Chapter 37
Maddox
The cell bars flatten and turn into a seamless wall, shutting me off from Durian and Castor’s gaze.
I’m almost relieved.
Once, I likened Castor’s eyes to a mahogany dagger stabbed through a beating heart.
Before the mornings of steaming coffee and witty exchanges.
Before we were both laid bare. When his eyes held only warmth and familiarity.
But now it is After, and I don’t know what to compare them to anymore.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to trust my heart or my gut.
He either had the audacity to pretend he was suffering at my betrayal, brows turned up in sorrow, tears crashing down his cheeks…
or he was genuinely upset. Perhaps he’s just a fantastic actor.
I’ve seen him cry more in the past two weeks than I’ve cried this whole year, I think.
But as much as I try to focus on my hate for the cursed prince, who isn’t really cursed, all I can hear is Durian saying, What’s even more tragic is that Castor is in here because he was trying to protect you from his imaginary curse. I think he may have even loved you.
Sinking to the floor in the center of my cell, I accordion my legs, wrapping my arms loosely around them.
I rock back and forth just to have something to do.
Pretending my mouth doesn’t feel like sandpaper, pretending my vision isn’t blurring at the edges from the lack of insulin in my body, pretending everything will be okay, knowing it won’t.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
There used to be a wooden rocking chair in my living room.
When he was home, my dad would sit in it on cold nights.
I would crawl into his lap, and he would tell me stories.
I don’t know which of his stories were true and which were fairy tales, now that magic and reality are thoroughly blurred.
Maybe nothing is magic. Maybe everything is.
All I know is magic is far from the sparkling, warm feeling I once imagined it to be.
I miss Javen, his infectious laugh and fierce loyalty. I miss walking on solid ground. I miss cheeseburgers and fries and all that greasy mortal food.
But as much as I long for my old mortal existence, I miss my life from only a week ago even more. Donning gowns and confidence at Magesté, laughing at Fern’s ridiculous questions about mortals, throwing Castor shade while sipping coffee. Kissing him on a piano top.
I have roots in so many places, it’s been impossible for me to grow. Here they felt more solid somehow. Buried deeper. Which is a ridiculous thought, because it was only a matter of time before I was uprooted again.
Because I’ve been a raging terror in everyone’s life. To my mom, my foster families, my bosses, my friends. Eventually, I’m too much for them to handle in one way or another. It’s probably for the best that I’m in here, that I’ll be gone soon.
I press my face between my knees, still rocking.
“Maddox! Maddox, I hope you’ve been thinking really hard in there. If you’re a good girl, I’ll let you out.”
With a start, I sit straight up. But I’m no longer in my cell.
I’m in a tiny bedroom: twin-sized bed tucked beneath a slanted ceiling, red-and-black checkered quilt, logs for walls, a tiny bookshelf filled with worn books, a doll with a lazy eye, a stuffed fox.
And a door that locks from the other side.
It’s been sixteen years since I’ve seen this room—the day the social worker brought me here to pack some clothes after my parents’ deaths.
Shaky legs carry me to the door. “Mama?”
My mother’s voice bleeds through the crack. “Have you thought about what you did, Maddox?”
“Let me out! Please. I need my insulin. I don’t feel good.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before, young lady.”
A sob escapes my throat as I press both hands against the wooden door. “Mama, please. I’m sorry.”
What did I do? I can’t remember what I did to upset her this time.
Cruel laughter sounds from the other side of the door, and I stumble backward, tripping over something.
Falling to the ground, I throw my hands out to catch myself.
Pain sparks in a thousand places across my palms, my arms, my back.
I look madly around to see what I’ve landed on.
Lifting my hand, I bite back a gasp. Dozens of empty insulin needles penetrate my skin.
I’m a human pincushion. I try pulling them out, but mounds of needles rise from the floor of my room like a ship taking on water.
The laughter stops suddenly. The lights in the room blink out.
When they return, my mom is in front of me, electric-blue eyes wide and face red like it would get when she was in one of her states.
“This”—she snatches one of my needle-covered hands in her own—“is what”—presses a bloody finger to a glucometer—“happens”—the meter counts down and beeps, flashing the word HI—“when you’re a bad diabetic.”
