Hazelthorn
Author: CG Drews
Date: 0101-01-01 00:00:00+00:00
Description: CG Drews, instant New York Times-bestselling author of Don't Let the Forest In, returns with another deeply unsettling and yet hauntingly beautiful tale of murder and botanical body horror, perfect for fans of Andrew Joseph White, Annihilation, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Evander has lived like a ghost in the forgotten corners of the Hazelthorn estate ever since he was taken in by his reclusive billionaire guardian, Byron Lennox-Hall, when he was a child. For his safety, Evander has been given three ironclad rules to follow: He can never leave the estate. He can never go into the g
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

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FOR THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN
MADE TO FEEL MONSTROUS.

what is love if not devouring

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is a story of a boy looking for a monster, and it is also a story of well-placed rage.

People who belong to marginalized groups are often condemned for anger, for letting emotions spill, for messiness and mistakes, but we deserve to feel pain loudly and to feel injustices bloodily. Hazelthorn is a story of queer and autistic rage and of being pushed over the edge. It is a story of the horror of being denied autonomy. It’s also about internalized shame and being at your worst before clawing your way toward self-acceptance.

I hope you enjoy the collision of magic and love and horror, but please be aware this story contains dark themes such as blood, gore, child abuse, medical abuse, ableism, eating disorders, and body horror.

ONE

He knows what it is to be buried alive, the feeling of dirt in his mouth and the quiet fitting around him like a well-tailored grave. Sometimes Evander still tastes it under his tongue, that rich earth clotting between his molars. He should have grown out of the memory by now, but he belongs to it, and not in a gentle way.

Sometimes he feels like he’s still outside, moldered down to the bone with roots woven through the soft tissue of his lungs and rot spilling from the remnants of his rib cage. No one saved him in time. He was never dug back up. Maybe all that’s truly left of him are white bones in the garden, and his ghost is the thing now rattling around the hollow expanse of this bedroom in the ancient, moth-eaten manor of Hazelthorn.

Except ghosts don’t develop blood blisters along their arms after being viciously pinched, and Evander has just given himself his fourth welt of the evening. A little shock of pain for proof of life.

The grim sky has brought on an early twilight, and the gloom has put his mood through the floor. It gets to him, sometimes, how lonely he is. Only the elderly butler flits in and out of his room every day, bringing doses of thick, milky medicine that makes Evander feel sluggish and dulled. He’ll flop onto his bed and stare at the wallpaper until the pattern of dead-eyed fauns and bloody thorns stops spinning and the loneliness passes.

Then he wakes.

And it begins again.

the same and the same and the same

He gave up screaming a long time ago.

All that’s left is to let the quiet thicken about him like a shroud as it runs a tongue around the rim of his ear, forcing him to listen to every noise he hates drifting in from the cracked-open window. The hushed whispers of trees, the trill of night birds and cicadas as they flitter between the many walled gardens, the humid breeze riffling the laurel hedgerows. The smell of summer is relentless, an unfettered punch of evergreens and florals, overturned soil and tree sap and life life life.

He could slam the window shut, but then the garden wins. Seventeen years old and afraid of the outdoors? Pathetic.

But it’s just that when he looks at the garden he thinks of blood.

He thinks of the shovel coming down.

He thinks of dirt hitting his face.

He thinks of the “accident,” as his guardian calls it.

it was an attack and you know it

His position in the oriel window seat isn’t exactly helping his spiral. He’s in a slouched U-shape with a book one inch from his nose, his legs halfway up the engraved scrollwork and his neck at a crooked angle against the velvet upholstery. The cushions are over a hundred years old, the emerald dulled to a decayed black that matches everything else in his musty room.

It’s all rotting, the Hazelthorn Estate.

And he’s rotting along inside it.

From his second-story vantage point, he has a fair view over the dense expanse of the gardens—the old stone walls and massive trees and hedges gone rogue as thorny vines steal over everything with writhing malevolence. The word overgrown doesn’t do it justice. The gardens are unmatched, unmanageable, terrible in their wildness. Even the cobbled path around the house is half-vanished, gnarly weeds sprung up between the stones and brambles clawing up the manor’s ivy-choked walls.

Sometimes Evander will sit in this window seat and watch Mr. Byron Lennox-Hall himself stomp out there with hedging shears, still wearing his creased dress pants and waistcoat, his shined oxfords soon flecked with grass clippings. He doesn’t hire gardeners or any kind of staff aside from Carrington, choosing to manage the grounds himself with irregular, though brutal, efficiency: snapping green throats, pruning vine arteries, glowering the shrubbery into submission. He’s an austere man, quiet and stern. But if he’s outside, he always glances at Evander’s window and raises a hand to say hello.

It’s what a father would do.

Not that Evander would know; he doesn’t remember his parents’ faces. Mr. Lennox-Hall has been his guardian since he was ten years old, though he’s often on business trips for interminable stretches. When he returns, he’ll visit Evander for a game of chess, a brief pat on the shoulder, and a promise of new books. Maybe he’s this brusque with his real grandson, but Evander wouldn’t know.

He isn’t meant to think about that boy, but still likes to put the wretched name in his mouth and roll it around like bitter hard candy.

“Laurence Lennox-Hall,” he whispers to the garden. “Laurie.” And, because his throat feels rusty from disuse, he adds, “I hate him.”

There is a morsel of heat to it, just enough to scald the underside of his tongue and make him think of how it would feel to etch that name on the window glass with his teeth.

He doesn’t remember what it was like before, when the two of them were children, the best of friends just as their parents were, living out of each other’s pockets while their laughs echoed between the garden walls.

But it’s common to forget things after almost dying.

An unmistakable thunk sounds from the heavy oaken door to his bedroom. Key in lock. Evander sighs and lets his legs slide bonelessly down the wall before he pushes upright. Eight p.m. sharp. Time for meds and then he’ll watch a documentary on his ancient laptop until he falls asleep. Hazelthorn has barely dragged its decayed corpse into the twenty-first century, and installing internet was apparently a step too far. But he has recordings. He has books. He’s safe here.

They’ve put him in the partially closed-up north wing. His room is neat and comfortable with a behemoth four-poster bed surrounded by dark velvet drapes and wallpaper imprinted with poison oaks and moths and feral little fauns. There’s no fireplace, though he always wishes for one when winter grows bitter. Bookshelves line the walls, a writing desk is tucked into the corner, puzzle and logic games are stacked in piles, and there’s a worn track in the carpet from the window to the door thanks to his pacing.

The blood in the carpet is imperceptible now. He hardly ever thinks about it.

He waits for Carrington to bustle in with his meds, but the door doesn’t open.

Evander frowns. He heard the lock turn—didn’t he?

Careful, as if this is a forbidden act, he edges across the room and presses himself against the hard oak of the door. His fingertips rest lightly on the brass knob.

He starts to twist it, slowly.

The knob gives with an old groan. The door swings open.

Beyond it, the inky dark of the hallway stretches like a diseased throat, no butler in sight.

Someone unlocked his door and then left.

Confusion pools in his gut, liquid anxiety that has him tapping his fingers against his thigh as he peers into the hall. The last time he left his room was—

He can’t remember.

The door is locked for a purpose, for his safety. He didn’t understand it as a child—newly ill and orphaned and traumatized—but now the boxed-in perimeters make sense. If he has an episode there is the safety of his bed, the restriction of these walls, the familiarity of everything in its place. To leave is unthinkable.

He lingers in the mouth of the doorway, anticipation raising gooseflesh along his arms.

“Carrington?” It comes out thin, echoing down the long hallway like a plaintive child. He coughs, deepens his voice, tries again. “Um, Carrington?”

The dark stares back, mouth wet.

He steps into the hallway, not quite breathing, no idea where he pulled this daring from. His bare toes curl on the worn carpet, his hand running lightly along the wall for balance since no lights have been turned on. Gilded-framed art lines the dark wallpaper and every door is shut. He tests a few knobs out of curiosity. Locked. No one uses the north wing except him, and the quiet is so dense that he never hears a single sign of life from anywhere else in the mansion.

The rabbit warren of twisting halls leads to a steep, narrow staircase that curls down to an odd landing, and he crouches to peer through the banister railings to the floor below. His legs feel ridiculously coltish, his chest full of hummingbird wings.

Faint voices drift up the staircase, muted and indistinguishable.

There are people in Hazelthorn.

Evander can’t breathe. His stomach is full of curdled cream and rotted violet stems and he can’t wrap his mind around the wrongness of this. Aside from Carrington and himself, no one else is allowed onto the estate—the sole exception being Mr. Lennox-Hall’s grandson, but even he’s only permitted when school is out and his grandfather is home. Which he isn’t. Mr. Lennox-Hall is still on his latest business trip.

That is the ironclad rule: Evander and Laurie can never again be left alone together.

Evander must have lost his goddamn mind, but he slips downstairs, his bare feet silent on the carpet. Go back to your room, something inside him hisses, but he can’t stop himself.

He blinks to adjust to the moody light flickering from chandeliers that line the hallways as he passes an ornate dining room and stuffy library, everything drenched in shadowy shades of deep green. The voices, the music, have sunk hooks in his throat and he is helpless as he is drawn in.

“… happens when you get yourself expelled.”

“I was not expelled, Carrington.”

“—your grandfather won’t take this kindly.”

“Since when does he ever take anything about me kindly? I hate the old bastard. Long may he rot.”

“That’s enough—”

Curiosity is a poison and Evander is furious at himself for being unable to resist. But he doesn’t stop until he’s in the wide archway. This parlor is an extravagant room, crammed with chaise lounges and bookshelves and potted plants, the heavy drapes and tasseled lampshades giving it a dim, boxed-in feeling.

And there is the person he should hate most in the world.

Evander stares.

The boy sprawls across an antique chaise with the languid disregard of a spoiled heir, unbothered and casual as if he’s never been denied a thing in his life. His hair is a rumpled riot of insufferable gold, his white shirt open at the collar to reveal the arch of an aristocratic throat. Only a brace on his left wrist interrupts his indolent perfection.

Seeing him this close after so many years gives Evander a discordant rush of vertigo. He only just manages to pull himself back into the shadowed hallway as the old butler bustles out of the room with a tray of dirty dishes. Carrington still wears black suits and white piqué vests as if he’s a butler cut out of a twentieth-century novel. His dislike of Evander is never hidden, but he still tends to him with rigorous dedication. It’s his job.

He doesn’t notice Evander flattened against the wall as he hurries off to the kitchen.

Evander waits until his rabbiting pulse smooths before he pushes back into the mouth of the parlor. Leave. Now. But he can’t.

He has to see Laurie again.

His fingers grip the archway, his knuckles gone white.

It takes only a second for Laurie to notice him, and he freezes.

Somehow Evander hadn’t been prepared for this, for the way Laurie has grown up while Evander still feels caught in the past. He must look a mess: his hair dark and lank, curling past his jawline and long overdue for a cut, sweater grubby and plaid pajama pants clinging to bony hips, his limbs too fluid and elastic, as if at any moment they could bend the wrong way. He is shaking, ever so slightly, though from fear or rage he doesn’t know.

He isn’t supposed to get angry. It isn’t good for his health.

Laurie sits up with a mocking smile tucked into one corner of his mouth. “Almost forgot you were real.”

Heat eats at Evander’s cheeks. “You can’t be here.” It’s somehow shocking to hear his own voice, but his teeth clench and he keeps going. “You aren’t allowed.”

Laurie flops backward onto the chaise, one eyebrow raised. “I think you’ll find this is actually my house. You’re the transplant.” He pulls out his phone as if this whole situation is uninteresting, though he seems to be breathing a little quickly.

As if maybe this is a shock to him too.

Laurie doesn’t think about him, Evander realizes. He travels the country and attends elite boarding schools and does whatever he pleases beyond the walls of Hazelthorn, and he doesn’t think of Evander or what he did to him at all.

While Evander has to think of Laurie every day.

He shouldn’t. He tries not to. But he still thinks of this boy until his lungs seize and his mouth fills with rust from a bitten tongue.

“If he finds you’ve come back while he isn’t here—” Each word trembles with a rage he didn’t think possible.

“He knows.” Laurie’s eyes are half-lidded with boredom. “He’s in the conservatory right now, messing with his stupid plants. I’ve been on summer break for a week already and he’s been here the whole time.”

Evander’s fingers curl into fists and there is a high-pitched buzzing in his ears. He’s trying to remember if it was like this before between them: Laurie dismissive and apathetic, Evander eaten through with jittery nerves.

“You can come sit down if you want.” Laurie tosses the words like a bone to a dog. “You look pale.”

Evander can feel himself winding up, his jaw clenched tight enough to crack. “This is just how I look.”

Because I’m always ill, he wants to scream. And it’s all your goddamn fault.

Though maybe he does need to sit down, because his vision has turned spacey and his stomach won’t stop doing loops. But he doesn’t understand. Mr. Lennox-Hall being back in Hazelthorn for days without bothering to visit Evander is unthinkable.

But then, who is he anyway except a charity case roped to them by guilt?

“I’ll find your grandfather and talk to him. There must be some mistake.” Evander sounds raw, but Laurie’s eyes track him with a sudden interest.

“Don’t,” he says. “He doesn’t like to be interrupted. Stay here with me.”

His gaze could pin Evander to the wall.

No.

That can never happen.

Suddenly Evander is in the garden again, caught against holly leaves and rose thorns, and he steps backward once, twice, before he turns and flees into the depths of the mansion.

His hate for Laurie is unmanageable, wild and bitter as wormwood on his tongue, and he should have lost all interest in him by now. He shouldn’t watch for him through his window. Or crave snippets of his voice. Or think about his cornflower-blue eyes and the beautiful shape of his wretched mouth.

Evander can still taste blood and earth and rotten petals and a death that almost spilled like indigo ink.

Seven years ago, Laurence Lennox-Hall tried to kill him in the garden, down amongst the roses. But somehow, Evander is still obsessed with him.

TWO

Maybe he’s destined to always feel like this: the wounded damsel from a fairy tale, stumbling away from the wolf. He hates it, hates that this is all anyone sees of him.

Fragile. Delicate. Falling apart.

It only takes half a minute of rushing blindly through interconnected rooms crammed with expensive furniture, marble statues, and extravagantly thick rugs before he realizes he has no idea where the conservatory is. His bedroom is a decaying tooth in this sprawling monstrosity of a mansion, and it turns out the rest of the skeleton is unknown to him. He must have run these halls as a child, tagging along after Laurie like a devoted puppy, but nothing is familiar anymore.

Heat throbs behind his eyes and his cheeks flush with the shame of being driven to tears this easily. His lungs flutter like tremulous moths, unused to such exertion. This is why he should stay in the cushioned darkness of his bedroom where he belongs.

Where he can’t hurt himself.

Or be hurt.

A scattering of leaves is the only thing that saves him. They lie desolate on a landing, and when he follows the trail, it leads into a tight corridor with carpet as thick as moss. No windows. He feels his way to the end, where he finds a stained glass door accented with opulent rubies, the pulsing light beyond it sickly and cold.

The door whines open at the barest touch and then he’s staring into a glass room with a domed ceiling, the riotous garden outside pressed against the walls.

He breathes in loam and overturned soil, the fresh, earthy smell of snapped stems and growing things. Compared to the unfettered wildness of the outdoor plants, the conservatory is neat, full of long tables of seedlings and cuttings, massive philodendrons lining the walls and ferns hanging like a cloud from the rafters. Spilled potting mix litters the tiled floor. Rusted green watering cans sit next to buckets of small trowels. The only light comes from golden globes hung like miniature suns, and there is a hushed quality to the room, as if it hides a secret.

Unease hooks under Evander’s ribs and he can’t quite catch his breath. He feels untethered, unsure if he wants to back away or plunge deeper into the conservatory. He needs to stop being pathetic.

But it’s inside him, this unexplainable coil of dread.

He’s so distracted by the overwhelming amount of plants that it takes him a moment to notice the wicker table surrounded by overgrown alocasia and the old man reclining in a matching chair as if it were a throne.

Byron Lennox-Hall cuts a severe figure in his deep brown suit, his jacket flung over the arm of his chair and his shirtsleeves rolled, pruners still in one hand with green sap dripping from the blades like blood. Beheaded roses are at his feet, the table littered with stems in various states of being spliced.

He has been watching Evander this whole time, saying nothing.

Now he crooks a finger. Come here.

Evander slinks forward, feeling even sicker for his disobedient escape. He stops just out of reach of his guardian and rubs the tips of his fingers against his pajama pants. Looking like a disheveled mess is also very high on his guardian’s disapproval list, and sickness does not negate class, as he’s told, so if he’s out of bed, he should dress properly.

Be a gentleman. Be eloquent. Be sensible.

“Someone is not where they should be.” Mr. Lennox-Hall’s hair is stripped of color, his features chiseled from aristocratic marble, and his eyebrows draw together like two white-capped waves of judgment. His voice is deep and rich and currently holds a note of danger that Evander knows well.

He used to thrash about with tantrums when he was little, wild and hateful of his ill body, and he had to be held down until he took his medicine. The grip had been bruising, remorseless.

“My … door was unlocked.” Evander could not feel more childish.

There’s a flicker of something on Mr. Lennox-Hall’s face. Surprise, or maybe unease. Then it’s quickly masked. “And what have you been up to during your ill-gotten travels? I suppose you found Laurie.”

Evander wraps his arms around himself and nods, his eyes glued to the floor.

“Did anything happen?” Despite the casual tone, the warning is frigid. “I will deal with him for you, of course.”

An odd knot tightens Evander’s throat and he shakes his head, though why he doesn’t want to get Laurie in trouble is beyond him. Nothing, nothing, will ever be enough recompense for what he did to Evander.

His body split open. Kidneys damaged. Broken ribs puncturing his own lungs. Forehead swollen. Blood, blood, so much blood.

“I thought—” He swallows hard and loathes how whiny this sounds. “You’d come see me once you got back from your trip? It’s just I was waiting…” He gives up, his mouth a coffin for all the things he can’t say.

But Mr. Lennox-Hall doesn’t have a chance to answer, because the stained glass door swings open and Carrington appears with a tea tray. He hobbles forward at such speed, he doesn’t register Evander until he’s placed the tray on the wicker table. Then he catches sight of the escaped patient and his eyes go wide.

“Mister Evander. How—When—” Carrington’s voice has the reedy quaver of old age and his rheumy eyes look ready to pop out of his skull.

“Not to worry, Carrington.” Mr. Lennox-Hall’s voice is even. “We’ll postpone what you and I were speaking of earlier. It’s clearly not the right time. I’ll escort Evander back to his room myself. Have his nighttime meds prepared, would you?”

“Of course, sir.” Carrington casts one more dismayed look at Evander before scurrying off.

So it wasn’t Carrington who unlocked the bedroom door.

Mr. Lennox-Hall reaches for the tray and pours himself a cup of tea as red as watered-down blood. “Laurie will not be staying at Hazelthorn for the whole summer, if that’s worrying you. I’ll deal with that useless boy so he isn’t bothering anyone.”

Evander is a tiny bit thrilled to not be the useless boy for once.

“Hazelthorn will return to peace and quiet,” Mr. Lennox-Hall says. “Your health is my foremost concern, as always, and I’d rather you not feel stressed.”

“I’m not stressed,” Evander says, his fingers tapping and flicking behind his back due to, perhaps, stress.

Mr. Lennox-Hall eyes him and then downs half his cup of tea. “You do understand why you can’t go wandering, don’t you?”

Agreement is on the tip of Evander’s tongue, because his reward for compliance is always a fond smile.

But something brackish spills out instead and he’s surprised at his own ungrateful daring. “I actually haven’t had an episode in a long time.” His fingertips rub faster and faster against his pants. “And I feel fine. I—I think maybe I should walk around more—”

“No.” Mr. Lennox-Hall throws back the last of his tea and claps the cup down hard enough to rattle the tray. He refills it, not looking at Evander. “Pushing yourself will send you backward and you need your strength for your next surgery. I know it’s hard to accept, but you’ve still a long, long road of recovery ahead.”

“But I don’t feel—”

“That’s enough. You’re getting yourself worked up.” Mr. Lennox-Hall coughs and pulls a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe at his mouth. “Damn this dry throat. Look, I understand you’ve become a bit, shall we say, root-bound as you’ve grown up.” He gives a thin smile and Evander slides a sideways glance at the worktable littered with plants pulled from too-small pots, their roots in matted knots. “But you have to understand your health conditions worsen as you age. I swore by your parents’ graves to give you the best care possible and I will.”

The car accident took all four of them, Evander’s parents and Laurie’s. Four deaths. Two children, orphaned. It should’ve made them close, him and Laurie, and instead it set their teeth at the other’s throat.

But it’s hard not to argue, to push back. “I don’t want another surgery.”

I don’t understand why I need it.

I don’t understand what’s still wrong with me.

I don’t understand—

Another coughing fit hits Mr. Lennox-Hall and he bends double, hacking into his handkerchief before using it to wipe his suddenly sweaty brow. He looks confused by the attack, reproachful at his empty teacup for not soothing his throat.

“We don’t want to trigger an episode,” Mr. Lennox-Hall says. “So let’s get you back to your room and into bed—” He cuts off, his hand going to his throat, and for a stretched minute, he struggles to swallow. His fingers prod at his neck and something moves beneath his larynx. Something that shifts, pushes, settles.

Evander’s heartbeat speeds up, his eyes snapping up to stare at his guardian. “Are you okay?”

“I’m—” But Mr. Lennox-Hall’s voice has turned to a serrated rasp, sweat beading on his forehead. A waxy sheen crosses his eyes.

Panic leaps across Evander’s skin.

Then Mr. Lennox-Hall spasms.

It happens fast, his regal position on his wicker throne crumpling as his body convulses and he topples to the gritty floor. Evander leaps forward in confusion, but he’s too slow. The old man collapses oddly, his fingers curled into gargoyle claws and his face spasmed in a rictus of pain. His eyes bulge, his mouth turning purple.

He’s choking.

Evander throws himself down by the old man’s side, grabbing his arm, though he has no idea what to do.

Mr. Lennox-Hall’s throat bulges again, that thing moving, pulsing, growing. When he opens his mouth for a soundless scream, black mucus starts frothing up his throat around the furred outline of what looks like—

Leaves.

No, that isn’t possible. None of this is possible—

Scream. Yell for help. Do something, goddamn it.

But Evander is paralyzed in mindless horror as he watches another convulsion shudder through Mr. Lennox-Hall’s body. His guardian’s hand shoots out and snatches Evander, tightening until his wrist bones crunch together in bright, white pain.

“I don’t know—” Evander’s voice is high with terror. “I don’t know what to do! I—I dontknowwhattodo—”

“Do not—” Mr. Lennox-Hall’s voice is all gravel as more black froth bubbles from his mouth and sluices down his chin. The veins around his forehead have popped out and they look—
black.

He can’t breathe. He’s choking. He’s choking.

“Do not—” Each syllable drags like rusted metal. His body begins to shake, violent, unstoppable. “Do not go into the gardens. Swear to me, Evander.”

But Evander tears free of the gnarled grip and surges for the conservatory door. He has no idea what he’s screaming, but it doesn’t feel loud enough until, from somewhere deep in the mansion, footsteps begin to pound.

Evander runs back to Mr. Lennox-Hall. He grabs at his convulsing body and tries to roll him on his side. He can’t remember the rules of CPR. He doesn’t know he doesn’t know whatwhatwhat to do—

By the time the conservatory door bursts open and Laurie explodes inside, Evander is trying to do chest compressions.

He’s trying.

Tears pattern the old man’s white shirt before Evander realizes he’s crying so hard he can barely breathe. He can’t think, can’t feel, can’t even react when arms wrap around his middle and yank him away, someone yelling, “What the hell did you do!”

Byron Lennox-Hall’s eyes have gone blank long before his body stops seizing, and it is only later, as Evander sits discarded where he was shoved away, that he sees his own hands are covered in a slick, strange oil. It stains the half-moons of his fingernails. He stares as a high-pitched ringing crescendos in his ears.

He doesn’t remember when Carrington arrives, barely hears the feeble wail that spills from the man as he tries to help his employer. Laurie bolts from the room and returns with a phone, but they all know it’s too late. The Hazelthorn Estate lies deep within the steep green hills of New England, miles from any town.

Something is growing in his throat, Evander means to say. We should root it out so he can breathe again. But he can’t remember how to speak.

He sits there, numb, as he stares at the overturned teacup and then into Byron Lennox-Hall’s dead, dead eyes.

THREE

When he fractures, it is in a place so deep inside himself that he cannot begin to collect the shattered pieces. He is kneeling there, terror unraveling in bloody ribbons from his mouth, his body a locked tomb.

He’s in shock, but knowing does nothing to thaw limbs now rooted to the floor. A small part of him is soundlessly screaming that these are warning signs he’s about to tip into an episode, but he can’t snap out of it.

He is looking at the body of the man who became his father, and he doesn’t understand what happened. It was so, so fast.

Someone needs to—
this isn’t real this isn’t real this isn’t real

He isn’t dead, he can’t be—

Hands hook under Evander’s armpits, bony fingers digging painfully into tender flesh, and it takes Evander a full minute to understand he’s being dragged from the conservatory. His legs don’t work. His brain isn’t processing sounds. Voices beat against each other, muddy and disorientating, until Carrington’s cuts through, shrill and reedy.

“You should be in your room. Quickly. Get up!”

Evander stumbles upright, steadied by the tight grip of the ancient butler. He glances over his shoulder once to see Laurie on his knees beside the body with a blankness to his face. When he raises his head, his eyes meet Evander’s and they look like dark cavities of disbelief.

Then Evander is rushed from the room, tripping as he keeps up with Carrington’s staggering pace. The mansion has been built in such a disorientating nest of hallways, every room so filled with antiques and collections of the bizarre and uncanny, that to traverse it is like stumbling through a fever dream. Carrington whips them through with a speed that doesn’t match his age until they are back in the stale, claustrophobic darkness of the north wing.

There is his door, the key in the lock.

The sight of it cuts through his shock and he finally tries to wrench free of Carrington’s grip.

“No, wait, please—”

But Carrington shoves Evander through the doorway.

It is not hard to move him when he is a creature made of gossamer moth wings pulled over fragile stick bones. He trips and slams down on his knees, his lungs heaving and fingers scrabbling like hooked thorns against his familiar, worn-down carpet. Carrington scuttles around him, hurrying to the window and slamming it closed before fishing another key from the heavy iron loop he keeps pocketed and locking it.

Then he whips around, bearing down on Evander. “What did you do?”

Evander wilts on the floor, drawing his knees up to his chin. He has always been slightly scared of the gnarled old butler and the sickly sweet, rotting smell that clings to him.

“Wh-what? I didn’t—” He breaks off, his teeth chattering as he tries to gather a full sentence. “I was j-j-just standing there.”

“You are not to leave this room,” Carrington hisses. “I have put your medicine on your desk. Take it and go to sleep.” Then he’s out the door just as Evander realizes what will happen.

He scrabbles forward, his hand outstretched. “No! Don’t lock—”

But Carrington has already slammed it closed and the key twists in the lock with a dull thud.

Such a familiar sound.

Evander’s world tips. The descent is too rapid; there is blood in his mouth. The sound he’s making is upturned and wretched, a keening that doesn’t end.

He flattens himself against the door, his mouth pressed to the sliver of space beneath as if he intends to scream for Carrington to come back. But he can’t. He shouldn’t. Everything inside him spins in a sick, tilted swirl, and if he doesn’t swallow this down, an episode will hit. His head feels inflamed, his stomach cramping so severely he thinks he might throw up. He should take his meds as instructed, but the idea of sleeping is ludicrous.

All he can think of is the tea and the thing growing in Mr. Lennox-Hall’s throat.

Unless he’s imagining—

No, he saw something. What if the tea was poisoned?

Thoughts feel too nebulous to hold on to right now, his heartbeat a runaway beast in his chest, and he can do nothing except lie there on the floor and pretend the door will open and his guardian will stride in and command Evander to pull himself together.

But no one comes.

Evander breathes in plumes of dust caught in the cracks between floorboards and suddenly remembers lying like this when he was a child—fever licking up and down his weak body, his stitches stretching from the exertion of hours of screaming, his skin flayed with red rashes from medication reactions. His memory is a pockmarked thing thanks to his many illnesses and his head wound from the day in the garden, but an image comes back in a sharp metallic rush.

He would lie here and listen to a soft voice whisper under a door, wait for the rustle of pages before the story would continue.

He’d forgotten that, forgotten the way he’d kicked his heels in a furious tantrum if the pauses grew too long. Sometimes there would be a tearing sound and a single page would slide under the door for him to look at while the soft little voice continued reading.

Two things hit Evander as he lies there, fear collapsing his lungs.

He used to eat those storybook pages instead of giving them back.

And the person reading to him through the door was Laurie.

He is forgotten.

It’s inevitable really, but as the night turns into dim, gray morning with rain flogging the windows, Evander wonders if it’s on purpose. Carrington views him as a chore to be done with stiff yet courteous diligence, and Laurie obviously hates him. They aren’t going to care how long he is left in here, alone.

All he knows is that Mr. Lennox-Hall could be dead—he is dead you know he’s dead dead dead stop pretending otherwise—and Evander is locked in his room with no way out.

Unless he breaks the window—

No, he’s being unreasonable, hysterical. Just be patient.

But the day stretches long and silent and empty, and Evander wears fear like a coat. He paces. Anxious sweating leaves his pajamas tacky against his skin, sour and uncomfortable, but he doesn’t change. He can’t sleep. Damp seeps through the walls as the rain strengthens, and he should be cold but his skin feels feverishly hot. He needs air, but no amount of rattling the window shifts the lock.

Last night was the first time he’d slipped free of his room in years and he can’t help think about how losing the window feels like punishment. But he’s safer in here. If the tea was poisoned, then it was done on purpose.

Somewhere in Hazelthorn, there is a murderer.

Descending down this thought spiral does little to stave off Evander’s growing panic, and as the day drags by and night falls again, he lines his arms with puffy purple bruises from senseless pinching. Time moves like a knocked-over jar of molasses, sticky and sullen, and all he can do is take another thousand paces up and down his room and silently beg Carrington to appear and explain what’s happening.

No one comes.

In the tiny attached bathroom, Evander sticks his head under the faucet and gulps enough water to swell his stomach. He shouldn’t think about food at a time like this, but he’s hungry, and Carrington does not walk in with the usual tray of oatmeal or buttered toast.

Evander is starving.

He can’t read, can’t study, can’t watch a documentary, can’t sleep.

There is a murderer in Hazelthorn.

The word murderer beats a merciless bruising rhythm against his skull. He’s read enough Sherlock Holmes classics to understand how one goes about solving a mystery, piecing together clues and analyzing forensics, but he’s too full of static to think through what he knows.

All he has is this:

Carrington served the tea.

But Laurie has tried to kill once before and he had just said, Long may he rot, about his grandfather. So what if—

There are only four of them in Hazelthorn, so one of them has to have poisoned the tea.

Evander paces.

He chews his fingernails down to bloody nubs. He’s starving and he hates himself for obsessing over it.

Eventually, he gives up pacing and sits in the middle of his floor, his knees drawn up to his chin, biting at his wrist until the teeth marks swell. He leaves the lights off. The deep green of his wallpaper breathes like wind filtering through hedgerows, the fauns stuffing the moths between their molars and chewing with morbid satisfaction.

Count to ten. Then Mr. Lennox-Hall will walk in.

Count to one hundred. Then Carrington will walk in.

Count to one thousand. Then—

Evander’s hand slips under his sweater and his palm presses hard up against old scar tissue. From the attack. From the surgeries that saved his life. He is an ugly thing when bared and he doesn’t like to think about it.

Somewhere, far into the deep of midnight, Hazelthorn moans.

In the back of Evander’s throat, he tastes the hot sting of poisonous berries.

It isn’t real.

It isn’t real let him out let him out let him out let him out let him out let him out let him out let him out LET HIM OUT LET HIM—

Only the dark is there to watch him beat himself bloody against the locked door.

FOUR

He has spoiled like mincemeat left out too long, the rot of him a blackened hole that repels the sun. Blackberry bruises riddle his arms, and his forehead is swollen to the touch; maybe it’s a good thing his room has no mirror and he can’t look at the shameful aftermath of his spiral last night. At least it’s over. He remains inert where he sits on the floor under his window seat, afternoon light streaming over the curved half-moon of his spine and somehow not touching him at all.

If he had an episode last night, he can’t remember. He never remembers. No one is here to dose him with medications and smother him in quilts as he sleeps off the pain, so he simply sits and breathes as little as possible around sore ribs and lips bitten bloody.

This is the third day he’s been—

Alone.

Locked in.

Sweat trickles down the back of his neck, but he can’t seem to force himself to strip off his sweater or splash cool water on his face. A sultry, stifling heat has pressed two hands over his mouth. He never drank the milk or took his meds that first night, and the sour reek of the untouched glass fills his bedroom with a sickly stench that sends his stomach churning.

Tip it down the bathroom sink. Clean up. Do something, goddamn it.

He does nothing.

Then at last there is the turn of the key in the lock.

It is a melody, it is his savior, it is another strike of shame.

See? You didn’t need to freak out. Why are you even like this? Why are you so embarrassing—

Instead of rushing at the door, he stays where he is, drawing his knees up so he can rest his forehead against them, his face hidden, his mortification buried. He is so very, very wrung out, so devastatingly tired.

Even without looking, he can tell it’s Laurie lingering in his doorway. He must be taking it all in—this sanctuary, this prison—and there is a soft murmur of disgust when he finds the source of the foul smell. Evander squeezes his eyes shut so tight that white sparks dance behind his lids, and he only feels Laurie sweep past and dump out the glass in the small attached bathroom.

When a heavy shadow falls across him, he finally glances up.

Laurie looks down at him with his expression shuttered. Even in expensive jeans and a white shirt cuffed to his elbows, he looks disreputable, his top buttons undone and something jaunty about his popped collar. But, despite everything, he is a whisper of sunshine in the fetid oppression of this room.

“I went with the ambulance,” Laurie says finally. “I mean, obviously they were too late, but protocol and all that, and—” He stops, frowning, though it doesn’t seem directed at Evander. “I got stuck in town until Grandfather’s goddamn attorney drove me back here this morning.”

It takes a full minute of silence to put together that this is meant to be the explanation for why Evander was left, forgotten. That he is meant to be fine with the fact people were in Hazelthorn all of today, they just couldn’t be bothered to check on him. Of course he heard nothing because he never does, not all the way up here in the north wing with a heavy oak door shut and locked.

“But is he—” Evander’s voice comes in a damp rasp. “I—I—I just thought maybe he isn’t…” But he trails off as Laurie makes a face.

“Stowed away in some mortuary freezer drawer?” he says. “Well, he is. We’re waiting on my great-aunt to arrive to organize the funeral.”

Evander hates the way his mouth wobbles, but he forces himself to nod. He needs to pull himself together and not act like a sickly, unpredictable brat, demanding attention when the Lennox-Halls are busy dealing with a family tragedy. Byron Lennox-Hall wasn’t even his grandfather.

Laurie starts playing with his brace, his eyes skirting past Evander to stare out the window. “I thought Carrington stayed here with you, but … I think he was hospitalized. The shock and everything.” There’s an odd, detached blankness to Laurie; he’s grieving, he must be. “Anyway, the attorney is here to read the will. So get up.”

“What?” Evander rubs hard at his swollen eyes. “But I’m not…”

Laurie shrugs. “He said no need to wait for my relatives to arrive for the reading, just to get you. So let’s call a truce between us.”

It’s such a ludicrous request, Evander almost laughs. His limp hair is stuck to his face from two days of anxious sweating and his stomach has punched in on itself with hunger and his whole face is puffy from crying and someone is dead—and Laurie wants a truce?

“I don’t—” Evander clears his raspy throat. “I don’t even understand why you tried to kill me. What did I ever do to make you hate me so much?” The question feels like a vulnerable, childish whine, and it cracks at the end.

Something unreadable plays around Laurie’s mouth. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” Evander snaps, but then shrinks under his own outburst.

This isn’t him. He is soft-spoken and deferential. He is a gentleman, crafted by Byron Lennox-Hall’s careful tutelage, and he dedicates himself to squeezing into that shape.

Three days alone and he is already losing who he is.

“Ask me later,” Laurie says finally. “When an impatient attorney isn’t breathing down my neck.”

Evander has waited seven years to understand why Laurie attacked him, so it shouldn’t matter that his trembling fists are still empty of answers. He feels dull-eyed as he watches Laurie drift over to the redwood wardrobe and flick through the collection of knit sweaters, vests, and crisp trousers. Most of Evander’s clothes are vintage, hauled in from storage courtesy of some long-dead Lennox-Hall relative. Laurie selects a dark button-up and a brown cable-knit and dumps them at Evander’s feet. They smell of mothballs.

Evander takes the clothes and watches the afternoon sunlight glance off the side of Laurie’s face, haloing his skin like a gold-brushed angel.

Someone had to have poisoned Byron Lennox-Hall and, aside from Carrington, there’s only one other option.

The mansion has grown or maybe Evander has shrunk, his bones wobbly inside too-loose skin and his limbs like soft, green sticks that feel bent too far. He follows Laurie at a careful distance, masking the way he keeps steadying himself on a wall or taking the stairs one at a time. It feels irreverent to think about how hungry he is, but it cycles in his skull.

He hasn’t eaten in three days.

At least he looks less bedraggled now, his shirt buttoned to the throat and tucked in, his belt tight and sweater neat, the thickness welcome despite the warmth of the afternoon because anxiety leaves him perpetually cold. The only thing missing is shoes, forgotten out of habit since he never needs them while alone in his bedroom.

Laurie says nothing as they walk, leading him down the intimidating grand staircase and toward his grandfather’s office.

he’s dead dead dead they buried him and they forgot about you and he was the only one who loved you and who will care for you now that he’s deaddeaddead—

He hates how little he remembers of these halls, of running up and down them shouting and playing with Laurie. A black void stretches instead, eating away at the edges of the childhood he should know.

It scares him, to think of what else he might have forgotten.

It scares him more wondering what will be done with him now. Especially if Laurie takes this chance to make him leave and be free of him once and for all.

He can’t leave. He has no idea what Mr. Lennox-Hall planned for his future, but a vast, unmappable emptiness spreads before him. College had to be the plan, somehow, what with all the studying he did, but he can’t imagine himself actually stepping off the estate. Just thinking about it brings him near to hyperventilating.

He could think if he wasn’t so hungry, could compartmentalize all the questions puncturing thorns through the inner flesh of his cheeks, could work out how to hold in all the fear and questions and grief.

Instead, he keeps his shoulders tight as he enters a study with vaulted ceilings and soaring bookshelves behind a massive dark wood desk. Hard leather sofas sit by the old fireplace and deep forest green Persian rugs cover the floor, everything drenched in musty, lavish austerity. What catches Evander’s eye are the lancet windows with the garden pressed so hard against them that vegetation has left stringy trails of rot and deep scratches across the glass. Never has a garden looked so angry to be kept out.

Two wooden chairs have been placed in front of the desk, and Laurie slumps into one with a bored sigh.

“Ah, here you are.” A man rises from behind the desk and Evander jumps half out of his skin.

This must be the attorney, though he looks more like a young college student in owlish glasses and a brown suit, his watch heavy and expensive, his dark blond hair slicked back and sandalwood aftershave too strong in the closed space. He has a square jaw and the casual ease of someone attending a garden party instead of being here to read the will of an incredibly wealthy dead man.

It occurs to Evander he hasn’t spoken to anyone aside from Lennox-Halls and Carrington for seven years. He doesn’t know how to talk to people. He probably looks shell-shocked standing here, gawking at the stranger.

“Nice to meet you, Evander.” The attorney flashes a bright, white-toothed smile, but there’s something too intense about his enthusiasm. “My name is Benedict Dawes and I will be serving as executor of the will. Please, sit down. Get comfortable.”

Evander tugs his sweater sleeves over his fingers and stares at the rug.

“So, we have a few things to go over.” The attorney opens a leather folio and pulls out gilt-edged papers, before peering at Evander again. “Sorry, do you, ah … talk?”

Evander wants to melt into the floor.

Laurie snorts. “He does if he can argue.”

Dawes gives Laurie a stern look and then turns to Evander with a sympathetic smile. “I can imagine this is all hard on you. I’ve only recently started working for Mr. Lennox-Hall, but he was a brilliant man. To see him taken so suddenly by an aneurysm is devastating.”

Evander glances at Laurie, who doesn’t react. Aneurysm? It wasn’t—no, couldn’t have been. Evander has read a few medical textbooks—out of sheer boredom—and he never lingered over descriptions of aneurysms, but he’s sure they don’t involve black foam frothing from the mouth and something growing inside the throat. He wasn’t the only one who saw that. He couldn’t have imagined it.

Frustration pinches Evander’s brow and he can feel a headache brewing. He doesn’t know how to question this, so he simply grabs the second chair and drags it backward a few feet. Then he flops onto it.

Dawes blinks rapidly.

Evander folds his arms and scowls.

“Oh, and also,” Laurie says, “he hates me.”

“Er, right.” Dawes peers back at his papers. “Well, this reading shouldn’t take long. If we’re all ready?”

“Question.” Laurie lets his tie slip through his fingers. “What happened to Godfrey? Thought he was Grandfather’s main attorney.”

“His health took a bad turn,” Dawes says without missing a beat. “The firm asked me to step in.”

“Sure.” Laurie’s mouth is a flat line. “Sounds convenient.”

Evander can’t focus. His chest is full of matchsticks, his tongue a greased wick, and he thinks any second now the flint will strike and he will simply explode. Why would they lie about an aneurysm? Hazelthorn should be swarming with detectives scooping up clues and building a case against the murderer—and yet it isn’t. It sits silent and contained, all its secrets cloistered in its crumbling mouth.

This is all wrong. Everything is wrong.

Dawes plucks a single sheet of paper from his folio. “This is the Last Will and Testament of Byron Laurence Lennox-Hall. The distribution of his Estate, known from hereon as Hazelthorn, is as follows—”

A sick, wet weight pools in Evander’s stomach. The legal jargon makes his head swim as it drones on, and it’s hard to focus instead of thinking about what will happen if they throw him out of Hazelthorn. He doesn’t think he could survive it. Heat stings the back of his eyelids and he wants to leave. He is out of place here, unwanted.

“‘… if I have omitted in this Will to leave property to my descendants, this is intentional…’”

The carpet pattern has dislocated itself from the floor and taken hold of Evander’s ankles. He’s going to throw up. Or have another episode. He’s been too long without medications.

Laurie makes a small noise in his throat. The attorney seems oblivious to any discomfort in the room and reads on with a flourish.

“‘All properties, including the Estate of Hazelthorn, along with the sum of my accounts, which amasses to 1.1 billion dollars at this time, is to be given to my sole heir and current ward, Evander. I have signed this document while of sound mind under the witness of these ensuing signatures…’”

His words turn to mud as he continues and then, quite suddenly, stops.

Silence falls.

It takes Evander a dizzying moment to notice Dawes has laid down the will with a decisive nod. That’s it.

Outside, branches scrape along the study window under a sudden flick of afternoon breeze. It sounds like claws against glass.

Laurie lets his chair legs hit the floor. “What,” he says, “the fuck? He didn’t mention me at all?”

“It appears not,” Dawes says.

Silence again.

Evander’s heartbeat has turned sluggish, each throb sicker than the last. He is in the earth again, the shovel is coming down, the bright blue of a perfect summer sky has been caught in the cornflower eyes staring down at him, cheeks flecked with freckles of Evander’s blood.

Sole heir.

Sole heir.

Sole heir.

Laurie hated him for the act of existing before. Now Evander has stolen his inheritance.

“Read it again.” Laurie’s voice is deadly cold.

