Chapter 32
Castor
Everything about being with Maddox is different.
Different because she fills every part of me. Different because my mind hasn’t wandered away from this bed. Different because the sensations in my body aren’t just below my navel but everywhere. My fingertips, my spine, my lips, my neck, the length of my horns.
Mostly, she’s in my chest, holding my heart in her hands and controlling its beats.
I press my sweat-soaked forehead to hers.
The curves of my horns sink into the soft material of the bed.
My lips find hers, one more time, wet and laced with salt.
Slowly and indulgently, I kiss her again.
Forgetting for a moment about the pact. We could just stay here.
Right here, quiet and cut off from the world outside.
Abruptly, Maddox tears her lips from mine, sliding out from under me and moving to the edge of the bed. She wraps her arms around her legs, pressing her face into the nook between the peaks of her knees. Then every inch of her begins to tremble.
I place a tentative hand against her back. “What is it? Do you need sugar crystals?”
A sob leaves her throat, echoing in the hollow of her curled form. Then another and another until her breaths come in gasps. Chest tightening, I move to her side, wrapping her in my arms. The sobs taper off, replaced with quick, shallow breathing.
“Was it something I did?” I ask, not letting go. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She lifts her flushed, tear-streaked face. “It’s not you.”
Maddox pulls the silk sheets around her, scooting back until she’s able to lie on the bed, red-rimmed eyes fixed on the ceiling. I lie beside her, taking the length of sheet she offers me to cover my nakedness.
“I’m just broken,” she whispers, as if she doesn’t trust her voice to speak any louder, “and the first thing I liked about you was that you were broken too. I’m drawn to broken things, or maybe they’re drawn to me.
I keep looking for things to fix me, but I just end up breaking myself all over again.
I’m a house of glass pretending to be iron. ”
I tuck a lock of red hair behind her ear. “At least you’re good at pretending. I’m a house of glass, too, but everyone can see right through me.”
She closes her eyes and her smile fades until it disappears completely. “You think I’m strong…but I’m not.”
“You think I’m good,” I counter, “but I’m not.”
Her head falls sideways until her silver eyes bore into me. “I have known a lot of bad people and a few good ones. You are the latter.”
“You’re wrong.”
Turning on her side and propping her head on the heel of her palm, she reaches out, placing her other hand at the base of my horns, stroking her thumb across my forehead. “I’m frequently wrong, but not about this.”
A burning tightness constricts my throat. “Especially this.”
“I wanted to hate you when we met, but then I got to know you, and I couldn’t. I actually like you. Maybe even…a bit more than that.”
Guilt crawls into the bed, lying between us. Every muscle in my body tenses at her words.
No. Not her too.
“I should not have lied to you,” I whisper, hating myself for hiding the ugliest of my falsehoods even now. “I’ll understand if you hate me. I rather do.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You shoul—”
But she cuts me off midsentence with her lips. She straddles me, hands running through my hair and landing at the back of my neck as she deepens the kiss. I sigh into her, forgetting for a moment what I was trying to say.
Then a fabricated image fills my mind of her saying the words, those three deadly words that will soon take the life of yet another person I care for.
Placing both hands on either side of her face, I pull her gently away. “We can’t do this.”
She presses her forehead to mine. “Why can’t we?”
“I’m the cursed prince, Maddox.”
The left side of her lips pulls upward into a teasing smirk. “What, you think just because we’ve slept together once, I’m going to fall madly in love with you?”
“No…I’m saying I don’t want to take the chance.”
“I’m not going to fall in love with you, Castor,” she says with a certainty that makes me feel both relieved and like I’m breathing in poisonous smoke.
For once, though, there is an uncertainty in her eyes. A flicker of deceit. She may not be in love with me now, but she’s close.
It’s so close, I can taste it. So close.
Like being addicted to a deadly poison. My death and my life in a single, unswallowable pill.
Every inch of me aches for it; the hole in my chest feels full and empty at the same time.
Because she’s right here, filling me up, but it’s like she’s made of vapor.
Intangible and incorporeal. And the moment she solidifies is the moment I will lose her.
And I realize with a horrible shock that I can’t lose her…because I’m not just close. I’m there. If our roles were reversed, I’d be long gone now. Choking on my wine. Bleeding out on the floor. Stuck in the gallows tree. However the curse decided to do away with me, it would have already happened.
Maddox bites down on her lip, tracing her fingertip over my collarbone as a line appears between her brows. “So, for the curse to work…does the person have to speak the words aloud?”
“Not necessarily.” But for my pact to work, she does. It was part of Durian’s stipulation. She has to say the words.
“Has anyone said it aloud before?”
“Yes.”
“How long did it take for them to die after they said it?”
“The curse follows its own rules. Once, it happened within the evening. Once, it took nearly a week.”
“Did you love them too?”
I think of every phantom face. Cyperus. Laurel. Jace. Now Tam. And those are just the ones I’ve loved in return.
The tears spill as I dip my head in a nod. But for once I don’t feel ashamed.
We both know Tam said the words. He said them to Maddox, and again to me. He’s a ticking clock now. She will get to watch my curse work in real time. We both will.
Heaviness settles over me. I’m so tired.
Maddox slides off my lap to sit beside me, taking my hand in hers. I don’t feel any lighter.
“Tell me about them.” It isn’t a demand, but a request.
I fill my lungs with air and let it slowly out, numbness creeping in.
“Cyperus was killed by a mortal man just after he spoke the words to me. When I was an eight-year-old sapling, Cyperus adopted me from the Nightshade orphan’s home in an attempt to continue the Sempervirens line.
