Page 25 of These Vile Hearts
“How?”
“Don’t you worry about that. Hurry up. At this rate, the masque will be over before you get there.”
Hiking my dress higher off the ground to keep it from dragging through the nettles, I trudge forward. An oversized golden clutch filled with my insulin, needles, and testing supplies is all I’ve been permitted to carry. That and the throwing axe hidden beneath my skirt—and the dagger strapped to my thigh. They didn’t see me sneak my dad’s red leather journal out of my backpack and stuff it among my supplies.
“Are we just going to walk to the Redwood Kingdom? Isn’t that like sixty miles from here? Pretty sure the masque will be over by then. Unless you dryads partyrealhard.”
“It’s the RedwoodCourt,” Drosera corrects. “The Redwood Kingdom is spread out all across the western coast.”
“My bad.” A pause. “So are we walking to the Redwood Court, then?”
Drosera shakes her head, muttering to herself, and Atlas points across the river at a myrtlewood tree with a hollow arched base. A short line of dryads and what Drosera callsarborfaehas formed. The only difference I see between the two is that dryads have antlers orhorns and most arborfae have wings or unnaturally colored skin. One by one, they pass through the arch and vanish into the air as if they never existed at all.
“Magic portal?” I say.
“An egress,” Drosera corrects.
“Ah, right. That was my next guess.”
As we approach the myrtlewood archway, my stomach begins to churn with the reality of my deal. And it’s not like my dad’s around to give me pointers. “Howdoyou kill a dryad?” I blurt.
A humorless laugh escapes Drosera’s lips. “That’s something I suppose you’ll just have to find out on your own, axeling. Being the daughter of Deacon Sinclair has likely taught you a thing or two about murdering dryads.”
I grit my teeth and resist the urge to practice on her.
“Hmm. Ibelieve, unless I’m quite mistaken, that my father killed dryads on your queen’s orders.”
Drosera rounds on me. “Yourfatherwas a mortal axman who cut down entire colonies of dryads. He didn’t need any orders from the queen.”
My head bobs back at this. Usually, I’m quick with a riposte, but nothing comes to me. Just the reminder that I clearly didn’t know my dad as well as I thought I did.
Atlas presses a hand to Drosera’s shoulder, and a meaningful glance passes between them. The blonde still has not spoken a single word in my presence. I wonder if it’s out of fear for my kind or if she simply can’t.
With a steadying breath, Drosera turns her head to speak without looking me in the eye. “You can kill a dryad as easily as any mortal. The king will be heavily guarded, so you’ll want to get him alone. If you can’t manage that, then you’ll have to find a way to kill his heartwood, which is also heavily guarded.”
“I’m sorry. His heartwood? Are you talking about his di—”
“The tree that houses his soul,” Drosera interrupts with a curled upper lip. “The Sovereign Tree has a branch that hangs above the citadel. All the heartwoods of the Sovereign kings grow from that branch.”
“Do all dryads have heartwoods?”
Drosera’s eyebrow lifts at me, as if shocked I can see them but do not know something so seemingly simple. “Yes. Each dryad has a heartwood tree. It’s the source of our magic, and why some of your stories seem to paint us as spirits rather than fae.”
“Are all trees heartwoods?”
“Are all mortals parents?” she counters.
“No, thankfully.”
She waves a hand and flattens her lips as if to say,Well, there you go.
I can tell I only have a few questions left before Drosera decides the pain of answering me is greater than what the Myrtle Queen would do to her if she were to stab me through with one of her wooden blades. “So I either have to kill the king or kill his…heartwood.”
“You catch on so quickly. And here I thought all mortals were ignorant.”
“Which is easier to kill?”
“Both are pretty impossible given the Redwood Court’s increase in security,” Drosera says pleasantly. “But judging by how fond the king is of playing with mortals, I’d say he is the less impossible option.”
