Chapter 21
Maddox
If I could rewind time and redo last night, I never would have left Magesté with Castor.
Not only did his stalker guard not leave our sight, but the mixture of seeing Arborfell from afar and the gift—the gift—and the nepenthe all just fucked with my brain.
And, after the insulin overdose debacle, I clearly didn’t need that.
This morning, my eyes look more tired than ever before. No sleep for the wicked, I guess. Waiting for Castor to come to me—guard in tow—clearly isn’t working. Time for plan B.
I tug on a knee-length dress of buttercup yellow and tether my new weapons belt underneath, sliding the golden dagger into the holster.
This blade is beginning to feel like yet another instrument I can’t leave home without.
On the other side of the belt, I affix my throwing axe.
Tucking a syringe filled with insulin into the bun on top of my head, I leave through my bedroom window once again. Locked and fucking loaded.
The wailing siren song and distant screeching between districts is even louder this time.
I swear I hear the ominous beating of massive insectile wings from just behind the nearest redwood trunks.
Looks like another early morning sprint for me.
Luckily my blood sugar is resting well above 150, as I’ve been forced to ration insulin even more after my careless mistake.
When I reach the citadel, panting and clutching a cramp in my side, only a pair of guards stand at the arched entrance. Putting on my most dreamy expression, I tiptoe toward them, feigning wonder at my surroundings.
“Oi!” one of them calls out. “How did a mortal get loose?”
“The pretty man with pretty green hair brought me here,” I say in an airy voice that is helped along by the lack of air in my lungs. “I don’t know where he went. Have you seen him? He told me I could have more wine. Do you have any wine?”
The guards exchange an exasperated look, both muttering, “Archer.”
The one on the left calls out to someone inside the citadel walls to fetch the prince’s mortal-snatcher. I walk in a slow circle with my hands clasped loosely behind my back, staring up at the treetops and humming.
“This is the third time this has happened,” one guard grumbles. “Yet he makes more gold than both of us. Pathetic.”
Archer arrives wearing a bewildered expression. I know he recognizes me by the panicked flare of his eyes. I wave, smiling widely.
“Wine boy!” I exclaim, lifting both my arms like a girl in the club whose song has just come on. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
He stops short, glancing between the guards and me. “What’s going on?”
“Your feet aren’t still sore, are they?” I ask in a singsong voice.
“Just take her, will you?” one guard says. “It’s too early for this.”
Archer’s frown deepens, but he takes hold of my arm anyway, guiding me away from the guards.
“What are you doing?” he whispers.
“Pretending to be drunk on tieg wine. Those guards weren’t about to let a mortal in to see the king.”
“You’re here to see the king?”
“I have some unfinished business with him.”
“Have you…met the king?”
“Um. Yes?” I narrow my eyes at him. Archer was literally there when Castor stormed into our foot-rubbing session. “I know you’re afraid of him and all, but could you just show me to his rooms? He’ll be fine with it. I promise. I’ve spent…way too much time with him the past week.”
Archer is looking at me like I’ve truly lost my mind. Both eyebrows lift as he lets out a breathy laugh. “If that’s what you want, golden girl.”
Despite my mind being wrapped up in murder and daggers, I study the sprawling interior of the citadel.
Now that my blood sugar isn’t plummeting like it was at the masque, I take in branches the size of roadways woven tightly together and earthen platforms covered in emerald grass.
Truly a fairy-tale wonderland up here. And I’m about to water the soil with their king’s blood.
I really wish that thought didn’t make me want to vomit.
Archer leads me into the palace through a maze of branches and secret passageways.
I try to make note of each turn, but soon right, left, left, right, right, left becomes a jumble of meaningless directions.
I’ll find a way to escape. Chop my way out if I must—not that throwing axes are great for chopping anything more than thin branches, but…
The guards in the passageways have tripled, so I assume we’re getting close to Castor’s room.
I wonder why Tamarind is enough protection for the king in a place like Magesté, but he needs a horde of golden goons to protect him inside his branch while he’s sleeping.
I wonder if it has anything to do with what my dad did to King Cyperus’s heartwood tree.
Stopping at a pair of gilded doors, Archer nods to the sentries standing on either side wearing golden-feathered armor. “Morning, gents.”
They grunt in response.
