Chapter 26
Castor
Everything hurts. Every. Thing.
A clock ticks somewhere. Loudly.
So loudly.
Birds screech outside. The breeze through the leaves is like a bellowing hurricane. All the lights here are brighter than the sun.
Where is “here”? Where am I?
I sit up, and it feels like slow motion. My horns are like redwood trees sprouting from my skull, achingly heavy. I breathe in, and I’m inhaling flames.
What. Did. I. Do.
There’s only one substance that has ever made me feel this way. Tieg. Why in the world’s dead forests would I drink that?
Sparks of memories play along the frayed edges of my mind. Durian and his pompous smile. Maddox and her red dress. Maddox and her singing. Maddox with her lips on mine. Maddox with her hand on my erection.
By the tree gods.
But there was also Maddox touching Durian’s arm. Laughing at his quips. Durian’s smug grin flashing my way as he whispered in her ear, running a possessive hand down her neck.
A crumbling piano. Maddox’s silver dagger eyes turning to stars.
Tieg wine. A lot of tieg wine. And then…blackness and rot and decay.
Pushing myself to an upright position takes the strength of a thousand dryads. I need wine. If only I could stand up and walk.
The smallest sound, a whimper, pulls my attention to the couch in the corner.
Curled in a ball is Maddox, sleeping fitfully.
Every sharp sensation brought on by the tieg wine softens.
I cross the room, treading lightly so as not to make too much sound and wake her, but also because any noise may cause my head to explode.
There are just two days until the Sylveris Solstice, and I don’t think she is any nearer to falling in love with me than when we first met. Especially after last night.
And yet she stayed.
In this state, when she isn’t guarded or glowering or rolling her eyes, she almost looks like a different person. Soft, gentle, and vulnerable. My hand twitches, longing to reach out and stroke the strands of hair stuck to her damp forehead.
I take a step forward and my toe rams into a small drawstring pouch on the floor.
A glass bottle clatters out of it, along with a thin, sharp instrument I recognize from the times I escaped to a mortal city for a loathsome night of pretending.
Something dark and serpentine slithers through my gut, tangling with my internal organs.
I may enjoy wine and nepenthe on a nightly basis…
but those are nothing compared to the horrors I’ve seen wreaked by mortal drugs.
Another whimper escapes Maddox’s mouth.
I kneel beside her. “Maddox?” Her silver eyes blink open, glazed and unfixed. She tries to lift a shaking hand but can’t seem to manage it. Immediately, my hangover is engulfed in a wave of adrenaline. “Maddox,” I say more urgently.
It takes a century for her to speak, though she opens her mouth again and again. “Shhgg,” she slurs. “Need.”
“What? What do you need?”
She swallows and speaks a fraction clearer this time. “Sugar.”
I recall her hands trembling the first time we met, the glazed look in her eyes then as she shoved those pastries down her throat.
And the night she ate all those sugar crystals and chugged a gallon of cherry juice before breaking the jug all over the floor.
I know very little about the effects of human drugs. Maybe sugar is the antidote?
I rush from the room, ignoring the pounding protest of my body, flying into the kitchen and swiping a jar filled with sugar crystals off the shelf. When I return to Maddox’s side, her eyes are closed.
“Hey.” I press a hand to her cheek. Her eyes flutter, but don’t open. “Maddox.”
Without waiting for her response, I stuff one of the sugar crystals between her lips. Then another.
The crystals dissolve quickly, and her mouth moves as she crunches down on the hard bits. It takes minutes that feel like centuries for her eyes to open again, black pupils swallowing the silver. “More,” she says, holding out a trembling hand.
I place a pile of sugar crystals in her palm, and she brings each of them clumsily to her mouth, chewing, swallowing, and laying her head back on the blue velvet cushion.
“Can I get you something else? More sugar? Water? Wine?”
“My pouch,” she says through a labored breath, her chest rising and falling in rapid succession. “With my—things in it.”
I pick up the silk pouch off the floor and offer it to her. She takes it, attempting and failing to sit up. Climbing onto the couch beside her, I grasp her shoulders and gently move her until she’s upright, leaning heavily against me.
With trembling fingers, she pulls out a mortal device, a squat plastic bottle, and a black cylindrical instrument.
I watch, bemused and silent, as she takes a thin strip from the bottle and inserts it into the electronic device, which illuminates with false light.
