Chapter Thirty
THIRTY
HIS VOICE IS A HUSH in the void of my mind.
Beneath it, the sound of rustling leaves, of panting breath, of anxious tap, tap, tapping against stone.
My head lolls. There’s a deep ache in the muscles around my chest. A gnawing pain in my left arm. The hollows beneath my eyes throb with pressure.
Hands smooth against my sweat-dampened coils.
A rough, frustrated voice so at odds with a gentle touch. “Harper! Wake up!” Followed by a firm, stinging slap against my cheek.
I groan, flailing against the shock, a strange, animalistic sound ripping from my throat.
“Stop!” the voice hisses, hands gripping my shoulders and shaking. “Quit it!”
Who the hell does this person think they are? Bossing me around at a time like this! Don’t they see what’s happening to me right now?
Bewildered, I chastise the disembodied voice. “Don’t tell me what to do!”
I consider kicking them, but I figure that can wait until I can look them in the face while I do it.
When I’m finally able to open my eyes, I’m met with an ink-black sky and eyes like liquified emerald, swimming with something fraught.
I try to push myself to sitting, but it’s no use. I’m no longer on the packed-dirt path. Instead, my thighs and back scrape harshly against a cement bench as I slide down onto the ground in a heap. The muscles in my eyes strain to adjust to the circular clearing in the center of the hedge maze.
Behind me Malachi’s head is in his hands, his hair nearly purple against the wash of cool moonlight. He drags his palms down his face as he peers at me, lips twisted into a frown.
Wrapping my arms around my chest, I fight against flashes of the last few minutes—because that’s really all it’s been, barely a few terrifying minutes—coming to me in waves.
I shoot to my feet, my stomach heaving as I look for my attacker.
Are they still here? Lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right time to finish the job?
The maze is silent save for Malachi’s bouncing foot and the soft wheeze of my breath.
I don’t see a red hood or a mask of midnight feathers. Instead I’m met with a broad chest and pale arms swirled with black and covered with a gray pullover. Eyes like a raging storm.
I feel like I should say something. But when I open my mouth, nothing comes out.
My thoughts are impermanent. Slippery. I hold my eyes wide open until they sting, until water escapes my lower lashes and flows down my cheeks in a steady stream. I’m not crying. I’m afraid that if I close my eyes again, I’ll be forced to relive what just happened.
Like a prayer, like an invocation, I fold, falling to my knees. Right there in front of Malachi and the statue of Cornelius Biltmore, his bronze hand curved around the wolf’s fur, my forehead meets the cool dirt floor.
For my entire life I have wished to feel only a fraction of what I do. It is a burden, this abundance of emotion. It clouds my thoughts, unsteadies my hands. It is something that only releases in my art, and until my pen hits paper, it rots me from the inside.
Art is my absolution, but there is no art here. Only me and the moon and stars. Me and the boy I’ve grown to loathe.
“Just go!” I say through gritted teeth, refusing to look at him. It’s bad enough that he found me like this. That he somehow saved me when I’d failed to save myself. But my shaking is uncontrollable.
They left me to die, the witches I’ve fought so hard to understand.
The stars that led my ancestors to new lands, to freedom, to this godforsaken power I’ve been burdened with. Abandoned with.
My chest feels cleaved in half.
“Go!” I growl, digging my fingers into the soil and lifting my face, snot tracing down to my chin, the salt of tears and mud coating my tongue. But this isn’t the earthy, mineral-rich taste of Carolina dirt—it’s putrid, like worm-eaten apples and decay.
The rot mentioned in Gigi’s letter. Slithers through the cracks in the mountain. Infects the land.
Everything that has led to this moment, every clue, every mysterious connection to a one-hundred-year-old lynching, every crumb unearthed from this wicked school and its buried past—was any of that worth it?
He stands slowly, his hands palm out.
I choke on a sob when I see the look on his face.
The hate I’ve grown so accustomed to is nowhere to be found. In its place is something I can only describe as anguish. Red-rimmed eyes and parted pink lips.
He approaches me carefully, and I rise to my knees, sitting back against my heels.
His eyes never leave mine as he eases to a stop in front of me, sinking to the ground until we are the same.
Shaking arms wrap around my sweatered shoulders, and I freeze. I panic. I push against him. I’m suffocating. Gasping for breath.
“Shhh,” Malachi hums. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re okay. It’s going to be okay.” By the end I can’t tell if he’s talking to me or himself.
This only makes me cry harder because the warmth of his embrace is bittersweet.
How many times have I wished for this? How many times have I lain in bed, imagining that things had turned out different?
He rubs gentle circles against my back, his nose buried in my curls. I grip him tighter. So tight, I know it’s hurting him. But I don’t care. He deserves it.