“It won’t change.” Dawes shuffles papers and he seems unbothered, though of course he would’ve looked over the will before he arrived. No wonder he wanted to read it out now to just the two of them—without more Lennox-Halls waiting for inheritances that would never be doled out. “Evander is seventeen, correct? So as a minor he’ll be placed under the guardianship of Byron’s closest kin, who I suppose would be his sister—”

“Kill me now,” Laurie mutters.

“—Oleander Burnett,” Dawes says. “Or I see she’s gone back to her maiden name of Lennox-Hall. This will just be until Evander is of age to come fully into his inheritance. She’ll take on your guardianship, too, Laurence, so not to worry there. I’ve also received word that several of your relations are on their way here for the funeral, so I suppose we’ll—”

“Who is coming?” Laurie’s voice rises, his neck going red. “My grandfather locked everyone out of this goddamn estate seven years ago, he wouldn’t want them here.”

Dawes seems unfazed as he twirls a pen. “Let’s remain calm over this. I can’t stop your family from paying their respects to your beloved grandfather, plus they all seem eager to meet Evander.”

Laurie stands suddenly and turns to look straight at Evander. “You,” he says.

Evander doesn’t wait.

The sole heir of the Hazelthorn Estate bolts from the study.

His legs eat up empty hallways and alcoves as he flies through the convoluted maze of the house until he sees the gaping maw of the back kitchen door. Shouts ricochet after him. But Evander has torn holes in his threadbare universe and he wrenches open the door and explodes outside.

Do not go into the gardens.

But no one is here to stop him anymore.

FIVE

Evander isn’t used to it, this devouring thrill of defiance. He has no idea what he’s doing, proven by the fact he’s running to the place he fears most. Although this feels less like a decision driven by mutiny and more an animal instinct to go to ground, to burrow, to slip out of this skin and into another so he doesn’t have to face the truths hounding his heels.

His guardian is dead.

Hazelthorn is his.

And everyone hates him.

His head hurts and his mouth feels like it’s full of broken twigs and he is tired of trying to make sense of it all. He shoves everything away and focuses all his frenetic, discordant energy on the only thing he can: his ravenous desperation to eat.

He is so hungry that it takes next to nothing for that feeling to eclipse his overwhelm about Hazelthorn and Lennox-Halls and fake aneurysms and potential murderers. Think only of this: putting the whole world in his mouth and cracking open its bones with his teeth.

A mottled, dusky light has fallen over the outside, the sun low enough to kiss the rolling green hills of New England. Shadows cling to the spaces between trees and overgrown hedges as Evander slows his headlong sprint and limps deeper into the gardens. Dogwood grows next to stone walls covered in maidenhair ferns, and untrimmed hedges spread over paths carpeted in thick moss. Weeds shoot up between garden beds, and trellises lie cracked under massive vines. Thickets of roses stretch to unreal heights. Everything is beyond vicious and so incredibly, ruthlessly alive.

He can feel it breathe as it watches him, this untamed garden with thorns for teeth.

Evander finds an archway smothered in wisteria and ducks beneath it, entranced by how the petals cascade and catch in his curls.

He has no idea where he’s going.

No one has chased him.

The cobbled path gives way to a small copse of wild plum trees and what would be a circular lawn if anyone ever mowed. Yellow grass reaches his thighs as he wades through, his palms open to brush the soft seed heads. He pretends he’s not totally winded and that his bare feet aren’t stinging from sharp-edged rocks and thistles. He doesn’t belong out here. He should be inside.

Yet his panic has grounded itself—and he didn’t expect that. He thought being out here would trigger every monstrous memory and hysterical fear, and he still isn’t sure why instinct propelled him into this frenzied flight outdoors in the first place. But maybe he needed to see the garden again, needed to know if his childhood terror had lost its bite.

A wall rises ahead, covered with so much verdant ivy it’s hard to see the stones. He pauses next to a mossy marble carving of a faun and leans against it, kneading the stitch in his side. How does one even navigate a maze of a garden like this? It feels like it was designed to confuse.

Perhaps he is Ariadne and behind one of these walls is the minotaur.

do not go into the gardens

Mr. Lennox-Hall will be so pissed when he finds out Evander has—

The thought stops, shudders, disintegrates like wet paper.

Very suddenly, he thinks he might cry and then even more suddenly, he thinks he might roar.

The garden hums, crickets chirping, and the wind stirs up dead leaves in delicate twirls. He can taste it, the startling riot of clean, green wonder.

Evander cuts a nervous glance over his shoulder at the looming mass of the Hazelthorn mansion and the way it sags in streaks of golden afternoon light. From this angle, the ivy looks less like it is climbing the walls and more like it wants to throttle the house. But at least he’s not lost. He can find his way back. It isn’t like he has grand plans to run away.

He wants to be alone, just for a minute.

Or maybe a small part of him wants to remember that day, the pain, the betrayal. Maybe he needs the reminder of how dangerous Laurie Lennox-Hall is so he can forget those blue eyes and that beautiful mouth.

Nothing is familiar as he ducks under low hanging branches and heads toward a broken-down greenhouse. It makes sense why Mr. Lennox-Hall forbade him from going outside—he could get lost, step on a snake, have an allergic reaction to pollen, hyperventilate himself into an episode, or just generally freak out because that is what he does.

He wishes he wasn’t like this, wishes he could stand even parallel to normal and be someone who fits next to those his age, who goes to school and kisses an appropriate amount of pretty people and isn’t bothered by things like an odd seam in his clothes or the very existence of socks. He wishes his brain moved in one direction, not a dozen all at the same time, and that he didn’t pull apart in a panic if even one thing goes wrong.

He tries, but somehow even trying means he’s failed.

The unfairness of it all adds to the growing agony pulling him apart from the inside out. He breathes in the outdoors with a hard, quick gasp. At least he hasn’t forgotten this part of that day: dirt in his mouth, blood pooled black in his cupped hands from his torn-open stomach.

A small frown crosses his brow. It occurs to him, only now, to wonder how a ten-year-old child with a tall-handled shovel nearly severed him in half.

But the evidence is on his skin, so he can’t doubt it.

He picks his way inside the greenhouse. It must have housed vegetables once, but all that remains are rows of raised wooden box beds filled with dead sticks of basil and withered pumpkin vines. A few wild tomato plants have thrived despite the neglect and Evander doesn’t stop to think. He rips a malformed tomato off the stem and stuffs it into his mouth.

It explodes on his tongue, sweet and tart all at once, the seeds slick as they catch between his teeth. He scrabbles through the leaves for another, and another, shoving them as fast as he can into his mouth. What does it matter if he’s acting a little wild? No one is here to see.

He wipes his mouth and gives a quick glance around the greenhouse. Every glass panel looks cracked, the roof half–caved in, dirt and glass littering the floor. Hedges and vines press at the walls on every side as if the garden is watching him with brutish, unrelenting intensity.

He slows his feral feasting and prowls down the aisles, picking his way around cracked terra-cotta flowerpots and sacks of potting mix and fertilizer. Carrington would have a conniption if he saw sickly, fragile Evander poking around out here. Evander, with his bones made of glass and his tremulous mind. Not to be trusted alone. Not allowed to make decisions. Not allowed out of his room in case he gets hurt.

Now he owns this.

He owns all of this.

It has to be a mistake.

Yet something sparks in his chest, too small to properly cup and flame alight. Excitement, or maybe panic. He can’t tell the two apart.

He is still so, so hungry.

He strips a half-dead basil plant, swallowing each leaf, and then starts poking about the potting mix sacks in search of wild vegetables, concentrating so hard that he almost doesn’t register the sound of voices. Low murmurs. Shoes crunching the garden path. There’s a light grunt, as if someone encountered the sharp hooks of holly leaves.

It hits him then, a swift uppercut to the jaw, how foolish he’s been to run into the garden and invite a Lennox-Hall to hunt him down. This time, there is no guardian in the house to hear the screams and run out to save him.

The low mumble of voices clarifies outside of the greenhouse. Shadows moving beyond the filthy panes turn into shoulders, golden hair, a hand raised to push aside ivy tumbling over the doorframe.

Evander throws himself behind the sacks of potting mix, squeezing in tight and pulling his knees up to his chest. He is made entirely of anxiety, his stomach knotted as he cups a desperate plea to the universe in the bony cage of his fluttering fingers.

Don’t let him find me.

Or hurt me.

Not again.

A rusty trowel lies at his feet and he carefully picks it up.

They’re in the greenhouse now, scuffing about noisily over the trash-strewn floors, glass crunching and dead pumpkin vines snapping underfoot. Evander hunkers even lower behind the sacks and watches two brown oxfords cruise right past him.

“Stop fussing, Benedict. He can’t have gone too far.”

“Look, I’m just concerned is all.” But there’s more than a little agitation in the attorney’s voice. “Your grandfather seemed pretty strict about keeping him … inside.”

“And you knew my grandfather that well? What really happened to Godfrey?”

There’s a tired sigh from Dawes. “I told you, he’s unwell. There’s no conspiracy here. I already work for your grandfather—”

“Worked,” Laurie says, flat. “Remember? Something got him.”

There’s a long, tense pause and then they start moving again, though not before Dawes says, with cool precision, “There’s something wrong with you.”

“Want a gold sticker for figuring that out?” Laurie’s amusement is pure vinegar.

Evander doesn’t move. It’s interesting to watch how they act while they think he can’t see, and he tries to focus on that, not the way gorging himself on tomatoes has left his stomach in an acidic swirl. The attorney has dropped his easygoing tone and seems pissed at Laurie to an unprofessional level.

“Just find him,” Dawes snaps, but his voice is farther away. “I need him to trust me, so I can…”

Footsteps crunch over shattered glass toward the exit, and there’s a curse of annoyance from Dawes as he must get tangled in the ivy, but then all sounds fade and Evander is left in the thickening gloom of the empty greenhouse. He breathes out slowly, relaxing against the potting mix sacks. His weight on them causes a ripple of dirt peppered with white balls of perlite to tumble free, and he stares as the glistening beads roll away.

Silence throbs in his ears.

A beat passes, two.

His arm feels like an alien thing, detached from his shivering body as his hand dips into the potting mix.

It’s in his mouth, his fingers stuffing more dirt between his lips. He’s chewing. Not thinking, not thinking. Compost is on his tongue, between his teeth. His jaw works up and down. Foul, wet clumps of soil stick in the back of his throat.

He is horrified, he is elated; he is so, so hungry.

what are you doing what what what are you—

He is a thing most foul. He is uncontrolled. He swallows.

His hand is in the bag again, his fingers bone white and shaking as he scoops up another fistful, but his knuckles brush against something hard. The distraction jolts him and for a minute he feels ill. Then he forces himself to use the trowel to dig into the sack and claw free a small rectangular object.

A fat green journal bound with strips of rawhide sits in his hand. The title is obscured by dried bits of compost and he scrapes it clean with his thumbnail.

Hazelthorn Field Guide

“Hi.”

Evander screams.

He hurls the trowel on instinct and it bounces off Laurie’s shoulder as he’s crouching down. He yelps, nearly overbalancing as his hands go up in surrender.

“The hell—Calm down!” Laurie glares down at the dirt now speckling his white shirt. “You need to come inside.”

“No.” Evander tries to worm backward, but he’s already up against the wall of the greenhouse. He decides to pretend the high-pitched scream did not come from him and instead folds his arms tight over the field guide and hunkers down. “Leave me alone.”

“You can’t be out here.” Laurie pauses. “Dawes is gone, by the way. It’s just us.”

This could be a threat. It feels like a threat.

Evander’s heart rabbits into his throat. “Don’t touch me.”

“I’m not—Jesus, I do not want to deal with you.” Laurie pinches the bridge of his nose and actually sounds tired. “I just want you to go inside before you hurt yourself out here. It’s getting dark and Dawes still needs to talk to you—by the way, it would be real useful if you spoke to him and proved you’re somewhat functional.”

It stings like a paper cut, though Evander can’t explain why. Somewhat functional. He hates those words. Hates how they degrade.

His disquiet must show on his face, because something flickers in Laurie’s eyes that almost looks like shame. Then it’s gone.

“What are you holding?” Laurie’s eyes are half-lidded, his voice a dull drawl, and he barely seems interested in the answer—except Evander has a feeling that’s a facade.

Back in the study, Laurie had been split apart with anger, his neck flushed, his voice rising. Now that fury is gone, wholly and utterly gone. Anyone who can turn off their emotions like that has to be placing them somewhere dark to grow even more brittle and toxic.

Whatever Laurie truly feels, he makes a habit of not showing it.

This is dangerous—he is dangerous—but all Evander feels is electricity running along his skin.

“It’s mine.” He doesn’t know where this boldness comes from. “Actually, all of this is mine according to your attorney. So stop … stop telling me what to do.”

Laurie’s mouth is a flat line. “Wow. You’re a natural at this whole inheriting-a-fortune thing. Good job taking it so well.”

Except Evander isn’t taking it well. He wants to blurt out that he doesn’t understand why he would be named heir by the man who all but kept him on a high shelf like a porcelain doll and didn’t bother to visit him most of the time. He wants to say this is a mistake. He can’t run an estate this old, this large. He’s sick. Everything is so very, very wrong.

But all he does is sit there, muscles quivering as he holds himself stiff.

“Now that you’re finished saying ‘mine’ like a toddler,” Laurie says, “can you please—for the love of god—come inside before I have to force you? Which I don’t want to do, since you’ll mess up my shirt even more.”

“I’ll fight,” Evander hisses.

Laurie sighs. “And I’ll fold you up like an envelope and literally carry you in. Don’t embarrass yourself.”

The field guide, Evander thinks, could be used to hit Laurie’s pretty face.

“I’m not coming out,” he says, “until you back off.”

“Fine.” Laurie stands and makes a show of stomping off to slouch against the doorframe to wait.

Evander squeezes out from between the potting mix sacks and carefully tucks the field guide under his sweater, because it will annoy Laurie to not see what it is. Then he tries to edge through the doorway, but Laurie puts his arm out to block the way. Damp leaves cling to his brace.

Their eyes meet, Evander’s scowl indignant and Laurie’s mouth tilting in that insufferable smirk again.

Evander’s teeth clench. “Don’t touch me.”

“I’m not,” Laurie says.

“Then move out of my way.”

“You can get past.”

“Do you want me to go back inside or not?!” Evander’s voice tips high and furious. “Why are you even like this?”

Laurie starts to say something, catches himself, and just gives the thinnest smile.

“What were you going to say?” Evander knows he’s unraveling into flustered indignation, but he can’t stop.

“Oh,” says Laurie, “you are not ready for all the things I want to say.”

Evander has had enough. He starts to duck under Laurie’s arm, except Laurie cuts quickly in front of him.

“Wait. Only touching you once, I swear.” He catches Evander’s chin, gentle and swift, and then tilts his face upward.

Evander doesn’t have time to wrench free before Laurie places his thumb at the corner of Evander’s mouth. He brushes it across skin and Evander tastes the smear of dirt before it’s gone.

“There.” Laurie releases him, his lips quirked. “So Dawes doesn’t have a stroke over what you’ve been up to.”

He knows what Evander ate. He probably watched.

Heat surges up Evander’s cheeks and he looks away. “Why did you wait till he was gone to talk to me?”

“No reason,” Laurie says, and it is so obviously a lie.

Evander doesn’t understand Laurie, doesn’t understand his wicked smiles and his silver tongue and his lazy entitlement. But worse is the way Evander has forgotten to be scared, standing here in the garden with the boy who once tried to kill him and has twice as much reason to try again. At any second, Laurie could crush his fingers around the arch of Evander’s slender throat.

Evander almost wants it to happen.

This time, he’ll bite back.

SIX

Evander leaves a trail of bloodied clover in his wake as he enters the kitchen. Only now have his feet begun to hurt, the abuse of the outdoors pulping his tender skin, and he takes inventory of the whip-line scratches that mark the back of his hands and the glass stuck in his heel from the greenhouse. Even his sweater hem has unraveled, bits of hawthorn caught in the wool as if the garden tried to snatch him as he ran past.

It isn’t the time to show weakness, but for once in his life, he actually wants Carrington to hobble out from behind a corner and scold him before fixing everything.

Evander doesn’t know how to take care of himself, doesn’t understand what will hurt him until after it has.

The bright, warm glow of the kitchen leaves him squinting as he limps to the quaint little breakfast nook. It’s tucked out of the way, a circular built-in bench covered in musty cushions, the round table dinted from decades of use. He slumps onto the bench and considers laying his head on the tabletop. Exhaustion has hit like a brick.

Laurie comes inside behind him, slamming the back door closed as he fishes his phone from his pocket and puts it to his ear. All he says is, “Feral cat corralled,” then ends the call before there’s time for a response.

He rakes a cool gaze over the mess of Evander.

“I am not a feral cat,” Evander says stiffly.

Laurie raises an eyebrow. “Have you thought about scratching my eyes out at any point in the last twenty-four hours?”

“Try the last five minutes,” Evander mutters.

“Feral. Cat.” Laurie leans against the sink and tries to flick dirt off his white shirt. It only smears.

Evander huffs and pulls one of his abused feet into his lap, wincing as he picks out a thorn. The field guide starts sliding out from under his sweater and he shoves it back up before Laurie sees. That is his to explore alone. Something about it has snagged his attention—not just the fact it was hidden, but the way it might be exactly what he needs. A guide to the monster he has inherited.

It’s almost too convenient finding it like that.

When he glances up at the arched windows, the overgrown garden seems to have clawed even closer, branches and ivy knotted against the glass. It needs to be pruned. Sunlight must struggle to get inside with so much shrubbery smothering the panes.

The kitchen feels like an alien place, a ghost in his memory along with so much of Hazelthorn. He probably had cucumber sandwiches and lemon cakes at this very nook with Laurie, both of them messing around and being rowdy little boys, while their parents ate sedately in the elegant dining room down the hall.

But that’s just what he thinks he should remember. What he truly remembers is being laid out on this table, the smell of perforated bowels slicking the wood while Mr. Lennox-Hall yelled for Carrington to bring bandages.

“Did you unlock my door?” It comes out more demanding than Evander intends. “That night your grandfather died? Someone unlocked my door.”

Laurie has wandered over to the freezer and yanks it open, perusing the contents with disinterest. He doesn’t even spare Evander a glance. “Why would I unlock your door?”

“I don’t know.” Frustration creeps into Evander’s voice. “Carrington wouldn’t just unlock it and leave.” He picks another thorn out of his foot. “Nothing makes sense. What’s wrong with the garden?”

Laurie bangs his head on the freezer with such force that Evander jumps.

“Jesus…” Laurie rubs at his head and hurls two frosted packets onto the counter before slamming the freezer shut as if he has a personal vendetta against it. “What do you mean, ‘What’s wrong with the garden’? It needs a trim? Because yeah, I guess so.”

“No.” Evander decides to speak very slowly and carefully in case this obtuse boy is trying to mishear. “I mean, why is it so overgrown? Why doesn’t Hazelthorn have gardeners? Why is it … Why does it feel…” But he can’t say so wildly, viciously alive because maybe that’s how the entire outdoors feels after you’ve been locked inside for seven years. He huffs out a breath and tries again. “The last thing your grandfather said to me was to never go into the garden. Why?”

“First of all,” Laurie says, still wincing as he glares at the freezer, “nice of you to ignore the final words of a dying man. Real sweet. Second of all, do I look like I know how the twisted brain of Byron Lennox-Hall works? Because I do not. Do a séance and ask him.”

“You’re not very respectful,” Evander says.

“I try not to be.” Laurie gives him the most earnest smile that is somehow also unfathomably condescending.

Evander’s chest feels full of brimstone. He is not an angry person. This isn’t him. Laurie is just insufferable.

Engaging is pointless, so he goes back to pulling thorns out of his sweater and ignoring Laurie as he dusts ice chips off the packets, which, Evander realizes now, are premade pizzas. His mouth waters.

Frozen pizza somehow feels incongruous in a kitchen like this, where oldness lies in the very bones of the flagstone flooring. Thick, wooden beams run overhead, still blackened from when the old woodstove worked in tandem with the massive fireplace to cook food for the lord of the manor. Original scrollwork outlines the hearth, and the old iron hooks for big kettles and roasting spits remain intact. Everything is dark and oppressive. Dark wood walls, dark iron light fixtures, dark cast-iron pots hanging from an overhead rack. Around the corner lies the butler’s pantry, and Evander has the sudden urge to scurry inside and stuff himself.

But he can’t be seen like that. He can’t be wolfish and unkempt and wild; he needs to be the studious, quiet, considerate gentleman that Mr. Lennox-Hall meticulously raised. Maybe this was why he plied Evander with books and logic puzzles and tests—preparation to inherit.

But it still makes no sense.

The back door yawns open again as Dawes appears in time to watch Laurie select a bottle of wine from the floor-to-ceiling pigeonhole rack beside the pantry. Scratch marks line Dawes’s forearms as if he fought through a hedgerow to get here, and mud cakes his expensive shoes. A frown pulls at his brow as he locks the door and then flicks a glance between them.

“Great, you’ve found him. Should he be put—” Dawes checks himself as if he’s remembered Evander has ears.

“What?” Laurie says. “Put him back in his cell?”

Dawes rubs at his temples. “Laurence. I swear, I’m—”

“Not in front of the baby,” Laurie says.

Evander straightens in his chair, lightning flaring hot in his chest. “I’m not a baby.”

“I was talking about me,” Laurie says calmly, “but okay.”

Dawes looks like he’s regretting his entire career. “I’m not entirely sure I should leave you two alone here tonight, but your great-aunt told me she’s arriving first thing tomorrow.” He adjusts his cuffs and glares with annoyance at the tears in his sleeves. “Also, Laurence? Put that wine back. You’re underage.”

Laurie sighs and sets the wine on the kitchen counter with a thunderous crack. “My bad, I forgot.”

“I understand emotions are running high,” Dawes goes on. “I’m only following the last wishes of your grandfather. This is what he wanted. I’m not your enemy.” He manages a strained smile.

“Or,” Laurie says, a little too bright, “I could hire my own lawyer and contest the bullshit in that will. It’s fake, I know it is.”

Dawes doesn’t blink. “I don’t believe you have the funds for that.”

The silence that follows is monstrous and sucks all the air from the room. Laurie’s expression doesn’t flicker, but his eyes seem dangerously, violently bright.

It sinks into Evander’s skin, the reality of Laurence Lennox-Hall no longer having a single cent to his name. His belongings, his schooling, his lavish lifestyle—it’s all funded by his grandfather. Byron didn’t just leave everything to Evander, he cut his grandson off with brutal finality and didn’t even bother to specify guardianship for him to the point he’ll be shuffled off to the nearest of kin, same as Evander. They’re only seventeen. And Byron clearly only cared about one of them.

A sick, heady rush makes Evander wish he could melt onto cool flagstones until everyone sorts out this mess around him. Except he’s not safe here. He could easily wake tonight with his throat slit open, the inheritance returned to Laurie in a circular ending to what they started. If Laurie tried to kill Evander once, he’ll try again.

Evander can see it now, Laurie’s hot, wet mouth on his bones.

His stomach does an odd swoop.

Dawes cautiously gives Evander an awkward pat on the shoulder, but seems to regret the contact. He slows down his words as he says, “Let me know if you need anything, all right? As your attorney, it’s my job to see you’re safe and cared for.” He straightens, his voice taking on a brighter, crisp tone, which means he’s talking to Laurie, the real person in the room. “Also, just a reminder, the will stipulates that if Evander is unable to inherit, all available funds under Byron Lennox-Hall’s name will be donated to various charities and the Hazelthorn Estate will be razed.”

Evander cuts a sideways glance at Laurie, who looks at the wine like he’s thinking about hurling it against the wall.

Dawes collects his briefcase, adjusts his glasses, and flicks a glance at his watch. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Your grandfather’s office and affairs need to be put in order, so I’ll be here quite a bit in the coming weeks. I’ve locked the office door though—please remain out.”

“Why don’t you just stay the night?” Laurie’s smile is razor-sharp. “Save time with all that traveling.”

A muscle flexes in Dawes’s jaw, but he matches the smile. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Almost like you know the old bastard never let anyone stay on the estate,” Laurie says. “He barely even let me stay here when school’s out. So you have to know he’d never want my relatives to come—”

“Your family is grieving deeply,” Dawes says. “Of course they want to pay their respects at the funeral.”

“Or they want a shot at the billion dollars,” Laurie mutters. “You know they’re all going to lose it when they realize they didn’t get a penny, either, right?”

Dawes raises a hand as if he’s helpless in all of this. “I’m bound to the law, as is this will, and my job is now to work in Evander’s best interests.”

Evander’s fingers tighten into fists, the thin cuts on his hands stretching to show slivers of wet, meaty red. A noxious taste fills his mouth and he isn’t sure if he will be able to pull words from the silt trapped in his throat.

“But—” He’s shivering, his fingernails digging crescent moons into his palms. “But what—what about the murderer?”

Dawes pauses, midway to the exit, and his smile seems plastic. “Pardon?”

“Don’t we need detectives and—and forensics and an autopsy to figure out who…” Evander trails off, his stomach cramping from the effort of placing down so many words before a stranger.

He doesn’t understand why it’s this hard when words spill from him with ease when he’s snapping at Laurie.

“Byron Lennox-Hall,” Dawes says with measured slowness, “died of an aneurysm.” He flicks a glance at Laurie. “I think Evander’s medications are kept in the pantry. Carrington mentioned something about a sedative syrup for when he’s agitated.”

A fluttering panic fills Evander’s mouth, but he says nothing, just slumps lower on the breakfast nook bench and tries to slow his breathing. Don’t look upset. Don’t act unreasonable. He must control himself.

Although, he didn’t think he sounded frenzied.

He thought it a fair question to ask.

Laurie folds his arms, his expression closed. “I’ll find it. Goodnight, Ben.”

Dawes hurries out of the kitchen, his footsteps echoing in the long, empty hallways as he heads for the front door.

Silence falls, broken only by the sluggish tick of an ancient clock in the corner.

They’re alone. They’re not meant to be alone. They can’t be alone.

But Evander also doesn’t want to be left listless and drowsy from medicine, not now when he needs to think—and to protect himself.

He focuses on the floor. “I won’t be trouble.” He says it low; no one can accuse him of being hysterical.

Laurie snorts. “I’m not drugging you for asking questions people don’t want to answer.”

Evander casts him a suspicious look, unsure whether Laurie is being nice or not. Their eyes meet, just for a second, and it hurts to see that brilliant sharpness, that cleverness that drew him in as a child, and how it can no longer be trusted.

“It wasn’t an aneurysm.” Evander’s mouth barely moves.

A drawer opens and crashes shut so hard he flinches. Laurie looks bored as he yanks open the next drawer. “Where does Carrington keep the corkscrews? I think you should fire your attorney, by the way, Mr. Billionaire.” He says attorney as if the word is a joke. “He’s pissing me off.”

The amount of money is so obscene that Evander hasn’t quite compacted it down into something he can digest, not to mention he doesn’t think he’ll have access to it until he turns eighteen anyway. Right now it’s not important, not when they’re all ignoring what really happened.

“Did you see your grandfather?” Evander swallows. “After they took him…”

“Nope.” Laurie frowns into a junk drawer and then slams it.

Evander swallows hard. “So you wouldn’t have seen signs of poisoning. His veins ran black in the conservatory, remember? And his skin was purpling and there was something in his throat—”

“He’s dead,” Laurie says without inflection. “He’s not coming back.”

“But it’s not about that!” Evander pushes to his feet, ignoring the stab of pain and the fresh blood oozing onto the flagstones. “There should be an autopsy! He was literally murdered in front of our eyes and you don’t care, which means you know who did it—or or or you did it.” A blurred voice buried in the back of his head is warning him to think about the consequences of shouting out accusations, but he can’t seem to stop this avalanche. “The tea—I’m sure it was poisoned. And if someone else did it, then we have no idea who is watching us. Does your grandfather have a lot of enemies?”

“He’s rich. What do you think?” Laurie gives up on the corkscrew and peels plastic off the frozen pizzas, then flings them into the oven like they’re flying discs.

He’s not going to hurt Evander right now; it wouldn’t benefit him. Hold on to that.

“Finished accusing me of stuff yet?” Laurie says.

“That is exactly what you do in a murder investigation.” Evander’s teeth clench. “You accuse people.”

Laurie leans his back against the sink, his arms folded and expression casual. “Then let’s accuse you. You were the last one with him.”

A panicky, suffocating feeling climbs up Evander’s throat, black speckling the edges of his vision in ways that whisper one word:

episode

No, no, he’s fine. He’s fine. He sways slightly, one arm still clasped around his middle to keep the field guide hidden, his mouth full of something brackish, like old water in a sunken grave.

“I didn’t.” His voice is coming from too far away. “He was my … He cared about me. He was the only one who did.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

There is no point talking to him. Evander has to remember that this boy is the devil with gilt horns under his golden curls and being alone with him is like putting coals on his tongue and wondering why they burn.

His ribs feel pulled too taut from exhaustion, and he has never been this untethered. There is no safety in this house, not near someone who can slip into lies like a second skin.

It all hits Evander so hard he can’t breathe. He is alone. No one is coming to save him.

He hurries from the room while Laurie is peering into the oven at the melting pizzas. He calls out, “I thought you were hungry,” but it’s tinged with sarcasm.

“You can bring me some when it’s ready,” Evander says over his shoulder, taking the stairs two at a time.

Laurie’s voice fades behind him, annoyance unmasked. “The lord of the manor hath spoken, I guess.”

The field guide slips from under his sweater and Evander snatches it before it hits the stairs. Then he’s plunging toward the north wing with a thousand wasps stinging the inside of his skull.

Murder is not so hard a puzzle to solve. If you have the pieces. If you have suspects. If you are desperate not to die next.

SEVEN

A dull gloom has settled over Hazelthorn as night falls. Evander only gets turned around twice before finding the correct twisted hallway that leads to his room. Once inside, he shuts his door and rests his back against it, breathing too fast, unsure if he should feel constricted by this return or relieved at the familiarity. The caged terror he felt while being locked in for three days seems unreasonable now.

This space is his.

He’s safe here.

There is his comfortable four-poster bed. His shelves of books. His writing desk in the corner. His slim green door that leads to his bathroom. His nightstand with a framed photo of his parents. His window seat where he’s spent a thousand hours watching the garden grow.

He just thinks he might like everything better if the door stays unlocked.

Wasting no time, he rummages in his desk drawers for a fresh yellow notepad and index cards. New stationery is an indulgence he’s never denied. Every time he receives a box of schoolbooks, it comes with a collection of pens and notebooks, paper clips and Scotch tape, and he loves the soothing smell of fresh paper and pencil wood. Towers of textbooks and half-finished assignments are strewn across his desk, and cleaning it off seems like too much work, so he flops on his bed with his hoard and bites the cap off a thick, black marker.

Every suspect gets their name in bold on an index card.

CARRINGTON

LAURIE

DAWES

The last name is unfounded suspicion, especially since Dawes wasn’t even here, but something about him feels off. Handling a late billionaire’s affairs would be a huge breakthrough for someone so new to their career, so the previous lawyer being “ill” is too convenient.

If Evander gathers information, puts it down in bold ink, and fits the pieces together, it will make sense. This is all that’s keeping him from letting grief slip through the fissures of his broken heart. He will find a way to make death make sense.

He’s read detective books, watched an active investigation in one of his documentaries—albeit one filmed like thirty years ago, but it counts—and he has a good handle on where to start. What questions to ask. What to look for. The top thing to consider is that someone unknown could have been in Hazelthorn the night of the murder.

The person who unlocked his door.

It would be a good distraction, wouldn’t it? Release the caged boy and see if he causes havoc while they slip poison into the tea steeping in the kitchen. Except all Evander did that night was go stare at Laurence Lennox-Hall.

He really needs to pull apart the wicker cage of his ribs and see if he can find the reason he’s so obsessed with that boy hidden amidst the rot. He craves him. He thinks about him all the time. Even when Laurie is at school, Evander still lies in bed and imagines how he must look in classes, tapping a pencil against his lips or reaching to pull books off tall shelves. Laurie is smoldering sin when he tilts his head back in a way that begs to be kissed.

Not that Evander would kiss someone like that. That would be akin to swallowing poison and relishing the taste. He can picture himself kissing girls, and he likes that idea, so his addiction to Laurie must be born of starvation, of deprivation, of memories from a ruined childhood friendship that he can’t quite get over. He is not going to sit here and let forlorn feelings walk all over him.

His guardian died. He needs to focus on that.

He flips the index cards and writes potential motive in a column.

Carrington is the obvious suspect since he served the tea—but he has zero motive. Being the caretaker of Hazelthorn is his whole life. He might not like Evander and acts as if his day-to-day care is an onerous chore, but then why not poison Evander’s milk instead of Mr. Lennox-Hall’s tea? Carrington speaks of his employer with reverent adoration, and he hasn’t retired despite a lifetime of service. Plus, his anguished cry of horror in the conservatory seemed real, and he surely couldn’t fake being hospitalized from shock.

What Evander needs to do is question Carrington. He has to figure out a way.

On Dawes’s card, Evander writes the motives of big career break and uninhibited access to the estate, though they feel more like assumptions than facts.

He moves on to Laurie’s index card and his brain pools into a sticky puddle. Obviously, he has that damning declaration memorized: I hate the old bastard. Long may he rot. It’s evidence now. But it seems shortsighted to murder the grandfather funding his life and fancy schooling, unless he thought he’d inherit everything as the only grandchild.

After a few moments chewing the marker cap, Evander adds and is a prick to Laurie’s card and feels satisfied.

A light tap at the door sounds and his neck snaps up fast. He’s cornered, he isn’t safe—

Laurie’s voice is a dull drone. “Pizza at the door, my lord.”

After a long moment, the footsteps retreat.

Evander waits to see if it’s a trap and then sneaks over to press his ear against the hard oak door. Silence. Cautiously, he opens it and expects Laurie to materialize with a sardonic quip, but only darkness pulses down the hallway. Evander scoops up the plate of pizza and inspects the stacked slices of gooey melted cheese. Carrington serves food that’s easy on a delicate stomach: buttered toast, oatmeal, rice pudding, stewed apple slices, and saltines. Evander can’t even remember what pizza tastes like.

He slams his door and inhales half of the slices before he gets back to his bed. The index cards end up smudged with tomato thumbprints as he sinks back into his sleuthing, and perhaps he should take a break—but he can’t. He needs to focus on this and only this.

After wiping greasy fingers on his pants, Evander opens the field guide. Bits of compost flake off and collect on his bed as he looks at tiny, careful drawings of plants and terse handwritten descriptions in barely legible cursive. He’s read botanical and horticulture books before and he’s not unfamiliar with a few Latin terms for plants—Quercus, Acer, Pinus, Ilex—but he recognizes nothing in this field guide.

Page after page has been filled with watercolor illustrations of strange, twisted plants with toothy thorns and petals that seem to go all the wrong ways. Either the botanist is terrible at capturing likenesses or these are the most bizarre plants Evander has ever seen. Where are the oaks, the crab apple trees, the roses and hollyhocks and daffodils? He flips pages fast, wanting to find one familiar thing to reassure himself the guide isn’t a joke.

Instead, he finds a page neatly labeled: Deadly Nightshades.

The plants on this page come with berries in shades of indigo and vermilion, juicy and plump and toxic, their leaves hooked and flowers lined with teeth.

If someone wanted to poison tea, it would be easiest to use poisons on hand. Like those grown in the garden right outside the back door.

His brain is caught in a too-fast spin-cycle. The day has been too much, everything is too much, and he finds himself lying on his side, the field guide spread open before him while he plays with the sharp corner of the pages and lets his eyes drift shut. The litany of to-dos he meant to accomplish fades into a smoggy oblivion: washing his bloodied feet, taking a bath, pulling on clean pajamas, taking his night meds …

There are no meds.

There is no Carrington.

He should talk to …

—something about …

he needs—
you need Mr. Lennox-Hall but he’s dead dead dead and whoever killed him might be after the fortune which means you’re in the way or maybe you’re a game piece that will be easily pushed around since you know nothing about the world outside your—

Sleep drags him under with rocks in his pockets. All his thoughts smudge to the left, his fingers pressed into gray clay that he can’t seem to work into a reasonable shape. There is a wrongness to this sleep.

His throat is wrapped in honeysuckle, perfume staining his lungs.

There is dirt in his mouth. A name lies under his tongue.

He’s spoken it before, it shouldn’t be this hard, but someone is pushing a seed down his throat, deep and deeper. Tiny white fleshy roots unfurl like fingers and attach to his esophagus until he’s choking, unable to breathe, calling for help but his mouth is too full of growing things.

Say it.

Don’t you remember how?

hazelthorn

Hazelthorn

HAZELTHORN

He wakes with a gasp, his hands cupped about his neck to feel for tiny roots puncturing his skin. Nothing. Of course there’s nothing. He sits on his bed in the brutish dark, gasping for air, his skin slicked with fevered sweat, strands of hair plastered to his cheeks. It’s only as he fumbles for his lamp that he remembers he never turned it off.

He slaps the switch.

A glow like browned sugar spreads a neat circle around his side table. He’s still breathing too fast as his eyes lock on the soothing image of his parents’ dusty photo. They watch him with eyes trapped in gloss like taxidermy animals. Dead. Everyone who ever loved him is dead.

He slaps the frame face down, a sob caught in his throat, and then he knuckles his eyes and tells himself it was just a creepy dream. Understandable, really, after the day he’d had. Then he hears it.

There is the tiniest sound, a brush of air, a soft shush so small it might not exist. He turns to look.

His door is open.

A hollowed nothingness stares at him from the pitch-black hallway.

“Don’t,” he whispers, but isn’t sure if he’s talking to the growing scream climbing up his throat or to the sudden idea that someone was in his room.

He closed that door. He absolutely closed that door.

The darkness beyond it is so thick he could dip his hand in and feel his nightmares ooze between his fingers. His heart pounds hard in his ears and he can’t think. A quick glance around his room shows nothing amiss, but what if they stood there as he slept? Leered over him. Traced skeletal fingers down the arch of his bared throat.

He slips from his bed, his fear compounded into a bass beat that throbs through every limb as he hurries over and shuts the door again. With his spine pressed hard against it, he tries to breathe. Nothing happened. It’s fine. Stop freaking out.

Trembles run up and down his arms until his legs go molten and he slithers down into a crouch. If he stays perfectly still, if he doesn’t breathe, he thinks he can hear the infinitesimal tap of a footstep outside his room. Just one.

Did they leave? Or are they still there? Mouth pressed to his keyhole, forked tongue flickering at the lock?

Breathing.

Waiting.

He should have barricaded the door. He should not be this naive. Yet some part of him doesn’t think this was Laurie.

Evander squeezes his eyes closed and shoves his knotted fists hard into his stomach until the pain makes him gasp in momentary distraction. Unsettling things like this never happened when Mr. Lennox-Hall was alive. What if this is all a terrible, terrible game to mess with him and—

“Stop.” Evander’s voice is dry decay as he covers his ears. “Stop stop stop.”

But the what-ifs have already stoked themselves into an inferno.

What if this isn’t the first time your door has opened at night?

you’d never know
you have no idea what stares at you from the dark
what touches you
they make you sleep
you don’t have a choice

EIGHT

When dawn hauls itself wearily over the horizon like a bruised lemon, Evander has written nine lists of murder theories and tacked his Suspect Index Cards to the wall. The wallpaper fauns look reproachful as he spears thumbtacks through their foreheads. His current plan is to shove all his crawling, spidery dread aside and stare at the cards until supporting evidence pops into existence and solves all of his problems.

So far, he has too many assumptions and hunches.

And sadly “is a prick” isn’t enough to put Laurie before a judge.

A gust of wind sends loose leaves pattering against his window and Evander jumps half out of his skin. Paranoia has him by the jaw. Or perhaps it’s the lack of sleep and the new wave of hunger leaving holes in his stomach. He could go downstairs and dig about for food if he wanted. No locks stop him anymore. This is freedom, isn’t it?

He stares at the door until his eyes ache, thinking only of that looming wall of darkness, thick enough to sluice over his hands like a toxic oil spill. No, stop it. Daylight has come. He had a silly little nightmare and now he’s being ridiculous.

That’s what they’d say to him when he was screaming on the floor as a child, elbows burned from thrashing against the carpet. Threads of black stitching unraveled from his surgery wounds next to deep red fingernail grooves from when he tried to tear himself back open. But it felt as if they’d sewn him up inside out and upside down. He could feel the wrongness inside him. They taped mittens over his hands and when he tore through them, they strapped his arms to his sides and put him to bed.

Stop being hysterical.

Stop it.

Instead of opening his door, Evander flattens himself on the carpet, his chin perched atop his stacked fists, and ignores the hunger stabbing hot knives through his middle. He stares at the open pages of the field guide.

Illustrations of furred poisonous leaves stare back at him.

Wolflock—known for its sharp-tipped leaves that resemble canine ears and bell-shaped flowers the color of charcoal. Toxins in the petals and pollen. Ingesting causes vomiting, nausea, split-vision, numbness in extremities, disordered speech. Symptoms may resemble a stroke.

King’s Sleep—identified by black trumpet-shaped petals with a single white berry grown in the middle. Toxic to the touch. Will cause rashes, swelling. Ingesting leads to permanent paralysis.

Bloodberry—bright red berries grow to the size of grapes and cluster within soft curling green vines. Entrancing to behold. Ingesting one will cause pleasant hallucinations, two will cause delusions of self-harm, three will grip the consumer with the need to self-amputate any limb they can reach.

An itch pulls at the underside of his feet, an urge to slip into the garden and look for these impossible nightshades. It walks two fingers down his spine, this feeling he’s never been allowed: curiosity.

Low murmurs make his head snap up, his eyes darting to his closed door as sounds grow louder from the hallway. Voices pile over each other, unfamiliar and staccato. Footsteps hit the carpet. His doorknob turns.

A small flicker of hope surges in his chest. It could be Carrington with breakfast and meds and normality restored—although he isn’t sure if he even wants that—but then the door is flung open with a dramatic shove and a terrifyingly tall woman strides into his room, with another smaller, more timid, woman hurrying in her wake.

Evander scrambles to his feet, his panic a living thing screaming through his skull. No one should be in his room. That was the one rule to keep him safe, to be sure he was never hurt again.

“This is him?” the tall woman barks. “I must say, I expected worse.”

Evander blinks, not entirely sure how to take that. He backs up until his shoulder blades hit the bookshelf, and he must look like a trapped thing, a terrified thing, cowering as his room is inundated with unwelcome guests.

The tall woman takes up the most space, her voice a boom with a smoky rasp and her leopard-print heels stabbing at the carpet. She wears color like an eruption, like a punishment: bold red pants and voluminous blouse and heels of oozing mustard, her jewelry overstated and lavish with matched rubies in her bracelets and earrings. A shock of styled white hair surrounds a face creased with age and heavy makeup, and she wastes no time in flashing white saber teeth at Evander as if she’s caught sight of her prey.

The second woman wears a dark, sensible pantsuit, her arms full of bags and an umbrella and car keys and a clipboard she appears to be attempting to take notes on while making a phone call. A thin sheen of panic lives in her eyes. Evander relates.

He catches sight of Laurie slouching by the doorway, looking as sour as ever as he wears a yellow button-down, soft as sunlight with the short sleeves cuffed, and white shorts in a curated look of expensive summer relaxation. Though he seems anything but at ease as he watches.

It all stokes Evander’s panic from bonfire to inexhaustible inferno.

“What a small thing.” The tall woman turns to Laurie and snaps, “Does he speak?” Without waiting for an answer, she whips back to Evander and bears down on him in an overwhelming cloud of saccharine roses and bergamot. “Do you speak?” She slows down each word, her eyes flared wide.

Evander tries to slither away, but she catches his jaw with her red-polished talons and squishes his cheeks until his lips pucker. “There isn’t much we can do about his appearance except tidy it. Jessica! Write that down. Have the cleaners responded yet?”

“Uh, no, ma’am.” Jessica looks like she’s fighting for her life to not drop everything. “But I did place the call only a few minutes ago…”

“Unacceptable. Call again. And a barber. I can barely see his face under this ghastly mop.”

