Chapter 20
Castor
“So, Your Majesty…” Tamarind says the evening following the great cherry juice debacle and my locking-down lesson. “What now?”
“Everything’s going to plan.” I wave Maddox’s painstakingly wrapped gift at him and place it beside me on the samara seat. “Have some faith.”
Everything is certainly not going to plan. It’s unclear if Maddox is simply locked up in that imaginary house in her mind or if she is truly uninterested in me, but my anxiety climbs as the Sylveris Solstice grows nearer and nearer.
In the past, it seemed almost cruelly easy for lovers to fall fatally in love with me.
It took no grand displays or thoughtful gifts.
No daily visits with coffee in hand or candlelit desserts.
Just casual nights spent smoking nepenthe in bed.
I pat the substance in my pocket. Desperate times call for it, I suppose.
“I know it’s not my place.” Tamarind stares out the window of the samara rather than at me. “But perhaps if you opened yourself up a bit more—shared something personal or vulnerable—she might relate to it. Or even do the same.”
“That girl is locked up tighter than the citadel vaults. I seriously doubt spewing out a sad story will change that.”
Tamarind’s lips press tightly together, holding back words he clearly wants to say.
I don’t push him to share them. I am well aware my time is rapidly running out.
My eyes cast down to the gift, about the size and width of my forearm and wrapped in silver paper.
Luckily, mortals seem to value possessions over most things.
And luckily, I’ve been paying attention to the kind of woman Maddox is.
Magesté is filled to bursting when Tamarind and I arrive, Maddox’s gift tucked underneath my cloak.
Fern flits about, handing out drinks to already-intoxicated visitors as Maddox stands behind the front desk, scribbling numbers on a page.
Tonight, she wears a flowing gown of deep plum, fiery hair pinned back, with loose strands framing her face.
Her teeth capture her bottom lip as she concentrates on her calculations.
Something stirs in my chest. An electric zing travels over my skin. Warmth pools in my gut. All of which I ignore.
“Sorry,” she says, without looking up, “we’re all booked for the night.”
“Shame,” I reply. “I had such grand plans too.”
The leaf quill in Maddox’s hand stills, silver gaze sliding up to me. “I suppose you will just have to find something else to entertain you, Your Majesty.”
“Mmm. Afraid you’re right.” I approach the desk, leaning my forearms against it. “Are you free?”
“For your entertainment?”
“No, for yours.”
I see Tam roll his eyes in my periphery, and Fern bounces up to the desk. “She’s free!”
“Very well,” Maddox says in an unrecognizable impression of some posh mortal accent. “Shall we go downstairs, or retire to the parlor?”
“Neither. Just change into something more comfortable and meet me outside.”
She doesn’t protest but glances warily at Tamarind before disappearing into the theater.
“I don’t think she’s thrilled you’re coming with us,” I tell Tam outside.
His shoulders stiffen. “Well, I’m not thrilled that she carries a dagger around like a mini mortal assassin.”
“She claims it’s for protection.” At first I didn’t believe her. But she’s had plenty of chances to off me if she really wanted to—especially last night—and she hasn’t taken any of them. Perhaps she wasn’t lying after all.
I’d rather not think that, though, because I need her to be a murderer.
I need her to be worthy of the wrath of my curse.
Otherwise I might let myself pull away like I have the past two dozen attempts.
The fact that the Sovereign Tree gave me a wicked curse but left my conscience intact is the worst part.
But, of course, Durian knew this when he made the pact with me.
He knew what my last mortal lover’s death had done to me.
He knew I didn’t see mortals the same way most dryads did. Even after what happened to Cyperus.
Tam’s words disrupt my thoughts. “Modern mortals don’t carry daggers for protection.”
“Okay, Mr. Mortal Pundit. What do they carry, then?”
He frowns. “I don’t know what they’re called, but they are not daggers. They’re—”
“Guns,” comes Maddox’s voice from behind us. “They’re called guns.”
Tamarind and I spin around, his hand going to his scythe. Maddox stands with her arms crossed. She’s changed into an oversized white blouse that hangs off one shoulder with tight-fitting black pants and boots. Strung across her chest is the strap of a small leather bag that rests at her hip.
My throat bobs.
“So, where are we going?” she asks with clearly fabricated cheeriness.
Stepping around Tamarind, I take Maddox’s arm in mine, ignoring the unexpected jolt to my nervous system as her fingers brush against my wrist. “You’ll see.”
