Chapter 19 #2
Taking up the vial, I stare at the bright orange top with blurry eyes.
Fuck. I took the wrong insulin. I was supposed to inject fifteen units of long-acting to keep my blood sugar steady throughout the night.
But I didn’t take that. No, like a dumbass, I took the insulin that covers meals and corrects highs and acts fast. The only way to fix this error…
is to eat. Eat literally all the things.
I was going to test my blood sugar in here, but there’s no point now. I already know it’s dive-bombing to the bottom of a sea of insulin, slowly drowning.
Fury adds to the tremors in my hands. Fifteen units of wasted insulin. I let out a single “FUCK,” the word bouncing off the wooden walls.
Castor’s voice echoes from the kitchen. “I didn’t realize my presence was quite so unwelcome.”
Reemerging from my room, I snatch up the jar of sugar crystals and return to the table, set with a romantic dessert for two.
“Where’s Tamarind?” I ask brusquely, scarfing down another tart. For once the reaper’s presence would be welcome, to keep the king occupied while I feed the insulin raging in my veins. Like sprinkling dirt on a fire a little bit at a time.
“He’s upstairs.” Castor still seems visibly taken aback by my odd behavior. “I asked him to give us some time alone. I thought you would…like that?”
Yes, I would have liked that very much—if I were not the biggest idiot in this forest.
“Why do you only have one guard anyway?” Pulling the jar of sugar crystals in front of me, I rest my chin in the cradle of my palm, waiting for the tremors to return. My brain is still in a fog, but the sugar seems to have fed the insulin monster for now.
“Tamarind has the capabilities of a dozen guards all on his own.” Castor takes the seat across from me. “It becomes more of a parade when you walk the streets with a royal entourage.”
“I feel like everything is backward here. You’re the king, yet you spend more time at Magesté than sitting on your throne.
You have only one guard.” I look up to the small circlet at the top of his forehead.
“And your crown is shockingly small for someone who is supposed to be infatuated with gold.”
“It’s not the size of the crown that matters, but how you wield its power.”
I swallow a laugh and nearly choke on another tart.
His brow arches, as if he’s genuinely confused. “What?”
“No, I agree. Size doesn’t matter. It’s how you use it. And you know how to use that crown real well, I bet.”
His frown deepens. “What…?”
“Nothing.”
“Mortals are so odd.”
“Everyone is odd to someone.”
The faintest glimmer of a smile lifts the corner of his lips. “Cyperus used to say something like that.”
Cyperus—the king my father killed. A feather of guilt flutters in my chest.
“What was he like?” Tell me he deserved it.
Castor’s face brightens a fraction. “Cy could turn anything into a story. I would point out a blue-winged butterfly and he would say, ‘Have you heard the tale of the fat blue caterpillar, Castor?’ Obviously, I hadn’t, because he was making it up as he went.
So he’d weave some grand tale right on the spot. He could tell stories about anything.”
“Reminds me of my dad,” I say absently.
My dad. The man who killed the king who told his little brother stories about fat blue caterpillars.
“What was your dad like?” Castor asks.
I offer him the truth trapped in a cage of lies.
He’ll be dead soon, so I suppose it doesn’t matter what I say.
The thought sits uncomfortably in my mind.
“My dad was like thunder; he had a voice that filled the whole room. But he also knew when to stay quiet because my mom…she was like lightning. Sharp. Quick. Striking. Terrifying.”
“So that’s where you get it.”
I push past the deep discomfort of being compared to my mother and send him a sly smirk. “You think I’m terrifying, do you?”
“Perhaps not all the time. The sight of you with that dagger wasn’t un-terrifying, I’ll say.
” His hand slides across the table just enough for him to brush the backs of his knuckles along the hand that held the golden dagger I meant to kill him with.
My breath catches on an inhale. “Sharp, quick, and striking, though? Most definitely.”
He says it like it’s a compliment. From him, I think it might be. Ridiculous, masochistic man.
Before I can think of what to say—all my quick remarks have drowned in too much insulin—Castor asks, “Why was your mother terrifying?”
I frown at my lap, picking at a snag in the thread on one of the acorns on my pine-colored gown.
My mom wasn’t always terrifying. Not when I was very young, when my dad was around more often.
Then he started going on monthlong jobs, and she began to unravel like a dropped spool of thread.
And I was the only one around for her to tie herself to.
“She liked to be in control of everything and everyone. And she had a special way of convincing people that they were in the wrong…even when they had no idea what it was they’d done in the first place.”
