Page 87 of These Vile Hearts

26

Castor

Everything hurts. Every. Thing.

A clock ticks somewhere. Loudly.

Soloudly.

Birds screech outside. The breeze through the leaves is like a bellowing hurricane. All the lights here are brighter than the sun.

Whereis“here”? Where am I?

I sit up, and it feels like slow motion. My horns are like redwood trees sprouting from my skull, achingly heavy. I breathe in, and I’m inhaling flames.

What. Did. I.Do.

There’s only one substance that has ever made me feel this way. Tieg. Why in the world’s dead forests would I drink that?

Sparks of memories play along the frayed edges of my mind. Durian and his pompous smile. Maddox and her red dress. Maddox and her singing. Maddox with her lips on mine. Maddox with her hand on my erection.

By the tree gods.

But there was also Maddox touching Durian’s arm. Laughing athis quips. Durian’s smug grin flashing my way as he whispered in her ear, running a possessive hand down her neck.

A crumbling piano. Maddox’s silver dagger eyes turning to stars.

Tieg wine. A lot of tieg wine. And then…blackness and rot and decay.

Pushing myself to an upright position takes the strength of a thousand dryads. I need wine. If only I could stand up and walk.

The smallest sound, a whimper, pulls my attention to the couch in the corner. Curled in a ball is Maddox, sleeping fitfully. Every sharp sensation brought on by the tieg wine softens. I cross the room, treading lightly so as not to make too much sound and wake her, but also because any noise may cause my head to explode.

There are just two days until the Sylveris Solstice, and I don’t think she is any nearer to falling in love with me than when we first met. Especially after last night.

And yet she stayed.

In this state, when she isn’t guarded or glowering or rolling her eyes, she almost looks like a different person. Soft, gentle, and vulnerable. My hand twitches, longing to reach out and stroke the strands of hair stuck to her damp forehead.

I take a step forward and my toe rams into a small drawstring pouch on the floor. A glass bottle clatters out of it, along with a thin, sharp instrument I recognize from the times I escaped to a mortal city for a loathsome night of pretending. Something dark and serpentine slithers through my gut, tangling with my internal organs. I may enjoy wine and nepenthe on a nightly basis…but those are nothing compared to the horrors I’ve seen wreaked by mortal drugs.

Another whimper escapes Maddox’s mouth.

I kneel beside her. “Maddox?” Her silver eyes blink open, glazed and unfixed. She tries to lift a shaking hand but can’t seem to manage it. Immediately, my hangover is engulfed in a wave of adrenaline. “Maddox,” I say more urgently.

It takes a century for her to speak, though she opens her mouth again and again. “Shhgg,” she slurs. “Need.”

“What? What do you need?”

She swallows and speaks a fraction clearer this time. “Sugar.”

I recall her hands trembling the first time we met, the glazed look in her eyes then as she shoved those pastries down her throat. And the night she ate all those sugar crystals and chugged a gallon of cherry juice before breaking the jug all over the floor. I know very little about the effects of human drugs. Maybe sugar is the antidote?

I rush from the room, ignoring the pounding protest of my body, flying into the kitchen and swiping a jar filled with sugar crystals off the shelf. When I return to Maddox’s side, her eyes are closed.

“Hey.” I press a hand to her cheek. Her eyes flutter, but don’t open.“Maddox.”

Without waiting for her response, I stuff one of the sugar crystals between her lips. Then another.