Archer clangs the door knocker once, pauses, twice quickly, pauses, and once again.
The door opens, but it isn’t Castor bathed in the light cast by the glowing sconces.
Before me stands a strikingly beautiful dryad man with golden hair styled perfectly, not a strand out of place, though he’s wearing a silken scarlet robe as if he just woke up.
Dark green eyes the color of emeralds, dazzlingly white teeth, sharp cheekbones, and a pair of sandstone horns.
“Prince Durian?” I say.
Fucking Archer. Of course he would bring me to the mortal collector instead of the king. See if I ever rub his aching feet again. The green-haired traitor looks quickly over at me, his maple eyes suddenly wide and panicked. The guards flanking the doors actually unfreeze and glance my way.
The cursed prince scans me with hungry eyes, a flaxen brow lifting as a smile unfurls. “You must be Maddox. I’m guessing you’re here to see King Castor?”
Archer’s mouth widens, and the prince shoots him an annoyed glare. “You’re dismissed, Archer.”
“Your Ma—”
“Pleasant morning to you,” Prince Durian interrupts pointedly.
A hurried bow and Archer disappears around the corner. Well. This is awesome for me.
From the depths of the room, a dazed giggle can be heard. Peering over Durian’s shoulder, I spot a colossal bed with white silk sheets and a million decorative pillows.
And there’s a girl tied to the bars of the headboard.
Everything about her screams mortal, from the blunt bangs clinging to her sweat-soaked forehead to the anchor tattoo on her rib cage.
Judging from the grin on her face, she doesn’t seem to be in pain.
Quite the opposite, actually. But whether that is tieg wine or because she genuinely enjoys being tethered by the cursed prince is unclear.
Prince Durian takes note of my wandering gaze and steps into the hall, closing the door behind him. “Allow me to escort you to my brother. Archer works for me, so sometimes he gets confused, the poor bastard.”
I swallow the biting comments crowding at the back of my throat. Insulting a cursed prince who plays with mortal women in his free time wouldn’t be the best of my ideas—though I suppose it wouldn’t be the worst either.
“I’m Durian, by the way.” He motions for me to join him down the guard-lined hall. “Though it seems you already know that. I’m sure my brother has told you all about me.”
“Your name may have come up,” I admit, smirking despite myself. There’s something about being near someone so supposedly dangerous—someone who kills anyone who falls in love with them—that turns me on a little. Typical.
His wide grin falls and he turns his attention to the ground. “I’m sure you’ve been warned to stay away from me.”
“Well, luckily, I don’t usually listen to the warnings of others.”
“That is lucky.”
The prince leads me into a circular sunroom with a glass ceiling covered in dark vines.
Shards of sunlight break through, casting a fractured spotlight on a fountain in the sunken middle of the room.
Within the fountain stands a life-size marble statue of a dryad woman with antlers.
A stone mortal man kneels at her feet, fists clasped before him as if he’s been pleading for his life.
At the base of his head, the dryad’s left hand tangles in his hair, pulling back, and in her right hand she holds a dagger.
A weathered gash across the mortal’s throat spurts water in a wave of colorless blood.
The final seconds of his life play out in an endless morbid display.
The burbling sound of the water turns my stomach.
Like he’s forever choking on his own blood.
“A gift,” Durian says, stepping to my side, “from the Myrtle Queen.”
Every muscle in my body stiffens. It’s as if the Myrtle Queen planned this moment out for me. An image of what I’ve been sent here to do. Only backward. The dryad killing the mortal.
I can practically hear her whisper. This is what you’re meant to be doing right now, Maddox, darling. Ticktock goes your mortal clock. My, how you love to waste time.
“How…thoughtful?”
“Our two kingdoms have a sordid history.” Durian reaches toward the statue, cupping his hand beneath the mortal’s slit throat, letting the water slide through his fingers. “But I must say, I have always admired the Myrtle Queen’s flair for the dramatic.”
“Do you see much of her?”
I recall what she said about the prince being useless and cursed, about his new interest in mortals and his nickname in the Myrtlewood. The one-night-stand prince.
“She attends the occasional Sylveris Council meetings but merely examines her nails as the rest of us discuss matters of importance. Last I actually spoke with her directly was at my brother’s heartwood memorial.”
