“I saidI’m fine.”
She tries to duck away from him, but he’s faster. He takes hold of her chin, angling her face to the side. The night air kisses the wound, drawing out a wince. Her head is full of Asher at sixteen, his voice cracked in laughter:You’re trouble to your bones.
“Shit.” He’s not laughing now. “That looks deep.”
“It’ll heal.” She wriggles out of his hold. “We should get back. Are you coming?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s staring down at Sullivan, his expression darkly contemplative. “Did you see what attacked him?”
“No.”
Asher’s eyes flick up to hers. “What do you mean, no? You were standing right here.”
“It was dark.”
“Not that dark. You sawsomething.”
“I didn’t—” She falters, blinking away the image of Lys, a heart in his fist. “I don’t know what I saw. I would tell you if I did.”
His brows pinch together. He searches her face for far too long. “You’re lying,” he finally says. “And I don’t know why you’re lying, but I’ll figure it out. Until then, we have a bigger problem.”
“What is it?”
“The intruder Nkosi found at your house? She’s been brought to Mercy Ridge.”
Shea’s heart gives a horrible crack. “She?”
“It’s Zahar,” says Asher. “Poppy is here in the Gravewood.”
The first thing Oliver Lysander is cognizant of is the sound of birds.
One bird, to be exact. A wood thrush, perched just outside his window. He can’t see it, but he can hear it. The flutelikeee-oh-laypervades the air. Stops. Starts again.
Ee-oh-lay.His head snaps up.Ee-oh-lay, ee-oh-lay.
His brain feels as if it’s been pared open with a knife. His wrists are cuffed in leather bands, ankles similarly strapped. His chest, bare save the intricate workings of a rib cage done in grayscale ink, is belted tight. He’s on the ground level of Mercy Ridge, in a cold, cluttered room, restrained against the unyielding steel of a standing cot. The bed is walled in thin, clinical rails. The walls are stone, thick enough to swallow a scream.
He swore he’d never need to use this room for its intended purpose.
Up until now, he hasn’t.
It’s become a gallery of sorts, in its years of dereliction. A shrine to his fixations, or else a dumping ground for oddments. Bones on shelves and beetles in shadowboxes, a hex jar full of dried dianthus and butterflies of all shapes and sizes, each one housed in an elegant glass cloche. He names them one by one.Grayling. Green hairstreak.He tries not to think about the previous night.Painted lady. Viceroy.
When he last saw Shea, she’d been bleeding.
Ee-oh-lay, goes the wood thrush.
His head pulses. His hand closes in around nothing. He never knew bones could snap so easily. He never knew how satisfied he would feel. How like a god, ripping up a life by the root.Common brimstone. Holly blue.Something is different. Something new is among his things. Something that doesn’t belong. He canfeelit, like a sour note. It takes him a moment to spot it—a jar that hadn’t been there before. Someone has filled it to the brim with pickling brine. In it floats a heart, dark with Rot.
“Do you like it?”
He cranes his head around and finds Viola seated at the far side of the room, hard at work on a cross-stitch. The needle is threaded with red, the fiber thin and dark as sinew. On the sill, the thrush lets out another tremulousee-oh-lay.
“Did you put that there to mock me?”
“Mock? Never.” She tugs the needle skyward, thread pulling taut. “I thought it would make a nice addition to your collection.”
“My collection,” he echoes flatly. It sounds so trite. So childish—like he’s still a little boy with his bin of old Matchbox cars. “I killed him. Do you understand that? The boy who belonged to that heart is dead.”