“I’m sorry,” I sob. “I tried. If you wouldn’t have locked me in here, I could’ve taken insulin to bring it down. I could’ve—”
“Are you blaming this on me?” The vein in her temple stands out. A spray of saliva leaves her lips as she spits the words, “I was protecting you.”
She’s never like this when Dad is here. She’s never like this around anyone but me. It doesn’t feel like being protected.
“For Christ’s sake, Maddox, why did you eat that candy yesterday? Look what it’s done to you.”
I want to deny it. I don’t remember eating candy, but maybe I did. Why would she lie about that? Why would she make it up?
A sudden wave of nausea hits me hard in my gut. I double over and vomit a choking wave of sugar onto the needle-littered ground. My mother claps a hand over her mouth.
“You could be in DKA,” she says in a muffled voice, growing hysterical now. “We have to get you to the hospital. We have to call your dad. You could die from this. I’m going to call your dad.”
The lights flicker again and the next moment she’s gone and the door is closed. I see the bolt turn.
“Wait!” I sob. The piles of needles multiply, plunging through the fabric of my clothes and into my skin.
Why would she leave me like this?
A sharp rap sounds on my tiny window, and a shadow blocks the light outside. Then I see the glint of red hair.
“Dad?” I breathe.
He shakes his head, his weathered face a mask of disappointment. “You should’ve listened, Maddox. I told you. I told you to never trust a dryad.”
“Help me,” I cry out to him.
Needles in my neck now. In my chest.
“It’s too late for me to help you now.”
I’m drowning in a sea of syringes. I curl forward into a ball, the way I would if I was locking down. Trying to protect my face, my eyes.
An empty house with doors and windows flung open.
That’s all I am. I just have to close them.
But I tug on the handle and the door won’t budge.
I try to pull the windows shut, but they’re stuck.
The inside of my house fills with empty insulin vials.
Needles rain down on me. I try to run, but there’s nowhere to go.
Tears track down my cheeks, and a sob escapes my throat.
“You’re even weaker than I thought,” says a voice that doesn’t belong to either of my parents.
The needles pricking my skin vanish. I uncurl. I’m no longer in my childhood bedroom. I’m back in my empty cell.
It wasn’t real. None of it was real.
Durian grasps the wooden bars, which are once again cylindrical, his hands sliding slowly down. I touch my cheeks, and they come away wet. Fuck this tree.
Beyond him, Castor sits on the ground, back curved as he stares into the middle distance. Despite my anger toward him, something deep in me longs to pull him into my arms. To offer comfort and safety like I did less than twenty-four hours ago.
“I’d love to know what you would see in here,” I say to Durian, wiping my tears away as I stand to face the king I couldn’t kill. “The horrors this tree would conjure for you. Or would you merely end up in a dark room with no gold or people to fawn over you?”
Durian strokes the bars of the cell, looking at them like fond friends. “Luckily, the tree is unable to imprison a Sovereign king. But when I was a child, my brother Cyperus had me locked in here a few times. Believe it or not, I was just as afraid of monsters as any other young dryad.”
“So you turned into one.”
“It’s easy to act as though I am the only monster here, but let us take a look at you, shall we? Not exactly the image of goodness and morality.”
I swallow at the truth in his accusation.
If I’m being honest with myself, I have never been all that fond of “goodness.” I equated it with spoiled brats.
It’s easy to be good when you have a good family with good jobs and a good upbringing.
I believed that forgiveness was weakness.
That being selfless was for those with no self-worth.
That being generous was the mark of a person who had too much to begin with.
I’ve never understood people like Fern who have lost everything and still found it within themselves to be giving and kind.
“I may be a bitch, but I’m not a monster. Not like you.”
His chin tilts down, half-gilded sandalwood horns poking through the bars while his mouth curls into a sinister grin. “Perhaps. But you are the one in the cage.”
“And you put me here—put your own brother here,” I snarl. Castor lifts his head at this, listening. “Because you are sick and twisted and would rather play games with people than show them decency or compassion or any other human emotion.”
“Ah, well, that’s the problem, you see. I am not human, am I? I am a dryad.”
“Castor is a dryad, too, and he can’t not show his emotions. I tried to teach him how to hide them, but he can’t. He’s basically one giant teardrop.”
