They’d hobbled together to the spring at the Gravewood’s center—drank from its waters, cold and transmutative. While dawn approached, they huddled on the frozen bank and let the Rot take hold—let the forest knit Cyrus back together. It was the beginning of a brotherhood. A blood bond, forged in deep winter. Lysander learned early on in life that every beginning has an end. He has no problem cutting the cord if it comes down to it.
“Since you don’t seem to need me for anything,” says Cyrus, “I guess I’ll see myself out.”
“I wish you would.”
With a muttered“asshole,”Cyrus stalks toward the door. He doesn’t make it far. Lysander cuffs him hard by the shoulder, stopping him dead in his tracks.
“There’s bruising on her throat.”
“Are you surprised? She’s always struck me as the kind of girl who goes looking for trouble. Guess she found some.”
“Guess she did.” Lysander smiles his most chilling smile—a menacing sneer he learned from his father. “Mark her like that again, and I’ll kill you.”
He lets go, and Cyrus staggers forward. His stare is closed-off, but Lysander can smell the fear on him. He knows he’s replaceable.
“You kill me, and you’ll be giving Keeling exactly what he wants.”
“Anticipate my needs, then. Don’t put me in a position where I’m forced to choose.”
Cyrus tugs the rumpled leather of his jacket flat. “If you’re not careful, your little obsession with Shea Parker is going to destroy everything you’ve built. And that’s not an opinion, Lysander, that’s a fact.”
He slams the door shut behind him when he goes. Lysander stares at the place where he’d been, blinking away swimmers.
His eyes catch on the glass of absinthe. A single starburst of light illuminates the blood within, making it glitter like a ruby. He ought to bolt it down. Swallow it, quick, before it clots. Cyrus is right—he’s starving. It isn’t enough, to survive on sporadic swallows of blood. To take what little Shea offers, when she sees fit to offer it. To becarefulwith her, while he desiccates a little more each passing day.
Heoughtto drink it, but he doesn’t. He is, as always, a creature of impulsivity. At the mercy of his most intrusive thoughts. Crossing the room in three swift steps, he picks up the glass and hefts it hard at the wall over the fireplace. It shatters, sending blood running along the wallpaper in thin rivers of red.
It doesn’t make him feel better, although he hadn’t expected it to. With a sigh, he sinks onto the trunk at the foot of his bed. He feels like a petulant child. He feels several eons old. The paradox of it threatens to tear him asunder.
When the door opens again, the light finds him there, his head in his hands.
“The door was shut for a reason,” he says to the floor.
He’s met with silence. Slowly, he lifts his head and peers out through the messy curtain of his hair. Viola stands in the open door, frail as ever. Mercy Ridge’s resident matron is wraithlike as a ghost. Lysander’s own personal nightmare. She wears her raven-black hair pulled back in a chignon, exposing the angry lattice of scars disfiguring her moon-pale face. One eye is strangely off-color, its pupil blown. The other is webbed in white glaucoma.
He should be used to the sight of her by now.
“I didn’t send for you.”
Her smile is patient.Placating.As if he’s still a child. “There’s a girl in my wing.”
“It’s impermanent,” he assures her, rising to his feet. Everything in him feels ground to dust. The smell of blood clings to the wall. Even his teeth ache. “She’ll be gone within the week. Leave her alone.”
“She’s pretty.”
“She isn’t.” The lie sticks in his throat. “How would you know, anyway?”
“I peeked out my door when she went past. She’s human.”
Like mecomes the unspoken afterthought.
“She is.”
“Do you like her?”
The question is as unexpected as it is ridiculous. He fixes Viola in a look.
“You’re angry.” Her smile quivers. “Don’t be angry.”