This has to be Oleander Lennox-Hall, sister to Byron and Laurie’s dreaded great-aunt. Sixty seconds with her seems like an overdose and Evander is paralyzed by sheer, undiluted anxiety.

“Those eyes,” Oleander muses, “are far, far too green. Such prettiness wasted on a boy. Laurence!” She snaps this last word so loud that Evander jumps. “I have no idea how many of your grandfather’s horrible relations are coming for the funeral, but they will not sniff out any weakness here. All my things need to be transported to Byron’s primary suite and I shall need all the keys. Those shrews won’t get a dime when they realize who they’re up against.”

Laurie hasn’t moved from the doorway, but his arms cross and his sourness seems directed only at her. “It’s not actually your money. As soon as Evander turns eighteen, you won’t have a dime either.”

Oleander looks like she’s been slapped and rears to her full, intimidating height with nostrils flaring and a hand clutched to her chest. But it means she releases Evander. He bolts to the corner of the room and flattens himself into the narrow space between the wardrobe and another bookshelf, breathing so fast he’s about to hyperventilate.

He doesn’t want to be touched. He never wants to be touched. The hot sting behind his eyes is less embarrassing and more infuriating; how he is seventeen years old and still can’t keep himself together.

“I will have none of the usual disrespect from you, young man.” Oleander’s voice cuts cold as ice. “Byron may have let you run amok and speak back to him, but I will not tolerate it.”

Laurie matches her gaze, his jaw tight and that mocking smirk playing with one corner of his mouth. “Okay.” But even agreement from him sounds like a sarcastic joke.

Oleander narrows her eyes. “I have waited decades to take my rightful place in Hazelthorn and I will be damned if I let anyone snatch this from me. I will put this decrepit estate in order and keep the boy in hand. Come here.” She snaps in Evander’s direction.

He just gapes at her.

“He’s not,” Laurie says flatly, “a dog.”

Oleander glares at Evander in a way that says she’d like to fix him to a board, pins through his wings and chloroform pressed to his mouth. She rakes a long dissecting look over his trembling form and then turns abruptly, snapping her fingers at her skittish assistant instead.

“Have my staff installed in their new quarters.” Her eyes gleam and she seems lost in her own scheming. “Anyone who arrives for the funeral shall be put in, shall we say, the most subpar guest rooms. Just as a reminder of their temporary place on this estate. We will need to hire maintenance to fix up these dour halls. Write that down, Jessica.”

Jessica scribbles madly, the phone tucked between her chin and shoulder as hold-music drifts from the speaker. “Of course, ma’am. A brilliant idea.”

“I have so much to do.” Oleander sighs loudly. “Byron’s selfishness has allowed this estate to fall apart, but I shall have tea before I commence fixing everything.”

The instinct is primal, the way Evander pushes from the wall with panic flooding his eyes, his tongue frozen to the roof of his mouth. Only Laurie notices. Evander assumes he’ll get a mocking smirk, since no one believes him about the poisoning anyway, but instead Laurie clears his throat.

“You might want to avoid the tea,” he says. “It’s got … weevils.”

Oleander is stabbing her way to the door and she waves him off dismissively. “I brought my own. As if I’d touch the tea leaves here anymore. Jessica, I feel like matcha.”

“Right away, ma’am.” Jessica tucks her head low and scurries out after her tornado of an employer, who is currently pounding down the north wing hallway and complaining about every darkened nook and mold-furred painting and how they desperately need to modernize.

Tension leaks out of Evander, his bones watery and his chest aching from breaths held too long. But the shock of what she said has settled.

“She knows about the poisoned tea,” Evander says. “Did you hear that? ‘As if I’d touch the tea leaves here anymore.’ She literally said anymore.”

Laurie shifts, his face unreadable. “She wasn’t here.”

“But she could’ve sent the tea,” Evander says. “She came to Hazelthorn knowing she wouldn’t be drinking anything from the kitchen, but she shouldn’t even know about the poison if Dawes is telling everyone it was an aneurysm.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s a demon.” Laurie rubs absently at his brace. “Anytime I’m shipped off to her, it’s like living in hell. Grandfather banned all our relatives from Hazelthorn, not just her, but she acts like it was a personal attack.”

“So, she has motive for murder.” Evander is trying not to pace and flick his fingers, bad habits he’s been told to quell, but Laurie doesn’t cast him any scornful looks. “She talks about Hazelthorn like she’s owed it, like she’d do anything to have it.”

Evander hurries to his bed and snatches up a fresh index card. He dashes Oleander’s name onto the thick cardstock and thumbtacks it to the wall before he realizes Laurie has drifted over to view the scrunched-up papers of neurotic ramblings covering the bed.

He looks at the wall with its growing mind-map of evidence. “One of these for me?” he says with fake pleasantness.

Evander hesitates and then points to Laurie’s index card. The name has been gone over twice in thick, black marker, as if he has an addiction to the curves and angles of Laurence Lennox-Hall.

“Nice.” Laurie’s eyes are half-lidded and his drawl turns sarcastic. “I’m not playing detectives with you.”

“Good thing,” Evander says coolly, “I didn’t ask for your help.” Though he had been talking as if Laurie would be interested in his deductions. A mistake.

They aren’t friends.

They hate each other.

And Laurie is one of his top suspects. He’s not exactly going to offer to solve a murder if he’s covering his own tracks.

But at least with the way Laurie is talking, it sounds like he finally believes that there was a murder. That feels like something.

“I’ll go see how much of this historical house Oleander is planning to destroy,” Laurie says. “Have at it, Sherlock.”

But a sudden, ravenous urge pulls out of Evander’s chest and he cuts in front of Laurie to block his exit. It’s a reversal of that moment in the greenhouse, though Laurie’s reaction is only a raised eyebrow of dry amusement.

“Tell me the truth.” Evander’s words are sandpaper against his throat, and he’s gripping the marker so hard it leaves indents in his skin. “Why did you try to kill me that day? What did I—What did I ever do to you?” He hates how his voice cracks in the middle, hates his own wretched desperation.

There’s a flicker of something on Laurie’s face, the smallest crack in his veneer of complacency. Then his expression shutters again, and the bored amusement is back, playing with the corner of his mouth.

“You don’t remember?” he says casually.

“No.” Evander does his best not to snarl. “I still don’t have any memories before the—attack. I deserve to know why it happened.”

“There is no why,” Laurie says easily. “We played a game in the garden, you and me, and it went wrong and you got hurt.”

“So you tried to bury me alive to cover your crimes?” Evander stares at him, wanting—needing—to see guilt, remorse, anything.

But Laurie only stuffs one hand into his pocket, unbothered. “Sure. Something like that.”

What did Evander expect, anyway? That he would find loose threads in the flawless facade of Laurence Lennox-Hall and tug until the edges unraveled and showed the raw and tremulous truth beneath?

he’s lying he’s lying he’s lying

Maybe, but Evander can’t grab Laurie’s jaw and squeeze until bone cracks and truth slips out between the ivory splinters. He is drawn to him, repelled by him, and he can’t let this go.

“Why cover it up?” His voice is hoarse. “What game were we playing? If it was just some stupid mistake, why not run for help? I was screaming and you filled my mouth with dirt.”

Finally, Laurie’s smile drops. “Because whenever I fucked up, Grandfather would beat the living shit out of me as a kid. So.”

Silence closes over the room like a fist.

Evander presses his back to the wall next to his index cards of suspects. He doesn’t know how to fit this information against the bloody throb of his heart. It’s a lie. Mr. Lennox-Hall was nothing but kind to him, gentle as he smoothed back Evander’s sweat-slick hair during a raging fever or lifted him into bed after he fell out during an episode.

“I was ten,” Laurie adds, his eyes flicking around the room as if anything is more interesting than Evander’s discomfort. “My parents had just died. I wasn’t making the most logical decisions.”

“You were grieving … So you took it out on me.” Evander can barely get the words out.

Laurie shrugs one shoulder and then leans in suddenly, placing his good hand on the wall beside Evander’s head. They are much too close, personal space invaded, and Evander sucks in a breath, trying to make himself smaller. Get away get away—But part of him doesn’t want to. If this is intimidation, two can play this game.

He glares at Laurie with hot defiance and thinks, for only a second, of pushing into him until the force of their collision makes him back off. But Evander isn’t yet that brave.

He also can’t help but notice Laurie didn’t say what game they had been playing.

“Just so you know,” Laurie says, his voice gone low and smoky, “that day in the garden? I wasn’t the only one at fault.” He twists his arm slightly to show his brace. “You’re the one who tore my tendon out with your teeth.”

A slow chill spreads up Evander’s spine, skeletal leaves dancing along his skin. He can’t think around the brambles growing sharp and wild in his head.

Laurie pushes away and strolls toward the exit, nonchalant and unaffected. He glances over his shoulder just once before disappearing out the door.

“Add your own name to the murder wall, Evander.”

A stagnant quiet is left in Laurie’s wake and Evander is alone with a bouquet of burned-up memories clutched in his fist as he stares at his index cards.

Another lie. It has to be. He didn’t do that.

But suddenly he can taste it again—lurid white tendon caught between his teeth as blood slicks his tongue, lush and wicked. And lovely.

PAST

There is a little boy in the garden, white fairy foxglove petals caught in his muddy curls and blood clotted on his tongue. A gash crevices the side of his scalp, matting hair down like he’s been swimming in sticky cherry syrup, and beside him on the ground lies a shovel. The edge is slicked red. He doesn’t remember anything before this.

Before he was face down in the soil.

Before his head felt too heavy to hold.

Before agony was chewing through his body.

The world is a cracked-open glass globe, shattered edges cutting him each way he turns. He can’t get up, can’t see through the streaks of vicious red slashing his vision and making his eyes roll to the sky. This is what it is to be awake: pain that eats. He is a hollowed-out gourd of a boy-shaped thing, pawing at the soil as he drags himself away.

He must get away. That’s all that matters.

Then two small hands wrap around his ankles.

The little boy screams, mind condensed into a rabid, animal thing, all teeth and terror as he snarls and thrashes, and he is at odds with the gentle calm of the garden, the trill of bluebirds and finches and the soft hush of the wind through the laurel hedgerows. Stone walls woven with ivy and honeysuckle box them in, and everywhere green grows in slashes of furious life, the color so loud it hurts his ears. Something is wrong.

Or perhaps it is him who is the discordant note, his blood pooling in the dirt of a place that is meant to be lovely.

It doesn’t feel lovely.

The ground feels like it’s full of teeth.

He is dragged ruthlessly toward a shallow grave by a boy with hair of butter gold, his face dirty and tear-streaked. It is just the two of them out here. Though somewhere in the distance he hears the shout of “Laurie? Laurence.” As if this golden boy is not where he should be.

The little boy’s head is a gnarled, root-locked mess of pain and fear and nothing else, nothing else, as if everything he knew has bled out the gash in his temple. Blood stuffs up his ear, his nose. He chokes, snot and tears racking his small chest, and he must look a pathetic creature as Laurie rolls him into the hole he dug.

The little boy curls in the hole as his screams turn into a thickened, wet slurry and slide sideways out his mouth.

Laurie is a smudge of gold in his periphery as he grabs the shovel and struggles to scoop soil. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just—I wanted to play with you.”

The first scoop of dirt hits the little boy in the face and he cries out. He should stand, fight, claw out his enemy’s eyes, but he doesn’t know how to get his legs underneath himself.

Laurie is all scabbed knees and a runny nose, his hair fluffy as clouds and his skin sun-kissed by summer. He gives up with the shovel and kneels by the grave, breathless as he surveys the wretched tangle of the bloody little boy.

There is no guilt on his face.

He is as luminous as a fallen god.

“Sorry,” he whispers again, and shoves more dirt into the grave, his hands slicked to the elbows in blood. “I can’t let Grandfather see you.”

It’s too late. The voice booms from over the garden wall again, and Laurie jumps and casts a wide-eyed look of terror over his shoulder.

“Laurie! If I have to call you one more goddamn time—”

And then again,

“LAURENCE.”

It is an unforgiving voice that cracks like river stones slammed together. Footsteps crunch gravel, moving fast, and it seems they are about to be found, both of them, in this terrible game they play.

The little boy hauls air into his silt-filled lungs, his body loose and serpentine as he puts all his energy into struggling once more. He screams.

Laurie flops onto his stomach so he can reach into the shallow grave and pin the little boy down. He leans in so far their foreheads nearly touch.

Their eyes lock.

The fairy foxglove is all in the little boy’s mouth now, green tendrils framing his face and pulling at his bloody lips. Around him the earth has grown moist, the smell of rich loam suffocating as Laurie presses him down, down. Mud sucks at his spine and his skinny ankles tangle with old roots.

It feels as if he’s being pushed into a mouth, consumed.

He whimpers, a hand flailing uselessly. He is looking for something to hold on to. Something to save him. He wants to get out.

Old rusty hinges yawn, a gate opening. Quick footsteps crunch across the gravel.

“Answer me when I call for you. Where are you?”

But Laurie is focused only on the grave and he leans in even farther, his breath like sun-warmed strawberries and fresh-cut grass.

“No matter what happens,” Laurie whispers, blood freckling his round cheeks, “remember your name is Evander and you love me best.”

He is foolish to use love, as if a word like that can hold truth when someone else’s blood is in his mouth.

The little boy is full of decayed, windswept rage as he lunges, sinking his teeth into Laurie’s arm.

It isn’t a simple bite. It is ravaging and deep. It is thorns hooked under soft ligaments, it is veins ripping like wriggling red worms.

Tendons tear between the little boy’s too-sharp teeth.

Laurie is screaming and screaming.

A pleasant, warm buzz begins in the pit of Evander’s belly. He is mollified, he is sated. His jaw locks and wrist bone crunches and the tip of his tongue coils around a luscious, slippery tendril. All he thinks is how he didn’t want to be left alone and now he won’t be. Laurie can’t get away.

He is still thinking this when a tall shadow snatches up the shovel and looms over the grave. There is a growling shout, Laurie’s shrill cry, then the blotting out of the sun.

The shovel comes down, brutal and swift.

NINE

Mold threads between the porcelain cracks in the bathtub like black veins. Evander has stared so long that one has curved into a gangrenous smile, its lips cracked to show moss grown between its teeth. The tub is empty. He is mostly clothed. His sweater puddles on the dark tiles like a shed exoskeleton, clover and snapped twigs still caught in the unraveling knit, and his slender fingers grip each side of the clawfoot tub as if he is about to be sucked under.

Like that day in the garden, the grave, the soil, the blood—

Evander looks down at his bare torso, at the surgery scars that map his ribs in white puckers and the ropey line that runs from hip to hip. A severing. As if someone tried to chop him in half.

Not Laurie.

The memory has an indistinct quality to it, fogged like breath on a cold windowpane. He’s trying to remember how long it’s been since Laurie strolled out of his room without a care, as if he didn’t just riffle fingers through Evander’s head and then leave him with the cleanup. He doesn’t remember taking off his shirt. Or getting in the tub. If he touches the empty space in his head like a tongue to a sore molar, it throbs, and his stomach turns over with a sick slosh.

He lost time.

An episode.

He should expect it when he hasn’t had his meds in days, when he’s overwhelmed and overtired. He’s abused the fragile limits of his ill body, spent his energy like gold coins and demanded too much of muscles that had been close to atrophy. Judging from the shadows hounding the deep green walls of his tiny bathroom, he has lost the rest of the day.

Fretful unease splays heavy across his lungs until he’s breathing too fast, his chest straining as scar tissue stretches. He hates looking at himself. Hates the catastrophe of fused skin. Hates the way he is marked by a history of indelible pain and cratered like an ugly expanse of the moon.

Hates that he doesn’t know if he finally relived a memory. Or if he made it up.

Memories have always been loose things, his past full of holes and his long years of recovery fuzzy thanks to pain and meds, and he’s wound up from trying to piece together clues and not freak out over the way his life has been upended.

He needs to calm down.

But when he touches the tips of his fingers to his lips, he can almost feel the slippery tendon, pinned like a wriggling worm against his incisors.

His mouth waters.

Disgust sweeps across him in a roar and he swallows saliva tinged with bile. He did not just think that. His brain is still soupy from the episode, that’s all.

Footsteps sound outside his cracked open bathroom door and his head snaps up. No. He can’t be seen like this, can’t let his scars be viewed with revulsion. Scrabbling against the smooth curve of the tub, he lunges for his discarded shirt and clutches it over his chest just as the door swings the rest of the way and dim light from his bedroom lamp smears across the tiles.

Laurie leans against the doorframe with that maddening smirk, his arms folded as he takes in the deep green walls, the unlit bronze sconces, the clawfoot tub. He looks elegantly lawless in a deep black suit, a black turtleneck beneath his dinner jacket, his hair artistically swept back. This is a glossy brochure image of a smug boy who feels entitled to the whole world.

But Laurie’s words swirl sickeningly through Evander’s mind: Grandfather would beat the living shit out of me as a kid. Maybe he’s reading Laurie all wrong. Maybe he’s misunderstanding everything.

Laurie raises an eyebrow. “Did you know you’re meant to turn the faucet on if you want a bath?”

Evander decides he still hates this boy.

“Go away,” he mutters.

“You’ve been cordially invited to dinner,” Laurie says. “And by ‘invited,’ I mean the delight that is Great-Aunt Oleander told me to make you presentable. Good news is she brought along a private chef, so we’re upgrading from frozen pizza. Bad news is, well, Great-Aunt Oleander exists.”

Evander slumps back against the tub with a low moan, his body feeling trod over and wrung out. These are usual aftereffects of an episode—except he doesn’t usually lose so much time. Carrington should be hovering over him with meds, ushering him into bed and drawing the curtains so Evander can sink into the velvet oblivion of darkness to sleep it off.

But hunger has the audacity to rear its ugly head and he thinks, perhaps, if he’s going to find real evidence against Oleander, he needs to observe her.

“It’s semiformal by decree of the self-appointed lady of the house.” Laurie drums fingertips on the bathroom doorknob. “I took the liberty of going through your wardrobe and shaking the mothballs out of a suit.”

“Well, un-take the liberty. I don’t want you in my things.” Evander hugs his shirt tighter to his chest.

“Too bad.” Laurie pushes away from the door and disappears, returning with his arms full of a disassembled suit and shiny oxfords. He dumps everything unceremoniously on the grimy tiles and then eyes Evander, calculating. “That’s quite the commitment to modesty.”

Evander tries to breathe very shallowly, his fingers curled hard into the cotton. There must be something murderous in his eyes, because Laurie doesn’t press.

“Try to be quick with the bath,” is all he says. “I’ll wait.”

“You can leave,” Evander snaps. “You’re not lurking in my room while—”

But Laurie slams the bathroom door and Evander is left glowering into the silence. A crawling sensation walks fingers up his throat: the idea of Laurie in his room unattended, continuing to mess with his things. He could storm out there and demand Laurie get out, but his energy couldn’t fill a thimble right now. Surviving dinner needs to be his priority.

Bathing is not the quick task he assumes it will be, due to the fact he’s never run one before and can’t get the temperature right. Carrington would usually do this, would pick out his clothes, return his cleaned laundry, collect his dirty dishes. It feels inaccurate to say he misses Carrington’s terse ministrations and dispassionate care, especially when he still suspects the old butler poisoned the tea, but Evander hates that he struggles with every little task.

A growing jittery unease floods his bloodstream as he dresses and slips on the dinner jacket. He leaves his curls loose and wet.

Stop acting out for attention.

Stop—stop being like this.

Be goddamn normal for once.

He pinches himself, hard, and then leaves the bathroom in a cloud of saffron soap and steam to see what damage Laurie has inflicted on his room.

It’s worse than he imagined.

Laurie is currently lying on his bed, ankles crossed, humming to himself, while he tosses the photo frame of Evander’s parents up in the air and catches it.

Evander storms toward him and snatches the photo frame. He slams it on his side table and seethes down at Laurie. “Don’t touch them. Don’t ever touch them.”

“Okaaaaay.” Laurie looks unfazed as he gives Evander a cool once-over. “You look nice. Shall we frolic to our dinner of torment?”

Evander tugs wretchedly at his cuffs, feeling small and drowned instead of gentlemanly and professional. Laid out on his bed like that, Laurie is the image of suave perfection, smelling of oak and thyme and summer. Evander thinks for a moment of what it would be to unbutton that shirt and fit both his hands around Laurie’s bare ribs, to squeeze and squeeze until he felt the give of bone, the collapse of lungs, Laurie’s soft mouth shaped into a whimper. That would wipe the insufferable smirk off his face.

It’s in Evander’s head again, this sharp-edged memory of his teeth sunk so deep into Laurie’s wrist they hit bone.

He cuts a cautious, sideways glance at Laurie’s brace, but it’s covered by the dinner jacket. Seven years later and their falling-out still haunts his skin.

Evander blinks hard. “Get off my bed. Did you mess with my papers?”

Laurie tosses an idle glance at the scattered notepads and torn paper all over the bed as if it hadn’t even occurred to him to snoop. “Nope. Already told you I don’t care.”

“You’re lying.” Evander deepens his scowl. “You read my notes, didn’t you?”

Laurie makes a mocking show of dragging a finger over his heart. “Cross my heart and hope to die, I would never tell a lie.”

As if. Evander points to the door. “Get off my bed and get out.”

Laurie levers himself up and drifts toward the door while Evander takes a few seconds to settle his parents’ photo back in place. He touches their faces reverently before he snatches up the field guide and hides it under his pillow.

If he survives dinner with a potential poisoner, he’ll finish studying it.

To make sure their mutual disdain is obvious, Evander trails several feet behind Laurie as they wind their way through Hazelthorn. By night, the halls transform into catacombs of gloom, black tar coating the gilded paintings and turning the heavy, velvet drapes into cascades of sooty wax. They walk through parlors of floral wingback chaises and dark cherrywood sideboards, the clutter making every room seem cramped yet vast as if Hazelthorn is proving it could devour everything and still feel hollow.

Laurie pauses impatiently on a landing, so Evander walks even slower in response, brushing his hands across overgrown potted monstera and maidenhair ferns that line the hallway. His clothes feel all wrong, too tight and brutal against his skin, and he keeps picking at his cuffs, his buttons, his collar. The more anxious he gets, the more things become unbearable—like clothes and lights and shrill voices. Sometimes he just wants to crawl out of his own skin and peg it on a washing line to air out for a bit while he takes a long nap somewhere cool and dark. But those are not the sorts of things he can explain out loud. No one cares how he feels anyway.

He drags himself over to Laurie, tugging at his too-tight collar.

“Don’t unbutton it,” Laurie says.

“I’m choking.” Evander can hear the whine in his own voice.

“I don’t care.” Laurie nods toward an alcove where a thin line of light emanates from beneath a shut door. “Dawes is in Grandfather’s office. Been there all day. Supposedly putting his affairs in order.”

“Why do you sound so skeptical?” Evander says before he remembers he doesn’t talk to Laurie.

“Because I don’t trust him.” Laurie rolls his eyes. “One junior lawyer is suddenly in charge of the entire estate? Sure. Not to mention he read out that bullshit will and snatched my inheritance out from under me.”

“Technically,” Evander says, “it was me who snatched—” He stops and frowns at what’s coming out of his own mouth. He really needs to get it together.

“Too true, buddy. Too true. You are the continual source of all my problems.” Laurie leads them to the grand staircase.

Evander needs to be more careful before antagonizing a wolf. The only safety net he has is the assumption that Laurie won’t risk losing Hazelthorn altogether by doing something like pushing Evander down the stairs and breaking his neck.

“Is the conservatory that way?” Evander says.

Laurie has started down the stairs. “Yes, but—”

Evander turns and takes off in the opposite direction, leaving Laurie scrabbling to catch up.

“Evander, wait.”

There’s no explaining it, the pleasure of hearing his name in Laurie’s mouth.

With a speed he didn’t think his exhausted self capable of, Evander hurries around corners until he finds that dim, narrow passageway where the carpet feels eerily like moss. The stained glass door is ahead, ruby accents glowing even in the dark. Not a single light lures him closer, yet he is drawn in as if there’s a hook in his stomach. A thick, molasses dread starts pulsing in his throat. A warning. If he holds his breath, he can almost hear it—all the plants breathing as one, ragged and desperate, as if they’ve been left to die in the suffocating dark.

Laurie hurries forward and grabs Evander by the collar. “Wrong turn.”

“I want to go in.” Except he doesn’t. His fingers tremble as they wrap around the doorknob. “I need to … look.”

For evidence, for clues, for the poisonous plants from the field guide.

But when he twists the knob, it doesn’t budge. Jiggling it does nothing except rattle the glass in its frame. Laurie yanks him backward.

“Before you break down the door,” he says, “let me remind you he’s dead. He’s not in there. He’s goddamn dead and he’s never coming back.” He says it with no inflection, but his fingers are too tight in Evander’s collar.

Before, Evander would have assumed Laurie was trying to be cold, his heart a decayed pulse of derision in his chest, but now he thinks about why Laurie acts like this.

Don’t you dare feel sorry for him.

It’s hard not to.

That pervasive feeling of wrongness curdles in Evander’s stomach as he stares at the door, drawn and repelled at the same time, as if entering might show him a corpse still splayed out on the tiles. Even in the tiny confines of this hall, the smell of loam and fertilizer and green, vile sweetness is choking, and he thinks he sees the outline of green vines pressed against the other side of the glass.

Laurie spins Evander around so fast his breath catches.

“Who locked the door?” he whispers. “Something feels wrong. It feels—”

“Who the hell cares who locked it?” Shadows eat half of Laurie’s face, his eyes turned to molten opals. “Maybe his petty ghost is haunting his petunias. I couldn’t care less.”

“You’re such a liar.” Evander jerks free of Laurie’s grip but instead of shoving away, he takes a furious step closer until they are chest to chest, the dark pressing in furred and heavy around them. “You have a tell when you lie, by the way.”

“What tell?” Laurie sounds dismissive.

“Your face does this thing where—Actually, I won’t say. Helps me to know when you’re messing with me.” Evander keeps his voice level, but anger is there, bristling and alive. “Someone’s keeping me from looking for evidence.”

“Fascinating,” Laurie says. “And you are keeping me from dinner.”

Evander tucks his shaking fists behind his back. “What don’t you want me to find out? Are you hiding something?”

They are too close, this tiny corridor too tight, and yet Laurie only leans back against the wall with his head tilted while he watches Evander through sleepy, half-lidded eyes, as if the palpable frustration means nothing to him.

Then Laurie pushes away from the wall and, for a second, his mouth is very close to Evander’s ear, his breath hot around cold words. “If you start unlocking doors, you might find things you don’t want to see. Or worse, you might wake up.”

“I’m not asleep,” Evander says, but heat prickles along his skin.

“Whatever you say,” Laurie says. “Take me apart if you want, find where I keep all my secrets. But I’m not helping you do it. I don’t care who killed him and I don’t care what you do.”

Evander’s heartbeat skids along the inside of his ribs and he doesn’t know how to name what he’s feeling, this mixture of dread and confusion and electrified hunger. All he knows is that Laurie is playing with him, twisting him in knots for the pleasure of it.

“Liar. You care so much you’re sick with it.” Evander sets each word down as quietly and viciously as he can, and then he shoves past so fast Laurie’s shoulders hit the wall. “Now, show me where the dining room is.”

“You do love telling me what to do,” Laurie mutters behind him.

“And you seem to like to be told.” Slow heat coils down the back of Evander’s neck and he can hardly believe he said that with such cool swiftness, but he’s glad Laurie’s eyes darken with annoyance.

Evander won this round.

He walks quickly, trying to outpace the unmistakable sweet, floral smell of poisonous plants seeping from under the conservatory door.

Laurie collects himself and follows, prickly silence wrapped around him, but when Evander looks back, he notices Laurie’s face has turned into a stone angel above a sepulchre.

He didn’t have a tell before. Now he does.

When he lies, he’s going to work overtime to keep his face still. Which is very useful.

Evander keeps his smile to himself.

TEN

There is something wrong with him, with how hungry he is.

Evander has been trying not to think about it, smothering the flickering panic in the back of his head with soothing platitudes that almost make sense. Withdrawal from his meds has probably stoked some long-suppressed hunger. Or maybe he’s having a growth spurt. He can’t stop thinking about the grooves his teeth would make against a supple, fleshy thing.

When he reaches the formal dining room, he’s wound himself into a twitchy, ravenous ball of electricity and the urge to scrape free of his own body as if it’s a chrysalis is hard to ignore. Get through this dinner. Then he can crawl between cool sheets and lie still until his skin feels less like it’s about to flake off his bones in hot, dry scabs.

Laurie has packed himself back into his box of apathy, as if his mouth hadn’t been inches from Evander’s ear moments before as he whispered, Or worse, you might wake up. He is gasoline poured into Evander’s open mouth of flame, and the worst part is how he likes the taste.

An immense table stretches before them, blackened oak polished to the glossy sheen of a reflective lake, and dozens of thick red candles line the middle with bloody rivulets of wax dripping down their sides. At the far end, Oleander stands abruptly, her chair giving a clawed shriek that makes Evander jump and Laurie flinch. She scowls as she yanks out the seat at the head of the table.

It takes Evander a full minute to understand it’s meant for him.

“Tardiness is unacceptable, Laurence. I’ve told you this before.” Oleander’s pursed lips are slashed in a deep shade of mauve that matches her evening gown. She is a slice of bloodied meat with fangs out, nails tapered to points made for pinning down helpless mice.

“Shockingly,” Laurie says, “it was the little lordling who slowed us down.”

“Do not talk back,” Oleander snaps.

Laurie rolls his eyes and stands aside with a mock bow to let Evander go first.

It feels like a trek to a sacrificial altar. He walks in dead silence, his shoes clacking oddly on the floorboards, as the black table stretches on and on. It could sit thirty people, maybe forty. Above, cobwebbed chandeliers flicker, most of the bulbs blown out under layers of dust, and the deep forest walls make the room seem airless and constricted. Only four places have been laid: white crockery against crisp white napkins, a terrifying amount of forks and knives on each side of the plates, crystal goblets studded with rubies and filled with a sticky, plum-colored wine that clots against the glass.

He sits. Oleander smiles down at him and rests an elongated claw on his shoulder.

“Good boy,” she says, and then takes her seat at his right.

He is ridiculous sitting here at the head of the table. The imprint of Byron Lennox-Hall simmers beside him, insulted at this insubstantial replacement whose fingers are tapping the underside of his chair to soothe some of the fractious energy pulsing through him.

Oleander picks up a tiny silver bell and rings it so hard Evander’s ears sting. A server in a black waistcoat appears out of nowhere with pearly bowls of soup that he lays one by one before each place.

Laurie collapses into his chair to Evander’s left. “Is Jessica eating with us?”

Oleander looks offended. “That setting is for Benedict Dawes, who should be here by now. I need to make sure he’s in contact with my own lawyers to send them a copy of the will. I cannot believe, by the way, that he would do the reading without me present. Where is—Jessica? Jessica!”

A server sets a bowl down before Evander, an oily, unappetizing sheen staring back at him with lumpy white shapes bobbing beneath the surface.

Jessica hurries into the dining room, still clasping her clipboard and looking exhausted already.

“Did you fetch Mr. Dawes?” Oleander barks.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” Jessica says. “He declined the invitation to dinner.”

“I have told you,” Oleander says steadily, “that empowered women do not retreat in the face of failure. Do you not wish to feel empowered?”

Jessica mumbles something that sounds like she would rather quit her job, but she clears her throat and says, “I’ll inquire again.” She drags herself from the room.

“It is impossible to find good assistants these days.” Oleander sniffs and lifts her wine.

It slides into her mouth in a slurry of sluggish gulps and Evander watches in wide-eyed revulsion. No way is he drinking anything at this table.

He chooses a spoon, casts a sideways look at Laurie, who raises one eyebrow, so he picks a different one.

Laurie pokes at his soup with the tip of a silver knife. “What’s in here? The cook’s own sweat and blood?”

Oleander ignores her nephew and zeroes her icy gaze in on Evander, measuring him up like he’s the next course. “I shall hire a valet so you have someone to keep you respectable at all times. He can escort you to and from your room so you don’t get lost.” She casts Laurie a nasty look, and he smiles back, all teeth. “You’re an ill little thing, so I shall take due care of your health.”

Spiders have nested in Evander’s gut and he doesn’t know what to do, what to say to her, so he swallows the first mouthful of soup. As soon as the salty broth hits his tongue, his cavernous hunger roars to life. He’s left breathless by it, frenzied, unable to slow down the dip of his spoon.

Laurie watches him with a complicated frown and taps his knife idly against his wine until Oleander snaps her fingers and the server removes the glass.

The next course is served, a blackberry and feta salad with thin dill-and-salmon crepes twirled into the shape of a rose. Evander eats everything, the sour vinaigrette making his eyes water and the salmon slipping down his throat like a detached tongue. Everything is oily. He has never tasted so many new things all at once.

“You can ask me for anything, Evander.” Oleander reaches out to lay a hand over his, her skin so moist it’s hard to hold back his shudder.

He tries to slide away, but her nails close around his wrist like a vise.

“I shall be what Byron was to you. A guardian. A grandmother.” Her eyes are bright, her voice a low, rusty croon. “I know he was very fond of you and I shall make sure everything remains as it was so you won’t have to worry about the care of this complicated estate and all its tedious demands. You can recover in peace.”

“It’s funny how sick he doesn’t look.” Laurie drums his fingers on the table, his voice a bored drone, but his eyes pin Evander to his chair.

The server whips Evander’s empty dishes away and sets down a plated steak, thick and juicy with salt flakes and thyme crusted on top. He should feel full, but his stomach is a bottomless well.

He can’t remember the last time he ate meat.

“What are you doing?” Laurie says, fake pleasant, but he’s staring directly at Oleander.

She ignores him and leans closer to Evander, her sickly sweet perfume throttling him with roses and bergamot. “As your new guardian, I will take such, such good care of you.”

Suddenly, everything is too much. She is too close, the candles are too hot, the steak is bleeding out on his plate like a freshly cut throat. Sweat beads on his brow and the room gives a sickening spin, but he has to focus.

If he wants to find a killer, he has to ask questions. Talk. Even if he has to reach down into his own lungs and pull each syllable out one by one. Words have always sat like dead moths and dried flowers in his mouth, unheard because no one is ever interested in what he has to say. He is not clever; he is not poetry. He is just a boy who speaks too bluntly when what he wants most is to figure out which pretty, magical words will finally make him understood.

He thinks of a coffin half-buried, crumpled pages of a will sticking out from the cracked-open chest of Byron Lennox-Hall as his decaying skin sloughs off his bones.

Evander tries to breath slowly, steady himself, as his eyes lock on his plate. Don’t look at her. It’s easier this way. “Why did Mr. Lennox-Hall ban you from Hazelthorn? How much money do you have? And are you familiar with any botanical poisons?”

Oleander releases his wrist and draws back with stiff indignation.

Laurie outright laughs. It is a quick, singular sound and it surprises Evander into looking up.

“What impertinent things to say.” Oleander’s nostrils flare. “Who put you up to this?”

They’re well-thought-out questions, actually, and relevant to his investigation, though he’s trying to decide if her hostility can be chalked up to guilt. He should’ve brought his notepad.

He swallows hard, feeling untethered but determined to plow on. “Well, then why do you want to be here so badly? If you’re poor, it makes sense why you want Hazelthorn.”

“I am not—The absolute disrespect!” Oleander cracks a palm against the table and Evander’s bravery scatters as he withers back against his chair.

“You wanted him to talk.” Laurie leans back in his chair, delighted. “Behold, he speaks.”

“Mark my words, Laurence,” Oleander hisses, “you will be receiving firm discipline from me to fix that disrespectful, lazy attitude, or I will pack you off to military school.”

“Sounds fun,” Laurie drawls.

Evander cuts into his steak, knowing he’s holding the knife and fork wrong, but he can’t copy Laurie because he hasn’t touched his plate. Evander is only used to eating oatmeal while perched in his window seat with a book propped open. The steak bleeds in his mouth.

“You want him gone, don’t you, dear?” Oleander all but purrs as she stares down Evander. “I know what he did to you.”

Panic flutters in his chest and he looks at Laurie from the corner of his eye, hating how the candlelight bastes his cheekbones in a high gloss and turns his eyes to liquid, luminous oceans. He is beautiful without trying.

Sweat runs in a straight line down Evander’s chest and he has the mad impulse to strip off his jacket, his shirt, anything to cool down. A sick roil spins his stomach and he should push the steak away, but somehow he’s still hacking at it with a slippery grip on his knife. Blood flecks his knuckles. It’s barely seared. It’s raw. He downs a sliver without chewing.

Then suddenly his plate is being lifted, the server’s white-gloved hand a blurry flash in front of him, and he’s left staring at the empty table, his tongue stained with copper and the fork dangling uselessly from his slender fingers.

“You may have that back,” Oleander says sweetly, “once you answer me with courtesy.”

“You mean, give you the answers you want.” Laurie still hasn’t touched his steak. He slouches in his chair at an indolent angle, one leg draped over the arm, his fingers toying with his knife as his food grows cold. “Why don’t you try striking him across the face, too, Auntie? Heard that works a charm.”

Evander swallows thickly. A throbbing beat marches through his head, each pulse dislodging his focus. He should be analyzing Oleander, questioning her further, but all he can think of is the undercurrent to what Laurie just said. If, perhaps, he is talking about how she treats him.

Fury seeps into Oleander’s eyes. “That’s enough.”

“Stop entertaining the delusion you’re going to keep Hazelthorn.” Laurie sticks his knifepoint into the table and spins it. “You don’t deserve this place and it doesn’t want you. This is my inheritance.” Then he looks straight at Evander and there is something too bright and terrible in his eyes. “I want Hazelthorn. I’ve always wanted Hazelthorn.”

It feels like a threat or maybe an invitation to fight. Maybe Laurie longs for split knuckles and an eye purpled with the imprint of a fist, for pain to drown out the apathy that smothers his lungs.

Evander’s breathing too fast, his hands trembling around his cutlery. The fact that all he can think of is getting his plate back is disgusting. This isn’t him. But his brain feels sucked out like the moist flesh within an oyster shell, and all he manages to say is, “Laurie can stay. I … I want him to stay. Please can I eat? I’m sorry.” The last part is a whisper, in case that’s what she wants to hear.

Oleander nods to the waiter to return Evander’s plate, and his relief is palpable as he hurries to saw off another strip of meat congealing in its own oily juices.

“See, is that so hard? Respect is all I ask for.” Then she snaps her fingers at Laurie. “As for you, leave my table. You can go to bed without dinner.”

“With pleasure.” Laurie scrapes back his chair. “Try not to swallow Evander all at once. I have a feeling he’s the kind of wishbone that will stick in your throat.”

He walks out with careless disregard, one hand tucked into his pocket, the other hanging limply at his side. Evander doesn’t know why he didn’t consider all of this before: a cut tendon, fingers constantly curved against the hard confines of the wrist brace, a scream that went on for eternity. Understanding comes in a quicksilver rush.

Laurie never uses his left hand for anything.

He couldn’t cut his steak and he’d never ask for help.

Oleander ordered this meal to be served knowing Laurie couldn’t eat it.

A snarl of a smile stretches Oleander’s lips. “Evander, look at me. Evander.” Demand tightens her voice. “I said look at me.”

But he’s staring at his empty plate, wondering if he can lick it, wondering if he’s about to vomit or ask for more. Red wax spills from the candles and pools on the table, and his face stretches like an eyeless ghoul in the reflection of the over-polished oak. He is a distortion, he is a wildness.

He will not lose Hazelthorn to any of them.

It’s his now.

This is all his.

He decides it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, and licks his plate.

ELEVEN

Sleep feels like a risk, an invitation for dreams to slide fingers dipped in viscid tar into his ears and scream into his paralyzed face, so Evander decides to read. A stack of musty old detective books tips over on his window seat cushions as he powers his way through one and then the next, a refresher on how to extract confessions and analyze clues. The fact they were written in the 1880s isn’t super helpful. But he’s doing something that isn’t spiraling or thinking about poison or replaying that threadbare memory of the shovel coming down down—
downdowndown

He dozes while paging through the field guide, but as soon as the decrepit cuckoo clock in the corner registers 7:00 a.m., he decides the hour is appropriate.

He goes hunting.

Opening his bedroom door and stepping out into the murky north wing hall still grips him with an intoxicating thrill. No one snaps at him to stop. Shoves him back into his room. Forces him to lie down on his bed and be quiet, just be quiet. He is a thing unlocked, unfettered, and he can feel his tattered moth wings tearing free of their pins and leaving only the imprint of himself behind.

Evander wanders down hallways with his breath half-held, reveling in how the early morning sunlight leaves golden thumbprints on the carpet. Summer is already warm and untasted against the windows, and dust motes swirl when he brushes past heavy drapes. He has dressed carefully in a button-down and waistcoat, his belt done up tight and hair caught up in an elastic, everything neat to mask the way he is overtired and jumpy, strung out from lack of sleep and the constant churn of anxiety in his stomach. In his back pocket, he stuffs his notepad for deductions. Time to work.

He peers into parlors and studies and libraries, the books so old that the spines flake off at a touch. Potted plants are crammed in every corner, monstera and philodendrons and pothos, their tiny roots attached to the wallpaper as they grow toward the ceiling. They don’t seem to mind the dark corners, the suffocating gloom, which doesn’t seem normal. When he steps over tiny green shoots that have busted free of their old ceramic pots and rooted into the carpet, he wonders if they’re looking for something.

A way out, maybe. Or a way farther in.

It takes a while to find the correct wing of the house, his explorations taking him through rooms stuffed with extravagant art and grand pianos and luxurious but dusty armoires until he finds it.

Laurie’s room.

His presence is spelled out in the pure chaos littered across the floor: suitcases open and clothes strewn everywhere, shoes piled by the door, dirty plates stacked atop a glossy laptop, the massive four-poster bed a mussy nest of tangled sheets. The room is triple the size of Evander’s, the wallpaper lined with dark rosebuds instead of fauns, but it still feels like a guest room. There’s no hint as to who Laurie is, what he likes, what he thinks. But he’s lived here for the last seven years, the same as Evander. Sure, he spends most of the year at boarding school, but Evander spends half his time sick in bed and he still manages to make his room feel cozy and lived in and his. Either Laurie’s hiding part of himself—or he was never allowed to feel at home here. Perhaps not anywhere.

He hesitates, his hand still on the doorknob, wondering if he dares go in and snoop while Laurie isn’t here.

Then he hears something. Soft at first. There’s running water, a sharp intake of breath. Pain bleeds through the sound and Evander is drawn to it in a primal way he doesn’t understand.

A slim door leads to an attached bathroom, left ajar for steam to escape in a mottled haze. Evander creeps toward it, his chest tight enough that his ribs feel ready to buckle. He stays close to the wall as he peers in.

Laurie’s back is to the bathroom door, his shirt discarded and bare spine a curved ridge. He’s bent over the bathroom sink where the faucet streams water so hot that steam has pulled a cotton cloud over him.

His left arm is plunged under the faucet.

And he’s crying.

It’s a rough, uneven sound, his tears cut from wild seas and broken skies, all the usual apathy and sardonic quips stripped. This is a moment so raw and skeletal it feels wrong to see.

Evander doesn’t leave.

He drinks it in. He eats it. He wants to watch.

“—fuck,” Laurie is whispering, agony slitting his voice in half. “I’m so, so sick of this. I’m so—” He cuts off, a spasm shivering all the way down his bare spine.

Then his body tilts and Evander can see more.

The brace has been removed. Laurie’s wrist looks like a bent claw, so twisted in on itself that his fingers touch his forearm. It shouldn’t be possible for bone and ligament to bend like that, to curl so tight and stiff that agony has written itself into the strained muscles. As Evander watches, Laurie tries to massage it straight only to choke on a sob.

Evander did this to him.