“Why are you here?” I hiccup into his neck. I fist his hair as a wave of nausea rolls through me. “Did—did you see—are they—did they—”
“They’re gone.”
The sound of my voice has broken the spell. He pulls away from me, an unreadable mask on his face. I sit back.
“Who was it? What was it?” I ask.
My hands rake down my cheeks, wiping away the tears and snot.
“I—I don’t know what that was… I—I didn’t see anyone. I was walking past when I heard fighting. It sounded… it sounded like you. I know your voice. I could feel that something was wrong. I called for you, I heard running, and then when I found you, you were all alone, barely conscious.”
Panic rises in me once again. “There was—was a guy… or I don’t know, a person in a robe. They—they attacked me. They were wearing this mask like, like a bird. They w-wanted something from me. I know it was one of them, one of the men who hanged those women! I know he knows wha—who I am!”
The words come out in a jumbled rush, and the change in him is immediate.
His face is a cruel reminder of all that has soured between us. “I thought you left the party with Lucas. Where the fuck was he when this happened?”
My throat burns with rage. I grab it and dig my nails into the delicate skin beneath my chin. “Don’t fucking look at me like that! And what does it matter? Lucas and I—” The pain from how we left things only compounds my agony. “I don’t know where Lucas is. He wasn’t with me when…”
“Harper,” Malachi says firmly, “maybe you’re just confused. Maybe you hit your head or something—”
“I’m not confused!” I say, slapping his hand away. “You don’t fucking get it!”
His expression hardens. “I’m just trying to help you. I’m sorry this happened to you. We can… we could go to the campus security. Report this—”
“No.” It’s rigid. Final. “I don’t want that. I don’t want any of this!”
A cloud crosses his face. “This is why you should leave. This is exactly why you should leave.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I scream.
“Shh!”
“No! No! You don’t get to shush me! Why are you here?
Why are you helping me? To tell me I shouldn’t be here?
Maybe you’re in on it, with whatever—whoever that was!
You want me gone so goddamn bad, huh?!” I rise to my knees, peering into his face, his jaw ticking in his cheek.
I jab my finger into his chest, but he catches it and wraps his hand around mine.
His palm is so warm, it nearly burns. The feel of his skin against my own pierces me straight through my core like an ice pick.
“You’re hurting, and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Harper, but you know me better than that. You know I had nothing to do with this. I’m trying to help you, whether you want to believe that or not. And to be honest, I don’t even know why I’m trying. It’s not like it’ll make a difference anyhow.”
He drops my hand and rises, then holds out his palm.
I look at it, my eyes burning and my voice hoarse. “What’s that supposed to mean? It wouldn’t make a difference? With what?”
I let him help me up, only because I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own.
He steadies me at my elbow, his brows pulled low at the sight of my arm. Blood blooms crimson against the green of my cardigan, just barely beginning to drip past my fingers. I cringe. He avoids my gaze when I lift my face to his.
Instead he stares at the roof of Biltmore rising over the bush wall. “If you stay or go, it doesn’t matter. It won’t fix you. I thought if you left, things would be better. I thought if I could just get you the fuck away from me, all this would be over.
“But I know now that you’ll haunt me until the day I die. There is no getting rid of you, Harper. No digging you out from under my skin. I always thought that I was broken, because I’ve only ever felt… With other girls, I don’t…”
He swipes the back of his hand against his forehead.
“I’ve never felt things for anyone except…” He shakes his head. “But it doesn’t matter anymore because when I’m around you, I hate myself because you bring out the worst, most vile parts of me.”
I’m breathless. Stunned at the cruel words falling from his lips. My head is swimming. He’s blinking in and out, multiplying and dividing. I’m not quite sure which version of him to be angrier at.
“You don’t mean that,” I say, swaying on my feet. I grip the hem of his shirt to keep myself from falling over. His stomach tightens beneath my touch. “You don’t mean any of that.”
He shakes his head, lips twisting as he bites the inside of his cheek like he’s trying to decide what to do with me now. “If you won’t go to the campus police, at least let me take you to the infirmary.”
“I’m fine,” I hiss, shouldering past him, wincing when the jostling tears at my chest, increases the throbbing in my arm.
His fingers wrap around my elbow again. “You’re not fine, but I can’t force you.” A beat of silence. “You’re being really stupid, though.”
Slowly he leads me out of the maze.
“You sure you didn’t see them?” I ask.
“No.” He says it plainly.
I hate that I believe him.
“Well, did you see… anything else? Anything weird?”
“What do you mean ‘weird?’ ”
It’s right there, on the tip of my tongue. The witches in the bushes. The iridescent wave. The magic.
But I can’t trust him.
I can’t trust anyone anymore.
So I keep my mouth shut.