Chapter 31
Maddox
Through the throne room window, I catch sight of the Myrtle Queen bowing to King Durian just before she retreats through the doors.
Cursing, I look to the left and right to find an alternate way to Castor’s branch. But the only way I know is past the throne room. I push my quaking limbs to the limit as I break into a sprint and—
Drosera and Atlas step out of the throne room just as I’m about to pass the doors. They both reach for their weapons but stop when they take me in. I slam to a halt.
“You’re still alive, axeling?” Drosera sounds genuinely shocked, her attention moving to the newly stitched cut on my face. “Though it looks like someone got ahold of you, huh? Didn’t have your tiny mortal axe around to chop away at them?”
The Myrtle Queen emerges just behind them, standing at full height and looking down her nose at me with those piercing golden eyes.
She speaks in a voice so quiet the wind nearly carries it away.
“Miss Sinclair. Taking your precious time, I see. Your father had the deed done before sunrise the very first day. I’d so hoped you would take after him.
And yet the king still sits on his throne, very much alive. ”
“I…” My brain is too full of Castor to come up with a clever lie.
“I mistook the cursed prince for the king, which I just learned. Today. So I’m…
a bit behind. If you’ll excuse me, I need to—” Drosera steps in front of me so I can’t pass, her hand on her weapon. My thundering heart stutters and sinks.
Please. Let me go to Castor.
The queen tilts her head, fixing me with a patronizing stare. “Oh, darling mortal girl. You do not listen well, do you? I warned you about this.”
“Warned me about what, exactly?” All respect I should be showing the dryad queen who made a pact with me evaporates with my impatience.
The queen’s eyes spark with amusement now. “I told you the king loves to play games.”
Drosera throws her head back in a cackle. “You’ve actually been plotting to murder the wrong brother. How humiliating for you.”
Her words would fill me with fury if another emotion weren’t consuming every cell in my body.
Terror.
I have to get to him. It’s been too long.
My hand trembles as I try to keep it from grasping my throwing axe and giving Drosera a third horn.
But then the trio’s attention is drawn away from me as a loud exclamation of “Amanita, darling!” is heard to their left.
It’s the water nymph I met at the feast with the spherical eyes.
Bless you, frog woman.
I bolt away from the Myrtle Queen. Drosera doesn’t lash out with her weapon, but her laughter chases after me. I outrun it.
Flitting from one shadow to the next, I dodge the eyes of the citadel guards. Slipping inside the branch through the dining hall to the living quarters, I snatch a tray of brandy and crystal glasses off a wooden bar cart to pass off my intrusion as a service to the king—to the prince.
I suppose he is both, so long as Durian keeps up his little game.
When I reach the sitting room outside of the dining hall, I stumble, catching sight of a painting that was definitely not there at the feast. I pause long enough to ogle Durian’s portrait.
Golden hair and sandstone horns. Emerald eyes that seem to follow me.
Castor’s face is nowhere to be seen among the queue of kings.
How was I so unbelievably naive?
The panic builds. I’m sure my blood sugar is building, too, but I don’t fucking care.
My strides grow longer as I rush through the maze of branches.
Castor’s face shimmers in my thoughts like sunlight on dark water.
His sharp jaw. His warm brown eyes. His reluctant smile.
His hands that can push darkness into living things if he wants them to—the hands people fear.
The hands that have only ever touched me with the utmost gentleness.
The lump clogging my throat sinks to my chest and morphs into a familiar black hole of aching emptiness.
One of the glasses on the tray tumbles to the ground as I break into a run.
Memories chase after me. Coffee and wine, accidental brushes of the hand.
More than a few times I’ve obsessed over how those fingers felt raking down my skin on that piano.
Back when I still hated him. Back when I only knew him as the heartless Redwood King.
Back when this pact felt like an open door rather than bars and chains and blood on my hands.
I nearly crash into Castor’s door, slamming my fist against the wood. “Castor!” I shout, waiting a couple seconds between knocks. I try the handle, but it’s locked. At least a minute goes by as my fists and heart thunder. “CASTOR! FUCKING. LET. ME. IN.”
“He’s probably passed out,” a voice says behind me.
I turn to see Archer leaning against the wall, watching me with his tree-sap gaze.
“I need to talk to him. It’s urgent. Do you have a key?”
He takes in the stitched cut along my jaw, the tray of brandy in my hands. Then he nods, dark green hair falling across his forehead. “This is the second favor you’ve asked of me.”
