Lysander thinks of Viola, a rocking chair beneath her and a book in her lap.I’ll read a verse; you recite it back.His head is stuffed with his mother’s doggerel. Words and words and words, all of it meaningless fucking drivel. He thinks of John Donne, an elegy for jealousy:His soul out of one hell into a new.
Someday he will lose his grip on himself completely.
Someday, but not tonight.
“We’d get lone wolf rangers sometimes,” says Asher, intruding on his thoughts. “Down in the garrison. They’d come in from the forest and spend the night—restock on food and supplies. If they came from up north, they’d tell us stories about the Gravewood Devil.”
“I hope they mentioned my good looks.”
The quip is half-hearted. He’s not thinking about rangers. He’s thinking about Shea in the pavilion, water running down her fingers. Shea in the garden, the curve of her hip under his hand and the slick of her blood against his tongue. The divine wrongness of Asher watching them, color in his cheeks. Her voice soft in the blue-green quiet:Stay.
He wonders if Asher has replayed it as many times as he has.
Distantly, he’s aware that Asher is still speaking. He zips his bag shut and rises to his feet.
“They all say you’re not like the others,” says Asher. “Like you weren’t built right or something. Like you’re some sort of mythical harbinger of the end times.”
Lysander turns to face him. “Who’s to say I’m not?”
“Me,” snaps Asher. “Isay. I’m looking right at you, and all I see is a kid with too much power and a crush, and no idea what to do with either.”
He recovers just a beat too late. “A crush implies it’s unrequited.”
A rap at the door brings their heads up. Cyrus is there, propped lazily against the frame. His eyes glimmer as they slide from Asher to Lysander before pausing over the blood-soaked floor. His gaze lingers there for a long time.
“The revel is another week out,” he finally says. “Where will you go until then?”
Lysander shoulders his bag. “It’s better if you don’t know.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Mercy Ridge is compromised,” says Lysander. “Just like you said. Per your advice, it’d be shortsighted of me to trust anyone.”
“You trusthim.”
He means Asher. The object of his ire stands idle between them, taking up entirely too much space. Not physically—not here, in Lysander’s bedroom—but subliminally. He’s inside Lysander’s head, dragging all his flaws kicking and screaming into the light. Grabbing the monster by the cuff and shaking it, making Lysander look it in the eye.Is this good for you? Having her like this?
“Thorley and I are playing a game,” he says mildly.
He doesn’t say more. He doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. Certainly not Cyrus. He veers around his lieutenant, heading out into the hall. He doesn’t need to look back to know Asher is following—he can feel each ungainly thud of the soldier’s boots against the floor.
“We built this place together,” calls Cyrus when he’s halfway down the hall. “It’s as much my home as it is yours. You think I want to see Keeling bring it down around our ears?”
“It’s not Mercy Ridge I’m worried about,” says Lysander, without turning back. They both hear what he doesn’t say.It’s Shea. It’s always Shea, even when he pretends it isn’t. He thinks of slamming back into awareness in a sunless cellar, Sullivan’s heart in a jar.
Do you want to keep her?his mother asked.
It doesn’t matter if he wants to or not. The truth is, he can’t.
Not until Paris Keeling is dead.
Over his shoulder, he says, “Tell Viola we’ll finish our match when I get back.”
“You’re making a mistake,” calls Cyrus.
“We’ll find out.”
It’s as much of a goodbye as either of them is likely to have. If things go wrong at the revel, he’ll never come back to New Hampshire again. Not as he is.