For a mortal, Maddox handles the egress impressively well. She mentioned being a dryad party crasher, so I suppose she’s likely traveled this way before. We emerge on the other side on a moss-covered path leading to the top of a cliff. At my nod, Tamarind stays back while Maddox and I step forward.
Just beyond the cliffs is a quaint seaside mortal town I’ve visited too many times.
Arborfell. The settlement is bisected by the border of the Myrtlewood and Redwood kingdoms, and is therefore frequented by fae of all sorts.
So much so that dryad lore has made its way into their tavern bards’ tales, spreading like climbing vines through the populace.
From this view, the town looks almost fae-like, sidling up to a rocky shore that kisses an angry sea.
Warm lights glitter as fairies do, and fishing boats bob in the dark waves along the docks.
Maddox and I sit on a patch of moss near the edge, a foot of distance between us.
“I come here a lot when I want to get away from the forest,” I tell her. “Sometimes the trees can feel suffocating.”
Maddox peers down at the town, a wistful glimmer in her eyes. “Odd for a dryad to say.”
“Did you never feel suffocated among other humans?”
The wistful look deepens to despondence. “All right. I see your point.” A sigh bows her shoulders as she watches the ant-sized people weaving in and out of shops, the waves swelling and pulling back. “I can see why you’d come here. It’s a perfect metaphor.”
“What is?”
“Being up here all alone, watching people window-shop and stroll hand in hand up and down the docks. Always from a distance. Ever on the outside.”
I don’t tell her that sometimes I venture into the town, desperate to feel on the inside of something.
“Like your locked-up house?”
“The opposite of that, actually.” Maddox’s gaze roves from the town to me and over her shoulder at Tam. Sighing again, she turns back to the scene below.
“You seem uncharacteristically somber tonight.” And by that I mean she’s showing an emotion other than indifference for once. Though each day I’ve spent with her, a few more slip out, bleeding through her mask like a fresh wound.
“Yeah, I’m just…” Bending her legs up to her stomach, she wraps her arms tightly around them, as if she needs extra support in locking herself down now. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m forever in an in-between place.”
“In-between?”
“More like dangling on the edge of a precipice. Everything in my life is so uncertain and confusing and…fucked up.”
My stomach twists uncomfortably. “You’re in good company, then.”
Maddox turns a skeptical expression toward me. “You’re a king. What do you have to feel uncertain about?”
Every single thing. “You would be surprised.”
“I doubt it.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I see Tamarind wave his hand in a go on motion.
My eyes narrow. This is plenty personal and vulnerable.
What am I supposed to tell her? Well, Maddox, I’m feeling rather uncertain at the moment because you have yet to fall for me, and I need that to happen so I can get rid of this monstrous curse.
Oh, and by the way, you will die if you do. Because of said curse.
A violent shudder wracks my shoulders.
Maddox laughs at the outburst. “Are you cold?”
“No, I— No. I’m fine. Would you like to try some nepenthe?”
Without hesitating, she holds out her hand, palm up. “Sure.”
Passing her one of the rolls, I squeeze my fingers to the end of hers and then mine, lighting them.
“Fancy.” She brings the nepenthe to her lips.
“You have to…”
But she’s already taking a long, deep drag, holding it in her lungs. She lets out a stream of lavender smoke, the tightness in her shoulders lessening, the furrowed set of her brows relaxing. “Oh, shit.”
“Have you smoked this before?”
“Not this.” She takes another drag, blowing the smoke in my direction and laughing. “Why isn’t there a Redwood Queen?” she asks suddenly. “Or—a second king?”
“A second—”
“Why aren’t you married, is what I’m asking.”
I choke on the smoke in my lungs. “Oh. Well. Redwood Kings don’t marry.”
“Why not?”
“Mostly because of our history with the Myrtlewood Kingdom.”
She turns her body to face me now, leaning forward. “What about it?”
“Our two kingdoms have been on treacherous terms for decades. We started as one realm—Sylveris. All the dryads in all of the western forests were co-ruled by the first monarchs: Elswyth Umbellularia, whose heartwood lay in the Sovereign myrtlewood tree, and Rowan Sempervirens, of the Sovereign redwood.”
“Why was it co-ruled?”
“The Myrtle Queen and Redwood King were bound together by marriage.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Guessing that didn’t work out.”