“Yeah, after I kept your weird foot-rubbing fetish from your guard friends,” I snap. “Please.”
“If I let you in, you will owe me another favor someday.”
It’s a terrible thing to agree to. I know better than to say, “Fine.” But I do.
A grin twists Archer’s lips, and he steps forward, pulling a key from his belt and unlocking the door. “Don’t murder him. That would get me in some serious trouble with the king.”
I can practically feel the blood drain from my face as I slip inside.
The interior of Castor’s branch is not unlike his Nightshade home.
Muted shades of gray, black, deep brown, and ivory.
Theatrical architecture. It reminds me of a fancy New York flat that you might see in a drama series about a lonely man who comes from wealth but has more alcohol than friends.
The front door opens into a sprawling living area with an open kitchen.
Firelight flickers in a room to the left.
Clutching the tray of brandy, I lock my terror in the basement of my metaphorical house. I lock everything down, holding the panic inside like a caged animal. “Castor?”
Nothing.
The glasses on the tray clink together from my trembling hands as I move like a reaper searching for my latest victim.
I cross the threshold into the sitting room identical to the one in his Nightshade home.
I take in everything at once. A vanity filled with substances and drinks and a couple of dozing wood sprites.
A fire lit in the grate. The bottle of oleander-soaked wine—open and half empty—on a wooden side table.
A glass with only a puddle of the dark liquid sits beside the bottle.
And lying on the couch, arm draped to the ground and head turned to the side, is the cursed prince.
My heart crawls into my throat and the tray of brandy shatters to the ground as I sweep to his side. “Fuck. Castor. Castor.”
Falling to my knees, my hands bunch in the material of his shirt, forehead pressed against his chest. Tears burn my eyes as a sob escapes my lips. “What have I done?”
A rumble in his chest vibrates against my head. “Knocked me out with that wine, that’s what.”
I nearly choke on the air that catches in my throat as I jerk back to look upon Castor’s face.
His dark eyes, glazed in the firelight, are open.
The lazy grin tugging at his lips turns into a frown.
“Are you crying? What happened?” he asks, more seriously, reaching for my face with a gentle hand. “Were you hurt?”
I ignore his question. “There was…” I gape at the half-drunk bottle. “There was oleander in that wine.”
“I know…” He sits up now. “Who did this to you?”
“How are you—? Oleander is extremely poisonous.”
“Not to dryads. Just puts us to sleep.” His words are distracted. “What hap—”
“I had a run-in with a tree siren, okay? I’m fine now. Are you fine?”
Shaking his head with a half-amused, half-impressed expression, he plops back on the couch. “Yes, Maddox, I am perfectly fine. What, did you think you’d accidentally poisoned me?”
Accidentally.
My heart doesn’t know whether it should race or shatter or stop, so it just palpitates.
I clutch my chest as I try to find a lie to cover my mistake.
“I—I hadn’t realized what was in it until I ran into, uh—Fern, and she told me it had oleander in there and, well, oleander is extremely poisonous to humans, so I just ran off before she could say anything else about— Why are you laughing? ”
Castor’s laughter softens as he runs a thumb along my cheek, an attempt at comfort.
I bat his hand away, climbing to my feet. “It’s not funny, Castor. I thought you were—I thought—”
“Hey.” Castor moves to stand before me. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m sorry I laughed.”
“Why did you lie to me?” The irony sounds absurd to my own ears. But he doesn’t know I’ve been deceitful this whole time. That I nearly murdered him…more than once.
He freezes, tan face growing pale. “Lie about what?”
“What do you think, Prince Castor?”
Letting out a breath, he bows his head. “Oh.”
“ ‘Oh’? That’s all you have for me? I’ve spent weeks with you, mornings drinking coffee, spilling secrets about my family, kissing you on piano tops, dragging your drunk ass home, and all the while you’ve been playing me like a fool.”
“I never wanted you to feel—”
“Like an absolute idiot? How long were you planning to pretend with me? What was your end goal?”
I can’t tell him the other half of my anger. The real reason I want to punch him in the jaw right now. That I’ve wasted so much time going after the wrong brother. That I’m nearly out of insulin and time and no closer to completing this pact.
Castor opens his mouth and closes it.
“So, tell me, Prince, why go to such lengths to lie to some random mortal girl you met at a masquerade?”
He doesn’t speak. His hands are trembling.
“Say something.”
“I’m the cursed prince.”
“Yeah, I’ve fucking heard. And?”