Chapter 41
Castor
Isit upon my throne wearing a crown made of onyx thorns.
The Sylveris Solstice passes in tense silence. Hardly anyone smiles. Tears are wept for Durian. Poor King Durian. The golden king. No curses are thrown my way. No glares or angry words. No words at all, in fact. Just silence and shifting eyes.
The throne feels cold, like it hasn’t warmed to me. Like it never will.
I take a sip of wine, but the angry edges of my world don’t soften.
A feast has been laid out. A smorgasbord.
Roasted meats and glazed vegetables, piles of fruit and greens, mounds of seeded bread and acorn clusters.
Then there is the table piled high with sweets.
Bowls of jams and jellies. Pastries, pies, and other sugary confections.
A memory of a sugarberry tart and glinting silver eyes flashes across my mind.
Despite the absence of my “curse,” my heart feels more raw and empty than ever before. Like Maddox had been using it as her metaphorical house, keeping it full and safe and secure. Locked up with her inside. Now she’s fled from it, left the doors and windows flung wide. Vacant and vulnerable.
“Always so glum,” comes a smooth voice. “Careful or they will dub you the Melancholy King.”
“Better than the Cursed King, I suppose.”
The Myrtle Queen stands beside me, looking out at the quiet crowd. “You are thinking of the girl, aren’t you?”
My hand tightens around the stem of my glass. “Did you cure her?”
“She told you of our pact, did she?”
“Is she cured?” I ask again.
“Don’t you worry, dearest. Maddox will not have to deal with her mortal affliction ever again. But you’d do best to forget about your time together. I am not so cruel as your brother was, but I do not do well with sharing my things.”
I cant my head in her direction. “Sharing what things?”
The queen slides a long-fingered hand across my shoulders, stroking in slow circles at the top of my back. “Maddox, silly. She’s all mine now.”
Slow creeping dread slithers in my gut.
I shake my head, trying to rid my ears of her words. “What are you talking about, Amanita?”
“You’ll see. Would you like more wine? Perhaps a sugarberry tart?” she asks in a saccharine voice. “I’ll have my newest lady-in-waiting fetch it for you.”
She snaps her fingers.
At the table filled with food, a dryad with hair like fire reaches for one of the sugarberry tarts and a flagon of wine. This queen certainly has an infatuation with redheads. Though I suppose I am certainly not one to talk.
I catch the Myrtle Queen’s assessing stare on me. There is something in her expression that hints at glee.
“What precisely is so—”
A familiar—and yet unfamiliar—voice cuts me off. “Your tart, Your Majesty.” The red-haired dryad stands on the topmost step of the dais, holding out a small silver plate topped with a single sugary pastry. “You seem rather hungry.”
The image of my hand holding out an identical pastry to a girl in a golden gown resurfaces. Have another. You seem rather hungry.
The empty glass falls from my hand. Speckled face. Silver eyes. Antlers sharper than blades. I go numb, as if my nerves have fizzled out from the shock.
A woodling scurries over to clean up the mess I’ve made as I stare, slack-jawed, at the dryad who cannot be anyone other than—
“Maddox?” My eyes fix on her antlers before moving to the queen. “What did you do?”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Amanita coos, sitting on the edge of my throne now. “I told you Maddox has been cured of that pesky mortal ailment. Given the gift of longevity and nature magic. Wonderful, don’t you think?”
“Your tart?” Maddox repeats, her speckled face a mask of indifference. Quite the opposite of mine, I’m certain.
Without a word, I take the silver plate from her hands. Our fingertips brush, and I fear I may burst into flames.
The Myrtle Queen slides off the armrest now, trailing her hand along my shoulder blade. Maddox’s eyes track the gesture.
“I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted a moment.” Stopping beside her, the queen whispers in Maddox’s ear, and she stiffens in response. Amanita turns back to me and says, “Remember what I said about my things, darling.”
In the queen’s absence, a gaping chasm of unspoken words and heartache remain between Maddox and me. All the moments we’ve shared lie scattered and broken like shards of glass.
My mouth opens and closes on empty words. Then finally, “So. You’re a—a, um—”
“A dryad?” she finishes. There’s no emotion in her words. Of course there isn’t.
My eyes won’t stop casting up to her antlers. They’re a redwood russet a few shades darker than her hair. They suit her somehow. Yet there is something distinctly Myrtlewood about them. “How did…I mean, are you happy with this?”
She opens her mouth, pauses, shakes her head a little, and then smiles. “Why shouldn’t I be happy, Your Majesty? I got everything I wanted, didn’t I?”
Again, she shakes her head, as if trying to clear it. Bemusement gives way to fury. Maddox takes a single step back. Then another.
Don’t leave me. “Going so soon?”
“I trust that you and I will meet again soon enough. Perhaps I’ll see you at the Iron Court. Apparently they have games there. I know how much you like those.”
Every year around the fall equinox, Durian would leave for a monthlong trip to the Iron Kingdom.
He always returned with tales of bloodshed and gambling, and several golden trinkets he used to decorate his living quarters.
Rumor has it I joined him there once. Evidently whatever I saw was worthy of wiping my mind of the experience entirely.
But I was just the cursed prince then. Now that I’m king, my presence may not only be welcome but expected. “Ah. Yes. Perhaps you will.”
She takes another step, and I hold up the silver plate with the sugarberry tart. “I trust you didn’t slip poison in this?” A jest in the shape of an olive branch. I’m practically begging her to take it.
But Maddox turns away now, retreating down the dais. The olive branch withers. At the bottom, she turns her head, the smallest smile tugging at her lips.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you to never trust a dryad?”