Lysander. “Just like you said. Per your advice, it’d be shortsighted of me to trust anyone.”
“You trust him .”
He means Asher. The object of his ire stands idle between them, taking up entirely too much space.
Not physically—not here, in Lysander’s bedroom—but subliminally.
He’s inside Lysander’s head, dragging all his flaws kicking and screaming into the light.
Grabbing the monster by the cuff and shaking it, making Lysander look it in the eye.
Is this good for you? Having her like this?
“Thorley and I are playing a game,” he says mildly.
He doesn’t say more. He doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. Certainly not Cyrus. He veers around his lieutenant, heading out into the hall. He doesn’t need to look back to know Asher is following—he can feel each ungainly thud of the soldier’s boots against the floor.
“We built this place together,” calls Cyrus when he’s halfway down the hall. “It’s as much my home as it is yours. You think I want to see Keeling bring it down around our ears?”
“It’s not Mercy Ridge I’m worried about,” says Lysander, without turning back. They both hear what he doesn’t say. It’s Shea . It’s always Shea, even when he pretends it isn’t. He thinks of slamming back into awareness in a sunless cellar, Sullivan’s heart in a jar.
Do you want to keep her? his mother asked.
It doesn’t matter if he wants to or not. The truth is, he can’t.
Not until Paris Keeling is dead.
Over his shoulder, he says, “Tell Viola we’ll finish our match when I get back.”
“You’re making a mistake,” calls Cyrus.
“We’ll find out.”
It’s as much of a goodbye as either of them is likely to have. If things go wrong at the revel, he’ll never come back to New Hampshire again. Not as he is.
A harbinger, Asher called him. A sign of things to come.
“Go pack your things,” he tells the watchdog. “We move while it’s dark.”
···
He finds Shea in her room, solemnly considering an old stuffed rabbit.
He stands in the open door until she notices him, his hood up and his hair in his eyes—hoping against hope that his horns aren’t visible.
He’s shorn them down twice already, filing them to studs until the sink was full of pale white shavings.
“I tried on the dress,” she says when she spots him. “It looks fantastic on me.”
His gut gives a violent kick. “Let me see.”
She fixes him in a cold stare, as though she can’t believe he had the gall to ask. And maybe she’s right.
“You’ll have to wait for our date.”