Chapter 5
Castor
Iwake in a pool of sweat and memories.
Cyperus’s final words to me ring like a screaming banshee in my mind.
I love you, kid. You are meant for greatness. You’ll see.
Then clangs Durian’s tearful attempt at commiseration, the day we buried our brother.
“It’s not your fault he’s dead, Castor. Don’t listen to them. I’ll stop all the whispering. I’ll tell the whole kingdom if necessary.”
“It was my curse,” I told him in a hollow voice, flinching at this new knowledge that people were whispering at all. But of course they were. “I know it was.”
“Surely your curse couldn’t kill a king…” But the uncertainty in his voice and the doubt in his expression were more than clear. My curse had killed dryads and fae and mortals before. Now it had stolen our brother, the Redwood King.
Surfacing from my memories is like crawling out of murky water just to find myself in an airless room. The sun has already dipped beneath the horizon. I’ve slept all day, it seems. That’s how I prefer it. Fewer people stare in the dark.
Dahlia’s death hangs heavy in the air. My curse is getting stronger. So I have to get over my mortal morality problem and find one to fall in love with me. Her death will save lives in our kingdom. And there is a new mortal working at my most frequented haunt.
I dress in charcoal breeches and an ashen leather jerkin, languidly descending to the sitting room, where I’ve erected an iron vanity littered with mind-altering substances.
Dark cherry wine, huckleberry mead, oleander tea, and my favored vice: nepenthe.
A bowl of the dried purple leaves sits in the center of the vanity beside a mound of thin lavender paper.
A wood sprite sleeps curled atop the pile, one sheet tucked over them like a blanket.
These creatures have infiltrated my branch so frequently, I might as well build them their own room.
I nudge the sprite with my middle finger. They startle awake, glaring up at me. “Move.”
Sighing heavily, they trudge to the tin of oleander tea, climbing inside. I roll a generous helping of nepenthe leaves in paper, sealing it with the edge of my thumb.
Tamarind materializes in the doorway, decked in his usual obsidian armor—unlike the king’s guards, who wear decorative gold breastplates and carry golden spears and probably take golden shits.
Not long after Cyperus’s death, when Durian was holding Court for the first time as king, he mispronounced a dryad’s name so profoundly that I couldn’t stop laughing.
In a fit of fury, Durian lashed me with a salt sword while everyone watched.
Tamarind stepped out of the waiting line and shouted, “That’s enough!
I think he’s learned his lesson…Your Majesty.
” I hadn’t seen Tamarind since we were both kids.
After I learned about my curse, I’d stopped visiting my friends in the Nightshade District and had refused to see Tam when he showed up at the citadel gates.
But he stood up for me then, and I can still remember Durian’s dangerous words that followed.
“Perhaps he has, young healer. But have you? Redwood Law would have me send you to the gallows tree for this blatant disrespect. But, since you feel brave enough to risk your life to protect the cursed prince, I will appoint you to be his personal guard instead.”
Afterward, Durian apologized for his loss of temper, for taking his grief over losing our brother out on me. I knew then that part of him did blame me for Cyperus’s death. Perhaps a large part.
Now that Tam is my guard, neither of us has mentioned our childhood friendship or that day in the throne room. Both of us remain dutifully behind the line that separates guard from friend. Though there are times where he steps dangerously close.
I hold up the nepenthe. “Care to partake?”
“Not tonight, Your Highness.”
“You always say that. What is it you fear about drugs? The loss-of-control part or the having-fun part?”
Tamarind’s jaw clenches, chin tilting forward. His normally shoulder-length black locs are pulled high atop his head like the crest of a gray-crowned crane. “I am afraid of the forgetting part.”
“Forgetting is the most desirable part.”
Shrugging into my coat, I light the nepenthe and take a long, slow pull of the milky smoke. It tastes of burnt sugar and forgetting. “Shall we?”
We leave my branch, venturing to the nearest samara dock.
Decades ago, dryads walked and climbed everywhere.
But, taking a leaf out of the lazy mortals’ handbook, they created a means of moving more quickly between districts.
The small carriages are modeled after their namesake seed, with a single blade propelling passengers through the air like mini mortal flying machines.
Soaring over the wooden pathways veining through our treetop city, neither of us speaks.
The Redwood Court is an elevated land of plenitude and repose.