He’s trembling from holding still, guilt an overturned jar in his chest. He needs to remember more from that day when they were ten. Laurie clearly did something first and Evander fought back. He had to. He was going to die.

Laurie has folded in half, his forehead resting on the sink, and he whispers, “I can’t.” He sounds so much younger.

Evander backs away carefully, picking his way around wicker hampers of dirty laundry and unzipped suitcases. He returns to the hallway, his hands shaking as he shuts the door without a sound and backs up until he can no longer feel the humid steam beading on his forehead. He’s breathing too fast. He needs to slow down, slow down. But he saw Laurie as he was not meant to.

Vulnerable.

If he could dig fingernails into the sides of Laurie’s face and peel back the mask, he would. He would core him like a pear and throw away the soft, rotted skin until he saw him as he really is: horrible and beautiful and real.

Tucked into an alcove beside a pedestal displaying a marble bust, Evander slowly counts to five hundred. Then he retraces his steps and knocks loudly on Laurie’s door.

It takes a moment before it cracks open to reveal a sliver of Laurie’s guarded face, though his expression instantly shifts to something complicated when he sees Evander.

“Didn’t realize you knew where my room was,” he mutters.

Evander yanks his notepad from his back pocket and clicks his pen. “I need to ask you some questions.”

Laurie frowns. “Right now? I said I wasn’t helping you.”

“Actually, you said I could dig up your secrets.” What he’d said was, Take me apart if you want, though it feels too intimate to repeat out loud.

“Did I say at the ass crack of dawn?” Laurie sounds more than a little frosty.

Evander remains expressionless. “You didn’t not say it.”

Laurie rolls his eyes and steps aside, the door opening wider so Evander can slip through and pretend he’s never been in here before.

He tries to keep his face neutral, his mouth a thin, businesslike line, anything to hide his fluttering heartbeat. Show nothing. Feel nothing. It’s better this way, better that Laurie never know Evander has seen him undone.

But Evander isn’t sure what to do about the small thread of sympathy stretching inside his chest. He understands what it is to be in pain and fall apart alone because no one cares. He snatches glances at Laurie, noting the return of the slim black brace on his wrist. He’s still half-dressed, his pajama pants low on his hips, and he throws himself on his bed and starts scrolling his phone. The only evidence of his pain is feverishly damp hair from the steam and a glassy brightness to his eyes.

Focus on figuring out the murderer. That’s all Evander should be doing. He needs to tuck his mess of thoughts about Laurie into a box. But instead he stares at the bed, knowing he shouldn’t want to lie in the Laurie-shaped space between sheets and quilts. He shouldn’t want to feel the ridges of Laurie’s spine under his fingertips.

“So what kind of interrogation is this?” Laurie doesn’t look up from his phone. “Also, don’t try questioning Oleander again. She will go ballistic.”

“So she has a lot to hide.” Evander scrawls on his notepad. “Much like you.”

Laurie lowers his phone an inch and watches Evander with a guarded frown. “This feels like anything I say will be held against me.”

Evander shoots him a disapproving look. “I’m holding everything against everyone at this point.”

Laurie rolls his eyes again.

“I can’t figure out who killed your grandfather,” Evander says, trying not to sound stressed while definitely being stressed, “without information. Like, when did he lock everyone out of the estate? And why? Why did he keep you?”

“Because,” Laurie says, with a long-suffering sigh, “no one else wanted me.”

“Shocking,” Evander deadpans, “when you have such a charming personality.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.” Laurie looks back at his phone, sinking deeper into his mounds of pillows. “My entire family tree is full of selfish dickholes who have dollar signs where their hearts should be. Grandfather doesn’t like them leeching off him. I mean, he barely lets me live here.”

“So there’s zero percent chance anyone else was on the estate the night of the attack?” Evander says. “Just you and me and Carrington?”

“Yup.” Laurie pops the P, still absorbed in his phone.

Evander starts pacing, his frown deepening. “Except how would you know? This house is huge. It would be totally possible to live in one of the forgotten rooms and no one would know—”

“Yeah, that’s supremely creepy.”

“I have to think,” Evander says tersely, “about all options.” But what he’s truly thinking of is his door yawned open wide in the night when he swore it was closed.

“Grandfather wouldn’t have let someone sneak in,” Laurie says. “He’s extremely private and hates people.”

It’s now that Evander realizes Laurie is speaking in present tense, as if despite all his dismissive snark, he also hasn’t fully accepted his grandfather is dead.

“He wouldn’t know when he was always away.” Evander starts poking about the room, surreptitiously lifting suitcase lids and then closing them fast when he sees underwear.

It takes him a full minute to notice Laurie hasn’t responded, and frustration makes him stomp closer to the bed and look down at the loose tangle of limbs and lazy, half-lidded nonchalance that is Laurie. He is elegant against white sheets; his skin is milk-smooth, his stomach slim. This is a body carved for summers and carelessness. No knobby rib bones. No mottled scabs and random bruising. Evander pretends he isn’t jealous, pretends he doesn’t wish he looked like that.

He has looked too long.

Laurie doesn’t seem to notice. He lets his phone rest on his chest and starts pulling at his lower lip, looking very steadily at the roof of his musty canopy bed.

“Evander,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that’s caught between wariness and resignation.

“What?” Evander snaps.

“There were no business trips.” Laurie sighs and rubs the corner of his eye.

Evander scoffs. “You were at boarding school, how would you know—”

Laurie sits up very suddenly and Evander has to take a step away from the bed so they don’t touch. “Because I do know,” he says, low and urgent. “You’re the one always locked in your room. And, sorry—but you’re the only one who was told there were business trips. Grandfather was a massive paranoid recluse. He never left the estate. He was too scared someone would sneak in here and—” He cuts off. “Well, mess with Hazelthorn when he wasn’t looking.”

A low, sick pounding has started up behind Evander’s eyes, and a sweet, coppery tang fills his mouth that he can’t swallow back.

“You’re lying.” His teeth clench.

Laurie levels a careful look at him. “I don’t have any reason to lie.”

“But then why wouldn’t he—” The words feel too sour to let out, too whiny and needy and sad.

Why wouldn’t he visit me more? Why wouldn’t he let me out if he was home? Why did he need to lock—

But he can’t let himself fall down that rabbit hole, so he sets his jaw and pretends to flick through his notepad of messy scrawls as if a new clue will materialize out of nothing. All he’s uncovering are more questions.

“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” Laurie adds, his voice returning to the usual indifference. “Is the interrogation over? I need to get dressed and find food before Oleander bans me from the kitchen forever because she likes to see me suffer.” He heads for one of his suitcases, rummaging around before he has to stop with a wince, his left arm curving into his chest to protect his brace from being jolted.

He doesn’t need Oleander to make him suffer. He’s always hurting.

Evander firmly redirects himself away from softening toward this merciless boy. The pendulum swing of emotions is making him ill.

“I need to talk to Carrington,” Evander says. “He knows everything there is to know about the estate.” And then he can demand to know if it was true; if Byron Lennox-Hall left Evander to decay simply because he didn’t care.

no one cares and you know it, you’ve always known it, you’re here because you’re a legal liability and they probably don’t want you to sue them for nearly dying in their garden, and sure they keep you but they don’t love you because who would love an odd, sickly, crazy boy like—

“I’ll call the hospital for you,” Laurie says, still picking through his suitcase. “But you only get one favor. And try to question the old man delicately so he doesn’t have a stroke.”

“I’m delicate—”

“Only in looks, Thumbelina,” Laurie says.

Evander straightens to glare at him. “I am not that short.”

“You’re barely pushing five three.”

“I could still grow.”

Laurie says nothing, and Evander watches carefully at the way his breathing has picked up, how the tips of his fingers are white as they press hard against the confines of the brace. He must be in agony right now, forcing those shrunken ligaments to stretch.

Evander makes a wild effort to shove everything aside and focus, again, on his case. “So. Why did you get thrown out of your old school?”

“Call it academic probation,” Laurie says flatly.

“So you were too lazy to go to class?”

A muscle ticks in Laurie’s jaw, but his voice doesn’t change. “Something like that. Wickwood is a shit school anyway and it’s in the middle of godforsaken nowhere. Weird, creepy stuff kept happening and every time I asked Grandfather if I could transfer, he said no because he hates me.”

“When’s your birthday?” Evander says.

“Two weeks ago.”

“What’s your full name?”

“Laurence Evan…” There’s a pause, Laurie finally finished selecting his clothes. He sighs and then says, “Alexander Lennox-Hall.”

“Did you get tired in the middle of your pretentiously long name?” Evander knows he’s being snippy, but he doesn’t care.

“I did, actually, thanks for asking.”

Evander glances at his notes. “What would you save in a fire?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“How would you describe your relationship with your grandfather?”

Laurie hurls his clothes on the bed, his mouth a flat line. “Yeah, I’m over the Sherlock production now.”

Evander jots a note on his pad.

“What did you just write?” Laurie has an edge to his voice.

“Just logging every time you avoid a question,” Evander says calmly. “And how suspicious it is.”

“Jesus Christ,” Laurie mutters. “I’m changing. Close your eyes or don’t. I couldn’t care less.”

Evander has exactly half a second to process this before Laurie has hooked a thumb into the waistband of his pajama pants and started pulling them down. Panic roars to life in Evander’s chest and he hurls himself across the bed to plummet to the floor on the other side. He sits there, his eyes squeezed shut and notepad crushed to his chest, and listens to the soft thump of fabric hitting the floor. Laurie is unclothed. He’s definitely doing this to make Evander uncomfortable enough to flee for good.

Evander starts doing deep, measured breathing, as he survives these panicky minutes of torture.

A lump of cloth smacks him in the side of the head.

He looks up startled to see Laurie smirking down at him, wearing tight red shorts and an expensive loose linen shirt. Only two buttons are done up, a deep V gaping to show the curve of his chest. Either he can’t do buttons one-handed or he’s continuing his reign of casual menace.

In Evander’s lap now lies the still-warm pair of pajama pants.

He hurls them off as if they’re alive.

“You’re a hilarious little man,” Laurie says.

“And you’re—you’re annoying,” Evander shoots back hotly.

“Iconic rebuttal. Good job.”

Evander tries to flatten his bent notepad. “Were you this mean to me when we were younger?”

No answer comes, and it takes him a moment of sorting out scrunched pages to realize Laurie isn’t going to say anything. Evander casts a scowl up at him, but Laurie has an odd look on his face. It vanishes and he flops backward onto the mattress to grab his phone, nearly kicking Evander in the head in the process.

“You sure are missing a lot of memories,” he says, unfazed.

Only half his life. Evander snaps his pen cap a few times to center himself. “They might come back. Some are.”

“Remember faster,” Laurie says. “Then you could answer a lot of your own questions.”

“Or you could just tell me.”

“Ask the right ones and I might.”

He is infuriating and insufferable and he knows it. His smile is sudden and self-satisfied, and heat flares across Evander’s ears for unexplainable reasons. If he gets to his feet, he isn’t sure what he might do—to himself or to Laurie—but he’s saved the temptation by Laurie telling his phone to call the hospital, which fascinates Evander, though he’d rather die than admit he is so inexperienced about most technology.

He picks himself up carefully and moves to hover at the end of the bed. Nervous energy has him feeling twitchy, though he doesn’t know why. This is Carrington, the one everyday constant in his life.

He could be a killer.

But he has absolutely no motive. He’s literally in the hospital, unable to cope with the shock of Byron’s death.

Laurie clears his throat. “Hi. Yeah. I’d like to inquire about a patient. An old family friend. We’ve just been through a tragic shock in the family and he was admitted a few days ago … Yes. Oh, of course. His name is…” He frowns at Evander and pulls the phone from his ear. “What the hell is Carrington’s first name?”

“William?” Evander says. “I think.”

“William Carrington,” Laurie says back to the phone. There’s a lengthy pause as his mouth pulls down at the corners. “Oh … Okay.”

Evander is clicking his pen cap on and off, faster and faster, until Laurie ends the call.

“What?” Evander demands. “Didn’t he want to talk to you? Because I—I need to ask him what medications I should be taking.” He doesn’t want any more episodes, is what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t want to relapse.

“Well,” Laurie says slowly, “I can’t talk to William Carrington because they have never heard of him. He was never admitted.”

Evander’s stomach does an odd lurch.

“So the next question is,” Laurie says, “where is our definitely totally innocent old butler?”

TWELVE

This is how it must have been before—the two of them knit inside each other, limbs woven together like fresh, green saplings, lungs breathing as one as they ran through the halls of Hazelthorn. Laurie is in front, moving fast, with Evander behind like a ghost on a string twined through Laurie’s fingers. Their voices spill over dusky corners and dislodge the thick, deadened drapes. It’s like being ten again with stick swords and hollyhock crowns and grass-stained knees and mouths smeared with blackberries from the gardens.

They would have been fervent terrors back then, riotous with life and each other; now they only haunt the places where together they once were lovely.

“Who even told you Carrington was hospitalized, anyway?” Evander is saying.

“Dawes,” Laurie says, “the bastard. Told you he was sketchy. Let’s corner him and you can torment him with one of your fun interrogations.”

“Maybe Carrington was in the hospital and then…” Evander struggles to keep up. “His family took him home?”

“Does he have a family?” Laurie says. “Thought he was bound in servitude to Grandfather—Okay, fine, I’m kidding. Stop looking at me like that. I just think Carrington married his job. Did he even take days off?”

Evander pulls his attention away from the walls lined with ferns, dead leaves flaking onto the carpet from neglect. Without Carrington, no one is caring for the plants.

“No.” Evander skids around a corner after Laurie. “He brought me meals and meds every single day.”

Always in silence, his movements stiff with distaste, his gaze never resting for long on the wretched charge he was forced to tend to—forced for no reason, Evander now realizes. If Byron was in the house, he could have cared for Evander. He just didn’t want to.

It hurts, but in a dulled way, like an unsharpened blade pressed against a throat.

“See, he totally has no family,” Laurie says. “So he probably served the poison tea, stole a bunch of random shit, and then took off. Ta-da, motive.”

They’ve reached the grand staircase, both of them slowing as they descend.

Evander’s smile is slightly smug. “Okay, Watson.”

“I am not Watson.” Laurie genuinely looks offended, but then he pulls up short in the middle of the grand staircase.

They had been too absorbed in each other to notice the massive blackwood front doors have been flung open and several bags are stacked on the floor. The foyer is an imposing introduction to Hazelthorn, a vast cavity with tall, arched ceilings and a massive chandelier that looks ready to drop crystals like shards of ice through unwanted guests. A deep forest-green carpet runner stretches from the foot of the grand staircase to the front door. To stand in the midst of this room is to feel like a leaf, insignificant and blemished, blown into the mouth of Hazelthorn to be toyed with by a heavy, humid tongue before being swallowed.

Laurie slowly continues to the last step and Evander decides to stand behind him. It hits him, how he’s never seen the front doors open before.

He’s also never seen this man strolling in with a thousand-dollar smile and a rolling suitcase.

One of Oleander’s new staff is ready to receive the guest with murmurs of “Welcome to Hazelthorn.”

The guest sweeps forward with arms spread wide in greeting. “Well, if it isn’t the man of the hour!”

The urge to bolt sends electric shocks up Evander’s spine, and he is only held in place by the promise of Laurie’s confusing offer of protection—he crosses his arms and stiffens his stance, surreptitiously turning so his body is a wall between Evander and the world.

“Bane,” Laurie says without inflection. “The cousin I never wanted to see again, how fun.”

Bane has the look of a prepackaged tourist who just stepped off a private jet and is ready to complain about the exotic location. He reeks of new money in tight white chinos and an even tighter silk shirt, aviator sunglasses perched on his blond hair, and a heavy gold watch glinting on a perfectly tanned wrist. Odd scratches line his arm, but he twists so his cuffs cover the scabs. His cologne is a choking haze of something that is probably labeled Adonis Masculinity Dipped in Gold, and he is, overall, too much.

His eyes skim past Laurie to rest on Evander with unmasked hunger. He stretches out a hand, but Evander shrinks into the shadows of the staircase. Laurie stares down at Bane’s hand until he drops it.

Bane casts him an annoyed look and steps sideways to try to see Evander again. “Evander, right? Evander. So, so good to finally meet you. I’ve heard incredible things about you. You’re one impressive kid, no doubt about it.”

Laurie leans against the banister, his eyebrow raised. “Exactly how is he impressive apart from inheriting the old bastard’s billions?”

Sometimes Evander forgets about the money. All he thinks of, all he obsesses over, is owning Hazelthorn.

“Well…” Bane looks like he’s struggling to put actual substance behind the flattery. “He’s a, uh … regular brainiac! Reads all those books and things? Anyway, Uncle Byron was very proud of you and, of course, I am proud to have this chance to meet you.”

Evander is pretty sure his face is undiluted confusion right now while Laurie’s drips with condescension.

“This is Great-Aunt Oleander’s son, Bane Burnett,” Laurie mutters to Evander. “He’s my second cousin or something.”

“The fact is we’re close, close family,” Bane says warmly, then he adds in a dismissive tone, “By the way, I reverted my name back to Lennox-Hall when Mother did after the divorce.”

“Yeah, gotta keep the same name as your rich uncle.” Laurie couldn’t sound more mocking, and Bane narrows his eyes.

“Surprised to see you’re well, Laurence.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I live in hope you’ll meet with an untimely accident.” Bane gives a wolf’s smile. “Hope you haven’t corrupted Evander here with your intolerable pessimism. Is he bothering you, Evander? Feel free to let me know if anything bothers you and I would be more than happy to—”

“You sure brought a lot of luggage for an overnight stay,” Laurie says.

Bane’s snarl is masked as a smile. “It will be longer than ‘overnight,’ but that’s not all mine. Unfortunately, Azalea just arrived. I think she’s still out there flirting with her driver.”

He says the name like an infected splinter has been lodged in his gum, and when Evander peers around Laurie to count the stylish suitcases, he instead sees straight out the wide open double doors.

With his bedroom facing the back of Hazelthorn and the riotous gardens, Evander barely even remembers what the front of the estate looks like. From this angle, he can make out the long stretch of driveway lined with hazel trees that leads to wrought iron gates strangled in ivy and honeysuckle. Marble fauns flecked with lichen stand like eerie sentinels. The part that confuses Evander is how several white vans are parked beyond the gates. Indistinct blurs of reporters rush around trying to snap pictures as the iron gates swing closed on an automatic mechanism.

Disgust shadows Laurie’s face. “Is that the press?”

“What do you expect?” Bane has an obnoxiously loud voice. “A billionaire passed away suddenly and an unknown heir was gifted the crown. People eat this up. We should be offering exclusive interviews with Evander to top publications. Get a crew in here for a tour of the estate and grab that attention while we can.” He bounces up a few steps and tries to get in Evander’s space.

“You know why we’re never doing that.” There’s a sharpness in Laurie’s voice, apathy gone, and he pushes away from the banister and shoves Bane back.

The vicious crackle of anger between them is unmistakable.

“Still an ungrateful little brat, I see,” Bane hisses.

“At least I’m not past forty,” Laurie says evenly, “and still sponging off my mother while dating teenage models.”

Bane’s voice drops several degrees. “I can’t wait until you get what’s coming to you.”

Laurie’s smile could cut ice. “Likewise.”

Evander’s heartbeat crawls up his throat and he has the sudden, suffocating urge to flee back into the north wing, where life was a lot simpler and he didn’t have to see the rotten underbellies of Lennox-Halls. He has no idea how to feel about Laurie protecting him. His head is a waspish, buzzing mess, but a sliver of curiosity locks onto the way everyone seems to unequivocally hate Laurie.

Not that Laurie does much to mitigate those reactions or make himself likable. In fact, he seems to go out of his way to be unpleasant, but a small part of Evander can’t ignore the part where Laurie’s truest crime seems to be telling the truth, brutal and honest and scathing, instead of simpering around and folding himself into shapes his rich relatives want to see. It must hurt him, though, the constant hate and rejection from his own family.

Evander needs to analyze all of this, write it down and understand.

But maybe the thing he truly wants to understand is how he, too, can hate this boy and yet long to use his own bones to build a shelter around Laurie’s raw, bleeding heart. It is unfathomable to feel that way. Yet he can’t make himself stop.

There’s more commotion on the front stairs as another Lennox-Hall sweeps inside in a cloud of floral perfume. She’s decked out in a flattering black dress with a plunging neckline, a wide-brimmed black hat netted with a pearl-beaded veil over her face. She owns the word elegance. She takes off her hat and holds it out as if a hatstand will materialize at her convenience. The footman obliges while she pets down her immaculate chignon and doesn’t spare him a glance.

Then she sees Evander.

“Oh.” Her hand goes to the pearls at her throat. “Oh. He’s gorgeous. He’s simply—Oh, the face of a pre-Raphaelite god. And the hair! The cheekbones! This is too much to bear.”

An odd heat flushes Evander’s ears and decides to recalibrate his definition of the word terrifying. Because this woman surely is just that as she glides toward the staircase, framing him with her hands as if she’s envisioning how he’d look hung upon the wall with the rest of the estate’s musty art collection.

“Darling.” She pushes aside Laurie, who grunts as he’s overbalanced, and she takes both of Evander’s cold hands in her own. “I am Azalea Adeline Lennox-Hall, and I should very much like to get to know you better. To be here for you in this difficult time.” She leans in so far he can see straight down the front of her dress.

He attempts to look everywhere else, his face burning.

“Hi, Auntie,” Laurie says, his voice pure acid.

“Laurie. How are you, dear?” She couldn’t sound more rote in her acknowledgment of her nephew, her eyes never leaving Evander. “Your name is a mouthful of heaven, Evander. Evander. Your grief, my darling, is my grief. Uncle Byron was a man of philanthropic legend and wonder and we shall all miss him dreadfully.”

“I do love your mourning attire,” Laurie says. “Lean in a little more, Aunt Azalea, I don’t think Evander can see everything yet.”

This makes her straighten and release Evander, placing a delicate white palm to her throat. “Laurie, what an uncouth thing to say. You must try to be nicer.”

“I’m surprised Mother hasn’t knocked some sense into him yet,” Bane says nastily, though he only receives an unpleasant sniff from Azalea.

“Why are you here?” she says.

“Why are you here?” he shoots back.

“Why are either of you here!”

Everyone snaps around to look at the top of the grand staircase, where Oleander stands like a jaguar on the prowl in a frothy robe edged in fur. From this height, her glower is monstrous, her disdain rolling down the stairs to smother the newcomers in intimidating scorn. Both Azalea and Bane look skittish and uncomfortable, proving Oleander does, indeed, terrorize everyone.

There are too many people, too much to process, and Evander feels himself slipping sideways, at a loss on how to hold on to his own skin. His lungs fill with dead leaves and the broken corners of sentences he can’t force out. He is outside of himself, a ghost at his own viewing, and he wants to leave but can’t remember how to make his limbs follow commands.

“I told you not to come.” Oleander storms down the stairs, her robe cascading around her.

“I was in town.” Bane waves a hand vaguely. “It felt prudent to pay my respects.”

In town? The sentence cuts through Evander’s daze and he fixates on it. He thought all the Lennox-Hall descendants lived far away, choosing lavish cities instead of sentencing themselves to the tiny rural town nearest Hazelthorn. There’s nothing interesting there as far as he knows. But if Bane has been living nearby all this time, then—

He could’ve had access to Hazelthorn.

“I’m just here for the funeral and to see my darling nephew.” Azalea suddenly reaches for Laurie and wraps him in a python hug while he lets out a surprised oof. “You wouldn’t deny him my love, would you, Aunt Oleander?”

Oleander’s lips peel back in an unfriendly smile. “And I suppose neither of you are here for the delights of the estate?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Azalea clasps a hand over her heart in perfect innocence.

Bane rolls his eyes.

The footman closes the front doors, blocking all views of those white vans and their cameras. The idea they might feed Evander to the press makes him want to vomit.

“Who else is coming for the funeral?” Oleander snaps.

“Well, the rest of your children. Larkspur, Wisteria … Oh, and Father’s cousins, too, I’m sure.” Azalea pats Laurie on the head and then shoves him away.

“God,” Bane says. “Now those are all people you can lock out.”

“I think we should lock you out,” Azalea says, tart and prim.

Evander’s head is swiveling side to side as he tries to follow their bickering, but Laurie takes hold of the front of his waistcoat and yanks him from the staircase. None of the adults seem to care that the key to the fortune is being towed from the room in an uncoordinated flail of limbs.

Laurie doesn’t let go of Evander until they reach an archway that leads deeper into the mansion. Not that Evander minds; he almost likes the grip, the way it grounds him through the overwhelm of meeting these new Lennox-Halls. He is the cuckoo in the nest of broken twigs and wishbones and bloody hearts, and he still doesn’t understand why he inherited Hazelthorn over everyone else.

Electricity skitters over his too-raw skin and he doesn’t know how to shape the words I’m not okay. Though he thinks, maybe, that Laurie knows and that’s why he bent himself to play guard dog, as if Evander is a thing he owns.

“The scratches on Bane’s arms,” Evander says suddenly. “You can’t even walk through the garden without being cut up.”

“He’s been on the property, then,” Laurie says. “Guess he’s the new top suspect.” He seems to have completely forgotten his apathy over playing detective.

But his inadvertent willingness to figure out the murderer is shifting Evander’s view of him too. One act of kindness isn’t enough to declare Laurie guiltless—but he surely wouldn’t be helping Evander if he needed to hide his own crimes.

“Maybe we should … Can we hire a real private investigator?” Evander says.

Laurie slows in an alcove papered with lavish prints of belladonna. “Not when Grandfather’s official cause of death is ‘aneurysm.’ The police don’t consider there to be a case and Oleander would never let any sort of private investigator onto the estate anyway. If I try anything, she’ll take my phone, and I can’t exactly drive off the estate to meet up with one either.” He waves his brace, but he’s looking at Evander steadily. “Which is fine, because I’m not leaving Hazelthorn.”

As if this is the only way he can keep fingertips on his claim of the house, the gardens, the fortune. It makes Evander want to scream.

But there’s an ache in his chest, and it’s getting harder and harder to ignore.

Don’t trust him—

But I want to.

He yearns for what he lost, for the comfort of fitting beside a boy so confident and sharp and lithe. If he could go back in time, he’d remember what kind of friends they were, which one of them was full of magic and which one was full of adventure. If he could just be like Laurie, be normal, maybe nothing would have ever gone wrong.

Though it hurts, in a deep, wretched way, that he’s still chasing this goal.

Normal.

He doesn’t even know what that means.

He just wishes he knew what broke between them, wishes he knew if their severing was his fault.

“Come on.” Laurie leads them into the kitchen, where they’re enveloped in clouds of apple cinnamon turnovers and bacon and hot maple syrup as Oleander’s private chef scurries to prepare breakfast.

The glorious smells poke at Evander’s dormant hunger. He doesn’t want to think about his tongue, too long, too hot, as it licked over the bloodied plate last night.

Distracted, he almost runs into Laurie as he yanks open the back door. Evander takes an automatic step away, because things like this are not for him—the outdoors and sunlight and hot summer days. He is an autumn leaf, meant to be pressed between the pages of an old book and forgotten.

“What are you doing?” he says warily. “I thought we were finding Dawes?”

Laurie steps outside and it seems like every shrub along the overgrown path reaches for him, leaves brushing his calves and tender green vines coiling against his thighs.

“It would be very helpful if you got your memories back,” he says.

“They’re coming back.” Evander’s stomach tightens. “Slowly.”

“Not fast enough.” Laurie’s mouth is an uninterested flat line, but Evander is now realizing that this, too, is another of his lies. “I’ll show you the place you nearly died. Let’s see what you remember.”

He has hidden under the bed, his only secret place, to finish putting all of the bluebells in his mouth. When asked where he found the flowers, he stays silent. Since the accident, he’s forgotten most things—how to read and speak and respond to his own name. Black stitches riddle his stomach and they’ve taped socks to his hands so he’ll stop clawing at his wounds. It also stops his fingers dancing and flicking and tapping.

Hands are meant to be still, he is told. He is meant to be still.

So he lies motionless beneath the bed, his eyes two luminescent green jewels, glowing from the depths as petals cling to the curl of his tongue.

It is his guardian who pulls him out by the ankles, but his disapproval morphs to alarm as he snatches the little boy’s jaw and pries it open.

Not bluebells. It’s wolfsbane.

His guardian picks him up and bolts for the bathroom to wash the little boy’s mouth out a hundred times. “Goddamn it. Who gave you these? Where did you find them?”

It is too difficult to answer, so the little boy merely bites the crooked old fingers squeezing his jawbone and leaving thumbprint bruises on his delicate skin.

After that, he is given medicine. He forgets what he did wrong.

He forgets there ever was wolfsbane.

THIRTEEN

There is a hot, sultry madness to following Laurence Lennox-Hall into the gardens, a mistake being made between the rush of cicadas and rustling leaves and the pulse of summer. Outside, the world smells relentlessly of green wood and musky earth, fresh blossoms and thick shrubbery. Evander must have a death wish, either that or he’s lost his goddamn mind. But it’s as if this boy has put hooks in his ribs.

Or maybe Evander, alone, is to blame for this decision. He is Icarus with wings of swan feathers, who chose to fly into the sun because it looked like a pretty boy.

He hates himself, just a little, as he steps into the garden.

Laurie has already walked away as if Evander’s choice to follow or not is of little concern. He navigates the path with ease, headed deeper into the lithe greenery of the garden. It’s hard to ignore the fact he chose to do this while all the adults are busy bickering, but he carries nothing that could be used as a weapon.

When Evander thinks of Laurie bent double in his bathroom, salt in his voice from the pain of his ruined wrist, he is fairly sure he can escape if Laurie tries anything. But this still feels like a terrible idea.

If he could cut this obsession out of himself, he would.

Instead, he follows.

The garden path narrows between beds of roses so overgrown and twisted that the thorns pierce their own petals. Laurie stops and it takes Evander a second to realize why.

Oleander’s quavering personal assistant is on her hands and knees, using tiny pruners to haphazardly trim the leaves. A floppy straw hat seems the start and end of her gardening gear and she’s still dressed for office work in a white blouse and creased pants. For some inexplicable reason, she’s been sent out here to garden.

“The hell?” Laurie folds his arms and looks down at her with disgust. “Go back inside.”

Jessica shrinks. “Mrs. Lennox-Hall sent me out here since the garden needs work and—”

“No,” Laurie says. “Just … no. Tell Oleander I started harassing you and drove you back indoors or something. Or make up whatever shitty story about me you want. I don’t care.”

Evander edges forward, confused by this sudden interest Laurie has taken in the miserable assistant. It looks like scorn, with the derisive eye roll and scathing words, but maybe this is pity, shown the only way a sour, awful boy can.

“I can’t lose my job.” Jessica sounds like she might cry as she stares down at the dirt staining her blouse. Her cheeks have flushed bright red from the sun and she looks so out of her depth. She can’t be much older than they are.

“Then quit,” Laurie says. “Pretty sure your sanity would last longer if you waited on tables. Oleander eats live mice as a snack.”

This makes Jessica almost laugh between pitiful sniffles and, to Evander’s surprise, she does what Laurie says, packing up her meager gardening supplies and limping back inside.

Evander swats a bug and frowns. “That was almost kind.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Laurie flicks a hand dismissively and starts down the path. “You don’t mess with Hazelthorn’s gardens. Not worth the risk of getting lost and bit.” There’s something odd in his voice, frustration maybe.

“I haven’t seen any snakes,” Evander says.

“There’s plenty of time.”

Evander carefully picks his way past the rosebushes as they claw thorny fingers for his sleeves, and he hurries after Laurie, who is fast disappearing around a stone garden wall.

“Also,” Evander says, trying to sound fierce, “if you’re luring me out here to do something wicked to me, you can quit it right now.”

“Define wicked,” Laurie says casually. He doesn’t turn around, but the smirk is in his voice.

“I will fight back,” Evander says, low and wretched.

Laurie sighs and ducks under low-hanging birch branches. “I’m not touching you. Stop fussing and catch up.”

This is nothing like Evander’s previous headlong rush into the garden after the will reading. This is a cautious exploration. A pause before choosing between split cobbled paths. A moment of letting go as the garden whispers for them to come deeper. Heat beats at the back of his neck and he feels overdressed, his waistcoat suddenly constricting his ribs and his cuffs rubbing at his wrists. But it’s best to wear layers, to have something between his scars and the world.

Everything around him pulses with lush, vibrant life, and there are so many sounds that he can’t parse them all. They pass under a stone archway and onto a checkerboard mosaic of turquoise tiles, riddled with moss and lichen that feels spongy underfoot. Evander is so entranced by the lone Corinthian columns strangled with brambles that he trips on the uneven tiles and scurries to right himself with a flush of embarrassment.

Ahead, Laurie waits under a row of plum trees gone wild, the jewel-toned fruit so glossy it looks unreal. He raises an eyebrow.

“Shut up,” Evander mutters, dusting himself off.

“I very literally said nothing.”

“Well, your eyebrows are raised and very loud.” Evander folds his arms and tries to look dignified. “I’m not an outdoor person.”

Laurie picks a plum and then pauses. “You are not an outdoor person?”

It hurts, this offhand blow, how so much of Evander’s life is folded away in unmarked, unreachable boxes. How people like Laurie know him better than he knows himself.

Laurie takes a bite of the fruit and shakes his head.

“What kind of person was I?” Evander wishes the longing wasn’t so evident in his voice.

“You’re supposed to be remembering.” Laurie is already moving. He throws the plum over his shoulder and Evander catches it.

It’s an insult, of course, that he should eat Laurie’s scraps. He thinks he’ll throw it at the back of Laurie’s head.

But he doesn’t. When Laurie is far enough ahead, Evander fits his mouth over the place Laurie’s was and he bites down like a secondhand kiss. Juice splits free of the sun-hot skin and runs in a bloody line down his chin. He eats the whole thing. He craves more. Though he isn’t sure it’s the fruit his mouth waters for.

The deeper they wander into the gardens, the more Evander’s neck prickles. No logical layout presents itself, no cohesion from one section of the gardens to the next. The entire estate is walled off like a fortress, the inner garden walls built like a honeycomb. Thickets grow so densely across some of the arched bowers that they’re impossible to get through, and honeysuckle and jasmine compete to drown the world in their overpowering perfume.

It takes a while for Evander to notice the plants have grown unrecognizable. Oddly shaped flowers. Berries so vivid and glossy they look toxic. Ivy leaves tapering to arrow tips. Trellises bending under the weight of inside-out daffodils and things that should be bluebells but look somehow wrong.

He should have brought the field guide.

Trying to be surreptitious, he snaps off a few samples and sticks the sappy cuttings in his back pocket. A green stick, a cluster of flowers, a verdant shoot.

Put it in your mouth.

He breathes in, sharp, his heartbeat picking up. Not his thought. Not him. The overabundance of sunshine is messing with his head. He’ll end up with a sunburn and heatstroke and plenty of reasons to blame Laurie.

The laurel hedgerows bend and a long pool appears ahead. Laurie waits at the edge and looks down with revulsion at the black, stagnant water. A few ancient wicker sun beds are decaying beside the pool, and four horrible-looking gargoyles stand at each corner with mold blooming in their cracks. When Evander pauses at the edge of the pool to look down, a strange vertigo takes hold of him. The shape of his face undulates and turns inside out. He knows it’s vanity to care about how he looks, but there are no mirrors in Hazelthorn, and every time he finds a reflection to check himself, it conspires to warp his features.

He only wants to be sure his expression is right, that he is doing his best to be normal. To fit in. To act like everyone else. He wants—needs—to figure it out.

“I don’t remember this.” Laurie sounds frustrated, unusual for someone who doesn’t care about anything. He paces the edge of the pool, turning in circles to stare back the way they’ve come. “Maybe we should have gone left at that fountain.”

Evander drops onto his stomach at the edge of the pool and reaches toward the thick clusters of lily pads. Algae oozes between them. A few dragonflies take off in offense at his presence, but he wants those black lilies. The pool must be ancient, built entirely of concrete that’s now mottled green, and the water level is so low Evander is halfway to tipping in before he manages to reach a flower.

“Maybe,” he says, wriggling backward from the edge with his prize, “you have amnesia too.”

“It’s been a long time since I was out here,” Laurie says flatly. “I just got turned around. Also, what the hell are you doing? Stop picking things.”

Evander has handfuls of his gatherings now, the wet lily nestled amongst the rest of his pleasing collection. He is actually, he realizes, having a good time out here. The garden isn’t so terrifying when it’s full of sunshine and bees and the sweet smell of plums … and no one is driving a shovel through his middle.

“You’re like a kid stealing flowers,” Laurie says.

Evander gives him a magnanimous sigh. “Except I own—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Laurie rolls his eyes and turns away.

“—everything out here.” Evander’s smile is so obnoxious, but it lights him up, in warm and strange ways, when he wins a round.

Though his smile slips as he watches Laurie stalk off toward another ivy-smothered wall, subconsciously holding his wrist to his chest as if to ease the pressure.

Evander arranges his cuttings in his arms and then hurries away from the pool. “Isn’t there a surgery that could fix your wrist?”

Laurie casts him an annoyed look. “I have had surgeries. Several of them. The last one just messed it all up. Also, put my wrist in the none-of-your-business basket, thanks.”

“Everything is my business while I’m investigating,” Evander says, though what he wants to say is I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. Maybe he should just confess he has remembered a little of that day, how Laurie’s flesh tasted between his teeth and how the sky was a cracked-open azure egg while he lay dying.

It was a day much like this one.

They’re following a tall garden wall, looking for the entrance, though an odd energy has taken hold of Laurie. He’s irritated, twitchy, slapping at invisible bugs on his neck, his skin reddening under a sheen of sweat.

“Okay, but,” Evander says slowly, “how did the last surgery mess it up? Can’t you go back to your surgeon and make him fix it?”

“Because”—Laurie’s teeth are clenched—“the surgeon is dead.”

Evander slows, frowning, but Laurie has sped up in his search for a way through this impossibly tall garden wall. The ivy is so thick the stones have been lost beneath it and still there is no entrance.

“Can’t you get another doctor—” Evander starts, but Laurie turns on him, an unraveled fierceness in his eyes.

“Just to shut you up,” he says, “Grandfather was the ‘surgeon.’ So go ahead and add another motive to that list in your little detective notebook of why I’m probably the killer. I really don’t care.”

Evander is still frowning. “Mr. Lennox-Hall was a surgeon?”

Laurie looks at him for a long moment and then turns away, impatient. “Must be nice to be so oblivious.”

This is what Evander hates the most, the dismissiveness of what he doesn’t know when everyone refuses to explain. Frustration beats in his throat, and as much as he tries to shove it down, to be quiet and logical and calm as he’s been taught, he storms forward and cuts in front of Laurie to force him to stop.

Laurie pulls up, his mouth tilted in displeasure.

“Stop talking in half-truths.” Evander keeps his voice deadly low. “Why can’t I know?”

“There’s nothing to know,” Laurie says, bored. But it’s fake, Evander can tell it by the marble smoothness of Laurie’s face: his new tell. “He isn’t a surgeon, he just likes to tinker. And, yes, it’s extremely messed up, but do you know who stops old rich men when they want to do something? Literally no one. I didn’t get a say.”

The pain in his voice is barely concealed, but it’s as if he doesn’t notice his own agitation.

“But he can’t—” Evander struggles. “He can’t just decide to play surgery on a real person.”

“And yet here we are.” Laurie’s eyes drift past Evander as if this conversation is putting him to sleep. “Grandfather transplanted a new tendon into my wrist and it didn’t work. It’s shrunken and keeps contracting and here I am today.”

Evander folds his arms. “Where did he get the tendon?”

There’s a long pause. Laurie blinks. “What?”

“Where,” Evander says, “did your grandfather get a new tendon to put in your wrist?”

Apathy flickers off like a short-circuiting bulb, as if this is the first time Laurie has considered it. He looks sick under the gloss of sweat, skin reddened and soft wisps of hair sticking to his forehead in contrast to Evander, who feels bright and lithe and full of energy. He feels taller, full, his stomach not tormenting him for once with hunger, which seems strange since he’s only eaten half a plum.

“Who was holding the shovel?” Evander says suddenly. “There was a … a tall shovel and it—” His furrowed brow has started to hurt, the memory a watercolor blur melting behind his eyes. “When you tried to kill me, who was holding the shovel?”

The ghost of that day presses against his spine, the truth like a splinter driving through both wrists until he can’t get away. It replays in his head, the shovel coming down. Byron Lennox-Hall’s hands gripping the handle.

Evander wants a different answer.

“I don’t remember,” Laurie mutters.

“Whose memories are we out here to collect?” Evander demands. “Yours or mine?”

Laurie raises his eyes to the sky as if that might save him from the endless torment of Evander’s questions.

“You’re such a liar…” But Evander trails off, tilting his head to the side as he listens. He turns. “Do you hear that?”

“No.”

But Evander has lost interest in anything except the strange sound. He can feel it against his ribs, this steady beat, this pulsing.

Ahead lies a red door in the wall.

It’s a single interruption against the wall of razor-sharp ivy, an arch of wood with a flourish of ancient iron hinges. There is no knob, just a keyhole.

The beat is coming from inside it.

It forcefully reels Evander in and his attention is so fixated on it that he forgets Laurie, forgets their conversation, forgets all his fears of the garden. His bunches of flowers and twigs drop from numb fingers onto the path as he stops in front of the door and stares hard at the deep vermilion paint, the texture like boiled sugar and sticky to the touch. He doesn’t even remember placing his fingertips against it. All he can think is how desperately he wants to press his tongue to the wood, let his teeth make grooves in the toffee coating.

“Evander—”

The word has been left underwater to drown. He ignores it.

He presses his palm flat against the sticky, rough surface even as a small voice in the back of his head screams at the feel of it.

He pushes hard at the wood.

It doesn’t budge.

He can smell it now, copper pennies and spilled wine. The beat has planted itself in his belly, a throb both sickening and elating, and he forgets anything except the need to open his mouth and put his tongue against—

“EVANDER.”

A hand grabs his arm and whirls him around. His hand slips from the door as he stumbles back a few paces, losing his footing, and goes down hard on his tailbone.

“Ow.” White spots spark in front of his eyes before he blinks them away. He glowers up at Laurie.

There’s something sharp and wild in Laurie’s eyes, all of his apathy vanished. “Let’s go back inside.”

“That door is locked,” Evander says. “Maybe Carrington has the key. He has all the keys.”

“I don’t care.” Barely tempered urgency has Laurie by the throat. “Get up, let’s go back.”

“You wanted to come out here,” Evander snaps.

Whatever odd hold the door had on him before has faded and now he has time to feel properly annoyed by the shove and how they walked all this way for a locked door. His botanical samplings have spilled all over the path and the heather is scratching his back where his shirt has untucked. His hand has also landed deep in something that feels disgustingly like pudding and every nerve ending in his skull has gone off in a silent scream. He will need to scrape a hard-bristled brush over every inch of himself in the bath after this.

But when he yanks his hand out from where it sank into the heather, every thought in his head empties.

Blood has splattered all the way up his arm.

A neat pile of entrails has been left hidden amongst the leaves, the organs split and bloated with maggots and smelling of sharp, metallic rot. A sliver of intestine wraps around Evander’s fingers like a noodle.

He screams.

Never in his life has he scrambled up so fast, shaking his hands hard as he tries not to vomit. The worm of intestine goes flying and Evander lunges away so fast that he gets snagged on the ivy-covered wall. It does not let go. His stomach is still trying not to flip out over the feel of that oozing, rotted offal, so he doesn’t realize he’s stuck until razor-sharp leaves start slicing his shirt to ribbons. There is something deeply wrong with this ivy. It feels like it’s made of unforgiving steel. He wrenches forward with a cry as it slices at his arms, his neck.

“Wait! Wait, wait!” Laurie grabs a fistful of Evander’s waistcoat and uses his brace to dig into the ivy and pull it from Evander’s skin. “God, stop struggling. You’re making it worse. Can you—Wait—Calm down.”