Durian pulls his hand away from the water, flicking his fingers at the statue’s face. His emerald eyes turn on me, an ember of dark amusement in their depths. “She’s always rather hated mortals, you know.”
“Has she,” I say evenly.
“It’s something we’ve never seen eye to eye on. I happen to be rather fond of them myself.”
The way his eyes drag down from mine to rove hungrily over my body makes me take a single step back.
Castor’s words about what his brother does to the mortals Archer captures for him reverberate in my skull—women Durian has his way with before he wipes their memories and leaves them dazed in the forest.
None of those Sovereign guards outside would bat an eye if he wanted to do something to me in here. The weight of my weapons reminds me I’m not a helpless mortal woman under a tieg wine trance. I could parry any advance with a sharpened blade.
I may be able to get away with killing one royal brother. But only one…and these blades are meant for the king.
“I do wonder why King Castor has not brought you around.” He steps forward, negating my retreat. “Perhaps he’s afraid of what I will do to you.”
“Do to me?”
As if we’re dancing a waltz, he steps forward, and I move back, except my heel hits the edge of a step, nearly toppling me.
“Have you not heard the rumors?” he asks in a gravelly murmur. “About my curse. About what happens to people who get too close to me?”
“Rumors are rumors.”
My hand inches down to the edge of my skirt on the side with my throwing axe. I can hit a bull’s-eye from fifteen feet away, but I’ve never buried it in someone’s skull before.
“Rumors are rooted in truth.” He closes the distance between us, and I lift my skirt in a flash, grasping the axe’s handle.
In a breath, Durian’s hand is on mine, closing over it and pressing against my thigh, cementing it in place. My eyes fly wide.
“Wearing weapons as if you came prepared for a fight? You’ll want to exercise caution with those. Someone might think you have ulterior motives in this kingdom.”
Another voice fills the room, tinged in darkness. “Back away from her.”
Castor steps through an open doorway wearing only a pair of dark gray silk pants and a matching robe.
A blackened scar veins out like a lightning strike across the muscled expanse of his stomach and chest. The same blackness colors his closed fists, wisps of gray smoke escaping through the cracks between his fingers.
Durian eyes the tendrils of his brother’s power, previous smile flickering with something very close to fear.
A forced chuckle tumbles from Durian’s lips as he releases me, letting my skirt fall to cover my axe. Stepping back, he lifts his hands in mock surrender. “King Castor. You’re up early.”
Castor’s head bobs back. “What did you—”
“I was just about to invite Maddox to the feast tomorrow.” Durian sinks onto the edge of the morbid fountain, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his thighs. “Unless you didn’t want her to come. You are the king, after all, so you have the final say on our guest list.”
Something between a sputter and a choke leaves Castor’s throat. “I…” His wild brown eyes meet mine.
I stand between the two Sovereign brothers. The Redwood King and the Cursed Prince. If I were a trained assassin like the badass women in Atomic Blonde or Killing Eve who awakened my bisexuality, I could take both of them out in seconds.
Looking not at all excited by the prospect of dinner with me, Castor says, “Would you like to join us for the feast tomorrow, Maddox?”
“I would enjoy spending more time in your company as well,” Durian adds. “The king has been selfishly hiding you away from me.”
Part of me enjoys the clear discomfort in Castor’s stance. The sweat beading at his brow. “Can’t fathom why I would do such a thing.” His words are scarcely louder than a whisper.
Durian stands from the fountain, moves to my side, and slides his arm around my shoulders. “He’s afraid you’ll fall in love with me,” he murmurs in my ear. “I told him I was sure you were much too intelligent to fall in love with the cursed prince.”
An involuntary shiver snakes down my back, and I can’t tell if I like it or not.
He pulls away, hooking his thumbs at his hips, squaring up to the king.
The two brothers share a lengthy stare—one with history and silent words, like they’re speaking a language I can’t understand.
Durian’s beaming smile seems even more pronounced juxtaposed beside Castor’s ashen face and phantom frown.
The prince looks several years older than Castor.
I wonder if his curse is what kept him from inheriting the crown.
Confident that today is not a good day for murdering kings, I interrupt their silent duel. “Dinner sounds lovely.” I smooth my skirt, hands skimming over the outlines of my twin weapons.
Still sparkling and clean and unused.
Until tomorrow.