Viola sets her embroidery hoop into her lap and looks up at him, blinking oddly. The faraway gleam in her eyes makes him feel as though he’s swallowed battery acid.
“I killed him,” he says again, and this time his voice cracks. “I killed him with my bare hands, and you’re not even angry.”
She gives a single owlish blink. “Do you want me to be angry?”
“Yes.” It feels like there are a thousand lifetimes packed into that little word. A thousand hurts. A thousand nights spent curled inward, his hands over his ears, a shout rattling through the dark:Get up, Oliver. Get up and face what you’ve done.
Viola’s mouth curves into a smile. “You were just a little boy. Such a lovely, sweet little boy. How could I ever be angry with you?”
He watches, saying nothing, as she resumes her cross-stitch, pushing the needle methodically through the linen. Stab. Push. Pull. Stab. Push. Pull.
“Do you want to keep her?” she asks without preamble. “Shea?”
“No.” The lie is a sharp stone in his throat.
“I like her. I like having her here. I like her for you. I wantyou to have someone you’d put a heart in a jar for. It means you’re alive.”
The guilt that cracks open within him is sharp as glass. Suddenly, he can’t bear to look at her. Like a coward, he turns his face away.
“The stars have gone red again,” she says. “I don’t like it when they watch us so closely.”
“It’s day,” he reminds her tiredly. “There are no stars.”
When Viola finally departs, she goes without a word—without offering to untie him. She leaves her hoop behind. It sits unfinished on her chair, the thread hanging loose. Cyrus appears moments later, slinking round the corner as though he’d been waiting.
“Took you long enough,” gripes Lysander. “Let me out.”
“I have something to say to you first.”
“While I’m strapped to a bed? How intrepid of you—”
“We need to consider the possibility that Mercy Ridge has been compromised.”
Lysander’s molars grind hard enough to hurt. “It hasn’t.”
“And you’re basing that on what, exactly? Ego? Pride? Willful ignorance?”
“Enough.”
It comes out a register too low, remnants of last night still coiled in his chest. Cyrus takes a step back. He schools his expression into a careful blank.
“There’s a reason Sullivan went after Shea last night.”
“There was blood,” says Lysander. “He lost control.”
“And the rest of us didn’t?” asks Cyrus. “Youdidn’t?”
Lysander thinks of Shea in the rain, her throat gleaming red, the smell of blood sticking to everything. The memory leaves an ache in his gut. A gnawing sense of hunger that isn’t entirely his own. He takes a deep swallow of air and slides his gaze toward the shelves.Adonis blue.Mountain ringlet. Swallowtail.Across the room, Cyrus is watching him too closely.
“That girl has you so turned around, you can’t think straight. You’ve been tripping over your own two feet since the night she turned up, and everyone sees it.”
Luna moth. Lulworth skipper.
He feels like he’s been dropped from some great height, the Rot seeping out of his cracks.
“The other day, you asked me where I’d push you if I wanted to make you break,” says Cyrus. “I told you I’d push you off a cliff. What I should have said was this—if I really wanted to mess you up, I’d go after Shea. We need to face the facts—Paris Keeling tugged at your leash last night, and he used Sullivan to do it.”
“Last night was an accident. It had nothing to do with Paris.”