“I AM NOT AN OUTDOOR PERSON.” Evander flails, smearing blood from the entrails all over his waistcoat before Laurie leverages him free and they both tumble backward.

They stand there, breathing too hard, neither looking at each other’s raw distress. Evander points a shaky hand at the bloodied heather and feels his stomach punch inside out.

“That—that looks freaking human.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Laurie snaps, and then turns abruptly, gripping his hair as if he wants to tear it loose. “It’s just some dead animal.”

“Where’s the rest of it?” Evander’s voice spirals higher. “It’s literally disemboweled. Shouldn’t there be fur or or or—”

“It would’ve been a fox or something. Do you want to sit here and analyze rotting innards or can we go? You’re such a damsel.” Heat has left brash lines on Laurie’s cheekbones and he doesn’t wait for Evander’s answer, just shoves him so hard he stumbles back the way they came.

Evander wants to snap, Don’t touch me, but he can’t help noticing the vicious cuts on Laurie’s arms, the tear in his brace. There had been no hesitation before using his bare hands to rip Evander out of the ivy’s jaws. But why does he immediately have to be so cruel? Something scared him and he’s covering his own untamed feelings by sneering at Evander.

Bitterness stings behind Evander’s eyes and he doesn’t know why. He shouldn’t care if Laurie thinks him pathetic.

Evander jerks away and scoops up as many of his dropped botanical clippings as he can before he marches off. Viscid organ juice runs down his hands and drips from the tips of his fingers, and the smell of it has stained him.

“You know what? I do remember something,” he says. “I remember how much I hate you.”

He snakes a foul look back at Laurie, expecting an eye roll, but hurt flashes briefly across Laurie’s face. There is no retort. Laurie looks away and keeps walking, his arm tucked to his stomach as if to hold himself together.

It should feel satisfying, to strike back. Instead, Evander’s mouth is full of nettles.

FOURTEEN

There is something wrong with the garden.

Evander sits in the warm glow of his bedroom lamps, cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by botany books and a flurry of scrunched papers. He prefers to leave the harsh overhead lights off and drift between pockets of gentle warmth from his small lamps. His focus should be on the mystery, on adding new theories in thick black marker to the index cards on his wall and taping more string between his mind-maps to connect deductions—but he can’t stop thinking about the garden.

The field guide lies open on his lap. A semicircle of mugs and old jam jars surrounds him, each filled with a spoonful of dirt and water and his harvested cuttings. Not a single one has wilted from the rough treatment of being beheaded and towed indoors. If anything, the plants look even more viciously alive, their petals and leaves curved toward him as if, for lack of a sun, they are fixated on the bloody beat of his heart instead.

There is something wrong with these plants.

He maps the shape of their petals, their bulbs, their leaves, and cannot find a match in the normal botany books. They are, however, all in the Hazelthorn Field Guide.

“I think the hospital is lying about Carrington,” he mutters, and then takes a moment to wonder if speaking to himself means he has truly lost it. But people speak to plants all the time.

This is probably normal.

“But Bane is also sketchy.” He eyes the Nettle Night blossoms, as if they would be most interested in this conversation. “Those scratches on his arms confirm it. To get inside the mansion when the front doors are locked, you’d have to go around the back, and there’s no way to walk through the garden without getting scratched up.” His own arms wear confirmation of this. “But what’s the point of lurking in the garden? That wouldn’t get him written into the will, right?”

He stares at the Nettle Night blossoms long enough that he thinks they nod, then decides he probably needs sleep.

It’s not like he misses Laurie or wishes he was here to listen to these rambling deductions. Evander would rather hold on to the bitter resentment that filled him after Laurie snapped at him in the garden, not think about how it would feel to run his fingers along the soft hair at the nape of Laurie’s neck. He has a murder to solve. That should be his focus. This unkempt yearning tipping through his chest is ridiculous and distracting and—and pointless.

It’s just that he has never kissed nor been kissed, and wondering what it would be like is the only reason he is restlessly addicted to the angle of Laurie’s scornful mouth.

He’s read enough mildewy books to be aware that the lord marries a lady without much variation—but he’s also struggling to care if his feelings are inside out. He wants to kiss a girl, but it’s just the idea of kissing a boy crowds his chest with fireflies and cracked-open shooting stars as well. He just wishes he could talk to someone about this, could know what other people feel and what they do about it.

He would also rather fling himself out a window than bring this up with Laurie.

Evander sighs and rubs his forehead. He should go to bed, but when he closes his eyes, all he can see is that red door, the pulse of it a metronome against his rib cage.

He spent two hours in a hot bath once he came inside, scrubbing even the memory of the guts off his skin, and trying to forget the stomach-turning feel of that rotten-pudding consistency closing over his hand. Even now that he’s in clean plaid pajama pants and a soft T-shirt, he still can’t forget the feel of that slippery, disgusting mess.

He’s always been like this—averse to the feel of things, sickened by a texture, his reactions disproportionate and swiftly followed by shame. The only things that feel safe pressed against the open palm of his hand are soft mounds of soil or a leaf curled up like a secret.

He forces himself to focus and riffle pages of the field guide to find a match for his sampling of the sharp-edged ivy. There it is.

Ever Ivy—from the Araliaceae family, similar in shape to its cousin Hedera Helix, but with stiff leaves, the texture similar to thinned steel. It leaves razor-sharp, thin slices upon touch. Beware of fine hairs remaining inside wounds, which will cause incessant itching.

Evander has already scratched most of his cuts and made them look a thousand times worse, and he is trying to ignore his worry about how Laurie is faring.

He slides a sideways glance to his evidence wall—he refuses to call it a murder wall despite what Laurie says—where he’s tacked up bad sketches of everyone in the house. He spent dinner staring at Bane and Azalea and trying not to wince at the incessant bickering. Oleander was even more insufferable than usual, overriding everyone’s suggestions for the funeral and insisting on black lilies, not white, and that the service should take place in Hazelthorn.

“It’s spite, isn’t it?” Bane had said in a low huff. “Choosing that kid and cutting the rest of us out. Did you read the will yourself yet, Mother?”

Oleander sniffed. “All documents should be with my lawyers by now if that incompetent young creature Dawes has done as he’s told. Cannot understand why he is taking the lead in our affairs when he scarcely knows this family. As for Evander, well—” She paused, leveling a heavy gaze his way. “I shall care for him exactly as Byron would have.”

“I was thinking”—Azalea delicately plucked up a wineglass, a gaudy ruby ring glinting in the candlelight—“if you needed me to stay and help balance the accounts—”

Oleander snorted and the arguing commenced again, more money focused now since that seemed to be the root of why everyone was here. Not the funeral. Evander had said nothing the entire time, just focused on eating three helpings of butterflied pomegranate quail with fluffy white bread smothered in thyme and melted butter.

Laurie didn’t show up for dinner. They haven’t spoken since they came inside.

Now Evander props his arm on his knee, chin on his fist, and stares at the black lilies in their jam jar. “Like, I don’t need Laurie around. He’s still a suspect. And a liar. Also, what if he got expelled from school for doing something malicious? What if he’s just messing with me?”

Except there is the way Laurie plunged into knife-sharp ivy for him without a second’s hesitation.

And the way he wants Evander to regain his memories.

And the way he looked scared in the garden.

But he could also outright tell Evander some of the secrets he’s letting rot under his tongue, and yet he refuses. Either he’s playing with Evander or there’s a reason.

Evander puts his mouth so close to the black lily petals and breathes in nothing but petals and loam. “What’s behind that red door?” His mouth barely makes the words. “Is it a monster? Is that what they’re hiding?”

A labyrinth of blossoms and thorns for a monster.

He needs the key.

The air feels suddenly cobwebbed and musty, his skin prickled with summer humidity, and he wants nothing more than to wrench the window open and tilt his head so he can see the star-flecked sky. But it’s still jammed shut. All he can do is brush his teeth, splash water on his face, and then flop on his bed with the field guide.

He flips to the pages of nightshades and rereads their descriptions, trying to match them to the symptoms of Byron Lennox-Hall’s poisoning. His guardian has been dead for almost a week and grief should be an all-consuming monster rendering Evander numb and useless.

Except, he’s thinking about how his door isn’t locked anymore and he can go wherever he wants and he is free free free.

He’s thinking of the shovel, the lies about the business trips.

He is thinking of the way Byron used his own grandson as a medical experiment and beat him when he stepped out of line. So much of Laurie’s pain ends now that his grandfather is dead.

It’s a pretty big motive for murder.

Evander tries to ignore the vines knotting around his intestines as he notices neat notes in the margins besides sketches of Bloodthorns. He thought this page was just about the side effects of the vermilion thorned flower, but on closer inspection, it’s a journal entry.

June 15—Dug up new plant in the garden. Took samples and will propagate it within the conservatory. The boy was playing with it and seemed unaffected by skin contact, but will still run toxin tests. Thorns are easily removed.

Is this Byron’s handwriting? “The boy” could mean Laurie—unless the field guide is even older than Byron. It does look ancient, bound like an old book with spidery calligraphy that’s almost impossible to read. Evander hasn’t thought much about how long Hazelthorn has been in the Lennox-Hall family. Another thing he needs to investigate.

He closes the field guide reluctantly and sets it on his bedside table, right next to his parents’ photo. It hurts, sometimes, to look at their smiling faces, his mother tucked against his father as if he is an everlasting tree to lean against and she is his perfect flower. Evander flicks off his lamp and burrows into the blankets despite the stuffy warmth of his room, because he needs to nest, to sink into oblivion, to dissolve.

But all he can think of is Byron propagating poisonous plants in his conservatory.

Evander’s sleep is restless, a fevered heat in his mouth as the dark closes hands around the fragile confines of his rib cage and pulls him down, down. This is what it is to be buried. Moss crawls up the back of his throat, latching on to the back of his tongue and drinking hard, long, deep.

Blood is what it wants.

He pushes at the edges of the dream with a whimper.

wakeupwakeup

His fingers clench into his sheet, relax, tighten, stretch out like roots still clotted with fresh soil. He is made of sticks and teeth and broken rose stems, his cheeks kissed with salt from tears he pretends he hasn’t wept. Loneliness haunts him. He needs to—
wake up wake up wake up

Cold finger bones stroke his damp curls away from his forehead, cartilage clicking together, soft as a wind chime. His eyes are half-lidded, his body pressed deep into the mattress under the weight of a thousand tons of dirt. A groggy, disoriented part of him understands he is not fully asleep. But he’s not awake either.

A dull light clicks on, the bulb flickering with a high hum. The night throbs around it, relentless. His face is half-mashed into the pillow, so it takes him an age of pushing through the molasses churning sluggishly over his brain to understand he is staring at his bedroom door.

It’s open.

The velvet dark sits beyond, pulsing like an opened wound.

He is staring and staring, his vision blurry as he tries to pull himself out of mud-soaked fatigue.

Finger bones brush down his cheek again, so very, very gently.

Then they wrap around his jaw and begin, so very slowly, to pull his mouth open.

There is a second where Evander’s eyes close again, the world sliding sideways to tuck itself back into the dark. He is almost asleep—

Then the bones push into his mouth.

Understanding shoots through him like a thunderclap, that this is not a dream, that he is awake.

He is so very awake.

He sits bolt upright, sucking in air with a desperate gasp as if his lungs had forgotten how to work. His scream chokes on confused, breathless terror.

He’s staring at the thing beside his bed.

It leers over him.

It doesn’t vanish.

The shape of it is backlit by the single bulb from his lamp, the shadows around it so thick and slippery that they turn its edges indistinct. Wrongness oozes from it in thick, heady beats, but it is hard to register what he’s seeing compared to what he knows.

“Carrington?” Evander whispers, breathing so quickly he’s close to hyperventilating. His heartbeat pounds, riotous and wild, as he stares at the old butler leaning over his bed.

Except it’s not Carrington.

It can’t be.

Evander’s eyes lock on to the butler’s chest. His waistcoat is gone, tie undone, his usually white crisp shirt now shredded and clinging together by only a few top buttons. The lower half of his shirt is undone, flapping gently.

It is dyed a red so dark it looks black.

Carrington reaches out again and Evander flinches back, but his legs are tangled in twisted sheets and he can’t shy far enough away. The butler’s fingers are in his hair again, but no skin wraps the bones. They are held together by tendons turned a putrefied, oxidized brown. Evander can’t stop staring at the butler’s shirt, the corner drifting aside again just enough to see his middle is a blown-out cavity.

There is nothing behind his shirt. No skin, no meat, no organs. Just a scooped-clean hole where a single shoot has been planted into his pelvis bone, its roots wrapped about his bared spine and soft, fresh leaves unfurled.

Carrington’s hand closes around Evander’s jaw again. Dirt begins pulsing out of the butler’s mouth in a steady, black stream, flooding down his chin. His voice is crusted and gravelly. “The garden—”

Evander is shaking, clawing backward.

“—wants—”

The fingers dig into his cheeks with crushing, horrifying pressure until his jaw is pried apart.

“—you back,” Carrington hisses as he squeezes a single blackened berry between Evander’s teeth.

The scream that pulls from Evander’s mouth is animal and terrified as he tastes it.

The garden. The sweetness. The poison.

FIFTEEN

Terror devours him. He is alight with it, suffocated by it, tendrils of fear wrapping like decayed vines around his throat and squeezing. There is an infinitesimal second where he cannot remember how to move because he has become only this: a scream inside hollow places.

Poisoned berry smears across his tongue as those putrid finger bones clink against his teeth, and then adrenaline kicks in like a thunderclap.

Evander throws himself backward with all his might, thrashing against the tangled sheets and clawing over to the other side of his bed. His heel slams out wildly toward the creature, the thing, the monster, that once was Carrington, and he should’ve landed a brutal blow to the old butler’s stomach. But he has no stomach.

Instead, Evander’s foot crashes right inside Carrington and cracks against vertebrae. Viscid juices envelop his ankle and he can feel the jagged edges of bone still corded in shriveled sinew. It’s wrong. It’s impossible. Evander yanks his foot away with a broken cry, bile slicking up his throat. Everything in his brain is melting like bloody red wax.

wakeupwakeupwakeup

He hurls himself off the bed.

The smack of his spine hitting the floor sends white-hot pain crashing through his body. It hits the back of his teeth and air explodes from his lungs until he is breathless from the sharp shock of it. Can’t breathe. He can’t—He’s gasping, scrabbling at the carpet as he tries to get up.

Carrington drags himself around the bed, his gait uneven. His feet make wet squelches on the carpet and revulsion crawls up Evander’s throat as he sees Carrington’s bare feet are caked in compost, worms threaded through the gnarly, bulbous twist of his toes.

“Don’t be difficult,” Carrington hisses. “It’s time to go outside.”

No. No, no nonono—

Evander scrambles backward on his elbows, but then his eyes lock on the pulsing, inky blackness beneath his bed. Under there, the night has unfurled with a thick, endless vengeance. Slow tendrils begin slithering out from beneath the oaken bed frame, unwrapping themselves like tentacles, like tongues … like thick green vines.

The tip of a vine glides out and twists around Evander’s ankle.

He wrenches backward, his legs kicking out in panic, but as soon as that vine snaps, another is threading its way across the carpet twice as fast. Strange flowers unfurl from green nubs, the stigmas way too long and the petals upside down. A sweet, sickly stench oozes from them, toxic even to inhale.

Then Carrington looms over him, his arms outstretched and hands knotted into claws. Foul silt is still spilling from his mouth in an endless stream as if he’s vomiting up a graveyard.

This is a nightmare.

It’s not real.

It’s notnotrealrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnot—

Get up.

He scrambles to his feet, unsteady and sick, the world sliding sideways in smears of static. Everything inside him narrows to this: Run.

He explodes toward the door, tripping as another vine snatches at his ankle and cracking his knees when he falls. Carrington’s claws graze the back of his shirt, but he flings himself out of reach. Animal instinct has taken over, consumed him. His heartbeat slides into his mouth, bloodied from his own teeth sinking into his tongue, as he plunges through his door and is enveloped in darkness.

It is like stepping into nothing; it is like falling. For a stricken second, he is unbalanced, the pitch black of the hallway throwing him off as he stumbles blindly with his arms outstretched. He slams into the opposite wall and finds a doorknob just as Carrington skitters into the hallway, his legs moving like a roach. There is something sickeningly disturbing about how fast he is, how his neck cocks at a broken angle, how the cracks between his teeth are packed with soil.

He is less like a man walking and more like a suit of decaying meat.

Evander has no time to think. He can only lunge for the next door, his shoulders crashing into the heavy gilt art frames on the wall. Every door is locked. He cracks his shins into an antique side table and cries out before clapping hands over his mouth. Maybe if he goes quiet, Carrington won’t be able to find him in the dark.

But the sound of confident footsteps behind him douses that idea.

A skeletal hand snatches for Evander’s throat, and fingernails rake against his flesh.

He wrenches away and runs, keeping his arms outstretched to soften the blow of whatever he smashes into next. He needs to get out of here before he is dragged outside by a nightmare.

Don’t go into the garden.

But it has come inside to him.

Evander falls over twice, scrabbling up in an uncoordinated flail of limbs before dashing down the narrow back staircase and nearly breaking his neck when he misses the last step. His heartbeat slams against his ribs. Call for help. But he doesn’t know what name to pull from the frenetic spiral of his brain. He can’t thinkthinkthinkthink—
run
get away
find a place he can’t get you
it’s not real you know it’s not real you’re being foolish and childish and if you continue on like this you’ll be strapped down since you’re such a danger to yourself stop screaming like that stop it stop it stop it stopstopstoppppp—

A light has been left on in a hallway, dim and flickering, and Evander rushes toward it like a moth. He hears nothing but his own rusted gasps as he hesitates under the tarnished sconce. Where is he? He has to hide. Maybe go left. Or maybe—

Somewhere beyond the flimsy ring of light, he hears the wet breathing of an old man with mulch in his lungs.

It turns into a snarl, a scream that shatters all the silence in the hallway.

Evander doesn’t run. He flies.

The headlong plummet away from the light sends him crashing into more walls as he staggers through parlors full of furniture cloaked in white sheets. Pain means nothing. Pain he can deal with. Especially when he realizes where he is.

He is so so so close—

“Laurie!” It rips from him in a frantic cry, terror shredding the edges of his hoarse voice. “Laurie—Laurie LAURIE—”

He is back in the garden.

The low scraaaaaape of the shovel dragged through soil.

Dirt hits his face.

He is screaming without words because back then he had no name to scream; there had only been a raging, vicious want for a boy he could not reach.

But he reaches him now.

Down the dim hallway, a door wrenches open and Laurie tumbles out in a spill of golden light. Evander springs for him. The collision is inevitable.

The obvious reaction would be to withdraw, to protect himself, but Laurie reaches out and catches Evander as they slam together. Laurie’s shoulder blades hit the wall with a meaty thwack. Evander collapses into the solid warmth of his body and hangs on to him like a thing half-drowned.

Words don’t make sense in the space between them, when Laurie’s heat is a molten promise against Evander’s bones. They are wrong like this—they should be flint against sharpened teeth if they touch. But instead, Laurie curves himself like a supplicant who would hollow out his own body if only it could be used to fit a lovely god inside.

He is real.

He is so very real.

“What the actual hell?” But there’s no heat to Laurie’s voice. He wears a thin white T-shirt and boxers, his hair mussed from sleep.

Evander is too dizzy to answer, his lungs clawing for air in heaving gasps. Sweaty hair covers his face and gets in his mouth.

“I’m going to die,” he gasps. “I’m d-d-d-dying. I’m—”

“No, you’re not.” It’s only a murmur, but then Laurie roughly twists Evander around so his back is to Laurie. He slides both arms around Evander’s chest with python swiftness and then he pulls their bodies together, hard.

The embrace is constricting, it’s crushing, it’s too tight—and yet not tight enough. Laurie’s right hand flattens against Evander’s heaving stomach and there is an almost tenderness in the way his fingers press down to slow the sickening lurches.

The sound escaping Evander is too high, too terrible, and he jams the heels of his hands over his eyes as he inwardly hisses at himself to pull it together. This is beyond ridiculous. Calm down. Explain what you saw. But berry juice is on his tongue, its wicked sweetness sweeping another wave of terror through his body.

All he can think of is Byron Lennox-Hall’s veins threaded a monstrous inky black as his lungs seized, his throat swollen with a foul, tangled growth.

“I’m p-p-p-poisoned.” Evander’s breathing quickens again, his voice gone hoarse. “I’ve been poisoned.”

SIXTEEN

Evander’s heartbeat is a catastrophe against his ribs, and he’s sure Laurie can feel every sickened, vicious lurch beneath the thin layer of his pajama shirt. Maybe he can feel the scars too. Maybe he is, even now, revolted.

A quick sideways glance down the hall shows no signs of Carrington, though Evander expected the creature to be on his heels with another fistful of poisonous berries, the horrifying contortion of his body on display for all to see.

But there’s nothing.

A small whimper escapes him as he sags against Laurie’s tight grip. But his breathing is slowing and he has not fallen outside of himself; he can’t. He is held together in this boy’s arms.

He finds he doesn’t hate it.

Laurie’s mouth is so close to his ear, his words a hot curl as they hit Evander’s cold, clammy skin. He whispers, “Breathe.”

Evander focuses on matching their breaths and not on the way Laurie’s thumb has started making slow circles on the sliver of fevered skin where Evander’s shirt has ridden up over his hip bone.

“Nightmare?” Laurie says.

“Carrington.” Evander forces it out, rusted and shrill, and when he stares down at his shaking fists, he realizes his fingernails have cut into his palms. “He-he-he was in my room.”

There’s a pause before Laurie says, “Er—how?”

To speak takes such momentous effort, as if his throat is coated in a toxic slurry. “He t-tried to poison me. It’s in my m-mouth. I’m—It’s in my mouth.” The sob is wet and wretched. “He wanted to take me outside and-and-and I think he’s dead.”

But here in a spill of light from Laurie’s room, it is harder to hold on to the picture of the monstrous decay of the old butler. Evander knows he didn’t make it up. He didn’t. But—

Pressure digs into his shoulder and it takes him a moment to register Laurie has rested his chin on Evander. The weight of it matches the solid, steady way his arms still circle Evander’s chest. The hyperventilating has slowed, the shaking ebbing.

“And you’re sure it wasn’t a nightmare?” Laurie says.

“It was real.” Evander’s teeth clench. “I—I—I saw him. His entire middle was gone like it had been ripped out and there’s this thing under my bed that tried to—” But he chops his last words off.

He sounds like a child wailing after a nightmare. What’s he going to say next? There are monsters under my bed.

A dizzy, sickened part of him wonders why Laurie hasn’t let go yet and shoved him off. Evander is being too messy, too loud.

“Sorry.” Evander’s voice catches, drowned in misery. “It wasn’t an episode. I swear it wasn’t. But I’m s-sorry. I’ll b-be quieter.” But he sounds unsteady and sick, not exactly an endorsement of a sound mind. Adrenaline has worn off, his body unraveling like a spool of wet wool, and he wants nothing more than to lie down and cover his head.

He has embarrassed himself.

He shouldn’t be like this. He hates being like this.

Laurie shifts his chin off Evander’s shoulder and his forehead brushes against the nape of Evander’s neck. A shivery, unexplainable feeling plummets down his spine and pools like liquid mercury in his belly.

“Who tells you to be quiet all the time?” Laurie’s words are a low, thickened spill of warm honey. “Pain is meant to take up space or else we wouldn’t know how to scream. Fuck making your agony silent to avoid disturbing others. Maybe they should be disturbed.”

It’s easier to talk when they aren’t facing each other, when words are disembodied and could be meant for anyone, though Evander is surprised in a dull way that Laurie of all people is comforting him like this. But maybe these are words no one ever said to Laurie, so he is saying them to someone else.

“Show me,” Laurie says.

Heat peppers Evander’s cheeks and he starts to pull away. Laurie immediately lets go; because that hold was never about pinning a hysterical boy down, not in the ways Evander grew used to as a child. That hold was only meant for comforting pressure.

Figuring out how he feels about any of this is beyond him. He’s too embarrassed to even look at Laurie. His chest is full of struck matches and gunpowder, and it seems safer to keep his eyes on the floor as he leads the way back to the north wing.

Laurie follows, a quiet weight at Evander’s back. Maybe they can both just never acknowledge that happened and go back to sniping at each other.

The darkness shies away from them as Laurie hits light switches as they pass. Evander jumps at every shadow, his nerves so frayed that even his own breathing makes him flinch. Around every corner, he expects to see Carrington roar murderously toward them. But there’s nothing but clumps of dirt marking where he trod. Evander can’t exactly claim them as proof of Carrington’s existence when he’s made just as much mess, knocking over furniture and potted plants in his headlong flight. It would be easy to explain all of this away as a nightmare.

Probably because that’s all it was.

By the time they reach Evander’s flung-open bedroom door, he’s been struck through with mortification. Reading about creepy poisonous plants before falling asleep did this to him. That’s the only logical explanation.

But he can’t shake the feel of those stripped, fleshless finger bones stroking his curls and the explosion of toxic sweetness in his mouth.

the garden wants you—

Since cowardice already won, he hangs back and lets Laurie enter his room first. Neither of them, it seems, are going to talk about their fight in the garden earlier—was it a fight?—and now Evander has to sort through the messy, upturned feelings about the way Laurie held him. Held him without malice or mockery.

Laurie flicks on the overhead lights, making Evander wither even further as the shadows are cut from all the corners. A sweaty, fear-soaked odor sours the stagnant room and it feels too small with both of them crowded in here. Again, he can’t push aside the sting of realizing he has lived for seven years inside these walls and it’s one of the smallest rooms in the mansion.

“So, what exactly happened?” Laurie sounds neutral, but Evander is busy staring at the neatly arranged line of jam jars on his window seat.

He didn’t do that. They should be on the floor amongst his strewn chaos of papers.

“I didn’t make it up,” he says with quiet bitterness. “It wasn’t an episode.”

Laurie drops down to his stomach and peers under the bed. Without the dark softening the space between them, it is very hard not to focus on the thinness of his T-shirt and boxers, the outline of body unmistakable under the cotton. Evander needs to remove his brain and wash it out under a cold faucet.

“Okay, I’ll ask it.” Laurie is still on his stomach, peering under the bed. “What the actual hell is an ‘episode’?”

Evander’s stomach starts churning again, his shivering fingers digging into his greasy, lank hair. Heat licks across his cheekbones until he is ablaze with all the things he wishes he’d never said. The episodes should have stayed a secret; no one will ever take him seriously or see him as normal if they know how miserably easy he is to unravel.

“I don’t—” He digs fingers into his scalp. “They’re not … I’m not some tantrumming child—”

“I never said you were.” Laurie’s mouth is a flat line. “Are they meltdowns? Because I’m pretty sure anyone can have a meltdown when they’re being pushed off the goddamn edge. But is that what Carrington or Grandfather told you they were? ‘Episodes’? It’s fucking derogatory,” he adds, with surprising venom.

Having this conversation while Laurie is laid out on the floor is removing some of the tension, but Evander still feels an acidic, crawling need to apologize. Or maybe snap back. Laurie is the one, after all, who dismissively said Evander wasn’t functional.

“No, I’m not—” Evander’s voice stretches. “I can’t explain it. I’m not awake for them. I—I don’t have them very often if I’m taking my meds.”

“Okay, so seizures?” Laurie sits up, but stays cross-legged on the floor. “Because if you’re having seizures, you shouldn’t be alone.”

Evander presses his palms to his eyes so hard white static sparks before him. “No. They’re just like … I lose time and I wake up bruised and exhausted and I feel sick.”

He wakes up in places he wasn’t before and finds his fingernails ripped off, scratches at the back of his door, blood on the carpet, his mouth busted open and filled with the pervasive taste of clover and moss.

He usually tries not to think about it, how he could be doing anything and wouldn’t even know it. Maybe he shouldn’t be trusted either.

“Okay.” Laurie yawns as if barely interested even though he started this line of questioning. “Guess I’ll just have to watch you have one and see what happens.”

Evander stares at him in muted dismay. “No? They’re—No, that’s embarrassing.”

Laurie rolls onto his stomach so he can look under the bed again, though he doesn’t need to make a show of pretending there are monsters to ferret out. Part of Evander wants to be alone again so he can crawl into bed and sleep away his shame, but he also knows that closing his eyes will be so profoundly awful that he’ll do anything to stay awake.

He wipes his mouth, a prickling unease on his skin that could be the poison kicking in—or could be in his head. What does it feel like, anyway, to die with the garden in your mouth?

“I think the garden has Carrington. I know that sounds ridiculous, but—” Evander breaks off as Laurie slides halfway under his bed.

He gives a small oomph sound and then starts squirming backward, yanking something with him. For a wild second, Evander thinks it’ll be the corpse of Carrington, dragged into view with his blown-out middle and eyes foamy with decay.

There is the rustling snap of old twigs and crushed leaves before Laurie topples backward and a huge mound of dead vines slides out from under the bed. He yelps, the knot of twisted, gnarled roots crashing around him with the wild smell of crumbling fungi. Those strange bloody flowers deflate on the carpet as if the light offends them.

Neither of them move. They just stare at the mass of decomposing foliage.

“You need a gardener.” Laurie’s breathing too fast. “But, like, for under the bed.”

Vindication roars to life in Evander’s chest and he jabs a finger at it, his voice rising. “SEE. That grabbed me. I wasn’t imagining it!”

Laurie snaps off a flower and surveys it. When he gets to his feet, his T-shirt is flecked with dirt, his jaw smeared with dust.

Evander snatches the flower and flings it across the room. “That’s a Devil’s Tongue. I saw it in the field guide. They’re extremely poisonous, like touch-the-pollen-and-have-your-tongue-swell-up-and-burst kind of poison.” He starts pacing while Laurie hastily wipes his hands on his shirt. “Carrington tried to poison me and I think, maybe—maybe I didn’t swallow enough for it to hurt me? But how can he walk around with half his body missing? He must have been in the garden and—” He whirls on Laurie, his voice going high. “Those entrails. Those were Carrington’s. What’s behind that red door? Why is it red?”

Laurie has drifted toward the window seat and is looking at the flourishing cuttings in their jam jars. His mouth tips down at the corners and his voice is very, very soft. “Someone painted it in blood.”

Silence stretches between them. It must have just been painted right before they arrived, to be that bright a red, which is … terrible to think about. He’d known it somehow, known it in ways he hadn’t wanted to quantify. Why else had he wanted so badly to put his mouth to the door and feel the rough wood splinters against his tongue?

Blood—coppery, luscious, fresh.

But his hunger is still a wild thing, licking the inside of his rib cage raw.

It takes effort to keep himself together, to not split apart under the weight of all these things that shouldn’t be real. “Is there a monster in the garden? Did your family—” He swallows. “Did they lock up a monster?”

Laurie cuts a quick sideways glance at him, but can’t seem to hold eye contact. He picks up a fallen leaf and rubs it between thumb and forefinger, but he’s tucking his brace tight against his stomach again—another tell, a real one this time, of when he’s anxious. Of when he’s in pain.

“What happens”—Evander takes a step forward, his voice low and shaking—“if we unlock the monster’s door?”

He is so sick of this: the silence, the lies, the deflections. The way he wants to wrap his fingers around Laurie’s neck and scrape his teeth along his throat is a compulsion he almost can’t tame.

“I don’t know,” Laurie says at last, but Evander isn’t sure which question he’s answering.

Evander is about to snap at him when something catches his eye beyond the window. A frown furrows his brow and he moves quickly to flick off the lights and then kneel on the window seat and press his face to the speckled, dusty glass.

Below, a figure moves in the moonlight, footsteps listing sideways as it staggers deeper into the gardens.

Laurie crushes in beside Evander, uninvited yet warm. His eyes are on the garden, his breathing gone shallow.

“The hell,” he mutters. “Carrington?”

A ferocious sort of need flattens Evander’s fear and he slides off the seat and heads for the door. Madness has him by the throat, a fevered sort of courage flooding his lungs.

He needs to know.

He has lost his goddamn mind right now, but he isn’t stopping.

“I’m going outside,” he says.

SEVENTEEN

Everything inside Evander has narrowed to this one point, the sharp edge of it wrapped like cutthroat ivy around his wrists. He would bleed for answers right now, he would do anything to fix his upside-down world and finally understand what is happening. But he doesn’t count on the swiftness of Laurie as he darts in front of Evander and snatches hold of his arm before he can get to the door.

Their eyes meet and he has no idea what’s on his face, but it probably isn’t the factual calmness of a gentleman ready to talk things through.

“You can’t go outside.” Panic lives in Laurie’s eyes. “It’s pitch dark out there and—and Carrington literally just attacked you, right? You can’t go out there after him.”

But it’s different, if Evander is ready. He isn’t going to get answers by curling up in bed and keeping his limbs from dangling off the edge in case the monster’s long tongue licks up between his fingers.

“What do you want us to do, then?” Evander says, trying not to sound bitter.

“I don’t know.” Laurie’s voice stretches, and he’s more upset than Evander thought he’d be. “Maybe … We could tell my aunt Azalea in the morning?” But there’s no conviction in his words. “You’re safe inside though.”

But he isn’t. Carrington proved that.

It freaks Evander out in a sickening way, how often Carrington has probably been in his room, stroking his hair as he slept hard and heavy. Terror hasn’t left him yet, the pulse of it a dull thrum in his stomach, but knowing he’ll never find the truth because no one is honest with him has severed all his self-preservation. Nobody can be trusted. Every single person here salivates over him and sees him as a key to be pocketed so they can own Hazelthorn, but the things they’re hiding are worse than he imagined.

He is sure now that there is a monster in Hazelthorn. Something worse than the creature Carrington has been corrupted into.

“You’re not poisoned.” Laurie sounds like he’s begging Evander to believe it. “You’d have felt effects before now and see? You’re fine. Let’s just deal with everything when there’s light. Okay?”

“Okay,” Evander says.

Laurie relaxes infinitesimally.

Evander waits exactly half a second and then bolts around him.

Laurie gives a muted yelp and snatches for Evander, but misses. “Evander! Wait.”

But Evander is already out of his bedroom and plummeting down the hallway.

“You are so goddamn stubborn—” Laurie lunges after him, but Evander is faster.

He shoots around corners and halls and then clatters down the narrow staircase, muscle memory kicking in to guide him through the murky dark. Footsteps pound the landing above him, but Evander is not a thing to be kept anymore.

He runs into the kitchen, where a small light over the stove breaks the darkness, and he flings open the back door, ignoring Laurie’s breathless shout behind him.

“Evander, you can’t—”

Night air hits him like a shock, slicing across his lungs as he gasps with the thrill of it. His bare feet hit the cobbled garden path and he’s moving fast, a roulette of frenzied screams circling his head.

What is he doing? If Carrington tried to poison him already, he could do much worse in a garden seething with toxic plants with only the moon as his witness.

This is what he wanted, after all.

Evander to come outside.

He should have grabbed a knife from the kitchen, though he isn’t sure if he’s the type of person who could use it. In the back of his mind, he can hear Byron Lennox-Hall’s firm voice nailing him to the floor. Be respectful. Be obedient. Be. Quiet.

Don’t go into the garden.

Swear to me—

“But why the hell not?” he whispers to the dark, his breathing quick and furious. “What is behind that goddamn door?”

Because he already knows that’s where Carrington was headed, the place where his blood coats the wood. To keep something in? Or to let it out?

unless you’re making everything up because it’s easier to imagine monsters than admit you’re lonely and scared and overwhelmed by inheriting this estate and you miss the man who hurt you even while you pretended he loved you and maybe you’ve got something to hide along with everyone else—

Evander slips between hedgerows and trellises throttled by brambles with a swift ease that surprises even him. It takes only seconds to lose Laurie.

Branches whip bloody lashes across Evander’s arms, but he seems to know just when to duck and weave, which mossy walls to climb over and when to dive beneath vine-covered archways, and he makes very little sound as he runs.

He shouldn’t remember the way this easily.

He should be anxious and terrified, fumbling in the dark.

He shouldn’t feel this confident.

Under the light of a moon curved like the back of a silver spoon, the garden looks like a thing from a fairy tale. Fireflies glow like pixie dust and the thrumming hum of a thousand cicadas and frogs sweetens to a cadence that feels like a song. Flowers turn to opal stones in the shadows and fungi lines garden walls like bioluminescent plates. His fingers brush them as he passes and come away powdered in spores, and he has an odd urge to lick them.

There is something wrong with him and the way he constantly wants to put the whole garden in his mouth and swallow.

Lithe greenery ushers him forward, and when he hears a smattering of voices ahead, he squirrels himself down amongst lush sweet ferns that curve like cupped hands to hide him.

This is the part he knows he’s ignoring: how the garden seems to want him there, how it reaches for him, how it is pulling toward the red door.

Behind him, something breathes. When he twists, trying to catch it out, it stops moving and all he can hear is a chorus of cicadas, their song rising to a shrill pitch.

The feeling remains, of being watched.

The back of his neck prickles.

A shivery spike of fear surges in his chest and thumps wetly against his aching ribs, and he hasn’t so much stopped freaking out as become used to the constant scream ringing in the back of his head. A frenetic laugh bubbles up in his throat at what he’s doing.

Black hooked thorns dig into the back of his thin shirt, but he ignores the needling sting against his flesh as two figures come into view on the twisted path that weaves in and out of the walled gardens.

Bane Lennox-Hall has a shovel over one shoulder and a tiny flowerpot under one arm, his flashlight illuminating his caustic expression as he gives a sardonic eye roll at something his companion said—his companion, who is none other than Oleander’s timid assistant.

Jessica trails after him, lugging a sack of gardening tools. The juxtaposition of them together in the dead of night makes Evander frown. He came out here for answers about Carrington and instead he’s turning over stones and finding only worms and rot the deeper he digs into the confusing mess that is the Lennox-Hall family.

“—being so precious about this,” Bane is saying with a huff. “This is part of the job. Assisting me is assisting my mother.”

“But that’s not … I didn’t sign up for…” Jessica catches up, and when the flashlight slashes across her face she winces. Her pantsuit is disheveled as if she flung it on at the last second, possibly after she thought she was off duty for the night. “I’m not qualified for gardening.”

“Nonsense. You’re doing such a good job.” Bane drips with condescension. “Like I said, we’re planting one seedling. It’s very rare, I might add, and must be planted under the light of a full moon.”

Evander squints because the moon isn’t full and the flowerpot seems to hold a wilted stick of basil, not some exotic plant. If Bane is pranking a hapless, underpaid assistant, he’s even more pathetically awful than Evander thought.

Bane powers off, snarking at her to keep up. He has on loungewear and what look like slippers, while Jessica has at least shoved her feet into some oversized rain boots. She staggers after him, the sack making scraping sounds on the cobbled path.

Evander follows.

The problem of Carrington folds itself into his pocket as he slips forward, keeping to the shadows near hedgerows or beside the tallest garden walls. His bare feet are soundless against the mossy stones, his heart a wildly fluttering thing in his chest as he detangles scarlet creepers from his ankles. The garden seems torn between urging him forward and snatching at his clothes, as if it longs to flatten its soft furred leaves against his hot, bared skin and keep him forever.

It’s in his head, of course, thinking the garden wants anything. It’s just a garden, and it’s just dark, and he is just a boy playing detective.

The path narrows into a heavy green throat of that steel-sharp ivy, and it takes Evander a second to realize where they are. Ahead, the red door looms, dark with blackened blood, and the walls seem even taller than before. Bane sets down his shovel and starts fiddling at the door, grunting complaints until it swings open. He holds up a thin, tarnished object.

So Carrington isn’t the only one who knows where the keys of Hazelthorn are kept.

With walls of ivy on both sides, Evander has no real coverage, so he drops to a crouch and crab-walks closer, the darkness layering him with invisibility as he watches them disappear into the locked garden. If they heard that odd heartbeat or felt the tacky, coppery ooze of the door’s bloody paint job, now dried to an oxidized reddish brown, they’ve made no indication. Maybe that was only for him to hear, to taste.

At least no monsters rush out.

Or maybe the thing that lives inside there still sleeps.

Evander crawls closer and then stays crouched by the open doorway, his heartbeat a runaway rabbit as he peers into the forbidden garden. What he expects, he can’t name. Something terrible, something foul. The Lennox-Halls’ dirty secret. He holds his breath and presses himself hard to the edge of the doorway in shivery anticipation. Show me. But the more he looks, the more his frown deepens, and he can’t help the wave of sallow disappointment.

The locked garden is perfectly circular, with wildly untamed underbrush running around the edges and Ever Ivy smothering the stone walls. It smells viciously and violently of growing things, of fresh soil and vegetation rotted down, and the flowers are oddly shaped and disfigured as if they’ve been crushed and flattened out by an invisible hand. Wickedly glossy berries cluster near leaves that curve like arrow tips. Most of them he recognizes from the field guide, from the poisonous nightshade section.

That wild, foul-sweet smell reminds him of something too—the poison that stained the air when Byron died.

In the middle of the garden lies a circle of odd tiles, a strange-looking dry marble fountain in the dead center. It’s so smothered in lichen and ivy it’s impossible to make out the grotesque statue’s shape until he realizes it’s another faun. What the hell is it with all the fauns? This one looks particular monstrous with horns and fangs, stone edges chipped off and bandaged in fingers of ivy.

Six garden beds surround the fountain and they’re the only things that don’t make sense.

They are completely dead.

Not a stick has been planted, not a weed flourishes.

Tension pricks at Evander’s shoulder blades and he glances quickly behind him, but nothing is there. Breathe. When he looks back, Bane is already lording over one of the empty beds, directing Jessica onto her knees to start digging with a small trowel. She tilts her head up to say something and he scoffs. The flashlight shows her frown before she bends back to her task.

Maybe the only thing happening is a rich man being an asshole. If Laurie was here, he’d go in and pick a fight with Bane so Jessica could escape, but Evander has none of that bravery. It also does strange things to his insides thinking of how Laurie is the only Lennox-Hall who would step in.

Bane inspects his piddly basil plant and starts waxing on and on about how to garden—bold for a man who dragged an underpaid assistant out here to do it for him—and Evander starts to feel his nervous energy fizzle out in disappointment. No answers will be found. No new pieces for the puzzle.

He gets to his feet, careful not to brush up against the vicious ivy, and decides he’ll melt into the shadows and keep looking for Carrington. Maybe later he’ll try to steal that key from Bane and inspect this garden in the daylight.

Because it makes no sense to lock a garden that is nothing more than a place for dying plants.

He turns away just as Jessica’s voice tips up into a stifled shriek.

Evander whips back around, his hands on the doorframe, leaning in while his heartbeat picks up. They could probably see him if they glanced this way, but neither of them look.

She’s pointing into the garden bed and he can’t see, can’t see, but Bane gives an unconcerned snort and comes over to rest a hand on her shoulder.

“Oh my god.” Jessica’s hands clap over her mouth. “Ohmygodohmygod. Is that … is that an arm?”

Ice settles in Evander’s veins. What the—No, she must have uncovered an old root and is confused in the dark. Getting any closer would mean he’d enter the garden and he can’t risk it.

Bane laughs, one long, despicable sound, and then tosses the basil plant over his shoulder. It smashes against the water fountain in a tinkling of ceramic.

“Yes, yes,” Bane says, unaffected. “Didn’t you know? The best way to fertilize hungry soil is with blood and bone.”

In his hand is a small knife.

There is one split second where Evander’s eyes go wide, his body coiled to plunge forward, because he can see it in slow motion, feel it, taste the spray of hot coppery blood at the exact moment it happens.

Bane plunges the knife into the side of Jessica’s neck.

He yanks it free with a sick, wet squelch and blood mists out like black rain.

A strange gurgling escapes Jessica as her hand flutters to her neck and she twists to stare up at Bane with almost childish confusion.

Evander’s heart punches into his throat, an upturned scream clattering against his teeth. He is frozen, he is horrified, he can’t take his eyes off what he just saw.

Hands close over his mouth.

