Chapter 19 #3
Castor is silent for several seconds, the wrinkles between his brows softening. He has lovely thick eyebrows, I’ve just realized. He has lovely everything, really.
What the fuck, Maddox? You have him helpless and unguarded. Just get it over with.
The idea of murdering someone is clearly much easier to face than the act.
“Okay, everything is closed and locked,” he says, forcing me to refocus, even though my brain is full of hypoglycemic fog. “Can I go lie on the bright purple couch now?”
“Sure.”
With his eyes still closed, the right side of his face lifts with a crooked smile.
“Why do you feel like you have to lock down anyway?” I ask, ignoring the bizarre urge to trace his lips with my finger. “Who do you have to hide your emotions from?”
Castor’s crooked smile crumbles. “Everyone…My brother, mostly.”
“Have you ever been close with your brother?”
“Durian? No. Not really.”
“Because of his curse?”
“The curse has nothing to do with the way Durian is toward me.” Melancholy weighs down his features. “He has never seen me as a true brother. He’s never said that outright, of course, but it’s quite clear.”
“I thought it was the other way around.”
Several seconds pass by. “Not everything is as it seems in this kingdom, Maddox. The Sempervirens family tree is rooted in secrets and distrust.”
For a fleeting moment I wonder what that would be like, to be born from a tree. No parents, just brothers and sisters. My dad once told me that trees communicate with one another through a network, sending chemical and electrical signals to one another like neurons in a brain.
“Sometimes,” he said, “when a tree is sick or dehydrated, the nearby trees will share their water and nutrients through an underground fungal network.”
I was young, so all I could picture were trees passing plates of spaghetti to other trees with their roots.
But, as I got older, the image of trees taking care of one another like that filled me with an odd resentment.
As I sat alone in strange homes listening to my foster parents argue in the other room, or when I lived in a packed group home trying not to get into a fight with any of the other girls, I would think about the tree families.
And I would actually feel a twinge of jealousy.
If trees could care for one another, why couldn’t anyone find it in themselves to care for me?
I found something like family in Javen, of course, but now he’s so far away that our little network has been severed. Even if I needed him, he wouldn’t be able to help me.
“Well, at least you have family,” I mutter, unable to bite back the bitterness, “whether you get along or not. At least you aren’t alone in the world.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw, and he finally opens his eyes, pupils nearly swallowing the brown iris. “Being surrounded by people doesn’t make you feel any less alone.”
My stomach floods with yet another unwelcome feeling.
The only thing I should be feeling is bloodlust. I could have a family of my own someday.
I could have a home, could move to San Francisco to be closer to Javen, and I wouldn’t have to feel alone anymore.
But I have to make it that long first. And the one thing standing in my way is the king sitting before me with the thin golden crown and curling black horns.
There it is. There’s the bloodlust.
More like desperation-lust.
Sliding from my chair, I move to the kitchen under the guise of searching for more food.
I bend down to rifle through a lower cabinet filled with sacks of mostly grains, seeds, and nuts.
As I push things around with my left hand, I lift my skirt high enough to unsheathe my dagger with my right.
“Castor, can you come help me with this?”
With impeccable timing, the tremor in my body returns. My vision starts to blur again, and I press my forehead against the edge of the cabinet door.
“Maddox?” Castor says from behind me.
My hand wraps around the hilt of the dagger, teeth clenched, eyes squeezed shut.
I can do this. I can—
A wave of heat trickles along my shoulders and down my back. Moisture breaks out across my palms and forehead. My focus wanes, the edges of my vision darkening. I let out a breath.
Soft footfalls sound as Castor makes his way closer.
I can do this. He’s a foot away now.
I imagine myself standing and spinning around, elegant as a ballet dancer, sliding the dagger artfully across his carotid.
The kitchen floor slick with blood as I hack away at his horns to bring them to the queen.
Sneaking out my window in a red-stained green dress.
Stealing a samara, flying down into the forest, and fleeing to the Myrtlewood Kingdom.
It’s a beautiful image. If only I could stand up without collapsing.
My eggshell-thin plans fracture with the sound of a distant slam. Tamarind darkens the doorway at the top of the stairs, letting in the music and cheers of the show above. His eyes zero in on me, casting down to the dagger in my hand, narrowing.
I shove the blade into the nearest bag, slicing sideways until an avalanche of dried dates pours out. Discarding the dagger in the cabinet, I slump down, back pressed against the door. I take a fistful of the dates and pop two in my mouth.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Castor kneels beside me. Tamarind closes the door, descending the stairs two at a time. “Tam’s a healer. He can—”
“I don’t need a healer. I need sugar.”
“The tarts—”
“Liquid sugar. Like juice or something.”
Castor stands abruptly. “Why didn’t you just say that?”
He disappears through a door behind a shelf full of glassware that clinks together as he shuts it back. In his hands, he carries a large glass jar of—
“Cherry juice for the Magesté wine,” he announces. “There are half a dozen jars back there. And also wine, which is obviously how I know about it.”
Saying nothing, I hold my trembling hands out.
He keeps one palm beneath the jar as I tip the juice into my mouth, taking several huge gulps.
Castor lets go, clearly assuming I have a tight enough grip of my own.
He assumed wrong. The glass slips through my fingers, crashing to the floor and shattering.
Deep red liquid spreads through the grains of wood like the blood I imagined spilling moments ago.
“Sorry.” I attempt to stand but am hit by a wave of vertigo that forces me back down.
“I’ve got it.” He presses a hand to my shoulder. “And don’t be sorry. It’s not like you spilled wine.”