Page 13 of These Vile Hearts
I’m trembling, and for a fleeting moment, I wonder if my bloodsugar has dropped again, but this doesn’t feel like hypoglycemia. This feels like staring death in the face. I stiffen to hide the most obvious signs. Javen once told me if you clench your ass cheeks, it will keep your hands from shaking. Might as well try it.
Mixed in with the fear is a magma-hot hate that unfortunately makes me tremble even harder.
“I’ve come to ask a favor.” My voice is stronger than I expected. “I’m told you do that.”
The queen’s brow, edged in specks of gold, rises. When she speaks, her voice is a deadly melody. “Told by whom?”
A smattering of cackles echoes around me. I wish they would shut up. For a moment, I consider making them, but when I shift my hips, the hard outline of my knife is no longer in my pocket.Stealthy motherfuckers.
The other dryads in the room sit at wooden tables and in animal-skin chairs, watching the exchange with mild interest. Some lean against the wall; others stand with their arms crossed. Not a single one of them looks like they wouldn’t enjoy killing me.
The fingers of the dryad to my left dig into my shoulder. “The queen asked you a question, axeling.”
There’s that word again.
“My father,” I answer finally, tamping my desire to break this dryad’s fingers. “My father told me.”
“Your father?”
I nod. “He said he met you.” Though this isn’t wholly true. He wrote about her in his journal and spoke of her as he did most fae things—cryptically and without elaboration.
“Did he?” She rests her chin on her fist. “Come into the light, child.”
The two dryads holding me down release my shoulders enough to allow me to stand. I take four steps forward until the moonbeam kisses my face.
The queen tilts her head. A flash of recognition. The fist under her chin drops, twining in her lap with the other as she stares down at me with an odd expression.
“Deacon Sinclair’s daughter.” It’s not a question. “I was wondering when you would show up.”
A stir runs through the watching dryads. Their eyes widen, backs straighten. I have their full attention now.
The knot in my stomach constricts. “So you did know him?”
The Myrtle Queen’s scarlet lips form an unreadable line. “The last time I saw Deacon, he had just killed the previous Redwood King.”
Shock shatters down my body in waves of pine needle pricks.Mydad? A murderer? No. The man who nursed baby forest animals back to health, who everyone in our little coastal town loved, who wasn’t afraid to show the broad spectrum of his emotions? He wouldn’t hurt anything or anyone, let alone kill.
Disgust curls my lips, my hands forming fists. I know better than to say what I’d like to this dryad queen, so I just shake my head slowly. “You must be mistaken.”
She’s wrong. She has to be wrong.
Maybe dryads can’t tell mortals apart. Maybe she’s thinking of another six-foot red-haired man named Deacon Sinclair.
“Oh, no, Miss Sinclair. I’m quite positive.”
“My father wouldn’t do something like that.” My confidence in my father’s morality wavers at the end of my sentence.
“I assure you, he would.” The queen flashes an amused grin. “Deacon Sinclair was rather good at doing as he was told.”
“You…told him to murder a dryad king?”
Her expression tightens. “I told him to rid Sylveris of its Redwood poison. KingCyperuswas far too tolerant of Unseelie creatures, allowing them to live among us though they aren’t bound by Sylveris Law. Then, of course, he made a most grievous error in choosing to ally with the Iron King, leaving acres ofmyforests to fall so avariciouscity-dwellers could expand their palaces of ore.” The queen’s voice has grown sharper and colder. “So, yes, Miss Sinclair. I asked your father to murder a king. And he happily obliged.”
I can’t come to terms with a version of my father that would happily murder another living creature. In the confusion, my anger blooms. Denial rages. But then the doubt creeps in.
My breaths come faster. Words from his journal—words I didn’t know the meaning of until now—flood my mind.
The sovereign redwood must fall.