He’s yanked backward and down, his cry muffled as he strikes out with wild terror. Carrington. It’s Carrington and he’s going to die die die—

But then Evander is crushed against a chest, his body folded over as a heavy weight presses him toward the cobbles and heather. Laurie’s mouth is at his ear, his breathing too quick and lit up with a raw, wretched fear. His fingers dig in hard around Evander’s mouth, his left arm coming up to wrap around Evander’s throat so he can’t scream, can’t breathe, can’t make a sound.

This is nothing like the comforting hold of before when he had a panic attack.

This is a silencing.

Laurie tightens his grip, his brace digging in hard against Evander’s windpipe; it’s strangulation, sickening and savage.

“Shh,” Laurie hisses.

Panic soars through Evander’s veins until he is an animal thing, pinned and brutalized, his terror written only in his wild eyes. This is the place he nearly died and this is the person who nearly killed him and the way he’s holding Evander says he has not forgotten either of these facts.

All Evander can do is stare into the open doorway of the forbidden garden as Bane releases Jessica and she crumples like a crushed flower into the empty garden bed. The bloody knife is in his hand, glinting wetly in the dark, and he surveys it with bored contempt. Then he kneels down, puts a knee on her back, and starts sawing open her throat. As if he needs her to bleed out faster.

The flesh must be chewy and soft. The small knife keeps getting stuck.

Cartilage snaps with a crackle.

A whimper escapes Evander, muffled by Laurie’s fingers pressed up hard against his teeth.

But then Laurie rests his forehead against Evander’s curls with infuriating tenderness, and bloody despair is strewn all through his voice as he whispers, “I told you and told you. The garden isn’t safe.”

There is something toothy and feral about the way he is now. Before the accident, he was a good, quiet little boy, or so they keep reminding him, but something has turned him inside out and he is so very hard to pin down, to reason with, to quell when he falls into frantic fits of rage. Or maybe it’s pain.

He is eleven now. He hasn’t left his room in a year.

Fever has eaten all the way up his throat and he cowers in a rocking chair by the cold fireplace, his sweaty curls trailing down his back in damp coils. He is dressed in a rigid brown suit and it’s too tight, it hurts. Silver scissors lie discarded on the floor.

The ancient butler nurses his bleeding hand, tooth marks ravaging the flesh like mincemeat.

“It’s due to the head trauma,” his guardian is saying patiently to the butler. “We’ll have these behaviors under control soon.”

The butler clenches his teeth and wraps a rag around his hand.

The old man crouches by the rocking chair and holds it still, ignoring the little boy’s whimper at the loss of motion. It makes him feel calmer, to rock like that.

He didn’t want his hair trimmed, his beautiful black curls. He loves the way they feel trailing down his spine like tender, lovely vines. When he said no to the haircut, it didn’t seem to matter, so he repeated the sentiment with his teeth.

“Do your gums hurt again?” the old man is asking, his voice low and reasonable. “Your teeth are all crowded and overgrown. Do you know my plants get this way? All they need is a little bit of pruning.” He holds silver jewelry pliers.

His hand snakes out and snatches the little boy’s jaw with excruciating pressure to pry it open.

The little boy starts to struggle as the cool metal pliers are forced between his lips and clamp onto a tooth.

“I already told you,” the old man says casually, “to be quiet.”

He begins to pull and the tooth comes out like a thorn, lumps of fleshy pulp tangled in the root. Blood gushes into the boy’s mouth and he is panicked by it, drowned with it.

He screams for a long time.

EIGHTEEN

Everything inside him has unspooled. His body is not his own, rather a cavity for dead moth wings and ruined wishes, and he thinks maybe it always has been.

Laurie hauls him upright, struggling to hold on while keeping a hand clamped over Evander’s mouth. He is such an easily maneuvered thing, something to be packed up and folded down when misbehaving and placed back in his box. Hot rage builds behind his eyes and, uselessly, he thinks he is about to cry.

He wanted one thing, just one thing, so, so badly.

An excuse to let himself trust his best friend again.

He can’t. He never will. The truth keeps unburying itself.

Laurie’s eyes flick nervously back at the red door where Bane stamps on the garden bed with annoyed grunts. His foot must be churning mud now, the soil oozing blood like wet pulp around the crumpled body. Then he bends and plunges his hand into the dirt. When he straightens, he holds something small, the shadows obscuring most of it until he rubs it on his shirt and holds it up to the moonlight. It’s the size of a button and glistens like calcified blood.

“That’s it?” he mutters to himself. “Waste of my time.”

Laurie drags Evander backward, away from the red door, the garden, the cousin who has just unearthed a ruby from the soil where he murdered a woman.

A low, guttural roar fills Evander’s head and something dark and monstrous crawls up his throat. Not a scream of terror, but a roar of unmitigated fury.

This isn’t real.

He did not just watch a throat cut, a life sacrificed, blood spilled into the dirt in return for an uncut gem. It hits him suddenly, how often he has seen rubies in the mansion. Studded into crystal wineglasses and watches, used to decorate stained glass doors, set into jewelry slung around Lennox-Hall necks. They’re wearing murder like trophies.

Laurie pulls Evander around a corner and into another garden, where the walls are low and mossy and a line of plum trees is being slowly strangled by brambles. Stinging nettles cover the ground and nip at their ankles as they stumble to a stop.

“Don’t scream,” Laurie says, low and soft, and he removes his hand from Evander’s mouth.

He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t cry out, either, though his voice is cracked all the way through. He thinks he’ll be sick. “You knew.”

Laurie’s jaw tightens and he looks away.

“That’s how it works?” Evander can’t keep his voice steady. “You kill someone and bury them in the garden and in return it … gives you gems? This is what I’m inheriting?”

Laurie winces, but his silence rings loud as a slap.

But worse is the new understanding crawling over Evander’s skin. No monster lives behind that door; there is just a poisonous garden with an appetite for blood. He nearly died in that garden.

There is dirt in his mouth again.

In his lungs.

He is ten years old and he is still screaming because he will always be screaming out there, half-buried in soil filled with monstrous vines wrapped about his ankles, ready to pull him down deep.

Evander takes a step backward as he stares at Laurie, his obsession, his sepulchre for unrequited adoration. Dirt streaks his pajama shirt and his hair is gnarled with twigs and crushed leaves, his expression ruinous.

Horrible understanding slowly fills Evander’s lungs.

“You tried to sacrifice me to the garden when we were kids, didn’t you?” He is surprised how factual it comes out when his hands are shaking this hard. “That’s what you were doing. That was the ‘game.’”

Laurie says nothing.

“You—” Evander’s voice begins to rise, hoarse and rusted. “You sacrificed me to the fucking garden.”

Laurie rubs at his face and then starts to reach out, but Evander slaps his hand away so hard he actually yelps.

Evander spins away, digging his fingers into his hair and yanking hard enough that pain splinters across his scalp. He wants to scream and never stop. He wants to beat himself bloody against a wall. He wants to sink his teeth into Laurie’s skin and tear all the way down to bone.

“You don’t understand.” Laurie’s voice sounds rusted. “It’s not—Just calm down and—” He tries, again, to grab Evander’s arm.

But this time Evander slams him backward so hard he trips and falls down in the stinging nettles.

“YOU CALM DOWN.” All he sees is red and red and red. “I thought we were friends. I wanted to believe what happened was a m-mistake.”

“It was a mistake.” Laurie’s voice is rising now, though he hasn’t gotten to his feet. “I didn’t mean—”

“FUCK YOU.” Rage is spilling out of Evander’s hands and he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to stop. He wants to punch his fists into the ground, but instead he snatches up a loose stone from the low garden wall.

There is nothing in his head but this monstrous need to tear, to rip, to destroy. He is so drowned in it, so lost to it, that he barely registers Laurie shouting at him to stop.

He stands above Laurie with the stone raised.

It would be so easy to bring it down and crack his skull open like a candied apple and make the lies stop. Make everything stop stop stop.

Laurie is still on the ground, his eyes blown wide, his hands flying up to shield his face with swift reflexes that speak of practice. As if he knows, intimately, what it is to cower on the ground.

Evander’s hands shake around the rock.

what what what are you doingggg—
what are you doing

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WHAT ARE YOU—

His lungs split. A gasp escapes.

He drops the rock to the soft earth with a thunk. A sudden dizziness makes him sway.

That wasn’t—

That didn’t feel like—

Him.

Laurie slowly lowers his hands and stares up at Evander and there is nothing on his face except pure fear. It looks wrong to see him like this, stripped of the smirk, the insolent swagger, but he also seems so much more real, so much softer and breakable.

“I’m sorry,” Evander thinks he says, but his mouth feels full of briars.

Bane had to have heard them yelling, but there’s no telling whether he doesn’t care or will storm over to investigate with the cruel edge of his knife.

Laurie is still breathing too fast, his body coiled and shivering as he stares up at Evander with fathomless despair. “Can we just go inside?”

“Who else has Bane killed?” Evander’s voice has gone detached, cold, and it sounds so very far away. “Are you pretending you don’t know who killed your grandfather?”

“No,” Laurie says quickly.

Memory hits, sharp as a blade slicing across a tendon: Jessica’s scream as she dug up an already-buried arm in that garden bed.

Someone else is already dead.

“Your family is a bunch of serial killers,” Evander says flatly. “You feed innocent people to the garden for … for profit.”

Laurie climbs shakily to his feet. Red welts streak his arms from the stinging nettles, and his pajamas are filthy and torn. “I tried to tell her to quit.”

For a second, Evander doesn’t understand—and then he remembers Laurie’s obnoxious mocking of Jessica when she attempted to trim those rosebushes.

“I was going to make her so … so uncomfortable, and then she’d quit. I just—” His voice crumples. “I ran out of time. I hate this, okay? We’re not allowed to breathe a word to anyone outside of the family about the garden. I’ve tried and Grandfather fucked me up pretty bad over it.” His voice wobbles slightly. “I can’t stop them.”

“Stop them? What about stop you?” Evander’s voice goes mockingly light, but it’s so unsteady he knows he’s about to cry. “Were we ever friends or was I just some annoying little kid you hated being stuck around? I don’t remember us before, so just tell me the truth. Were we even friends before you tried to sacrifice me?”

Laurie makes a small noise, pressing his face into the crook of his arm. “Please, just listen to me.” He is hoarse and ragged and when he raises his head, his eyes have turned to twin pools of moonlight. “Once the garden has a taste, it wants the rest. It wants you back. Do you understand?”

And suddenly Evander can hear Carrington’s wet rasp again.

the garden
wants you
back

His mouth has gone bone-dry.

“No, I goddamn don’t understand!” Evander nearly shouts it. “You keep everything from me. I can’t trust you! How am I supposed to find a killer in a family of killers?” He starts pacing, his hands fluttering up to his face. “Maybe I don’t even care who killed your grandfather, because he’s just as evil as—” He spins away with a muted growl and his body smacks into something solid.

A small grunt escapes him and his hands shoot out to steady himself against the thing that wasn’t there before. And now is.

Carrington snatches hold of Evander’s face and
screams.

Bloodied soil splatters against Evander’s shocked, open mouth. His cry is high and inhuman as terror shoots through him like a thunderclap. He jerks backward but Carrington digs mud-crusted fingernails into the skin around Evander’s cheekbones and roars.

It is endless. It is a nightmare.

It goes on and on, a scream everlasting.

Carrington scratches hard at Evander’s face as if he’s trying to peel back the flesh, and then he lunges, teeth gnashing. Evander keeps trying to hurl himself backward, his own terrified cry pitching higher and higher, but Carrington holds on to him hard.

Laurie shouts behind them and flings himself at Carrington.

They go down, all three, except Evander is underneath.

He fights wild and hard, his legs kicking as he struggles to get free.

“Evander.” But Laurie sounds too far away.

Carrington rolls off him with a snarl, his neck at a horrible angle until he takes both hands and rights it with a meaty, wet snap. There is even less of his tattered butler’s uniform than before, rib bones wrapped with vines and hollyhock showing through the shredded fabric. Evander lands a hard kick to the creature’s sternum and sends him reeling back. It gives Evander enough time to clamber to his feet while his heartbeat rockets out of his chest.

Laurie has grabbed up a fallen branch. “Evander, run. Go inside!” He tries to raise the branch but Carrington simply grabs his wrist midswing and wrenches it sideways until Laurie cries out.

Carrington shoves him aside as if he weighs no more than a butterfly, and he hits the ground hard. Then Carrington slowly turns back to Evander.

“Stop.” Evander shakily raises his hands. “P-p-please, Carrington. I’m s-sorry. I’m sorry—”

Carrington lunges.

It’s inhuman how fast he moves, skittering with such speed that Evander has no time to do anything but turn and bolt as fast as he can. Maybe he is saving Laurie, leading the creature away.

But as he leaps over a bed of lavender, he realizes there is no putrid breath on his neck, nothing bearing down on him. He spins, wild, because Carrington didn’t follow.

He’s slamming into Laurie.

Evander doesn’t hesitate.

He hurls himself back toward them, while a tiny voice stabs the inside of his skull. Run run run, let him deal with the monsters his family creates. But it is worse than anything else, somehow, to be only a few yards away while Carrington pins Laurie to the ground and rakes gnarled claws down his chest as if he means to split him open. It is worse, somehow, to listen to another boy let out the kind of panicked scream that could shatter the sky.

Carrington is a ravaging, horrifying force, his bare finger bones plunging for Laurie’s eyes.

Laurie is still screaming.

Then Evander is close enough to grab the back of Carrington and haul him off with a strength he didn’t know he had. Dirt spills from Carrington’s wounds, vines unravel like intestinal worms from the gaping cavity where his guts should have been. It splatters on Evander’s feet. He gags.

The distraction is enough.

Carrington peels himself upright, bones clattering and jaw unhinged, and his fist slams forward and wraps around Evander’s throat.

“Time,” he rasps, “for the ground.”

And then he starts dragging Evander away.

He fights, striking out as he chokes, his legs slipping out from under him. But it does nothing. A new strength has gripped Carrington and he simple walks away into the murky overgrown depths of the garden, pulling Evander along with him.

Laurie tries to stand, slips, and curls up on the ground with a guttural cry. He’s cradling his bad wrist.

Carrington hauls Evander around a corner and the rest of the garden wall blocks his view of Laurie.

The garden
wants you
back.

He already knows where Carrington is taking him.

He can hear the bloody, hungry throb of the red door.

NINETEEN

The garden never really let him escape that day, not when he was already tooth marked, selected for devouring.

He will be put in the ground again.

He is going to die.

The way Evander thrashes in Carrington’s grip is rabid and wild, his body a lithe, liquid thing against a grip so phenomenally tight. Carrington crushes bony fingers around Evander’s neck with one hand, and hauls him by the collar with the other, taking most of the weight as Evander’s legs go out from under him and he’s dragged down the path between blackened walls of ivy. Toward the red door.

Don’t go in there. Don’t don’t don’t—

A dull, tired part of his mind wonders if Carrington will put him in the earth beside Jessica or if he’ll pick an empty, cold bed. Maybe this is what it is to face your own death: to worry if you will be lonely, right there at the end.

But it feels as if a thin, silver needle is piercing right between his eyes. He needs to think.

If the garden has hold of Carrington, has eaten through him and wrapped its tendrils around his spine to direct him like a puppet, then why did it attack Laurie? The garden is owned by the Lennox-Halls, obeys them. It should want to kill only Evander, the sacrifice it didn’t get to finish.

Ahead, the doorway yawns wider and Evander tries to scream one last time. But the hand crushing his windpipe reduces his cry to a choked sob. He throws himself wildly from left to right, trying to beg Carrington to stop. To listen. To wait.

“What the—?”

Carrington jerks to a halt and Evander stops struggling in surprise, twisting his head just enough to see Bane blocking the doorway to the locked garden. Shadows swathe his frame, and his loungewear is blackened and wet with blood, slippers caked in grime. His eyes bulge, mouth agape, and he grips the doorframe as he lets out a shriek that sounds more like a strangled bird than a man.

“What is—What is that!” Bane raises one shaking finger straight at Carrington. “Oh my god—”

There is no way Bane didn’t hear the commotion before, but clearly he was going to ignore it and continue on his merry way with his blood-bought ruby. Evander assumed the Lennox-Halls were used to creatures like Carrington. Apparently not.

Evander uses the momentary disruption in Carrington’s focus to wrench free of him. This time it works.

He hits the ground and rolls sideways, grabbing for the first rock he can—a sharp-edged thing, big enough to hold in two hands. Carrington doesn’t seem to care and has started lurching in that uncanny gait toward Bane.

But Evander clambers to his feet, his heartbeat pounding with a sickening slurry of adrenaline. He rushes forward, rock raised, and slams it into the back of Carrington’s head.

The old butler goes down.

Bane starts screaming.

Evander’s heartbeat is a throbbing mess in his mouth, blood dripping down his chin, and all he can think is, make it stop stop STOPSTOPSTOP—

The rock comes down again.

again

He has a knee on Carrington’s back, his hands gripping the rock gone slippery and slick as the smell of iron stains the air. He slams it down and watches the skull split like a robin’s egg, a viscid pool of bloody juices sluicing between the shattered bones. Compost riddled with maggots plops onto the cobbled path and the smell is nauseating.

It takes him a very long time to realize the monster is no longer moving and he is simply mashing brains against rock while this terrible sound dribbles from his mouth. Agony, horror, terror.

“No…” Evander lets the rock roll from his hands and thud dully on the soft, damp ground. His arms are wet, slicked up to his elbows. His pajama shirt clings to his stomach, warm and saturated.

Everywhere, there is blood. Dark, endless pools of it.

It’s in his mouth, mixed with a sudden flood of saliva.

“Nonono.” He is shaking hard as he stumbles backward. This isn’t him—He didn’t do—

He didn’t do this.

He didn’t—

Slowly, he forces himself to look up at the petrified figure of Bane still standing there, staring with blatant shock.

This is how Evander must look, slivers of skull and flesh flecking his chin, soaked in blood like an ethereal horror pulled from the night soil.

Evander runs.

Nothing else exists in his head, just the need to get away get away from what he has done.

It was a monster. It was going to kill him.

He tears wildly down the path, clambering over garden beds and throwing himself through underbrush so thick it whips and slices his body as he bolts. It’s all up in his mouth, the dirt and blood and foulness, and he can barely see. His arms stretch out to ward branches out of his way and a heartsick sob escapes his mouth. Darkness unfolds around him as he plunges into a clearing, tripping on cement broken up by roots. He glances down, trying to find his footing, but instead the world ends.

There is nothing nothing nothing beneath his feet.

His lungs are full of wildflowers, not screams, his body twisting like a bird with its neck broken midflight. But there is nothing to hold on to.

Air rushes past.

His stomach bottoms out.

Then he hits water with a cracking splash.

Somehow he had forgotten that stagnant, cement pool he and Laurie stumbled across yesterday, framed by gargoyles and throttled with algae and water lilies. The night disoriented him, and now water floods into his open mouth in a brackish wave.

He’s thrashing, choking, sinking fast. Wet, snakelike water lily roots tangle around his arms, his throat.

If he hits the bottom, then he can push off it back toward the surface. But he sinks and sinks, impossibly far, his lungs screaming as frog spawn and weeds press about him from every side. Beneath his bare feet, the pond descends in an infinity of blackness. It’s a goddamn cement pool. It can’t be this deep.

Except it is.

And he is drowning.

He kicks as hard as he can, flailing his arms and ignoring the way his stomach spins. Swim. Except he doesn’t know how. His head breaks the surface for a second, water lilies plastered against his chest, but weeds wrap around his ankles and yank him down. Down. To fight is to lose energy, but panic roars through his brain and survival instinct takes over. His arms windmill underwater and he comes up again. Goes down. Water crashes wildly against the sides of the pool from his mad thrashing and a wave slams backward into his face. He tries to cry for help, but he can’t get enough air, can’t think, can’t goddamn swim.

He understands the concept of it, but he is made of panic right now, and he can’t calm down enough to tread water. When he lunges for the edge of the pool, his fingers scrape uselessly at the vast expanse of slick concrete wall, algae gumming beneath his fingernails as he tries to pull himself out. It’s useless. The water level is too low, the pool too deep, and he can’t push off the floor to surge up and grab the lip of the pool if there is no floor.

Energy fast slithers out of his bones.

Keep moving.

But he’s tired, he’s so, so tired. He never thought about how quiet drowning can be.

Exhaustion sets in, a deep cold worming its way through his skin and sucking him down. He tries to float, his face all that could be seen amidst the swathe of suffocating lilies, but he is too waterlogged, his movements floppy and uncoordinated.

It has been minutes. It feels like hours.

A wet vine wraps about his throat and slowly begins to tighten and he doesn’t even have the energy to scream about how not right this is.

“Help.” But it’s too weak and water rushes into his mouth.

His legs are barely moving.

Keep going—

But he can’t reach the edge, he can’t pull himself out. All he can think, as he starts to sink, is that to drown here, after all that he survived, feels bitterly cruel.

Then something wraps around his wrist.

At first, he thinks little of it, his brain spinning with fright and exhaustion, too disoriented to understand the tender, green vine circling his arm isn’t pulling him down. It drapes over the edge of the pool—he didn’t see it earlier, was it even there?—and it’s stronger than it looks, covered in soft leaves that brush his cheek. If he could use it to pull himself up—

But he has no energy.

A foolish, pathetic urge to call for Laurie swells in his throat and he hates himself for wishing he could, for wishing a murderous boy like Laurie would even care. Evander’s head tips forward and rests against the vine as his chest burns.

Then, slowly, slowly, he begins to rise.

His body is limp as it is dragged from the pool, the vine encircling his wrist growing tight with the strain. Water pours off him in a gushing roar as he’s pulled over the edge of the pool and flops on the concrete. Lichen scratches his arms, his neck, as he coughs up stagnant water, his whole chest shaking from the violent expulsion.

Then he just lies there, spread out as if he’s been butterflied with a butcher knife, staring up at a sky gone gray with incoming dawn. Duckweed sticks to his face and his wrists, tangles in his curls. Each breath cuts lines of white-hot fire through his chest, and after a while his cheeks are only wet with salt tears, not pond water. It takes forever until he looks down at the vine still circling his bird-bone wrist and the absence of anyone around to have used it to pull him out.

Slowly, the vine uncurls.

It draws away, but not before a tendril with tiny green leaves pats his tearstained cheek.

Evander forgets how to breathe, because there is something almost tender, almost human, about that gesture.

“I think you forgot,” he whispers, too emptied to care that he’s talking to a plant, “you’re meant to be trying to kill me.”

TWENTY

The sky has split open like a bloodshot eye by the time Evander limps back inside the mansion. Already birdsong chirps behind him, the wind’s fingers playing with the hedgerows and teasing petals open. The air is thick with magnolia and the hum of honeybees as dawn dyes the hedgerows a verdant green. It seems impossible that the garden is anything but a vibrant paradise.

Evander slams the back door behind him so hard the entire house seems to clench its teeth at the aftershock.

He leans his forehead against the door, sobs curdling in his throat. Part of him wants to scream. Most of him wants to curl in a ball on the cool kitchen flagstones and cover his ears and just stop. He needs this all to stop. Water sluices from his clothes and puddles beneath his bare, bloody feet. His pajamas are beyond ruined, plastered to his body and smeared with pond scum and mud and frog spawn, and the foul taint of stagnant water has settled into his skin. Limp lily roots wrap his throat, his wrists. When he peels one off his cheek, it comes away with a sucking sound, as if it was a tentacle lined with hungry mouths.

At least most of the blood has washed out and gore no longer clings to his hands. But he still looks wrecked. Dull agony throbs through his ribs and he isn’t sure if it’s from being thrown around by Carrington or swallowing half the pond, or from the fact he keeps forgetting to breathe.

He is not okay.

The garden wants him dead—except maybe it doesn’t. Had it ever been dragging him down to drown, or had it been trying to pull him out the whole time? He is so goddamn confused.

It takes him a full minute to peel himself out of the kitchen. Even though Oleander’s staff are busy with breakfast, the room filled with the smell of fried eggs and plum preserves and cinnamon apple muffins, not a single person looks at him or asks if he’s okay. Begging for help seems futile since he doesn’t know if they’ll report whatever he blurts out to Oleander.

What would he say, anyway? If he starts talking about gardens with bloody appetites and monsters held together by brambles and rubies dug out of flower beds, he’ll sound insane.

He could run away, but he has no idea which way is the nearest town or if he could even walk there. Inheriting billions seems like a meaningless fairy tale when he has no idea how to access a single dollar. And the idea of leaving Hazelthorn sends panic fissuring through his chest with such velocity that he feels sick. He can’t just go.

It has hooks in him, he can feel it.

He is too far grown into Hazelthorn, and it into him.

Cold digs into his bones as he stumbles deeper into the mansion, leaving a trail of slick mud and duckweed in his wake. He is a drowned spectral creature pulled from the depths, equal parts pathetic and terrible to behold.

He is not thinking, not thinking, about Laurie. What happened to him. How badly he was hurt. If he made it back inside. Was it Carrington’s attack or fear that had him curled up on the ground? Either way, all Evander should feel is seething hate.

Laurie tried to sacrifice him. For—for a goddamn gemstone. He is every inch a Lennox-Hall, wearing his family legacy with pride. Although a small needling image flashes through Evander’s mind of Oleander and Azalea flaunting ruby-studded jewelry … but he can’t ever remember Laurie doing the same. Even that first night’s dinner with Oleander, there had been rubies inlaid into the wineglasses, and Laurie, who had seemed keen about alcohol previously, had instead been hitting his glass with a knife, not drinking it, not wanting anything to do with it.

It’s a mess, all of it, and Evander doesn’t know what to think, but hurting over this is a waste of time. It’s lore between them now—he will always be a bloodied plaything and Laurie will always leave him to die because this is what they are to each other: two boys forever trying to sink their teeth into the other’s throat.

Salt stains Evander’s tongue. He hates being like this, a sad, yearning thing. Hates how everyone walks over him. Hates how he can’t make them stop.

He needs to find Dawes and beg for help, since the attorney is supposed to be working for him. If he could just kick the Lennox-Halls out, that would be a start.

One aching step at a time, Evander hauls himself through the manor to Byron’s office. He’s shivering hard as he fumbles for the knob and it takes him a second to realize the door has been left ajar. Nothing in his head is working in straight lines—he isn’t thinking of the early hour or how he looks or what he will say—but he hesitates as he hears the smooth, comfortable voice of Benedict Dawes on the phone.

Evander fits himself closer to the crack to watch a sliver of Dawes moving through the dim gloom of the office, unable to make out the words. Morning light does weak battle with the shrubbery clawing up the window, and it leaves the office feeling tight and smothered.

The office door swings open and Evander stumbles inside with a slight yelp. He’d been so distracted that he hadn’t noticed the call had ended.

Dawes reaches out to steady him with his free hand, the other still holding his phone, but his disapproval morphs into dismayed surprise. “My god. What happened to you?”

“I—I—I need to talk to you.” Evander can’t stop his teeth chattering, though he isn’t sure if it’s cold or shock. Black sludge slides down his face and splatters on the floor. The blood staining his pajama shirt must look enough like soggy mud now that it doesn’t raise immediate concern.

In comparison, Dawes looks well rested and neat, his hair combed back and his suit a mixture of tweed and deep mahogany tones, his tortoiseshell glasses making him look even more like he just stepped out of a college class. That heavy, expensive watch on his wrist glimmers before he twists his hand and his cuff covers it. Maybe he’s imagining it, but Evander is almost sure he sees rubies inlaid into the watch face.

“I’ve got an important call incoming with your shareholders.” Dawes winces. “I can’t delay this. But I’m … Let’s see. Er, can you…” He’s struggling, eyeing Evander as if he’s going to melt into sludge.

“I need you to-to-to get r-rid of the Lennox-Halls.” Evander can barely get the words out through his chattering teeth. “I—I don’t want any of them as m-my guardian.”

“Ah.” Dawes slips his phone into his pocket and then leans on the edge of the huge desk. Papers throttle every inch of the surface, which seems odd for someone who is supposedly putting affairs “in order,” and when he attempts a smile, there’s a measure of unease to it that wasn’t there before. “I’m afraid you don’t really get a choice there when it comes to next of kin.”

“But they’re not my kin,” Evander says. “What about—”

“I’m not sure you should be wandering around outside,” Dawes cuts in. “Look, what if you get cleaned up and we talk later? This call I need to take is really important. Just trust that everything I’m working on is in your best interest as your lawyer.”

Evander stares at him with flat fury while Dawes backs up and puts the desk between them under the guise of tidying a pile of disemboweled manila folders. Trust? Evander can’t trust anyone. He doesn’t know why he’s never pushed for more about his past, his own family. Why doesn’t he ask goddamn questions?

Because they told you not to.

Because you get punished when you do.

stop blocking it out out out out—

Dawes flicks a glance at his watch. “Just stay in your room for now, all right? Rest. We don’t want to trigger any episodes.”

Evander’s eyes snap up to Dawes’s and he thinks he sees a momentary flash of regret, as if Dawes hadn’t meant to let slip he knows about the episodes. He shouldn’t. He’s just some lawyer.

No one is meant to know about the episodes.

“I’m not safe here,” Evander hisses. “Do-do-do you know about the garden?”

Dawes gives a confused glance at the window where branches scratch at the grass with eerie shrieks. “Know what about it? That it needs work? Because, absolutely. Hiring gardeners is something we can look into.”

There’s a guilelessness to how he says it and Evander wants to believe him, but all he can think of is sending clueless workers out there to be eaten.

“No gardeners,” he snaps. “No.”

He is fitting anger atop fear, he knows this, but he can’t rein it in. He is seconds away from clawing fingernails down his own face as he screams, I have done something terrible out there in the garden. I don’t know what to do, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m—

There’s a light rap on the door and a delicate cough that makes him whirl around with his heart punching into his throat.

Azalea Lennox-Hall lingers in the open office doorway, holding a delicate teapot and wearing a strapless dress, the skirt curved like black rose petals. She gives an insipid little finger-wave.

“Could I be of help?” Her expression is brushed with the appropriate amount of genteel concern.

Dawes looks relieved someone else has stepped in to scrape the mess of Evander off the floor. “Actually, that’s perfect. Evander, see if Ms. Lennox-Hall can help you out. I’ll grab you to finish our discussion later, all right?” He ushers Evander out the door before he can argue, as if he wants nothing more than to put distance between them, then he gives a stilted wave and shuts it.

A lock clicks.

Evander’s stammered protest dies in his mouth.

“Darling, you look positively distraught.” Azalea’s hand flutters to her throat. “I’m about to breakfast. Come tell Auntie Aza all your woes and I will fix everything.” She holds out a hand to him, wriggling her fingers as if he is a small child who will rush to her and be consoled.

A snarl catches between his molars and he grinds it to dust before forcing himself to limp after her. At least she probably won’t try to murder him—on account of it being an unpleasant and dirty task—and maybe he can force her to give him some answers.

That is one thing he can cling to: his pathetic attempt to play detective. Then he can stop thinking—stop thinking stop thinking—about what he did to Carrington.

Though what is the point of searching for a murderer anymore? Maybe Byron Lennox-Hall got what he deserved after a lifetime of putting people in the ground to build his fortune. No wonder he locked everyone out and never left Hazelthorn. He didn’t want to share.

Hazelthorn is a blood-soaked monster.

And Evander is inheriting it.

He feels sick as he trails Azalea into one of the downstairs parlors, this one crowded with oppressive ebony hardwood furniture and deep green drapes, the wallpaper patterned with elderberry flowers. A small, round table sits in the center of the Persian rug, and it’s been set with a silver tray of fresh fruit and soft-boiled eggs and sardines in an open tin. Tiny dead eyes stare up at Evander as he slumps into the seat opposite her and watches her pour floral-smelling tea into a pretty little teacup. Steam curls between them and he has the sudden urge to sweep everything onto the floor.

It could be poisoned.

He puts both elbows on the table and digs his palms into his eyes. For once, he’s not even hungry. He’s full, right up to his throat, with a thousand horrors.

“Talk to me, darling.” Azalea starts setting out little dishes and fussing with her toast. “Though I must urge you not to go swimming in that awful pool. I doubt it’s been cleaned for decades. We used to play there as children, Locke and I.” Her smile is fond, but reserved, as if something about the memory makes her uncomfortable.

The unfamiliar name cuts through Evander’s muddied fog. “Who’s Locke?”

“Oh, my brother. Laurie’s father. May he rest in peace.”

Ask questions. Now. He has nothing to lose.

“I know about the garden.” He leans forward, his voice shaking. “I—I—I know what you all are.”

Azalea’s expression remains serene as she uses a two-tined fork to stab at the sardines. “Haven’t you always? It’s not much of a secret amongst the family, though of course you are but an honorary Lennox-Hall—” Her voice takes on a delighted, conspiratorial tone. “Unless that changes through marriage.”

Evander stares. He’s shaking with rage and fear and soaked to the bone, and he has no idea whose marriage she’s suggesting.

“I’m seventeen,” he says.

“Oh, well, adoption, then.” She smiles. “Marmalade on your toast?”

“I’m not hungry,” he grits out.

Azalea’s gaze flutters to him and then quickly refocuses on her arrangement of toast squares. “I have always wanted to adopt. It’s such a glorious, special calling and, truly, I would be a beautiful mother.”

He’s trying to peel his brain away from the fact she was about to frame this conversation around marrying him even though she knows how old he is. His skin wants to crawl off his entire body.

“Then why didn’t you adopt Laurie?” he snaps.

Azalea blinks as if this is the only bizarre part of the conversation. “Oh, well. We are not particularly close, I fear. He’s rather opposed to any sort of affection.”

All Evander can think of is the tender, reverent way Laurie held him after he’d run to his room last night. The way he seemed as hungry for contact as Evander was.

But thinking of Laurie makes something in his chest feel pulped down, so he lets out a slow breath and tries to refocus. His nerves are feathered out, split and spliced, his mind a hurricane of everything he’s trying to hold in. He knows Azalea the least, but he’s not foolish enough to think she’s harmless.

“Did you kill him?” He hates how rusty he sounds, hates how he keeps crashing straight into the most dangerous questions.

“Who?” Azalea pauses, butter knife poised above the butter. “Oh, you mean Father? No, of course not. How does that benefit me?” She makes a dismissive noise, and somehow he believes her, despite the fact they’ve dropped pretenses of the aneurysm now. “I have quite an agreeable life thanks to Father giving me a nice little allowance.” She says this as if it’s mere pocket money when she’s wearing a dress that must cost thousands. “There is so much of the beautiful world to see—in first-class fashion of course, I’m not an animal. Also, I was on a beach in the Maldives when I received the call from Dawes of Father’s tragic passing. I have reservations, plane tickets, all of that. It’s easy to prove.”

She picks up a phone in a pearl-crusted case and taps at it for a few seconds before flipping it around to show airline tickets that put her in the sky while Byron lay dying.

Water drips off Evander and patters softly onto the carpet. He tries to read guilt or manipulation off her dreamy face, but he’s exhausted and he isn’t sure if he ever reads people right anyway.

“I’m quite happy to be abroad instead of here and I’m fairly certain Oleander wants Hazelthorn all to herself. And you.” Azalea gives a small laugh as she sets down the phone, but there’s no humor in it. “Listen, darling. Say you and I were to enter an arrangement. It could work nicely for us both. Adoption, marriage”—she waves a hand as if they’re the same thing while Evander glares daggers—“we could work it out and then I would take myself off on glorious, luxurious adventures and you could stay here, doing whatever you please. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Freedom.” She smiles, beatific, and leans back to pop a whole sardine into her mouth.

He thinks he hears the little jellied suck of the eyeball slithering down her throat.

“Of course,” she adds, “I would manage our finances.”

A tart taste stings the back of his mouth and he swallows hard, knowing she means she’d drain all of his inheritance and leave. But is that even such a bad thing? He needs only Hazelthorn, wants nothing to do with the blood-soaked fortune Byron has cultivated. Evander hates that he’s even considering her offer, but Oleander is obviously going to rule Hazelthorn and him with an iron fist and do nothing to stop Bane using the gardens to bloat himself with more wealth. Bane is probably still out there, covered in Jessica’s blood.

“Think about it,” Azalea says sweetly.

If Evander was alone on the estate, no one would ever have access to the gardens again. He’d be sure of it. He could force everyone to leave. Bane, Oleander …

Laurie.

“When I turn eighteen, I’ll lock everyone out.” His voice is thick with unshed tears. “Forever.”

Azalea’s elegant mouth turns into a pout. “Don’t take this so hard. I truly thought you knew about the gardens. It’s a little barbaric, of course, but everything has its balance. If we feed it a reasonable amount of blood, it gives us rubies, and quite frankly, we deserve that. The unfortunate part is how it’s gone feral these last few years. Father mentioned he was no longer feeding it since it was taking so much and giving back so little. A little starvation to motivate it to behave, you know?”

Evander’s stomach clenches.

Azalea taps the top off her egg with a silver spoon. Slick membranous liquid oozes out and puddles on her plate. It’s undercooked, but she barely seems to care. “But don’t worry. It’s not as if we ever feed the garden anyone important.”

It hits like a physical blow and he can hardly breathe around it.

Anyone. Important.

“It was unfortunate about Locke’s wife,” Azalea goes on, unconcerned. “But she was such a miserable woman. When some people find out what the garden is like, they go a little mad. It took a lot of encouraging for him to tidy up that loose end and let the garden have her, but I still do not understand why he took it so hard and drove his car into the tree afterward. My poor, silly brother. I miss him.”

A dull roar slowly fills Evander’s ears; he is back underwater, putrid water sluicing from his mouth.

“No.” He is surprised how steady he sounds. “Laurie’s parents died in a car accident with my parents. They were all out together for the opera and dinner.” He repeats it again, the words hollow and tasteless as he grips the table until his fingertips turn white. “They were all in a terrible car accident.”

Azalea pops another spoonful of sloppy egg white into her mouth, long strands of it dripping off the spoon like gelatinous saliva. “Well, I’m not sure who told you that, but Locke was alone in the car when he drove out of Hazelthorn. It was, oh, eight, nine years ago now? He was highly strung, yes, but none of us suspected regret would hit him that swiftly. Though I suppose the tip-off was that he left Laurie behind before he tore out of Hazelthorn like he’d lost his mind. Which I suppose he had. I was touring Amsterdam when Father phoned me with the news and I just couldn’t take on Laurie at that point.” Her sigh is full of curated regret. “He has … difficulties. It was better that Father raised him.”

The dull roar is growing to a spiraling scream in Evander’s head. “No, no, b-because my parents were in the car too.”

“Sweetie.” Azalea gentles her voice, but the saccharine lilt to it makes him choke. “I can assure you my brother died alone in that car.”

“Then how did my parents die?” he bursts out.

“I’m not sure.” Azalea plucks a finger of marmalade toast from her plate and there’s half a smile caught on her mouth. It feels mocking. “What was your last name again, dear?”

“It’s—” And he stops.

Everything inside him
stops.

It’s as if the too-fast beat of his heart has simply imploded like a soft dandelion head, his rib cage contracting to catch all the soft strewn seeds before they fly away.

In his mouth is nothing nothing nothing.

Evander—

Evander Nothing.

How could he forget his own last name?

No, he can’t freak out. He’s gone through hell in the last twenty-four hours and he’s had trouble with his memory since the accident—this is just him, spacing out for a second. Dawes must know. It must have been in the will reading.

Wasn’t it?

Azalea is chattering on, unconcerned even though he’s turned to stone. He barely takes in what she’s saying.

“—was adorable as a child.” She dabs at her lips with a napkin. “He had certain behavioral difficulties at school, but Father didn’t want him coddled, so we just hoped he’d grow out of it. Unfortunately, he turned into such a sour young man, so antisocial and sarcastic, but he used to be so lovely and bright. Oh! And he had the cutest imaginary friend. He combined his own names to give it a name. Isn’t that sweet?”

“His names.” Evander’s voice is dead.

His heart is not beating.

He can’t think.

He shoves out of his chair and strides for the door, ignoring a startled noise from Azalea.

“At least think about what we discussed!” she calls after him. “We would make a wonderful team, you and I! We could both have everything we wanted.”

He gets to the narrow back staircase before he starts to run for the north wing, his lungs full of black tar and his head throbbing. Around him, darkness streams down the walls in ebony waves, and he can feel it soaking into the carpet, licking the undersides of his feet, laughing and laughing at him. The halls have become too narrow, strangling. He is nearly delirious as he crashes through his bedroom door and goes straight to his bedside table.

The photo frame was always his prized possession, the only thing he had of his family. But why? Why doesn’t he have more of his own things? Wouldn’t they have fetched his clothes, his toys, his books from his own home after Byron took him in?

my parents didn’t die in a car crash
what’s my last name
whatwhatwhat is going on—

He snatches the frame with dull fingers and stares at the rot speckled on the glass, the dust caked in the corners, the plastic smiles on their perfect faces.

The lack of him in the frame.

He hurls it at the wall.

Glass shatters in a delicate spray, the frame cracking as it hits the carpet with a dull thud. He crouches, not caring about the sharp slivers nicking his fingertips. The thin paper crumples as he tugs it free and it takes him a full minute of staring at the text on the back to understand what he’s seeing. There’s half a recipe, an ad, an article about a celebrity’s dress. He unfolds the photo that is not a photo and stares at the kitchenware his parents are holding that was hidden just out of the frame.

This was cut out of a magazine.

A stock photo.

Hands shaking, he stares and stares at the picture that used to bring him more comfort than anything in the world.

All he can hear is Laurie’s voice pounding inside his skull.

If you start unlocking doors, you might find things you don’t want to see. Or worse, you might wake up.

Evander lunges to his feet and staggers to his murder wall. Vines still cover his floor from where Laurie yanked them from under the bed, but he doesn’t care about the poisonous blossoms or the impossibility of them growing in his room. He is thinking only one thing as he yanks Laurie’s card off the wall so hard it rips.

He is riddled with despair, his next breath choked with something too close to hysterical laughter. This can’t be real.

Laurence Evan Alexander Lennox-Hall. He’d rattled it off when asked, though he’d been reluctant.

Evan

Alexander

Laurie named his childhood imaginary friend—

Evander.

TWENTY-ONE

This is how it feels to fall outside of his own skin, to be scissored open with gardening shears so the soft underside of his flesh can be bared to the world. His throat is wrapped in tendrils of wisteria and wickedly sharp ivy. His mouth is full of dirt. Inside of his head, thunderstorms rage, and he can’t fit logical thought around the crack of fists against the back of his teeth.

It isn’t an episode, but it’s not a panic attack either.

Evander is losing his goddamn mind.

He holds himself so rigid his spine feels near to snapping. The foul smell of the pond still stains his skin and the crawling urge to peel out of this body seems the safest thing to focus on, because he can’t think about the rest of it.

Get the garden’s fingerprints off him. That’s what he’ll do.

He shuts himself in his bathroom and fills the tub with water so scalding it renders his bruised body a livid red. Countless scratches cover his hands, his arms, his throat, and he scrubs them all with brutal amounts of soap, relishing the sting. Think of this, only this. Pain. Otherwise, he’ll freak out about being submerged in water again, about closing his eyes and feeling like he’s back there: drowning and drowning while no one cares.

Don’t cry. But it’s so goddamn hard not to.

Lies have been placed like delicacies on his tongue for so long he can’t recognize anything else; he is a cobwebbed collection of pretty untruths and made-up stories, and if all of that is cut away, there is nothing left.

He is just a boy who was once buried alive on an estate full of monsters.

And he doesn’t know what else about him is real.

Carefully, Evander draws his knees up to his chin and simply sits in the tub, staring at the green tiled wall with mold threaded between the cracks. Moss flourishes there, too, now. He doesn’t have the energy to wonder if that’s normal or if the garden is crawling into his life any way it can.

His spine is the naked curve of a half-moon and he can’t stop shivering. Shock has eaten all the way through his bones, his muscles, his marrow, but his mind is still picking through the shattered pieces of all he knows.

He wanted to be a detective? So be a detective.