Then she presses the black instrument to her pinkie, clicks a button, and pulls it away to reveal a drop of blood, which she presses against the strip.
The machine emits an odd mechanical noise.
Maddox frowns at the machine but says nothing, only nods as if answering a silent question. Then she dumps everything into the pouch, tying it to her belt before lying back down, her head propped on my lap like I’m a pillow. “I’m just going to wait here until I don’t feel so…heavy.”
I start to ask her about what just happened, about why she is shaking and pale, about the devices and drugs, but I’m afraid she will move away from me. So I stay silent.
My right hand hovers above her shoulder, settling gently down and waiting for her to push me off. But she doesn’t. With my left hand, I brush the strands back from her speckled forehead, stroking my thumb along her temple.
Eventually, her rapid breathing slows. I realize the adrenaline coursing through my body has erased the effects of the tieg wine, an effective antidote.
Judging from her even breathing, I assume she’s fallen back to sleep, but then she says, “How’s your hangover?”
The smallest chuckle escapes my lips. “Mostly gone now.”
“Do you remember anything about last night?”
Guilt settles around my shoulders like a shawl of rocks. “Bits. I remember the dinner and drinks with Durian. I remember the piano…”
Blush colors her cheeks, but her voice hides it. “What about after all that?”
“I took a bottle of tieg wine from my brother’s room and drank it while Tamarind yelled at me to stop. He wouldn’t shut up the whole samara ride. I nearly rotted him.”
“What else do you remember?”
“After that is mostly a blur. I know I used my…hazardous power at Magesté. And I’m guessing you probably saw?”
Snorting at this, she nods against my leg. “I definitely saw.”
My eyes squeeze closed. “I’m sorry you had to witness that. I’m sure it was—”
“It was incredible,” she says on a breath.
“—what?”
“You destroyed that blood nymph with one sweep of your hand. I stabbed it in the side with a dagger, and that still didn’t take it down. But you just walked in and”—she snaps her fingers—“turned the monster to dust.”
A gentle laugh falls from my lips, dissipating quickly. “You’re probably the only person in this whole forest who has anything remotely positive to say about my power.”
She takes a deep breath in and lets a deep breath out. Then she turns over until she’s on her back, looking up at the ceiling. My left hand moves to the top of her head, and my right pulls away. She looks at me, and my thumb stills on her temple.
“Just so you know,” she says in a quiet voice, “you’re not a monster, Castor. In fact, you are much too lovable.”
My heart leaps to my throat. The word lovable isn’t enough to set my curse in motion.
For a bizarre moment, I realize my first thought isn’t of the pact with Durian or fulfilling it.
There’s no leap of excitement when the word lovable falls from her lips.
No, my gut reaction is panic and fear. Fear for her.
Anguish vines through my ribs, wrapping around my throbbing heart. My voice comes out half strangled. “Why would you say that?”
Her eyes move back and forth, from my right to my left, as if searching for something. “Seems like you feel that way sometimes, like your power somehow makes you this dark, despicable thing who’s undeserving of care. But I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong a lot lately, shockingly enough.”
My teeth press together before I admit, “Sometimes I do feel that way. All the time, actually. I think people only speak kindly to me because they’re afraid. After last night, I can’t really blame them.”
A melancholy smile paints her features blue. She presses a hand to my cheek. “Well, I’ve met very few lovable people, and you happen to be one of them. It’s extremely rude.”
“Me being lovable is rude?” I force a smile.
She nods, closing her eyes. “You have no idea how rude.”
Oh, but I do.
Pressure builds in my eyes and in my throat. I take a slow, steadying breath. I would love to not cry right now. Judging from how dry and aching my eyes are, I’m afraid I may have already done that last night, which probably made Maddox fall instantly in love with me.
Her lips are mismatched in size, I’ve just noticed.
The top is small and perfectly pointed like the letter M; the bottom is full and waiting to be enveloped by someone else’s.
An ever-present pout. Last night’s rage-filled kiss wraps around us like a palpable memory.
Her slow breathing hitches, and I catch her gaze on my mouth too.
I press my lips to her forehead, whispering, “Only a monster would find someone like me lovable.”
“Oh, have you not heard?” she whispers back. “I’m the mortal queen of the monsters.”