Humans don’t bother us up here, not even the mortal climbers.
That’s why what happened to King Cyperus was so unexpected, why Durian increased the number of guards standing watch on the candelabra branch and around the Crown District.
For decades, Redwood druids have harnessed the magic of the Sovereign Tree to create wards around our city, to keep tree-felling mortals out—unless they are brought in by a dryad who fancies a pet.
But some mortals, the most dangerous ones, it seems, have the Sight.
So far, no fae has been able to capture one of them, to figure out how it is they can see the things most cannot.
Is it some unknown form of mortal magic?
Some distant fae relative in their bloodline?
Did they steal one of the Iron King’s antidotes to tieg wine? Who’s to say? Certainly not me.
Our samara enters the Nightshade District, the sector of decay and indecency where the nymphs and nomads of the treetops bare all and pay handsomely to partake in immoral things.
Typical that my haven would be home to the dregs of Redwood society.
During the day, this district is quiet: dryads sleeping on dilapidated stoops and arborfae awakening to clean up the previous night of debauchery. But at night it blooms like the flower after which it’s named.
Satyrs play lyres in the street, enchanting drums to back them up with a thundering beat.
Arborfae are clothed in spiderwebs, dryads are decked in no more than draping vines, some prancing nude through the wooden streets.
Clouds of nepenthe hang heavy in the air, drawing me in.
I’m paid little notice as we pass above, for I am not the most dangerous creature here.
And then there is Magesté.
On the outside, the brothel-turned-cabaret looks like a grand café built around a redwood in the heart of the district.
Evodia Debray, the madam of this establishment, knows me by my first name, and isn’t afraid to yell it when I do something ill-advised.
Like turning her nicest bed into a pile of rotten wood when my romps get out of hand.
The samara lands at the edge of the District Center, and I toss the pedaler a few gold pieces.
A massive, latticed windmill made of obsidian dotted with emeralds looms above, and a line of patrons winds around the District Center, shorter than usual tonight.
I cash in the power of my tarnished crown by walking past the grumbling guests, letting myself inside.
A green arborfae with iridescent wings greets me at the door, carrying a tray of cherry wine. Glimmering gauze is all that covers her thin, naked body, the color of a sprig of grass.
“Happy evening, Prince Castor,” she says. “Cherry wine for you?”
I take the goblet from her delicate hand. “Always. Thank you, Fern.”
Either Fern hasn’t heard the news of what happened to Dahlia yesterday or she is a fabulous actor.
I assume it’s the former because when she found out I was the cursed prince, her eyes grew to the size of death caps.
It’s unlikely Durian would have let the news spread quickly.
It will arrive to this district as a trickle.
Then, once it does, word will catch like an ember in dry grass on a windy day.
Evodia is nowhere to be seen, and I peek through the green-feathered curtain into the dark theater, which is only half filled.
“Unusually barren tonight,” I say to Fern, who is rearranging the glasses of wine so they don’t topple to one side.
“Everyone is preparing for the Crown Masquerade, I suppose.” She gives up balancing the glasses on her arm and slides the tray onto the desk, spilling papers across the floor. “I wasn’t here for the last one, so I’m not sure what to expect. Evodia tells me it is…quite a lot.”
“It is. Quite a lot of overdressed dryads toting around their enchanted mortal accessories and pretending they’re important.” I lift my glass to her and duck through the black-feathered curtain to my right with Tamarind trailing behind. “Have a pleasant evening, Fern.”
I drain my glass and find a vacant chair in the corner of the parlor, the room where the sex is cheaper and the wine is plenty.
Tamarind retreats into the shadows. A piano enchanted to play on its own sits in the center of the space, filling the room with a sensual melody.
A pair of naked dryads straddle the bench before it, touching each other in ways most would deem inappropriate in public. But this is Magesté.
Immediately, I spot the mortal server Evodia recently hired.
Her eyes have the trademark glaze of tieg wine, her lips curved in a subtle smile.
She’s pretty, I suppose. Dark hair and light green eyes.
There is an imperfect quality to mortal beauty I’ve always found captivating.
The fae are practically flawless by mortal standards.
It’s part of what draws them to us when we allow them a glimpse into our world.
Even the ugliest fae are ugly in a breathless sort of way.
Spotting my empty glass, the mortal server flits over to fill it.