The scrambled mess of clues and lies and secrets seem impossible to sort into cohesive shapes, but he can make deductions like the detectives do in his musty classic books. Starting with this: Why the hell is he even at Hazelthorn?

His parents were obviously never close with the Lennox-Halls, which means he and Laurie were never childhood friends. He fabricated this entire life of growing up trailing after Laurie with dogged adoration, and now embarrassment sends his stomach spinning. What if Laurie resented the way his grandfather became guardian over some random kid? Maybe it was easy to see Evander as a skinful of blood, useful only for sacrificing to the garden so he could ask for something he actually wanted.

Evander needs to remember exactly what happened before the sacrifice.

Who was he? And why is it a secret?

He squeezes his eyes shut, digging his chin into his knees with such vicious pressure that new bruises will form. If only he could force his memories back by sheer, furious will.

Years ago, he read a medical textbook about amnesia and head trauma, how sometimes a patient doesn’t want to remember, so they make no real effort to heal their minds. That could be him. Maybe he’s known, all along, that Laurie thought nothing of him, and he wants so desperately for it not to be true that he refuses to fight through the thick, choking cobwebs that smother his past.

But even as he grits his teeth harder, reaching and reaching into the black depths of his mind, he finds … nothing. Before they tried to kill him, there is nothing nothing nothing.

Tepid water sloshes against his heaving ribs and he’s hyperventilating here in this tub, with grime rimming the white porcelain from his scrubbed-off filth. Gooseflesh ripples down his arms. Just get out. Sharp pain fissures the undersides of his feet, and he slowly unclenches his arms from around his legs and awkwardly pulls a foot into his lap to inspect the damage.

He thought he’d find flesh grated to pulp thanks to running barefoot through thorns and thistles, but it isn’t that.

For a long, long minute, he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.

Thin, white nubs poke out from his soles. He picks at one, thinking it’s a sliver of dead skin. Instead of peeling, it pulls. An uncomfortable shudder runs through his stomach, not painful exactly, but weird in a way that makes every fine hair on his body stand on end. It’s like tugging a piece of hair that’s been stuck down his throat—except this thing is long and thin, lightly haired like a radish root. The tub has softened his feet, so it slides straight out, snapping off at the end.

When he holds the white, wormlike thing up with shaking hands, he realizes that’s exactly what it is.

A root.

He just pulled a little white root out of his own flesh.

A sob breaks in his mouth as he hurls the root away and reaches for another, sick compulsion making him pull it out. Then another, and another. Their exodus leaves little peppered holes in the hard skin of his sole, bloodless but deep. Worse is the gag reflex that comes as he plucks at them, the way his toes curl, and revulsion crawls up his spine. The bath fills with tiny roots floating limply on the water.

“What the fuck,” Evander whispers, hoarse and horrified. “What the actual—”

The garden
wants you
back.

Maybe this is the result of being half-eaten. The garden took a bite and its tooth broke off under his skin, and all these years it lay dormant inside him until he went outside and woke it up.

Then why did it save him from the pool? He’s missing a crucial piece and he doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t understand what a murder garden wants if not to finish eating him.

Unless—

Unless he’s turning into a monster like Carrington.

It’s too much to swallow, to even think about, and it’s all he can do not to rip off all his skin to see if vines coil around his intestines and thread through his bones. If he keeps looking at the roots floating in water, he’ll vomit, so he hauls himself from the tub in a rush, water sloshing over the bathroom tiles in a grubby wave.

In his bedroom, he finds clothes. His curls hang wet and limp, plastered to his neck and trailing past his shoulders. None of his usual care goes into dressing: He yanks on thick socks so he can’t see his feet, then stuffs himself into corduroy pants and a button-up shirt that he leaves untucked, his collar popped, cuffs undone. He doesn’t even get the buttons in the right holes and it’s too short at the wrists, which makes no sense unless he just shot up a few inches over the last week. Which should be impossible.

Electricity fizzes behind his burning eyes as he hurries around his room, snatching up a handful of pens and tearing open his notepad to scribble frantically. He pins more notes to his evidence wall and slashes haphazard writing on the old notecards. On Bane’s, he writes in red marker: MURDERER.

Except he’s the wrong murderer. Unless he isn’t. It’s impossible to guess because everyone in this house is a goddamn liar.

Bane could have been so pissed that Byron refused him entrance to Hazelthorn, so he killed his uncle in revenge. That gives him access to the gardens, to wealth.

Suddenly, all Evander wants is to find Laurie, to pin him down with knees on his chest, hand at his throat, and make him talk. Anxiety blossoms under his tongue, wondering if Laurie made it back inside, and he shouldn’t worry, but he does. What if—No, Laurie is fine, he’s probably just off somewhere only caring about his own problems.

A light crash and thump sounds behind Evander and he whirls, his heartbeat rabbiting in his chest. He isn’t safe safe safe. But his spiral is cut short when he realizes the crash was one of the jam jars on his window seat toppling over.

Evander lowers the pen from where he’s been writing straight onto the wallpaper and blinks hard.

The clippings he’d so carefully arranged in jars have grown. Not a few new shoots or unfurled leaves; they have doubled in size. Branches stretch from the tiny jars, flowers blossom in brilliant colors, and leaves the size of dinner plates unfurl toward the sunlight. They have far outgrown their confines in a single night.

Evander takes a hesitant step toward the plants and then stops.

The sound of his socked foot hitting the carpet has every leaf and petal and lean green stem turning slowly toward him.

As if they heard.

As if they grew for him.

As if they want him to see.

you have to get out you have to run you literally brought them inside you invited them to do this you asked for this you should never have gone outside they told you not to and you did it and you’re going to die and die and die—

The doorknob rattles, the dark oak swinging open with a low groan, and Evander flinches back so violently his shoulder blades hit the wall. His chest moves too fast, too ragged, and he can’t swallow past the growing knot of hysteria bunched up in his throat. He half expects Carrington to stagger in with hemlock growing from his empty eye sockets, but instead, Oleander swoops into his room, tall and imposing in a loud pantsuit splattered with violent swirls of orange and yellow florals and decked out in a lavish amount of chunky gold jewelry. Her earrings are polished, red rubies, and Evander can’t stop staring. All he can think is: Who did you slaughter to make those?

Oleander surveys the cluttered mess of the bedroom with a hmph. “I hear you’ve been having midnight adventures in the garden.”

Panic splinters white hot across Evander’s vision. He’s so goddamn naive. He should have barricaded himself into his room, should have realized that the Lennox-Halls have gone from unpleasant to dangerous and being the key to their fortune might not be enough to keep him unharmed.

“I’m—I’m not.” But he stops, his lungs hollowed out.

Another jam jar topples over with a dull thump onto the carpet, a sapling spilling out in a tumble of dirt.

Oleander’s eyes narrow as she looks at the mess. “I suppose there’s no one to blame but myself.” She lets out an acidic, long-suffering sigh. “I let you wander around in such delicate health.”

“P-p-please leave my room.” His voice comes too high. He needs Dawes to come in here right now.

Dawes, who is on a business call far, far away from the north wing. No one can hear screams from behind these walls; Evander already knows. He also isn’t sure, anymore, if Dawes is on his side. If he, too, knows about the garden and revels in it.

Oleander cocks a disdainful eyebrow. “I think you should lie down. You’re sick.”

“I—I said—” The world blurs and he can taste blood, so much blood. “Leave. All of you n-need to leave Hazelthorn. You c-can take Laurie too. I never want to see any of you again.”

Oleander merely snorts. “Oh, you won’t be seeing Laurence again, don’t worry about that.”

It hits him almost too slow, what she means. His mouth goes dry. “Wait.” Because it rushes back, that night in the conservatory with Byron, how he also said he’d be dealing with Laurie this summer. It means something different now that Evander knows how Lennox-Halls deal with family members who don’t fit in, who fight back.

“That’s not—” His hands flutter at his sides before he squeezes them into fists. “That’s not what I meant.”

But Oleander only smiles, wide and vicious, as another shadow appears in the doorframe behind her.

Bane walks in with a nonchalant swagger and Evander forgets how to breathe.

He has always known that to scream is to believe there is someone out there who cares. People only scream with rabid hope caged in their lungs like a thousand thrashing wings because they still think someone is going to save them.

Evander has no one.

He is alone and he always has been and he might as well stay silent.

Bane has cleaned up since the murder, his skin glowing and his expensive linen suit neatly pressed. His golden hair is artfully mussed and his smile is an array of blinding-white shark teeth. He couldn’t look more at ease as he strolls forward with a jaunty whistle and sets a small tray down on the writing desk.

It’s a familiar sight, the tray.

A small brown bottle of medicine.

Evander pushes himself hard into the corner, his eyes flicking wildly between Oleander and Bane and the door. If he bolts, he won’t make it. Oleander is in the way.

“A sick kid like you shouldn’t miss so much medicine.” Bane’s smile pulls even wider. “C’mon over here, Evander.”

Refusal screams through his head, wild and feral, but he can do nothing. He has been speared straight through the middle, rooted to the wall by his own panic.

“Don’t be difficult,” Oleander snaps. “You’re unwell and you don’t want it to get worse.”

“I—I feel fine.” Evander swallows hard. “I don’t—I don’t need it.” Then he adds, “Thank you,” because he has been taught to be polite, to not rage, to cooperate, or consequences will hit like brands to his skin.

They can smell fear oozing from him, taste it on the air, and they exchange sardonic smiles.

“What an unsettled mind you have,” Bane purrs. “We’ll do our best to fix it.”

“I don’t need to be fixed!” It bursts out in a shout and he resists the urge to cram his fists against his mouth and bite down. “G-get out and leave me the hell alone, you murderers.”

As soon as it slips out, he regrets it, but no anger or surprise traces their faces. Bane smirks at Oleander, who rolls her eyes.

Evander is no threat to them. What he knows doesn’t matter.

He has no one to tell.

He thinks, suddenly, of a very small Laurie telling a teacher, a friend’s parent, anyone who would listen. How they must not have believed him and instead told Byron Lennox-Hall of his grandson’s tall tales, who then turned around and did something terrible enough to Laurie that he never told again.

“Take the medicine willingly,” Oleander says. “Or be forced. I don’t have time for a childish tantrum.”

Hysteria bubbles up Evander’s throat. He can’t reason with them. They are so comfortable in their crimes and their wealth and their walled-off estate; they know they can get away with anything.

Run. He has to try. If he can get to Dawes—

But he underestimates how fast Bane can move.

In a flash, he whips forward, grabbing Evander by the throat and punching him hard in the stomach. Air explodes from Evander in a stilted gasp and he buckles, his vision tunneling to a tar-smeared spiral of pain. The shock of it leaves him speechless and he forgets to fight as Bane deftly slips arms behind Evander’s neck and clasps him in a headlock. Then he twists so that Evander’s head tilts backward, the snapping force of the movement sending white fire splintering across his shoulders. He cries out, but that leaves his mouth open.

Oleander bears down with the medicine, splashing a generous dose in the cap. “Tilt his head back farther.”

“No no no. Please wait wait wait!” Evander tries desperately to wrench free only to be met with another twist that splinters his voice into a wail. His neck is at a steep, terrible angle.

Oleander sinks claws into his jaw and pries his mouth open while he makes another frantic attempt to thrash free. But he is a thin, fine-boned creature and Bane is a heavy, relentless weight behind him.

There was never any chance, Evander against the two of them.

Thick, saccharine liquid pours between his lips, the taste gluey and revolting as it glides down his throat. He tries to spit it back out, but he can’t breathe as Oleander fills another cap and doses him again. This is way too much. Carrington would only give him one dose after an episode. If this is even the same medicine. This tastes far thicker and even more bitter than what he’s used to and it coats his tongue with a mucous film.

It could be poison.

A cry tears from his throat, but it’s drowned as he chokes and coughs on the foul mixture. Bane drags him toward the bed and flings him down, dodging any uncoordinated blows Evander tries to swing. Dizziness sweeps over him in a wretched wave and for a second he thinks he’ll vomit. His stomach throbs from the punch. Something is wrong wrong wrong and the world lists sideways with a sudden lurch.

The mattress sucks him down, smothers him, and he is on a carousel, his fingers slipping as he tries to cling on. Voices bicker above him, their words like shrill magpies, every letter inverted so he can’t make sense of what they’re planning.

Distantly, he can feel hands on his shirt. Unbuttoning. Air touches his hot skin.

No.

No, they can’t—Stop stop stop.

His whimper is desperate as the room gives another sickened swirl. He has lost control of his body, his mouth, his mind, and he is lit up with the absolute terror of it.

Hands are on him, all over him, hundreds of fingers skittering like spider legs across the tender skin of his shuddering stomach. Poking his scars. Digging into the knotted tissue. Touching and touching and touching.

Don’t don’t don’t touch me I don’t want to be touched I DON’T WANT TO BE TOUCHED I DON’T WANT—

“Be quiet.” The voice is sharp and nasty right in his ear. “This is what happens when you don’t do as you’re told.”

Evander doesn’t remember when he slips off the edge of infinity and falls down into the dark.

All he knows is that he holds his still-beating heart in both hands and he is screaming as white roots burst from the bloody tissue and twine about his fingers. He’s trying to remember if the garden has ever actually attacked him or if it was just trying to take him somewhere, show him something, and the more he fought, the harder it tried.

His mouth is full of rotten roses.

And they are still growing.

And growing.

And growing.

TWENTY-TWO

He opens his eyes.

That alone exhausts him, and he lies for a long time with his eyelashes tacky with sleep as he stares at the coffered ceilings, floral motifs carved all through the plaster. He’s mapped every corner of this ceiling during his years of illness and it feels like time has slipped between his fingers.

Moving his body feels impossible. Muffled, cottony weight keeps him smothered deep into the mattress and the best he can do is rub his fingertips against the sheets. Continuous, soothing. If he tries to move, the room will spin anyway. He knows how it goes. How being ill works.

Except you were fine. You weren’t sick until they dosed you. Which means maybe you never were sick and it was never medicine. They’re poisoning you and they have been this whole time.

Pain splits through the gossamer fog before his eyes and he whimpers as something pulls across his chest with white-hot agony. His fingers drag over his ribs and catch on rough bandages.

“No…” He can barely get the word out through dry, chapped lips. “No, no, nononono—”

His next breath is too quick and he feels the stretch of the stitches, the tightening of bandages against expanding ribs. Heavy sedatives are slinking slowly from his bloodstream and he can feel a phantom scalpel sliding across his skin with a deft snick snick to open him up like a ripe pomegranate. But he didn’t need another surgery. Byron talked about it just before he died, but there was nothing wrong with Evander—

He was fine.

What have they done what have they done to him he was FINE HE WAS FINE HE DIDN’T FEEL SICK—

“Don’t.”

Cold, papery hands wrap about his wrists, tugging them away from where he’s tearing weakly at the bandages. He tries to wrest free, but it’s pathetic how little strength he has, how the lightest of touches can pin him back to the bed. “You brought this on yourself.”

Fever surges up his spine like a wick, and he blinks hard until his vision clears enough to make out the shape of Oleander, standing by his bed and backlit by golden afternoon sun pouring through his window. She wears an expensive, elegant pantsuit, her nails polished a dark crimson to match the rubies set in her golden rings.

Everywhere he looks, he sees rubies now. It is so horrifyingly, sickeningly obvious where they came from.

“You’re poisoning me.” It comes out slurred as a tear carves its way down the sharp angle of his cheekbone.

“You needed emergency surgery,” Oleander says crisply. “Now is the time to rest and heal, though I suppose you’ll be bedridden for quite a few months yet. Unless of course”—her voice turns factual—“we come to an agreement.”

She will torture him into silence, into compliance, and she isn’t even being coy about it.

He lies motionless, staring up at the ceiling as it turns over in a slow, sickening spiral. Better than looking at his bedside table, at the place where his parents’ photo used to sit.

His “parents.”

“Who am I?” he whispers. “Am I … a Lennox-Hall?”

Agitation twitches in Oleander’s jaw as if she doesn’t have time for this. “Of course not. All you need to know is that you were a feral little boy and my brother took you in out of the kindness of his heart. Your origin does not matter. Now listen to me carefully. You will stop prying into our family affairs, stop disagreeing, stop fighting against me, or none of this is going away, Evander.” She says his name as if it’s a thorn-choked curse, and then she leans in, her voice narrowing to a hiss. “If you thought this last week was hard, it is nothing compared to the ways I will split you open next.”

He can’t breathe, his weak body strangled in such rigid terror that he can’t even try to move. It’s been a week. A week like this. He is a hollowed-out husk of nightmares and fever-licked agony and he cannot catch himself before he slips down a hyperventilating spiral. No memories exist of being taken to a hospital for surgery, but slow understanding is seeping into his skull. How Laurie said his grandfather had sliced open his wrist to see if he could “fix it.” How Evander has never remembered surgeons or hospitals or leaving this estate.

Maybe they’ve always done what they wanted with him, right here, in Hazelthorn. Because nobody tells wealthy, vicious people no.

He wonders then if that’s all the garden is doing.

Telling them no.

Everything is steeped in a wrongness so terrible it takes his breath away, but worse is the indescribable, all-consuming panic of being trapped. It doesn’t matter how many truths he unwraps and lies he burns to the ground and mysteries he solves. They can do what they want to him and they always have.

“What did you take out of me?” His voice wobbles and he hates how debased he sounds as he looks down at his thickly bandaged chest, his hip bones that jut out like knives, and his skinny legs. “Where’s Laurie? Did you … kill him?”

There’s a flash of something in Oleander’s eyes, and for a second he thinks she’ll reach over and slap him. “Why this obsession with Laurie?” She bares her teeth in the pretense of a smile. “You will not be seeing him again, so burn him from your mind. And accept that I am a better option than what your life would be like amidst Bane’s greed and Azalea’s tastes. From now on, you will not be leaving this room and I will take very good care of Hazelthorn while you are indisposed.” She leans in and one crimson claw digs into his cheek for just a second before she wrenches away and sweeps from the room.

It’s only when she’s gone that he realizes her fingernails weren’t lacquered with fresh red polish. She has blood under her long nails. As if she hadn’t scrubbed them after being wrist deep in someone’s entrails.

Time is too slippery a thing to hold. He has no idea how long he lies in the suffocating heat of his closed-up bedroom, shifting in and out of consciousness while gray plumes of dust fill his lungs, his ears, his eyes. His body feels wasted, atrophied, his tongue a shriveled worm in his mouth. They should be pleased with that.

He is no longer trying to scream.

They’ve thrown out the plants on his window seat, cleaned the vines from under his bed, and torn down his evidence wall. The mess of scrunched paper scraps sticks out from his trash can under his desk, but he doesn’t care. Naive, wasn’t it? To think he could go up against a family like this. It’s over and he lost and this will be his life forevermore. He doesn’t even have the energy to pretend turning eighteen will change anything.

He wonders where his own family is, if he was stolen from them or given up to the Lennox-Halls like an object, if he once had a name that suited him more than Evander. A name for an imaginary friend.

He still has no idea why they’re doing this to him, what they’re taking out of him, and he’s too exhausted to think.

Except that’s a half-truth. He’s thinking of one person, and he hates himself for being delusional enough to believe Laurie is any less cruel than the others, considering he once tried to feed Evander to the garden.

Evander curls into a ball amongst his dank, sweaty sheets, trying to ignore the dull throb under his bandages, and he almost misses the clack of something hitting his window.

It happens again. A definitive clack.

He forces his head up and stares at the window, his breathing a little too fast. A wild sort of desperate hope fills him. Ignoring the pain, the dizziness, he pushes himself into a wobbly sitting position, one hand gripping his headboard to steady himself as he stares at the window.

Laurie’s face is on the other side of the glass.

Anguish surges up Evander’s throat and he’s terrified that this moment is born of fevered hallucination. Any second now, Laurie’s face will melt away and Evander will be left staring at nothing. But it doesn’t happen.

Goddamn Laurence Evan Alexander Lennox-Hall has climbed the ivy trellis beneath his window and now stands on the sill with his brace hooked in the vines, his free hand holding a hammer. Leaves tumble around him in shades of emerald and olive, and he looks like an absolute mess—white T-shirt rumpled with dirty sweat, muddy jeans and boots, his golden hair mussed. A livid purple bruise crosses one cheekbone and there is something determined and violent in his expression.

Evander’s never even seen Laurie look like this, rough and unkempt and feral, and he hates how much he likes it.

Laurie is mouthing something, but it’s impossible to make out the words before he gives up with a shrug and simply swings the hammer straight through the window.

Glass sprays in ice-chip shards across the seat, the sound shrill and beautiful all at once.

Laurie shoves the hammer through the ragged hole and wedges the claw into the lock on the inside. He wriggles it until the old mechanism buckles. Then it takes only a second to yank the window so hard it hurtles open, a cool breeze sweeping into the stuffy room with sweet relief. Leaves swirl inside and catch in Evander’s curls like a dozen viridescent kisses.

Laurie clambers through, everything about him rabid and lean and hungry as he looks at Evander. Only Evander.

“Hi, Rapunzel.” He is breathless, his eyes the bright, crystallized blue of the entire summer sky. “They’re going to kill me for this.”

He stands by the window for hours each summer, pressing his cheek to the humid condensation beading on the glass as he watches the garden below. After a while, his legs ache, but there’s nowhere to sit. He must stand if he wants to see.

He watches the boy in the garden, hungrily, furiously.

They are thirteen now, both of them, and it has been three years since Laurence Lennox-Hall tried to kill him.

Last week, there was a scheduled surgery to open up Evander’s old stomach wound, parting the ropey, pink scar so they could dip inside and drain the pervasive infection that keeps threatening to send him into septic shock. Soon, he will be better. He has been promised this.

He doesn’t feel it yet. Old vomit taints his mouth, and standing pulls at the new stitches, so he is in agony right now. Still, he doesn’t crawl back to bed.

He watches Laurie for hours.

Laurie, lying in the overgrown grass listening to loud music.

Laurie, beheading roses with a willow switch.

Laurie, climbing the plum trees and dangling languidly in the branches as he bites into luscious plums with his beautiful, bored mouth.

When he glances up at the window, Evander ducks behind the curtains and then smolders there like a stoked coal ready to flicker into a blaze of fury at how unfair this is. At how the person who ruined his life can be so lovely and lazy and free all summer while he swelters in his stifling room with nothing to do but pick at the soft green shoots coming up through the carpet.

When his guardian visits after a long business trip—bringing a gold-and-rosewood chess set as a treat—he catches the hungry way Evander stares through the window. He, too, stands there for a minute and watches Laurie’s mindless antics.

“He’s doing it for attention,” his guardian says gruffly. “I’ll make him stop bothering you.”

Panic kneads Evander’s stomach and he is terrified of losing these moments with Laurie, even if they are strewn through with resentment and jealousy and want want want.

“It’s not bothering me.” But he says it too softly.

The next day, his fever is monstrous, volcanic, unmanageable. He is dizzy as he looks through the window and watches his guardian storm out to the garden and take rough hold of Laurie to yell at him. It filters through the closed window in muffled cadences and it’s easy for Evander to cover his ears and pretend he doesn’t hear the crack of palm to flesh. Again, and then again.

Laurie doesn’t fight back. He doesn’t make a sound.

Evander crawls back into bed and ignores the tiny redcap mushrooms growing in the grooves of his headboard. When his next dose of medicine comes, he is grateful for how it upends his memories and leaves them like scattered marbles rolling away on the floor.

TWENTY-THREE

This boy cannot be trusted. He is wretched and irreverent, and his beautiful, mocking mouth is so full of lies. Yet Evander is helpless to stop his strangled cry of relief as Laurie jumps off the window seat and strides across the room to the bed. He tosses the hammer aside, his boots tracking mud across the carpet, and he reaches for Evander as if he’s about to cup his jaw. But he pauses, his fingertips hovering so close but not brave enough to make contact.

“You look like shit,” Laurie says, but his glib tone doesn’t match the flame-licked fury in his eyes.

Evander’s eyes map out that purpled, tender cheekbone. “So do you.”

Another wave of dizziness takes hold of him and he drags his knees to his chest, pressing his forehead to the sharp, knobby bones. His stitches throb and he wishes he wasn’t being seen like this: half-naked and weak, bandaged and withered like old sunflower petals. But he’s also so tired of being ashamed of himself all the time; what they’ve done to him isn’t his fault and maybe he should take fierce pride in having survived it.

“I kept trying to get to you,” Laurie is saying, still out of breath. “But they’re guarding the north wing entrance and then Oleander locked me in a bathroom for a few days. She’s gone completely ballistic about something new, but not sure why it’s doubled her hate of me.” He gives a small, tight laugh. “Today’s treat was Bane taking me outside to dig a hole in the garden. Wonder what that’s for. I bolted when he was distracted, but he was never going to chase me too far when he’s so terrified of that garden.”

Evander drags his head up, his eyes wild and panicked. “They’re going to kill you. I—I heard them—”

“Eh. I’ve known that for a long time.” There’s no inflection in his voice and his shrug is nonchalant as he sinks onto the edge of the bed. “I knew it the second I wasn’t in the will. Why do you think I was so pissed?”

“I thought,” Evander says dully, “it was because you wanted Hazelthorn.”

“I still do. And that’s why I’m not leaving.” He hesitates and then his voice comes rough and fierce. “I’m not leaving Hazelthorn because I’m not leaving you.”

Evander stares at him. The knot in his throat tastes of violet stems and soft mud. He wonders if, all along, he has not been listening to Laurie. Though maybe the misunderstanding isn’t wholly Evander’s fault when Laurie has buried the vulnerable truth of himself as deep as he can, leaving only this insolent mask for everyone to see. Maybe he does this to protect himself. Maybe he does this to hide.

Seeing this side of him is jarring and exhilarating and Evander wants to sink his teeth into it before it vanishes; that’s the only way he has ever known how to hold on to something like Laurie.

“We need to flush the sedatives out of your system.” Laurie stands abruptly, glancing around the room as if he’s taking stock. “When was the last time you ate?”

“No one brings me food,” Evander mumbles. “They’re p-poisoning me … every day. I should be dead, shouldn’t I?”

“I think it’s just enough to keep you sick, not dead. Really, really sick. You won’t make the climb out of the window like this though.” He strides into the bathroom, purposeful and confident, and it is a relief to have someone else making the plans.

Evander’s eyes drift closed and he almost misses when Laurie comes back and waves a hand in front of his face. Evander blinks, so drowsy that it feels as if there’s a delay between word and sound.

“—said, do you want to try throwing up?” Laurie says. “It might help. When was your last dose?”

“I dunno.” Evander tilts his head backward so it thumps on his headboard.

“Helpful.” But Laurie sounds unfazed. “So you could vomit and then drink a ton of water. Or you could just try sleeping it off. Your choice.”

Since when did Evander get choices? Since when did anyone ask? He is forever bullied into whatever option is most convenient for everyone else.

Thick tears catch in his eyelashes even though he desperately wants to hold them back. “I’ll try. I—I just want to get out of this room. But I don’t—Where would we even go? I can’t…” He swallows thickly. “I can’t leave Hazelthorn.”

“I have half a plan.” Laurie is staring very hard at the old bloodstain on the carpet. “I know you can’t leave.” He says it as if he knows Hazelthorn made the decision long ago. “A few more of my relatives have arrived for the funeral and I think Oleander is having the wake tonight in honor of Grandfather’s memory. Everyone is pretty focused on that and downstairs is swarming with caterers. I heard Oleander and Bane talking about bringing you down during dinner and … There’s a coffin, but I think it’s empty. I don’t know what they’re up to and I don’t know where my grandfather’s body is.” He starts picking at the mud crusted on his brace and Evander thinks, maybe, they both know that part is a lie.

Dread is a slow, seeping monster fitting its fist in their lungs and making it so hard to breathe around the understanding of exactly what the Lennox-Halls are willing to do.

Panic has slid a knife between Evander’s ribs. “Dawes isn’t going to stop any of this, is he? He doesn’t care what happens to me so long as he gets paid.”

Though he is now wondering what else Dawes knows, with the way he was so eager to put distance between himself and Evander before, how he holes up in that office with his fingers in all of Byron Lennox-Hall’s affairs, how he made sure to read the will with only Evander and Laurie present and has avoided the rest of the Lennox-Halls ever since.

“Byron’s death would have been…” Evander’s fogged brain struggles to put words down in a coherent line. “A big opportunity for him.”

Laurie rubs his eye. “Sherlock is onto something. Grandfather never kept a lot of staff, but we’re supposed to believe some postgraduate brat is the only person on his payroll at the time of his death? Convenient.” He hesitates. “If I help you to the bathroom, I’d need to touch you. Is that okay?”

The fact that he asks brings such brilliant and violent relief that Evander can’t hold back the choked sob. He nods. There’s time to steel himself, to anticipate the way Laurie’s hands slip under his armpits as he half lifts, half drags Evander toward the bathroom. But more than that, Laurie’s touch doesn’t hurt.

It shouldn’t be hard for Evander to upturn his insides when he’s felt nonstop nauseous for days, but he ends up with his cheek on the cool toilet seat while his attempts at dry heaving only leave him dizzier.

“Put your fingers down your throat,” Laurie suggests.

Evander moans.

“Do you…” There is a pause that lasts exactly seven lifetimes as Laurie looks very hard at the wall. “Do you want me to?”

What Evander wants right now is to die and be reincarnated as a slug that everybody leaves the hell alone, but failing that, he wants to be able to think through this fog. He wants to escape. He nods.

Laurie crouches down awkwardly beside him and gently cups Evander’s jaw.

“This is not,” he mutters, “what I wanted to be doing with your mouth.”

Evander squints at him.

A bright, hot red spreads up Laurie’s throat and he coughs.

“What,” Evander says.

“Just throw up,” Laurie says, and jams two fingers down the back of Evander’s throat.

They are both a mess after that: Evander with his head half in the toilet bowl as he empties his guts, while Laurie stands at the sink scrubbing his hand. Their eyes meet and Laurie winces half a smile while Evander’s eyes sting with salty tears and bile burns his throat.

That was, actually, the worst idea.

He drinks at least three cups of water before Laurie cuts him off, worried he’ll start puking again. Exhaustion has emptied him and he doesn’t argue, just sits slumped with his back to the bathtub and legs splayed out, long and coltish, his lank curls trailing down his bare shoulder blades. Repulsiveness oozes from him, which is why he’s confused when Laurie lowers himself to the tiles beside him and just waits.

Evander’s chin tilts toward the floor, he can’t quite look at Laurie. “Who hit you?”

“Mostly Bane.” He sounds disinterested. “But he’d been wanting to for a while, so.”

“What about … Carrington? Did he hurt you?” Evander swallows. It’s still too hard to think of the depraved rage that swept through him as he split apart the old butler and he can’t confess what he did. He just can’t.

“I’m used to it.” Laurie shrugs. “I froze that night. He went for my bad wrist and sometimes I just freak out when that happens. Reminds me of—Anyway, whatever, it’s stupid, I’m—I’m stupid.”

Don’t talk about yourself like that, Evander wants to snap, but he doesn’t have the energy. It’s easy, somehow, to think of himself with loathing and contempt, but then to realize how wrong it sounds when someone else does it to themselves. He hates it, the nonchalant way both of them reduce themselves with offhand comments of disgust.

“I—I don’t understand.” Evander’s words stretch with plaintive confusion. “The garden had grown all through Carrington, right? So it should’ve wanted to kill me … Instead, it went after you.”

Laurie’s voice comes hard. “Of course it did. The garden fucking hates Lennox-Halls, and why shouldn’t it? My family does the worst kind of evil down there and then we take and take and take. The garden wasn’t like that until they started feeding it blood. They made it a monster. So I guess it gets revenge when it can and sometimes turns corpses into puppets so it can send them inside and gouge out a few Lennox-Hall eyes. Good for it, quite frankly.”

Evander is too tired to properly appreciate the fact Laurie is talking uncensored for the first time ever—or ask who was keeping him quiet before.

“I nearly drowned in the garden that night,” Evander whispers.

Laurie’s head tilts toward him, a frown leaving a divot between his brows. “You should’ve called for me. If you put my name in your mouth, I will always listen.”

The wretched, raw conviction of his words hurts, and Evander can’t keep looking at him, can’t keep staring at those eyes gone soft with longing, because Laurie isn’t holding himself behind any icy, sardonic walls anymore. It’s too fervent. It’s too real. Evander can’t bear how much he wants this.

Both of their hands have ended up side by side on the tiles, a sliver of distance between their pinkie fingers.

“I want you to swear”—Evander’s looking at their hands—“to tell me the truth from now on.”

“I swear.”

“I like you like this.”

Hushed amusement edges Laurie’s voice. “Like what?”

Evander’s heartbeat picks up and his mouth feels oddly crowded with hummingbird wings. He doesn’t know how to say, I like it when you’re actually being you, so he just says, “Muddy.”

“Okay, Evander.” He’s trying not to laugh.

His fingertips stretch out and brush Evander’s, and then it’s as if he can’t bear the distance anymore and he simply picks up Evander’s hand and threads their fingers together. The warmth of him, the obvious tender earnestness, sparks a wildfire up Evander’s spine and he almost can’t breathe. This doesn’t feel like a thing he should want and yet the idea of pulling his hand away is unbearable. He wants their twined fingers to grow together like soft green vines across a rose trellis. If he is to be held, to be touched, he wants it to be like this and only by this boy.

Outside the bathroom, there is a faint thump and then the familiar sound of the lock turning over cracks through the quiet. Evander stiffens, his ribs caving inward, fear oozing through his veins in an oil spill. But Laurie’s already moving, scrabbling to his feet and darting back into the bedroom, while Evander follows a few steps before fear roots him to his carpet.

Hinges whine as Bane’s nasally voice drifts through. “Rise and shine, brat. We have a big evening ahead.”

Claws of panic rake Evander’s lungs open, but then Laurie moves to stand behind the slowly opening door. That mocking smirk is back in one corner of his mouth. He looks straight at Evander and puts a finger to his lips.

Then he turns and yanks the door wide open to Bane holding a tray.

“Hey, what the—” Bane splutters.

“Surprise, it’s your favorite cousin.” Laurie slams the door so hard into Bane’s startled face that the crack of cartilage is loud and glorious.

Bane reels back with a cry, the tray crashing to the floor as he grabs hold of his face. Blood spews through his fingers.

Evander starts for the exit, his heartbeat thundering under his ribs, but then he sees the field guide slid half under his pillow. Roots cradle the old book and slowly, as he watches in growing alarm, they push the field guide toward him. No time to think. He just snatches it up and ignores the way moss stains his fingertips. Then he plunges for the exit.

“Go go go.” Laurie lunges for Bane and yanks something from his pocket before leaping out into the hallway.

Evander skirts the crumpled, howling Bane on the floor and plunges after Laurie.

Adrenaline streams through him in a dizzying wave and he doesn’t know what to do, where to go. But Laurie reaches back, breathless and bright, a hand outstretched and fingers splayed in invitation. He is holding out the thing he stole from his cousin.

A key.

“This is yours,” Laurie says. “It unlocks the red door.”

Evander doesn’t have time to ask what exactly Laurie means, so he simply snatches Laurie’s hand and lets himself be pulled into a run.

TWENTY-FOUR

It takes him only a second to notice they have gone the wrong way.

Left leads to the narrow back staircase that opens into the rest of the mansion. Right ends in a stained glass window with the ivy grown so thick and vicious over it that all light has been swallowed.

The garden wants in in in.

There is no exit this way.

He tries to warn Laurie, but air escapes his lungs in a punctured gasp and his vision blurs from the brief exertion. His ribs feel as if they’ve been split open beneath the bandages, and the pain makes him almost drop the field guide. Behind them, Bane bellows as he scrambles to his feet.

“Laurie. You little shit! I’m going to rip your head off!”

Evander’s fingers slip from Laurie’s, his palm too clammy with sweat. He is not a bird meant for flight; he is broken wings and forgotten petals left to dry between pages of an old book and he doesn’t know how to believe he could be anything else.

But Laurie reaches the last door in the hall and yanks at the locked knob, swears, then grabs a dusty marble bust from the closest pedestal. Cobwebs dangle from the eye sockets. With one grunt, Laurie slams it against the doorknob.

The lock shatters.

The force sends him reeling backward and crashing into Evander, who barely holds him up while his own legs buckle. He yelps as Laurie tosses aside the bust and then drags Evander through the door as it moans open.

Inside, murky light smothers the walls in a soft dove gray, shadows tall enough to swallow a person. Laurie slams the door behind them and drags over an antique dresser to block the way. Two seconds later, a heavy weight pounds against the door. Bane roars.

“Don’t you dare do this, Laurie! You know what will happen! You know what will happen to you!”

The dresser jerks but doesn’t budge as Bane hurls himself against it again and again.

Laurie backs up, breathing hard, and then glances at where Evander is melting toward the floor.

“I—I—I can’t.” Evander hates how wrecked he sounds, how pathetic. “I—I don’t feel okay. I’m—”

“No, no, you’re fine.” Laurie quickly pulls Evander back upright and pushes some of the tangled curls out of his eyes. “This is all part of my plan.”

The door wrenches again and Bane shouts profanities. Every blow makes Evander curl farther in on himself. Whatever surge of adrenaline he had has ebbed and his muscles feel stiff enough to snap. He still wears only the thin knit pajama shorts and his bandages are far too tight around his shuddering ribs. They hide most of his scars but not the long one that stretches hip to hip from the shovel.

Laurie hasn’t said anything yet about the way Evander looks, but he will; he will be uncomfortable or disgusted or pitying. Or sorry. And it isn’t his fault. It’s his grandfather’s.

Evander can’t take any more lies. They are building up inside him, crowding up his throat in fistfuls of brutal thorns, and eventually he will bleed out from the effort of swallowing it all down. He is so sick of being quiet about everything that hurts.

“Wait, what the hell is this?” Laurie turns in a slow circle.

“You just said you had a plan,” Evander snaps, but he, too, is finally taking in the musty, airless space.

It’s his bedroom.

An uncanny, icy unease spreads through his chest and he has a sudden flash of vertigo, as if maybe he dreamt their escape. As if, maybe, he is once again curled on his carpet, his fingers tracing the bloodstained whorls where once upon a time Byron Lennox-Hall pulled out his teeth.

He cut the day out of his memory with such finality that it feels made-up, especially considering he still has teeth. So then what the hell did Byron pull out of him?

what do they want with you why are they keeping you what are they doing to you—

Everything in this place is a mirror image to the bedroom they just left: the four poster with the exact same quilts, the overstuffed bookshelves with the same titles he’s grown up reading, wallpaper covered in dead-eyed fauns. But it’s all slightly off: furniture to the left, bloodstains gone from the carpet, a fireplace where he now has a writing desk.

Evander coughs and dust motes dance in front of his face. Except it’s not dust. It’s pollen.

Then his eyes finish adjusting to the gloom.

The garden has devoured this room whole. Vines thread around bedposts and the quilts are layered in leaves. Shrubs nestle where the pillows should be and lichen patterns the wallpaper so thickly it suffocates the dead-eyed fauns. Mushrooms bloom from the old book spines and the carpet is lush with clover. But there’s no dirt, no water. These plants shouldn’t be so violently, viciously alive.

“This isn’t—possible.” His voice cracks.

Slowly, slowly, every leaf and soft green tendril begins to turn toward Evander and Laurie. Black petals open from buds tightly folded, pistils lolling out like red tongues. They were in the field guide: King’s Sleep. Black trumpet-shaped petals with white berries. Ingesting leads to paralysis. The toxic flowers are everywhere in this room. Absolutely everywhere.

The banging stops as if Bane’s given up. Or else he’s gone to find a better way to break it down.

An invisible ticking clock speeds up in the back of Evander’s skull. He’s breathing too fast as he watches a vine unwrap from the bedpost and reach for him.

“Tell me what’s going on.” Evander backs toward the door “How is—How?”

A faint sheen of panic has crossed Laurie’s face, too, and he covers his mouth against the pollen, hurrying over to the ancient fireplace so he can feel around the mantel. His touch leaves deep grooves in the dust.

“I don’t know, okay? I’ve never been in here before,” he says. “All I know is that there are tunnels in the walls and I’m sort of pretty sure—”

“That doesn’t sound goddamn sure, Laurence.”

“—that one connects to this wall. Can you not ‘Laurence’ me?” He looks determined, but the way he’s groping at the whorls and divots in the mantel’s marble carvings says he’s freaked out by the replica room too. “I found the tunnels years ago, but I didn’t explore much because I was scared of getting caught. But I want—need—to show you something. Hope you’re not claustrophobic.”

“I am actually!” Evander nearly shouts, even though he’s trying to hold himself together.

But he’s staring at an inside-out version of his own bedroom and he has this sudden, sickened memory of lying bundled up in blankets by the fire, reading as it crackles merrily. His room doesn’t have a fireplace. He can’t have this memory. Unless he lived in this room once.

His eyes flick to the window, to the lack of window seat. He stood there and watched Laurie in the garden. He remembers it with the sharp precision of a slap.

All those times they’d forced him to take those heavy sedatives must have messed with his memories. It would be so easy to move him while he was disorientated and dizzy to a new bedroom. They could just gaslight him out of any confusion he had.

What? No, everything is the same as it always is. You’re confused. You’re sick, Evander.

Be
fucking
quiet.

What if the rest of the locked rooms in the north wing hall are the same? And every time the garden crept in through the windows, the door, the wallpaper, they moved Evander and made him forget.

the garden
wants you
back

Laurie makes a triumphant sound and yanks a hidden lever in the mantel. A door in the wall opens with a gravelly moan and reveals a narrow entrance into a pitch-black chasm. The dark pulses, liquid and frothing.

Laurie sucks in his breath as he squeezes through the crack. “There’s more room once you’re in.” His voice sounds disembodied from inside the wall.

Already suffocation presses a hard hand over Evander’s mouth and a low keening noise slips from his lips. “No, no. I’ll die. You’re trying to kill me. I can’t, I can’t, I—”

Laurie’s arm reaches out through the crack, pale and skeletal, palm open for Evander to grasp. Desperation fills his voice. “Please?”

Incandescent rage surges through Evander. “No.” It comes out a snarl and he backs up even farther, still clutching the field guide in one hand and the key in the other.

But a massive weight slams against the door and the dresser skids forward. Another crash and the wood around the doorknob splinters. Evander shies away, panic shoving his heart into his stomach.

“I’ll hold on to you.” Laurie’s voice sounds hollowed out, but there’s an urgency to it. “Evander, come on. This is the only way I can get you out.”

Another blow smashes into the door behind him and Evander lets out a strangled moan before fitting his fear back into the curdled cage behind his ribs. He plunges through the crack in the wall.

As soon as he’s through, the entrance groans closed. Tight hysteria splays fingers over his ribs and he can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t move. The space can’t be wider than the width of a coffin and, as the entrance clicks shut, it narrows even farther.

Walls press in on him. Inky fingers wrap about his throat and begin to squeeze. He’s choking. Dying. Tipping toward the gritty floor strewn with decades of filthy decay.

The field guide slips from his hands and skids into the dark.

“Hey, hey.” Laurie catches him and hauls him back to his feet. “Breathe.”

Evander’s lungs strain, frenetic and airless.

Laurie scoops up the field guide and shoves it into the waistband of his own jeans. Then his hand closes over Evander’s, the key trapped between their fingers.

“Once we get around the corner, there’s more light, I swear.”

A dull roar pulses in Evander’s ears. He can’t do this, he can’t—

“You buried me alive.” It comes out choked. “You-you-you’re doing it again. It’s j-j-j-just like last time—”

“No,” Laurie whispers. “Because I’m in here with you.”

He catches Evander’s chin and pulls him close, pressing their clammy foreheads together, and for just a second they are fused, conjoined in their anguish, the dark between them thinning until the shape of Laurie is almost enough to hold on to.

Their mouths are so close, the salt on Evander’s tongue brushing Laurie’s lips. Hunger stokes, soft at first, and then it brightens, a flame licking up a wick, and Evander reaches for it because this feeling is easier to hold on to than the abyss of despair that has eaten through him nonstop since Byron Lennox-Hall died.

