The forest watched him, silent, and the monsters stayed back in respect, though the hunger in their eyes was still terrible.
To cut out his heart was actually
such a small
thing.
“Everything stops,” he whispered, “after this.”
Something slammed into him.
Andrew hit the leaves with a thud, all the air punched from his lungs. His fingers curled tight and protective around the box cutter so it wouldn’t fly from his hands, but someone grabbedhis wrist and pinned it to the ground. He tried to wrench away, to fight fierce and victorious, but he had so little strength left.
“Andrew,wait.”
He smashed his head into Thomas’s face and sent him careening backward, hands over his nose as he choked back a cry. Andrew dragged himself to his feet, the box cutter burning in his hand as if it was a dragon-tooth blade forged for princes who wore briar crowns. He stood over Thomas, his ribs moving raggedly, watching the October boy writhe on the ground with a hand cupping his bloody nose.
The world had begun to lighten with a graying dawn he wasn’t ready for. He was running out of time. The Wildwood tree stretched its branches toward the sky, patience thinning.
“Cut out a heart and bury it in the woods.”
Andrew didn’t realize he’d said it out loud until Thomas looked up at him with swollen, glossy eyes and said, “Does it have to beyourheart?”
He looked ruined, his clothes torn and blood seeping from dozens of cuts on his arms from where the thorny vines had pinned him down. He must have freed himself with the hatchet. Then he would have run so fast to get here in time because he, too, remembered the story Andrew wrote last summer and slipped into his back pocket.
Andrew pressed the palm of his hand against his good eye, squeezing until the world refocused. Dusty light shimmered like fairy dust around him and turned the edges of the forest sepia and soft. It seemed impossible they’d been scared of this forest for so long.
Thomas pushed himself to his knees and then stayed there,a supplicant before his prince. He could unmake Andrew if he wanted; he could destroy him with the tender shape of his mouth. But he waited.
“I know it wants a heart,” Thomas said, raw, “but it doesn’t have to be yours.”
Andrew’s fingers brushed across Thomas’s beautiful cheekbones, the curve of his perfect jaw, then through the thick, sticky blood spilling from his nose down his lips. Then he wrapped his fingers around Thomas’s throat.
This was how they were, bones broken and mended crookedly, each entwined with the other. He thought maybe you could love someone so much you ruined them, and then you ruined yourself.
“If you cut open my chest”—Andrew’s voice was wrecked—“you’ll find a garden of rot where my heart should be.”
Thomas tilted his head up, and the way he looked at Andrew was so tender and fierce, so full of fearless worship. “I don’t care how dark the world is for you. I’ll hold out my hand until you find it, and I won’t let go.”
Ribbons of blood traced Andrew’s wrists and threaded around the box cutter. If he ignored what the forest demanded, this would never end. The monsters would keep attacking, more people would die. They hungered for guilt and grief and for the two boys who fed them relentlessly. So, in truth, this moment made sense.
“But just know this,” Thomas said as he fought back tears. “Dove’s death was an accident and she never would have haunted you in revenge. This is all your doing, and you couldtell a different story if you wanted to. You’re strong enough. You’re brave enough.”
Andrew slowly peeled Thomas’s filthy shirt back just enough to show the trembling skin over his heart. He pressed fingertips against warm flesh, felt the throbbing, bloody beat. Hot and fierce and alive alivealive.
They didn’t need two hearts. They could share Andrew’s, even if it was a bruised and sorrowful thing. Their rib bones would twine together in a lattice to protect them from the worst of the world and they would always be together; they should never be apart.
He began to cut.
THIRTY-FOUR
Dawn dyed the forest in colors of the softest russet and gold. The air felt crisp on the tip of his tongue, wood smoke and pines and the musk of freshly turned earth. Blood stained the leaves and glistened in small pools, a red so deep and dark that if one dipped fingers into it, they’d touch another world.
He’d covered the hole with soil, packed it down hard with his palms before brushing leaves on top. The box cutter had been buried as well, resting gently on the notebook that held all his most decadent and lovely, and cruel and macabre stories. That notebook was his everything, his most precious possession, his heart made paper.
Before him, the Wildwood tree looked like an old white oak again with branches stretched in a wide, leafy arch, thick whorls and knots in the bark at the perfect height for handholds if one dared to climb. One branch was broken.
The forest had never been so still, so peaceful.
