Page 120 of These Vile Hearts

Maddox looks up at me with eyes that can’t seem to decide if they should be guilty or proud. They skip over both of those and settle on fury. She takes a step back.

“You think I’ve forgotten about the pact you conveniently neglected to mention during our night of secrets and sex?”

“Maddox—”

My hand grips air, falling to my side.

“The coffee. The kindness. The conversations. Was that all just a lie? Just you trying to get me to fall in love with you?”

“At first, yes, it was a lie.” My chest aches at my honesty, at the betrayal in her eyes, as if she hoped she’d been wrong. “At first.And then…it wasn’t anymore.”

“When wasn’t it?”

When indeed.

I hated her, then I wanted her, then I needed her, and then I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. The timeline is liquid. It’s smoke. It’s poison mixed with blood.

“I don’t know. Maybe when we had wine for breakfast. Maybe when I first saw you in one of your Magesté outfits, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Maybe when I found out you were actually funny and clever and not just mean, so I had to mentally practice my jokes on the samara ride there to keep up with you. All I know with certainty is it was definitely not a lie when I kissed you on that piano top or when it crumbled to the ground, and you wrapped your legs so tightly around me I thought I might come right there in front of all those guards.”

Maddox’s face flushes. From embarrassment or lust or anger, I’ll never know which, because I simply continue. “But then you held your own against a blood nymph and walked my drunken soul home when I nearly rotted Magesté. Told me I wastoolovable andlooked at me like you meant it. Then you came to my branch in tears, worried for me, kissed me like it was all you’d ever wanted. All of my reactions to that, the feelings that you can read all over my face like no one else, those were all real. And after our night together, I knew. I knew I would rather spend a year in this godsforsaken tree than let you die for me.”

She looks at me for a long time and then shakes her head. “Well. That was quite the gamble you made if you were being genuine all that time, knowing I could die any second.”

Shame turns to bitterness in my chest. “I wasn’t the only one with invisible blood on their hands, was I? You came here to kill the Redwood King. And for quite a while, that’s who you thought I was.”

Her eyes fall to my brother’s body, mouth tightening. She doesn’t deny it.

“Why?” I ask. “Whydid you come here to kill the king? Were you just bored with your mortal life and decided it would be fun to murder a dryad? Like your father did?”

Maddox flinches, eyes squeezing shut a moment. “No. I…” She stops, guilty eyes casting down. “I made a pact too.”

“With?” The question is foolish as there are only two dryads with whom she could have made a heartwood pact, and one of them is dead. “Ah. Why did you make a pact with the Myrtle Queen?”

“I’ll explain after I’ve retrieved Durian’s horns.”

“His horns?”

Maddox drops to her knees, inspecting the sandalwood horns I once envied so. “Yes. Do you have a knife or something so I can cut them off?”

I look from her to my brother’s corpse, his perfect cheekbones still slightly pink. The man who never truly loved me. The man who made me feel lonelier when I was standing beside him than when I was all alone. Never outright dismissive, especially in front of others, but always sure to offer comfort in the form of dark, painfulreminders. There were glimpses of a brother there, though. Sometimes he would tell me about his day, about the things he saw when he visited the Iron King, about the ridiculous things other leaders would say in Council meetings. He would even invite me to join him in a game of chess every now and then. But, of course, he always had to win.

Despite all of that, my throat feels thick with grief. But I’m not about to cry. Not after Maddox called me a giant teardrop. For once I’m the winner of this game. And somehow, I don’t feel any sense of victory. Only the same bone-deep numbness. Without speaking, I kneel beside Maddox, pressing my fingers to the base of each of Durian’s horns. My power surges, warming my hands as a line of concentrated decay sears through the wood until the horns clatter to the floor. Maddox picks them up, the size of eggplants in her hands. She stuffs them into the oversized pockets of her cloak as if they are nothing more sacred than a crumpled-up piece of paper.

“The Myrtle Queen told me if I killed the Redwood King, she would rid me of my mortal disease.”

“Disease?” Despite her clear distaste for my nearness, I step closer, my hand lifting to her forehead.

“I’m notsick.” She steps out of my reach again. “It’s more complicated than all that. It’s an autoimmune disease called diabetes. Depending on a mortal’s circumstances, it can be deadly, and my circumstances were pretty un-fucking-ideal. So.”

Like a twig snapping beneath a heavy footstep, disjointed memories click together in my mind. The trembling of her hands. The occasional glaze in her eyes. Sneaking away to the bathroom before she eats anything. The juice and sugar crystals. Nearly passing out on the couch that morning. The needle on the floor.

“So you…made a pact with the Myrtle Queen to cure you?”

“Such a quick mind you have.”

A sickening sensation trickles down my nerves like acid rainwater sliding over a leaf.

“You should not have done that.”