“I thought mortal mothers were all warm and generous and comforting.”
“They are definitely not all like that.”
I don’t like talking about my mother. Too many feelings about too many things she did would push me to a breaking point if I allowed them. So, of course, I don’t. I lock them up and shove them in the basement where they belong.
“What were you like then?” he asks. “As a mortal sapling.”
Once I’m completely locked down, I look up at him. “Nothing special. Just a little girl stuck in a thunderstorm.”
“How do you do that?” he says suddenly, words tinged with frustration.
“Do what?”
“Keep your face so blank and emotionless like that when this is clearly something that bothers you.”
“How do you know it bothers me, then?”
“Because— Well, doesn’t it? Or do you just not feel anything ever?” The thought seems to unnerve him.
Rich coming from a dryad. Although this past week has opened my eyes in an uncomfortable way.
Not all dryads are terrible or cruel and conniving.
In fact, most of them are pleasant. Nice, even.
Maybe it’s just the Crown District dryads who my father meant to warn me about.
The ones with all the power. And then there is Castor… who I still can’t figure out.
And I shouldn’t want to, because I need to murder him, like, yesterday.
“Of course I feel things,” I retort. “But just because I feel something on the inside doesn’t mean everyone has to see it on my face.”
“But how do you do that?” he asks more earnestly.
I shrug, staring at the jar of sugar crystals in a bit of a daze, remembering all the times my mom scolded me for crying during a high or low blood sugar.
How she reminded me what could happen if I ate something I shouldn’t.
“You could die if your sugar stays high for too long, Maddox. Do you understand that? This disease can kill you.”
What would she have had to say about me mistakenly taking the wrong kind of insulin? My teeth clench and unclench at the thought. “Practice.”
Castor lets out a humorless laugh. “I’ve practiced for years, and yet I am unable to master my face in most situations.”
“A king who can’t master his emotions?” I say with false dramatics. “That’s not what we want.”
A deep sigh. “Truly, it is not.”
“Well, it’s really not that hard. Just pretend you’re a house, and everything you feel is locked inside where no one can see.”
“A house…”
“Yeah.” I’m too aware of the fact that he will never get the chance to put this advice to use if I manage to kill him tonight. After my blood sugar chills the fuck out. “Just…disconnect from your emotions. They are hidden in the house. Close the curtains, lock the doors, shutter the windows.”
He seems to silently puzzle over this. “Will you show me?”
I take in the near desperation in his eyes. They are rather expressive, a hundred emotions flitting around inside of them. Dangerous indeed. “Sure.”
Castor moves his chair around the table so we are face-to-face. His jaw looks particularly sculpted in the candlelight. An emotion I don’t want to examine flutters in my chest. It goes in the basement with all the rest.
“It’s easier to do if you close your eyes.”
As if he trusts me completely, as if I were never caught with a dagger hidden behind my back, he does. “I don’t feel like a house,” he says after a moment.
“You have to focus. Paint a picture in your mind—like when your brother used to tell you stories. Imagine the shape of your house, the color of the walls, the size of the windows, the outline of the door. Do you see that?”
“I think so.”
Castor’s eyes are squeezed so tight that the skin between his brows and on the bridge of his nose wrinkles. My cheeks tighten as I repress a laugh. “What do you see?”
“White walls…like a birch tree. Round windows. A red door.”
“Interesting choices.”
He frowns, eyes still closed. “Why? Is that the wrong kind of house?”
A small chuckle escapes my throat. “No. It’s a perfectly fine house. Just keep picturing that and imagine yourself standing inside.”
“Do I need to imagine what the interior looks like?”
“No, that doesn’t really matter.”
“So I’m just in an empty house with no furniture?”
My eyes roll up to the ceiling. “I mean, you can picture furniture in there if you want.”
“Okay.” His eyes squeeze more tightly and his head bobs back a little. “None of this furniture matches.”
“You are literally the one in control of what the furniture looks like, Castor.”
“I can’t just control what my mind does, Maddox.”
“Oh my God. Ignore the furniture. You’re going to focus on locking everything down.”
“How do I do that?”
“Think of what you’d do if some evil forest creature were coming for you and this house was the only thing that could protect you from them.
Picture yourself closing the front door and locking it, shutting all the windows and sliding the bars across, pulling the curtains and slamming the shutters, until every single window and door is locked and closed and protected from the outside. ”