“Thanks,” Castor mutters.
Durian snickers at this. “He’s always been weak. That’s why he is the one behind bars, and I am standing out here.”
Castor and I may be selfish, desperate assholes who have made questionable life choices…but neither of us is weak. And we are practically angelic next to Durian.
I recall Evodia’s fervent words to Fern:
Castor’s pact is over at the Sylveris Solstice. If he doesn’t get Maddox to say she loves him by tomorrow evening, he will be locked in the Bloodwood Tree for a year. Do you know what that tree does to people? He will never be the same.
I’ve been in here ten minutes and I’m already seeing things. I can’t imagine a year of this. Not that I have a year left without my insulin. I’m down to counting the hours. Again.
My heated conversation with Castor resurfaces in my mind. Just before he lifted me onto that piano and everything fell apart. And at the same time…pieced together.
Would you die for the cursed prince?
If I loved him, I would.
“It’s embarrassing, really,” I say to Durian after a moment. “To think that the whole reason you’ve done all of this is because you’re jealous of your little brother.”
Disgust and a glimmer of bitterness darken the king’s eyes until they’re the color of tree poison. “Why would I be jealous of an adopted abomination everyone despises?”
“Because people don’t despise him, do they?
They love him. In fact, even after you invented your little curse, they kept loving him.
How many people did you have to kill to convince Castor he was cursed?
Over and over and over. All those people willing to die for the cursed prince.
But no one is willing to die for you, the golden king. ”
His upper lip curls, but I can tell by the set of his shoulders he still thinks he’s the winner of this game. “Shame the one person he needed to love him was trying to murder him instead.”
“A person can both love someone and want to murder them. The fact that they don’t go through with the act is the proof.”
Durian visibly tenses.
All I can see of Castor is his shadow in the lamplight, his head now hung. It tilts at this. “If that is true, why did you not murder me?”
“Because I did fucking love you, Castor.” There is more agony in the words than I’d like.
His shadow goes utterly still, head turning toward me. “And now?”
“Now, I hate you.” His head starts to bow again, and Durian’s shoulders relax. My heart thrums. “And yet…I love you still.”
Several things happen at once. A loud crack splinters the air.
Both Sempervirens brothers look down at their wrists, then over at each other.
A pact completed. The bars to Castor’s cell slide open just as Durian pushes through mine—moving between the wooden bars as if they’re nothing more than dangling vines.
“You really shouldn’t have said that.”
Like a prowling lion, he slinks forward, then lunges, clasping my wrists and slamming them back against the wall.
Vines erupt from the floor, slithering around my legs as Durian holds my arms above my head, pinning them with his hands clamped just beneath my wrists.
His breath burns hot on my neck, his nose dragging along my jawline.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you the most, I think. ”
“Get off her,” Castor warns from the other side of the bars, looking more murderous than he did the night he killed the blood nymphs.
He holds out his hands, a dangerous cloud of rot and decay billowing between his palms. But it crashes against the bars of my cell like they are a wall of glass. Solid again.
Without releasing my wrists, Durian turns to lay eyes on his brother, a laugh rumbling in his chest. “You may have been liberated from your prison sentence, but I have one final kill to make.”
Yeah. So do I.
I twist my wrist back, my fingers wriggling into my hair, piled on my head and tied in a bun. My fingers root around until I grasp the base of the syringe I tucked there yesterday, expertly popping off the cap with one hand. Like I have a million times before.
With a flick of my wrist, I bury the needle deep in Durian’s neck and push down on the plunger. Dark red blood pools around the needle, pumping his carotid with the tree poison I filled it with.
It takes the Redwood King two seconds too long to realize what I’ve just done.
His green eyes grow wide. Durian releases me and claps a hand to the syringe in his neck, ripping it out.
Blood follows the needle in a spurting stream.
He blinks up at me, the vines sliding from my legs.
Veins of black spread from his wound, spiderwebbing across his neck and up his face, darkening the whites of his eyes and turning his lips a purplish gray.
He opens his mouth as if trying to gulp down air, but instead, a rattling gasp turns into a strangled cry.
Then he crumples to the ground, neck twisted at an unnatural angle, eyes staring at nothing. The bars to my cell glide open and the empty syringe falls, rolling to rest beside the dead king.