But the moment my heartwood was grafted to the Sovereign Tree, bad things started to happen.
Anyone who got too close to me, who cared too much for me, began to die.
Tutors, servants, even some of my new Crown District friends.
They never told me they loved me out loud.
And neither did Cyperus…not until the day before his death. ”
“But he didn’t just die, right? He was killed by a mortal.”
“That’s right.”
“So, how do you know he died because of your curse?”
“That’s just how my curse works. They don’t die in one specific way. It’s…erratic and unpredictable. As fae magic is wont to be. And it’s why people fear me. Why Durian blames me for Cyperus’s death.”
Maddox’s face goes blank, her eyes staring unfixed at the bed. Locking down. “What about the others?”
I wonder if I’m scaring her, and I can’t decide if it’s a good or a bad thing. It’s probably best that she’s afraid.
“Laurel was an accident.” All my ugly secrets start to pile up around us.
“She was a couple years older than me and started working in the kitchens when she turned sixteen. There was something about her that intimidated and intrigued me. I was quiet and awkward, and I wanted to learn how to be someone worthy of a crown.”
“You were quiet and awkward?”
“Shocking, I know.”
She snorts. “So Laurel taught you how to be cool and brooding?”
“Essentially. We started hanging out after all her duties were over with. Laurel is the one who introduced me to nepenthe and a few other vices. We weren’t lovers.
Just friends. At least, that’s what I thought we were, until she said the words, completely out of the blue.
She had just lit some nepenthe, took a long drag, blew out the smoke, and said, I love you, Castor Sempervirens.
The next morning, she was found lying in her bed, cold as stone, as if her heart just stopped in the night. ”
“Oh…fuck.”
“Yes, exactly. Laurel’s death shook me pretty hard. But nothing was as excruciating as—” My voice cracks, and Maddox’s hand clasps my arm. “Jace.”
The original catalyst to my pact. The reason I’ve been seeking out a mortal to beguile for the past year.
“Jace was a mortal. For some foolish reason, I thought the curse couldn’t touch him, because at that point only dryads had died. I first saw him in that town I showed you.”
“Arborfell,” Maddox says in a hollow voice.
“That’s right…Anyway, I ran into him on the docks while I was glamoured to look mortal. Our dalliance turned into something deeper, and I carelessly told him what I really was after he started asking questions about my home and why I didn’t want to meet his friends.
“He asked if he could try tieg wine. Just a drop. Enough for him to see the real me but not become overly intoxicated. It was my first real, genuine relationship. One that didn’t revolve around Magesté or meaningless sex.
I was terrified to tell him about the curse because I thought, surely, he would leave—that he’d be too afraid to continue on with me.
But he didn’t run away. He laughed and said, ‘No curse can touch me.’ After all, my rotting power did nothing to him. ”
“I thought maybe I’d found the secret work-around. The fatal flaw in my curse. So I would sneak him up into my branch. We’d smoke nepenthe and sleep together, and everything seemed to be going perfectly. Then he told me he loved me.”
My cheeks warm. It feels odd to tell her about this, to tell anyone. But especially her.
“And, even though I thought he was safe, it still set my nerves on edge. I berated him, saying he shouldn’t have said that, just in case.
He laughed it off. The day passed, and nothing happened.
So we went about our day and at the end, crawled into my bed and made love.
Afterward, Jace laughed and said, ‘See? Told you I’m invincible.
’ But when I woke the next morning, he was no longer next to me. I found him hanging from my heartwood.”
Maddox flinches, taking my face in her hands. “I’m so sorry, Cas. I just—” Her teeth clamp down on her bottom lip, as if she’s caging words. “I hate that you’ve endured so much loss.”
Grief joins Guilt in this bed, pressing on my chest, burning my throat. Tears brim in my eyes. I’ve told her almost everything, all the deep, dark, and deadly secrets I carry with me day after day. But the pact still presses on my conscience.
I could tell her. I should tell her…but I don’t. Because I’m a coward. An unlovable abomination. Because I don’t want to see the tenderness in her eyes turn to shards of ice again. I don’t want to see the starlight morph back into daggers.
And then there’s Tam. My childhood friend with a terminal diagnosis because he got too close. Because I let him get too close. The tears in my eyes make guilty tracks down my cheeks.
“Come here,” Maddox murmurs, opening her arms for me.
In her eyes is a vulnerability I’ve never seen there before.
Without speaking, I slide over, and she gently pulls my head to rest in her lap.
Her arm curls around my shoulders, hand resting at the base of my horns.
Maddox holds me in a way I’ve never been held by anyone.
Not in a sensual or passion-crazed way. Not possessive or desperate.
Her arms are a cocoon of warmth and safety.
If things were different, it would be easy to fall asleep here.
But things are not different.
The sun gently rises, bleeding through the darkness. Guilt and Grief turn to shadows stroking my back, whispering in my ear. Soon, Maddox’s breathing slows as she succumbs to sleep. But mine doesn’t.
This evening, Durian and I are meant to welcome visitors from all over Sylveris as they flood in for the Solstice.
But I won’t be staying for the prolonged celebration.
I’m going to tell him that I’m out. I’m finished with it all.
With this pact, with this curse, with sentencing good people to death.
He can lock me in the Bloodwood Tree and just keep me there. Madness almost sounds like a relief.
It will be better for everyone. Because it’s too late for Tam…but I can still save Maddox.
Guilt slides out of the bed, but Grief stays.