Page 101 of These Vile Hearts

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 actuallylikeyou. 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 thecursedprince, 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 deadlypoison. 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.