Slowly, Laurie starts walking backward, leading Evander deeper through the tunnel while exposed bricks and rough-hewn beams scrape at their skin. The air feels stagnant, throttled with dust, the floor uncomfortably damp. Panic is a beast in Evander’s chest, pounding fists against each rib until they buckle, and he clenches the key so hard the teeth bite into his palm. Ahead, the tunnel bends in a sharp angle.

An odd bioluminescence seems to come from the walls, bathing them both in a sickly shade of green. Mushrooms, he realizes, as Laurie brushes a hand against the walls and lifts it to show the crumbling fungi clinging to his fingertips. He’s pretty sure redcaps are not meant to glow, but he’s so grateful for the shred of light, he doesn’t care.

Laurie’s voice has an odd strain to it. “I don’t understand why things grow in Hazelthorn the way they do. There’s this old family story about how some ancestor a hundred years ago did terrible things to buy this piece of land, and then after he built the mansion, he found his wife having an affair with the gardener. He killed them both and buried them under the roses and then built a wall around them so he wouldn’t have to face what he did.”

Nothing in Evander wants to hear this, but maybe it’s part of the puzzle. He fits the key into the pocket of his pajamas and then presses his fingers to the spongy wall, watching the glow smear on his skin.

“But he couldn’t take the guilt, so he dug them back up and—found rubies.” Laurie’s face is shadowed and impossible to read. “Guess he forgot about his guilt because he kept testing it. Again and again. Back then, you could drain a cup of your own blood and get a ruby the size of your fist, but all he could think of was how much more you could get if you spilled more blood. He killed his staff for bucketloads of rubies. Then his enemies. Then he started on his kin. And here we are today. The bloody legacy of the Lennox-Halls’ greed and how it always outweighs our guilt in the end.”

“You’d know, wouldn’t you?” Evander is surprised at how vicious the words seethe between his clenched teeth. “All you’ve ever done is lie to me. You mess with my head like it’s a game and you move me around like I’m some puppet, but the strings are sewn into my throat. You think I’ll always trot after you, believe you, do anything for you.” He’s breathing too hard, each word carved from him with a hot knife. “And you think I’ll forgive you now because you rescued me?”

“No.” Shadows cover half of Laurie’s face, his eyes reduced to black opals in the gloom. “You should hate me. Why do you think I’m shitty to you? I … I need you to hate me.”

Molten rage fills Evander’s chest. “I do.”

“Good.” Laurie’s eyes flick to Evander’s bandages, to the old scar that nearly split him in two. “You can do it, you know.” The pause in his voice is pure agony. “Have your revenge. Do whatever you want to me.”

Evander tastes copper and rage and a darkness so black it blots out the sun, and it is like the moment in the garden.

Where he held the rock.

And Laurie was on the ground, terror melting down his face.

“I’m not insulting you with an apology.” The yearning in Laurie’s voice is almost unbearable. “So take it out of my skin if you want. Actually, I want you to. I want you to feel as if we’re even.”

This is what he’s used to: running his mouth and wearing the consequences in bruises. It’s on his face even now with that swollen cheekbone. If pain is a language of bruises, Laurie has worn his so long under his skin that he’s found comfort in the pattern and his bored, disinterested facade is to hide just how much he hurts.

Evander takes a step forward, waiting for the flinch, but Laurie only tilts toward him, and something about it makes Evander even angrier. He snatches Laurie by the throat and slams him backward into the bare brick wall, mushrooms dislodging in a waterfall of vivid, luminous green. Breath punches from Laurie’s lungs in a small gasp, but he doesn’t try to jerk free. His body softens, bends, and it ignites something so feral in Evander that he can’t think.

“That’s the worst you can do?” There is a wheezing, breathy quality to Laurie’s words, pain stitched beneath the layers. “That’s pathetic, Evander.”

Evander.

The name of an imaginary friend.

A hurricane crashes through Evander’s ears until he can feel it wrenching apart every bone, every ligament, even tearing at the soft skin of his gums. His mouth aches.

“Say my real name,” he snarls, “you absolute coward.”

He digs his fingers so deep into Laurie’s throat that he feels the bend of his trachea, the trapped, muffled gasp unable to escape. The fissuring rage in his head grows louder and louder, while thorns fill his mouth and black petals blossom behind his eyes, and he cannot think think think beyond this—

He crushes his mouth to Laurie’s.

There is a small noise of surprise on Laurie’s lips. Evander eats it. His fingers splay out underneath Laurie’s jaw and he thinks, maybe, survival instinct will kick in and Laurie will pull away. But he doesn’t. He leans in and Evander kisses him even deeper. Harder. Ravenous. Desperate.

A soft moan escapes Laurie and his mouth opens, his fingertips daring to rest on the bare skin between Evander’s bandages and waistband, close to the edge of his scar. Not allowed. Evander forces Laurie’s neck backward, the arch of his delicate throat so beautifully vulnerable it makes him feel torn apart in unmanageable, feral ways.

He is so, so out of control.

He needs to stopstopstopstop—

But there is something growing inside him, something all up in his throat, and there is no line between him and the end of the world.

He sinks his teeth into Laurie’s bottom lip.

There is nothing gentle about it.

This is evisceration. This is flesh parting and blood vessels severing with a meaty, slick snap. This is tongue playing with jagged, torn flesh as he drinks down the trembling sob that slips from Laurie’s throat. He bites down harder.

Blood explodes in Evander’s mouth, slicks his teeth, runs down the back of his throat, hot and salty and sweet. He leans in so hard he can feel the bend of Laurie’s ribs.

Soft wetness runs down Laurie’s cheeks.

He has gone perfectly still.

“Evander.” He can barely get the word out.

There is so much blood in Evander’s mouth as his tongue probes at split flesh. It is bliss, it is ecstasy, it is—
hungerhungerhunger

“Evander, p-please.” Laurie’s shaking fingertips touch the underside of Evander’s jaw. There is no fight, no struggle, nothing but that one word, trembling under all the blood.

He is scared.

Evander lets go.

He takes a step back, wiping his mouth, his chest moving raggedly. Blood smears up his cheek and he tries to wipe it again, but there is a dizzying, sick impulse to put his tacky thumb in his mouth and lick it.

He does.

Laurie is watching him with eyes like blown-out cavities in the dark. He sinks halfway down the wall, his arms wrapped around his stomach, and all Evander can think is how he looks like a flower stem bending just before it’s picked. Laurie’s mouth is a mess of red, his lower lip swollen and ragged as blood clots on his chin.

The way he looks at Evander is terrible.

It is awed horror.

Evander licks his lips, tasting copper and Laurie and veneration. He feels so much calmer, steadier, stronger.

What did he just do?

what the hell did you just do what did you just whatwhatwhat—

It’s ready on his tongue, the excuse. That wasn’t me. Instead, he sounds careful and calm as he says, “We can keep going. You said you had something to show me.”

Laurie nods slightly and pushes to his feet, but he cups a trembling hand over his torn-up mouth to hide the damage. “This—” He swallows. “This way.”

Evander is breathless as he follows, but doesn’t know what scares him more: Wondering if the garden has sunk hooks so deep inside him that it’s made him monstrous.

Or if it didn’t force him at all.

TWENTY-FIVE

A taut unease breathes in the space between them as they climb through the walls of the mansion, their way lit by bioluminescent fungi and their limbs caught up in silken cobwebs. Evander watches where Laurie steps as the ground shifts to loose, grayed floorboards perched precariously on beams over deep chasms. Being inside the walls of Hazelthorn between exposed brick and beams feels like climbing through its rib cage. Now and then, Laurie tells him to watch out, to step this way. To be careful. It feels unreal that no one can reach them in here, that they are safe.

Or at least Evander is safe.

Laurie can’t possibly feel the same way, not after that kiss.

It wasn’t a kiss.

It was revenge and it was starvation and it was obsession. The need to apologize crowds in Evander’s head as blood still slicks the underside of his tongue, but louder is the need to kiss Laurie again. But not like that.

He will do it differently, if he has another chance. He can be tender, too, when his pain is held behind his teeth and instead he lets the soft petals of his deepest yearning unfurl.

As Laurie fumbles in the dark toward a ladder made of splintery wood that stretches up toward pale light, Evander stays close. His claustrophobia has ebbed—the distraction of the kiss short-circuiting his brain enough that he’s not focused on the smothered, trapped feeling of narrow spaces—but stranger is the vigorous energy that pulses through him. He should be listless after a week of being sedated and starved, unable to force his emaciated body to keep up. But he feels good.

Fed.

At the top of the ladder, they enter a crawl space that must be between the attic and roof. Ahead lies a small square door.

“Here,” Laurie says. “My grandfather’s secret office.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” Evander folds himself up behind Laurie as he shoves his shoulder against the door.

“I just think the will might be fake. If there’s a real draft, it’ll be in here.” He hesitates. “Sorry.”

It occurs to Evander that he should feel angry or betrayed, but he doesn’t. He’s more confused as to why Laurie needed him for this or thought he’d cooperate with a plan to dissolve his claim on Hazelthorn.

The old, swollen wood finally gives and Laurie tumbles through.

Evander has to rearrange his shoulders as he squeezes inside. Splinters snag against his skin and his body feels suddenly too unwieldy and stretched. This makes no sense. Laurie didn’t struggle and Evander is far smaller than him.

He hits a soft rug with a muffled oomph. Dust punches into the air in a gray plume and Evander sits for a second, coughing and surveying the filth covering his arms and bandages. Laurie looks just as bad, grime and sweat smudged up his neck, and his once-white shirt beyond ruined. He stands with shoulders tense as if his grandfather might unfold from the walls and strike him down for the intrusion.

“He spent most of his time here when he wasn’t in the conservatory,” Laurie says. “The real entrance is over there.” He nods toward a slim door in the corner. “But there’s four locks to get through that way, so…” He trails off, frowning as he looks around.

Evander wanders into the middle of the room and turns in a slow circle.

It’s a small attic space, the roof steeply slanted. A single bulb swings from the ceiling and there’s one round window smothered so thickly in muck that the late-afternoon sunlight barely filters through the cracks. A few ancient bookshelves hold battered tomes, spines busted and pages foxed.

But it’s the walls that make Evander’s skin crawl.

Words written in cherry-red paint have been splattered across the bare wood, crowded and overlapping, manic and streaked. It all looks like the ravings of a madman.

This is the burden of a god in the dark.

What is divinity, but the survival of death?

Not again, not again, I swear it on my beloved.

End it now before it grows too strong.

For all I have done, I cannot be forgiven.

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

This is godhood, but I cannot bear it.

Evander feels sick as he puts fingers against the old paint and traces the jagged letters. This is a confession. It’s guilt immortalized in a museum display. But it looks old. It’s as if Byron’s regret would overwhelm him, and he’d come up here to purge his terrible thoughts, then simply go back downstairs to continue feeding the gardens and ripping wealth from the soil thanks to a god-complex he wasn’t willing to give up. And his “beloved”? He wonders what happened to Byron’s wife, if she one day grew a conscience and demanded he stop the killings and his response was to feed her to the garden too. That is the Lennox-Hall legacy, after all. Putting those you love in the ground.

“What the hell?” Laurie mutters.

At first Evander thinks he’s talking about the bloody words slashed all over the walls, but Laurie is headed for a sagging couch stuffed in the corner. Blankets and pillows lie in disarray upon it. A suitcase has been dumped on the floor, left open to show folded shirts and an unzipped toiletry bag, the smell of sandalwood aftershave faint on the air.

“This isn’t Grandfather’s stuff. Who’s been in here?” Laurie digs through the suitcase, a sudden frantic energy to his movements. Then he surges to his feet and lunges for the massive desk under the oval window. It’s covered in a colossal amount of torn papers and old ledgers, pens crammed into dirty mugs and ink staining the wood. He starts yanking at the locked drawers.

Evander picks his way cautiously to the suitcase. “I think … this is Dawes’s stuff.”

Laurie’s back is to him, but his shoulders go tight. “Not possible. You saw how eager he is to leave the estate before nightfall, and only my family know about this room.”

“Unless he’s been lying this whole time.” Cogs begin to twist in Evander’s head and he is steadied by this—thinking through clues and matching up evidence. “Did we ever even see him leave? Like literally pull out of the gates and drive away? I kept telling you that anyone could be living in this mansion. Which means he could’ve been here the night your grandfather died. He’s another suspect.” He kneels back down by the suitcase and digs through the mess of folded clothes, his fingers brushing a small, velvet bag, similar to the type used to store bejeweled necklaces.

Which makes sense when he opens it and tips rubies into his palm like a scattering of bloodshot eyes.

He sits back on his heels, trying to slow his breathing, but everything is crashing into him with such unmitigated violence it’s hard to steady himself. He barely notices the way Laurie isn’t responding to any of this.

Neat piles of papers have been wedged into the side of the suitcase, and Evander tugs them free to look through résumés and letters of employment that quickly spiral into threats of extortion.

“I think Dawes found out about the gardens.” Evander’s eyes flick across the page. “And decided he wanted in. I guess a junior lawyer’s wage isn’t that high … he sounds really, really angry at your grandfather for steeping in all this wealth and not even using it. This is all blackmail. He’s threatening to take everything he knows to the press. If Byron was paranoid and private, he wouldn’t want anyone looking at Hazelthorn too closely and then linking it to local disappearances. There must be a lot of missing people in this area, right?”

He finally looks up to where Laurie has broken open a drawer with a brittle crack. But a short hiss escapes him, and he backs up, cradling his brace as his face ghosts white for a second. Above him the words I KILL IN DESPAIR eat through the wall in brutal vermilion.

Setting his teeth, Laurie shakes off the pain and starts shuffling through the drawers with one hand, his brace huddled close to his chest.

“I think Dawes has been going through your grandfather’s office and stealing rubies and trying to figure out how the garden works. Or maybe he’s been slinking through the whole house to steal and that’s how he found this room…” Evander stops, frowning hard as he sees another thick envelope tucked deep in the suitcase, dislodged by his digging. When he snatches it up, his stomach twists at the dried leaves pressed between papers. “This is Wolflock. I recognize the shape of the leaves from the field guide. Wait, you know how he said the old lawyer had a stroke? What if he was poisoned?”

“Circumstantial evidence though.” Laurie sounds distracted.

But maybe Evander isn’t focused on the right death. After all, Byron was in the way of Dawes digging his fingers into the garden—did he use Byron’s death as an opportunity or did he make all of this happen?

“Dawes is the one who told us Carrington was hospitalized when really he was—dead.” Evander finds it hard to force the word out. “Dawes could’ve attacked him, dragged him outside, and then the garden turned him into that—that monster.”

For a second, he lets himself kneel there, his fists opening and closing until he feels less like his organs are loose, slippery things that are about to fall from his mouth. He casts a sideways glance at Laurie, who is still focused on his chaotic search through the drawers, messing up files and crumpling envelopes. It doesn’t even seem like he knows what he’s looking for.

“What happened to you,” Evander says, his voice very low, “when you tried to tell people the truth about Hazelthorn?”

Laurie goes still, his fist clenched around an ancient envelope. His face turns to the wall, his expression buried, but his words sound dry and rusted out. “Does it matter?”

“You promised not to lie anymore,” Evander says fiercely. “And there has to be a reason you struggle to tell me even the smallest truth. You’re scared, Laurie. You’re goddamn scared.”

A long, taut minute passes before Laurie sighs. “I was nine the first time I tried to tell. I think it—” He stops and says nothing for so long Evander thinks he won’t, but then a tremor runs up his spine and he forces himself on. “I think I started all of this? I told my teacher and then she told my mom I was making up ‘fantastical but very concerning stories’ and suggested getting me some counseling.” His laugh is so bitter he chokes. “Then my parents started fighting, all the time. About me. About the garden. My dad finally drove us to Hazelthorn and told Grandfather what I’d done and—Well, he was furious. He’s terrified of people finding out, beyond terrified. He and my dad ‘dealt’ with my mom, since she was protesting the legacy too much, and then Grandfather told him to go home and leave me at Hazelthorn. I was losing my mind with terror over what he was going to do to me, but Dad didn’t care. He just left me.”

“And your dad … drove into a tree on purpose?” Evander says, so softly.

“Yup.” Laurie lets out a long, shuddering breath. “He was always really anxious and erratic … It eats away at all of them, you know? The guilt. They pretend it doesn’t, but it does. He couldn’t take what he’d done to my mother and I guess I wasn’t enough to live for.” There is nothing in his voice as he goes on. “Anyway, Grandfather used to tie me to a chair and put dirt in my mouth. I thought I would choke and pass out so many times. He did it every day for weeks, for hours, to remind me to ‘stay quiet’ about the gardens. I just had to sit there, choking on mud and panicking in silence, until he felt like untying me. When he stuck me in the next boarding school, I didn’t speak at all for months.”

The room suddenly feels far too small and intimate, both of them stripped down to naked bones. Evander thinks, if he pulled off Laurie’s shirt right now, there would be no skin holding him together, just raw meat and flayed nerves left to bear the abuse of the world.

He pushes slowly to his feet and moves to stand behind Laurie. There is an infinitesimal flinch from Laurie, but then he leans backward so his spine presses to Evander’s chest.

Evander puts his chin on Laurie’s shoulder and watches him fumble with the papers before he gives up and just stands there, breathing too fast, too damp.

“The second time I tried to tell, he punished me by doing this.” Laurie holds up his brace and then lets it drop limply to his side. “I’d already flunked out of my last school, so he enrolled me in Wickwood and I haven’t breathed a word about my family or the garden to anyone since. I know I’m a coward, I know. He was always going to feed me to the garden someday, he just put it off because he loved my father. But I’m this family’s bad apple, the academically defective and offensively queer Lennox-Hall who runs their mouth.”

“Pretend,” Evander whispers, “you’re somewhat functional.”

Because sometimes the snarl, the insult, the teeth marks cut into the nearest person are so often a reflection of the bruises you already wear.

Laurie gives a tiny snort, but Evander can feel him trembling. He slowly, slowly, wraps his arms around Laurie’s waist, unsure what he’s doing, if this is allowed or if he’s making it worse. Touch like this is easier for him when he’s the one deciding on the pressure, but he doesn’t know what Laurie needs. He wonders if anyone ever asks.

“You can’t read, can you?” Evander says quietly.

Because he is thinking of academic probation.

He is thinking of Laurie prowling through Evander’s bedroom but never glancing at any of his papers and clues.

He is thinking of Laurie looking at the murder wall saying, One of these for me? when the card with his name was right in front of him.

He is thinking of Laurie bringing him here when he could’ve come alone, of digging through these papers without pause, without purpose. He’s searching for answers he can’t grasp and the despair has cracked something inside him.

Laurie puts a thumb to the corner of his eye. “I have really intense dyslexia. I’m not”—he sounds hoarse—“allowed tutoring or help at school, because I’m ‘just being lazy.’ So. Whatever. It’s just, the more I stress, the more the letters don’t make sense, and it never gets easier, just harder, and I literally can’t make my brain recognize the simplest goddamn—Look, it doesn’t matter.” He can barely get the words out through the shame he’s so used to choking down. “What do the walls say? I always wanted to know. Handwriting is kind of the worst for me.”

“Um, chaotic ravings.” Evander very carefully splays a hand over Laurie’s ribs and feels the rapid rise and fall of his featherlight lungs. “But why would Byron be so cruel to you and nice to me?”

“Evander, he wasn’t fucking nice to you.” There’s sudden venom in his voice. “He tortured you. He locked you up and drugged you and punished you for not being … being ‘normal.’ I used to wake up at night and hear you crying and crying, like a haunting that never ended. You think he’s nice because he gave you presents and said you were ‘good’ after you did what he wanted. You think he’s nice because you don’t know anything but pain.”

It’s like being struck and Evander can’t swallow the tar slicked all through his mouth.

“You were never sick, you get that, right?” Laurie says. “He made you sick. Like, if he was giving you real meds, they would have helped you. But he was forcing you to take laced sedatives so you’d always be unconscious or vomiting and too weak to…” He trails off, a shudder spiraling down his body. “Too weak to question him. Or get angry.”

A hollow ache smudges the word angry, the weight of it pushing Evander through the floor. He isn’t an angry person, except—maybe he doesn’t actually know what kind of person he is.

“You don’t know anything but pain too.” He gives a harsh yank and spins Laurie around so they are chest to chest, both of them breathing too fast at the intimacy of this touch. “I just want to know what the point was to any of this. Why keep me? Did he steal me? Where is my real family? I feel like—I’m not even a real person.” He hates the way his voice stretches at the end, the vulnerability in it.

The only thing in Laurie’s eyes is this agony, this brokenness that feels wrong to see. Take down the armor, the walls, the glib snark and the curated boredom, and he doesn’t have anything to hold himself together—except, perhaps, for Evander, with fingers stretched over his ribs.

“I’m sorry,” is all Laurie says. “You’re real. You’re so real that I gave up.” His voice is unsteady, his hand gripping the desk behind him.

“Gave up what?” Evander tilts his head forward so his forehead brushes Laurie’s temple.

“Trying to stay away from you. I’d split my bones, I’d open my throat, I’d do anything to be near you and have even one second with my mouth against yours.”

A short, sharp pain splices Evander’s chest and he doesn’t know how to unpack this delirious need to fit himself so hard against Laurie that their limbs twine like soft green branches, to grow into him with reverent fervor, their mossy green hearts a matched set. He wants to forget how it ever felt to be alone.

He’s meant to hate this boy, yet he’s forgotten how.

He tastes guilt as he puts a thumb gently against Laurie’s swollen lower lip. The teeth marks have left a deep, purpling groove.

“It’s okay, I wanted it.” Laurie mouth is glossy with drying blood.

Evander hates the rasp in his own voice. “No, you didn’t. You just don’t know what it would be like if it was soft.”

“Show me.” His words are a breath of spun spider silk and fairy dust.

Evander puts his mouth on Laurie’s neck.

It is careful the way he kisses, the way he leaves heat shaped like fireflies up to Laurie’s ear and then under his jaw. A feral urge to scrape his teeth against Laurie’s cheekbone cages Evander in a riot of hunger before he shoves it aside and forces himself to breathe. To hold back whatever—that is. He kisses the corner of Laurie’s mocking mouth so very, very tenderly. When he pulls at the hem of that filthy T-shirt and drags his thumbs along the soft skin just above Laurie’s belt loops, his reward is a caught breath, an almost whimper.

His skin is hot, soft, divine.

Evander is dimly aware of the furnace burning through the back of his head as he kisses Laurie’s swollen lower lip and waits for the flinch, the fear, the pain. But there’s nothing. Only Laurie leaning into him.

His forgiveness is maddening.

Evander’s hands brush against the field guide still tucked into the back of Laurie’s jeans and he pulls it out without looking and tosses it on the carpet behind them.

“I think I grew,” he mumbles. “I’m as tall as you?”

Laurie gives a breathy, unsteady laugh. “Yeah, um … you grew like a weed.”

It hardly matters, though it explains the too-short cuffs and the odd way he has to rearrange his shoulders to fit places. He’s seventeen, a growth spurt is probably normal. What he cares about is this, and only this.

Laurie.

He is wrecked with this terrible, gnawing need to splay Laurie out on the floorboards like a butterfly with broken wings and put pins through him to make him stay still as he takes him apart. Carefully, reverently. To think like this, to be consumed by this want, is ridiculous right now, when they are both hiding and hunted—but maybe they deserve this distraction.

He has been locked in a room for seven years.

He has been starved for this.

And maybe this is the best way to destroy the boy he’s hated for so long—to kiss him helpless, senseless, to make him desperate for more from the person he made the mistake of failing to kill.

Laurie sags, his legs gone weak, and his brace knocks papers off the desk. They flutter to the floor in a snowy avalanche and Evander glances down on instinct. The Lennox-Hall letterhead glints in the dim afternoon light. He decides the worst and most satisfying thing he could do to Laurie right now is this: kneel down, lift his shirt just enough to trail six burning kisses from his hip across the sensitive skin below his navel, and stop just before his jeans halt any descent. Then Evander pulls away and crouches down to gather up the papers.

The choked sound Laurie makes as he covers his face with the crook of his arm is very, very pleasing.

“You menace,” he mutters.

Evander smiles to himself as he sorts through the papers. “What?”

“Don’t even pretend to act innocent.” Laurie drops his arm from his face and glares, flushed and sweaty and wrecked. “I need to know how you learned to kiss like that.”

“I might have thought about it,” Evander says. “A lot.”

He ignores Laurie’s stifled snort and focuses on skimming the papers. A note has been stapled to the top of one page, the handwriting eerily familiar, and not just from the disturbing ramblings on the walls. Evander grabs for the discarded field guide, flipping pages until he finds those cryptic notes scattered amongst the poisonous flower sketches. A perfect match. He’s thinking again, inexplicably, of that journal entry he read.

Dug up new plant in the garden. Took samples and will propagate it within the conservatory. The boy was playing with it and seemed unaffected by skin contact, but will still run toxin tests. Thorns are easily removed.

Something about it has sunk barbed hooks into Evander, but he can’t quite connect the pieces, even though his mind churns so fast the molten heat of it pounds the inside of his skull. He picks up the papers again, staring at the Lennox-Hall letterhead and the signatures at the end. It looks too important to have been lost amidst the mess of the desk. Unless it wasn’t lost, but locked in a drawer in a hidden room where no one else should’ve been able to access it if Laurie hadn’t gone digging.

Byron’s stapled note is simple:

Godfrey, the following documents are in order and signed with Carrington as witness. Please file this as my official will.

Sincerely, B

Godfrey, the original lawyer, the one who was too “ill” to take the lead on the affairs of the estate. The one Dawes possibly poisoned. Evander knows he’s jumping to conclusions here, but he thinks it’s a fair deduction to pursue, especially given the litany of evidence piling up against Dawes right now.

But this is the will. The real will.

Evander skims the pages fast, his heart a staccato beat in his throat, his fingers trembling slightly as he claws through the legal jargon until he finds the name of the single heir—because Byron had never wanted to divide this property up amongst his family.

Laurence Evan Alexander Lennox-Hall.

“What is it?” Laurie is still leaning heavily against the desk, trying to catch his breath. “Is that the same will Dawes read to us?”

“I remember you used to read to me,” Evander says, trying to sound neutral. “Through my door.”

Laurie rubs at the back of his neck with a sheepish smile. “I made up the stories. I tore out the pictures and—”

“Slid them under the door.”

“I should have realized your room was in a different place now, but the north wing was so creepy and gloomy and everything looked the same to me as a kid. Grandfather stopped me sneaking up there years ago and I guess I forgot how it used to look. What did you even do with those pictures?”

“I ate them,” Evander says, distracted.

He’s still staring at the will, his pulse hammering in his skull as he tries to decide what this means. What any of it means. Bryon abused Laurie, constant and vicious, and was threatening to kill him—yet he left everything to him? It doesn’t make sense. Although Evander suddenly understands how easy it would’ve been for Dawes to sit in that office and read out loud a will, swapping out names without hesitation in front of two boys, one who was conditioned never to ask questions and one who couldn’t read. It would all come out eventually, of course, especially with Oleander growing more and more suspicious and demanding to see the will herself, but maybe Dawes didn’t care. Maybe he just wanted time to figure out how the garden worked and collect as many rubies from the estate as he could before vanishing with his gains and leaving the Lennox-Halls strewn in chaos behind him.

It makes so much sense, though, to choose Evander to “inherit.” Evander, the sickly, anxious, naive kid who knows nothing of the world, who has no family, no allies, who is easy to maneuver and control. Laurie wouldn’t have bent an inch if he thought he owned Hazelthorn. He hated Dawes from the start and wouldn’t have let him slither around the estate if he’d had his way.

It’s a perfect yet simple scheme. And it worked.

Tell Laurie. He needs to know the truth. Maybe his grandfather wasn’t actually going to kill him over this summer, though Evander can only think of all the cruel punishments Laurie would’ve kept receiving if Byron had lived.

“You are so weird sometimes.” Laurie seems to have gotten his breath back, but his smile fades as he forces his tone to remain unaffected. “So whose name is down to inherit?”

“Mine,” Evander says, without hesitation. “It’s still my name.”

He tastes tar and condemnation. He feels sick. But he doesn’t know what would happen, if Laurie thought this all belonged to him.

The only coward in this room is Evander.

Laurie sighs and then shrugs. “Okay, well, I give up. I don’t understand any of this.”

What Evander needs to do is lie on the carpet and just think. He feels outside of himself, his world tearing on all the corners of these brutal, sharp discoveries.

He needs to keep it together.

He drops the papers and presses fingertips to his temples, reminding himself how to breathe.

“Are you okay?” Laurie edges toward him.

“I’m—” An odd, gauzy feeling folds over Evander and he tastes loam and blossoms. A dull roar starts in his ears and he is doing his best not to fall out of his skin like an unstitched ghost. He can no longer deny what’s happening.

Episode.

Laurie skids forward on his knees, grabbing Evander’s head as it flops toward his chest. “Hey, hey. Are you okay? What—what’s wrong?”

Evander’s fingers grasp for the will again, a dull part of him thinking he needs to destroy it just in case Laurie tries to read it—but the crumpled paper flips over and he sees penciled scribbles on the back.

Though it pains me to write this, Laurie is the best option to inherit as he will keep this family’s secrets. I have disciplined that boy to the best of my ability, I have conditioned and trained him relentlessly since he came into my possession, and even though he has clear defects, ingrained fear will eventually keep him obedient. Hazelthorn must stay locked. It is out of control. It cannot be sated. We have taken too much from it, yet we cannot go back. The only concern will be making sure, upon my death, that he disposes of Evander before that situation spirals beyond control. But perhaps, before my passing, I will have finished with Evander myself and already have done away with him.

The world blurs, listing sideways as metal fills Evander’s mouth. He is a … situation. To be disposed of. It’s him, not Laurie, who was always meant to die.

“It’s okay,” he says, dull and detached. “This is just an episode.”

Laurie starts patting Evander’s cheek frantically. “Changed my mind. I don’t want to see an episode. Stay awake, okay? Hey, hey—Stay with me.”

But Evander’s head is tipping forward again.

The estate must go to my grandson because he will stop anyone outside of my bloodline from having access to the garden. This power is mine alone. I refuse to let the world taste Hazelthorn’s glory. It belongs to me. I will raze it before letting anyone else touch it.

“You have to fight this.” Panic has lit up Laurie’s eyes to a feverish blue. “I—I think I’ve figured out what the episodes are.”

Leaves unfurl behind Evander’s eyes, briars and hollyhock and thistles, and the world blackens about the edges. It’s almost a relief to have a break from this: from his body, from the world, from thinking. He is dimly aware Laurie is still holding his face, trying to keep him from slumping to the floor, shouting his name.

But it’s not his name.

Then his fingers slip from Laurie’s—

—and he finishes falling all the way down.

TWENTY-SIX

Dirt presses against his cheek, as if it has curved itself to catch him before his skull cracked against the floor. It is gentle, the way he is held by earth. Evander is grateful for it in this distant, mussy way, his brain not yet up to speed and his eyes still half-closed. This is the way it always is after an episode: his blinks delayed and languorous, the world undulating in blurred streaks of watercolor, his lungs full of wet leaves as he breathes out and waits for consciousness to crawl back into his hollowed-out body.

Usually, he wonders where his mind slips during the episodes and if, one day, someone will care enough to catch him as he falls so he doesn’t wake up with bruises.

But maybe he has been asking the wrong question.

It isn’t about where his mind went—

—it’s what his body was doing when he wasn’t in it.

A taut, high-pitched keen has started up inside his head, a frantic speed churning his heartbeat faster and faster. Don’t think like that. He pushes up on his elbows, blinking hard as his vision slides sideways before refocusing on the dirt scattered across tiles.

All around him, a lush, organic smell intensifies: fertilizer and earth, growing things and sap, that bright, fresh odor of spring water and flower buds in full bloom. Everywhere there are potted plants—huge philodendrons crowded next to moth orchids, trellises of Black Baccara roses, and planters teaming with exotic ferns. From the rafters hang endless rows of greenery, so thick and lush it blocks out the ceiling. Long tables are set in the middle of the room, crowded thickly with plants, and one single lightbulb above spills a weak glow. Darkness reflects off walls of glass.

That’s all he can see, glass walls and plants and the night as thick as ink.

He’s in the conservatory.

And every green stem and floral bud has turned to stare at him.

Disorientation has him spinning, his brain scrabbling to understand how he traded that stuffy little attic space for this. If he walked here or was taken. And if Laurie is—

Laurie.

He can’t see Laurie anywhere. Did he just leave Evander after all that? After how tenderly he kissed him?

Cold sweat prickles the back of Evander’s neck as he struggles to stand, his legs numb and coltish as he clings to the tables for support. Tipped-over terra-cotta pots and bags of soil and dishes of propagated leaves scatter the workspace, as if the gardener only stepped out for a minute instead of died brutally, horribly, on the floor two weeks ago.

But the way everything has grown since the night of the murder is unreal. There is almost nowhere to stand between plants exploding from their pots and vines strangling everything with hundreds of tendrils. He turns and is caught in long, dangling arms of pothos and grape ivy and has to detangle himself.

Beyond the glass walls, the garden has grown with wild, vicious intensity as if it’s trying to tear open the mansion—and it’s starting to succeed. Huge cracks run along the walls, panes broken as a whole tree branch grows through.

That tight, panicking feeling is back, though Evander can’t tell if it’s claustrophobia from being in this plant-smothered room or the same unease that struck him the first time he came in here. It’s an itch. Or maybe it’s a pull.

He feels dislocated.

Spliced.

He should get out.

Then he looks down at the tiles speckled with spilled potting mix and leaves—and ruby-red droplets.

There is a trail of them, some smeared, some still perfectly round like buttons left to be followed. There is a story to be read in the scuffed footprints and soil scooted aside in a wide arc as if someone fell. Stood. Fell again.

Sick dread starts pounding in Evander’s stomach. He takes a step, slow and unsteady, and follows the blood.

More smashed ceramics lie around the corner next to a pool of glossy red that reflects the dark. Too much, there is way too much.

“Laurie?” It comes out choked, dug through with terror he tries to ignore. He can’t leap to conclusions. It might not even be Laurie’s blood.

Evander slips deeper into the conservatory, away from the weak pool of light to where the plants are muted by a darkness so thick it feels like sludge dripping down skin. Stifling humidity presses against him from all sides, sucking at his thin reserves of energy. The plants watch as he passes, reaching out to gently stroke his arm, his neck, the bare skin around his bandaged chest. They are judging. Waiting.

whispering whispering whispering

“Laurie?” he says louder this time, but it cracks at the end and a sudden pain lances through his mouth so viciously that he nearly cries out. “What—” He rubs at his lips, then slips fingers into his mouth to press hard against his throbbing gums.

He finds it then: ruptured flesh, raw and loose, a nub of something sticking out. It’s sharp enough to slice his tongue when he probs it. Compulsion makes him tug at it, ignoring the pain, and for a second this is all he focuses on—worming the nub from his mouth until it’s loose enough to yank like a tooth.

Blood gushes in a salty, coppery spray, but he doesn’t care.

He stares at the thorn in his palm, a long, slick root dangling from its bloody end.

Don’t freak out.

But it’s too late. He is hurtling steeply down a spiral so dark, so out of control, that he is being torn apart from bone to marrow.

There is blood on the floor. Thorns in his mouth. He lost time, and not just a few minutes. The afternoon is gone and night has arrived like a thunderclap, like a fist, like the end of the world. He lost hours. And Laurie is gone.

The urge to scream his name is hard to hold back. Evander starts to run through the conservatory, his heart pounding, his movements clumsy as he shoves aside massive branches heavy with diamond-shaped leaves and black, glossy berries. He follows the trail of blood—right to a wicker seat cloistered by overgrown alocasia.

Byron Lennox-Hall once sat there with a cup of tea and dissected Evander with a clinical gaze, his alarm barely hidden that his young charge had dared leave the safe confines of his room.

Safe for who, exactly?

Evander pulls up, breathing hard and fast, as sweat mats his curls to his forehead—curls that have grown far too fast, far too long, and trail halfway down his spine. His hand goes to his bandages, to the dull throb slowly intensifying.

But he only cares about one thing.

There, behind the wicker throne, a single leg can be seen, sprawled and trembling. The muddy jean cuff is peppered with blood.

Evander takes a shaky step forward.

The leg draws out of sight, scrapping stiffly on the floor. The whimper is so low, so animal, it could be a fox caught in a steel trap.

Evander slowly brushes aside the massive, deep green alocasia leaves while his heartbeat drops out of his chest.

The world has inverted, the mirror flipped, and he’s suddenly back in that day of the will reading, when he hid in the greenhouse amongst sacks of potting mix with the field guide clutched to his chest as Laurie stood over him. Only this time it is Evander bearing down like a nightmare made of sticks and twine and unholy thorns while Laurie huddles on the ground in a pitiful attempt to hide. On his lap is the field guide, open to a sketch of a strange tree that looks mangled and vicious—and almost human.

His arms are wrapped tight around his middle, his head bowed like a supplicant. Everything golden about him has been tarnished, stripped.

He is shivering, hard.

He doesn’t look up.

“What … what happened?” Darkness speckles the edge of Evander’s vision and the vertigo is sudden and ruthless.

Laurie shrinks back at his voice.

It takes everything in Evander not to grab him by the shoulders, clutch him close, scream the question again. But something holds him back.

Laurie still won’t look up.

The drawing in the field guide isn’t a tree. It looks more like a monster, uncanny in the way of dryads and fauns as they playact humanity amongst their fur and horns and skin made of bark.

“You need to tell me what happened.” Evander can’t keep his voice even. “Did—did someone find us? I never know wh-what happens when I have an…” But he can’t finish when it feels like a lie made out of knives on his tongue.

He folds himself down into a crouch, his fist pressed hard to his mouth. His tongue can’t stop poking at the raw flesh in his gum where he yanked the thorn, but worse is the way he can feel other nubs in there, under the skin. Waiting to cut free.

“Laurie?” He breathes the word so gently.

Laurie finally tilts his chin up and there are tear-tracks through the grit on his cheeks, his swollen mouth a mottling of mauve and red. Though the gouges beneath his lip look less like teeth marks now; they look like a row of punctures from thorns.

A terrible haunting has settled in his eyes and he makes an effort to slow his breathing, but there is a hitch of unfiltered, glassy pain.

Evander wants to reach for him, but he can’t make himself move.

“It’s okay,” Laurie whispers, and it’s so tender, so sweet, that it breaks Evander in half.

“What did I do?” Evander sounds frantic, shrill, and when Laurie doesn’t speak, there is nothing to do but cut the answer out of his own throat. “I’m the same as Carrington, aren’t I?”

“Not … not exactly.” Laurie’s arms shift slightly in their strangling grip around his own middle. He’s holding himself together. Or hiding something.

Carefully, Evander reaches out and wraps his fingers around Laurie’s brace. He tugs and there is resistance—and then Laurie simply gives up.

Evander pulls Laurie’s arm away from his middle and stares at the shredded T-shirt. At the blackened blood soaking his side. Between the flutters of fabric, bite marks can be seen ravaging his flesh.

Blood oozes from the wound and drips slowly to the floor.

It is such a slow, nonchalant sound.

pat     pat     pat

Evander’s fingers jam hard against his mouth again, and he can taste it again: the bits of flesh caught in his back molars.

The sound that pulls from him is low and animal. He scrambles backward until his shoulders hit one of the long tables of plants, and then they both just sit there staring at each other, a chasm of violation between them.

He did that to Laurie.

He did that.

Clarity slices across him in a slash: He probably hunted Laurie, chased him, attacked him again and again as he begged Evander to stop, to come back to himself, to wait please please please—

The ghostly cadence of the screams rings in his skull, growing more horrifying by the second.

did he did he did he swallow Laurie’s flesh and is that why saliva is pooling under his tongue right now and why his stomach is clawing holes in itself in desperate, ravaging hunger hunger hunger—

“It’s okay.” Laurie sounds so far away, and there is something irrevocably broken about this voice. “I knew it could happen and I wanted … I wanted you anyway.”

Evander squeezes his eyes shut, his shaking fingers going to the bandages around his chest. He slowly starts tugging at the ends.

Laurie’s swallowing hard, but his breathing has quickened in a labored, worrying way. “There is nothing else to me but the hollow spaces I’ve carved out for you. I knew I’d cut myself to pieces on you if we ever had the chance to touch, but I wanted to.” His voice unravels, massacred on yearning. “Let me ruin myself on you.”

“It was you.” Evander can taste it, the blood. “You unlocked my door. You let me out.”

A soft sob escapes Laurie and he presses the heel of his palm to one eye.

“What’s h-happening to me?” Evander wipes at his face quickly, wondering now if there is blood staining his cheeks.

There is no use pretending anymore.

The garden holds him like a puppet.

Laurie’s mouth trembles until he forces a smile so soft it hits Evander like pure agony. “You woke up,” he says.

With sudden, manic fervor, Evander unravels the last of his bandages and hurls them away. He stares down at the history of scar tissue he’s always worn with resentment, expecting new surgery incisions across his torso. He never asked why they kept cutting open his ribs. His only real wound had been across his stomach, long since healed and scarred.

He never questioned anything.

The scream grows in his skull as he stares down at himself.

He has been vivisected—sternum to the bottom of his rib cage. A cut meant for heart surgeries. A cut meant to remove. Vines entwine through the stitches and tiny mauve flowers blossom from his skin. Clover has begun to grow between the ladder rungs of his too-sharp ribs, as if it has always belonged there.

It is easy, so easy, to push his fingers into the loose stitching, to dig his hand into his chest, deep and then deeper, while terror pools in his mouth. There should be gushing blood, the undulating pulse of organs, pain so eviscerating he should black out in agony.

Instead, he has sunk half his hand into his sternum while stitches snap and soft petals of fairy foxglove drift to the floor. Red, sticky sap oozes between his fingers.

All he can feel is dirt and bark as he wraps a fist around his own rib bone of soft, green wood. The end lies jagged where it’s been broken off.

Harvested.

When he raises his head, his whole body trembles and his eyes meet Laurie’s with unmitigated horror.

Laurie’s voice comes so soft, so wretched, and his chest is moving too fast as if he can’t quite get a full breath.

“I never tried to sacrifice you, because I was sacrificing me.” Each word shatters as it hits the ground. “I asked the garden for you. Then I dug you up.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Part of him had always known there was a monster locked behind the walls of Hazelthorn, a secret overgrown with ivy and hemlock and the sharpened tips of holly leaves.

He just hadn’t thought it was him.

TWENTY-EIGHT

All around him, the plants breathe out, pressing close and hovering anxious leaves over his shoulders. Their whispering has turned hushed but reverent, a tenderness to the way they try to cup him in comfort. It is so disturbingly human that all the fine hairs stand up along the back of Evander’s neck.

He can’t breathe.

Every rib in his chest curves inward as if it wants to perforate his heart, his lungs, his soul, break him in unfixable ways. If he tore himself the rest of the way open, he’s sure he would find his organs packed with soil, moist flower bulbs wedged between liver and kidney, moss furring his intestines.

No wonder he failed at being normal, no matter how he tried.

He is not even—
human

He is all—
monster monster monster

A dull, detached weight settles over him as he stares at Laurie, seeing nothing but a bloodied blur as the world folds in on itself and his eyes burn. Only a few feet of space lie between them, but he has the sudden urge to scramble backward. To get as far away as possible.

To protect Laurie.

“You need to lock me up again.” Evander’s voice sounds disembodied, a flat, lifeless thing that falls from a flaccid tongue. “I still have the key.” His hand goes to the pocket in his shorts, to the iron key that doesn’t just lock up a monstrous garden. It should lock up a monstrous boy.

It all fits together with shocking, crystallized clarity and he should laugh at how oblivious he was to not see himself for what he truly is. A boy with no past, who was so feral he had to be “taught” how to act. A boy they kept locked up, sedated, hidden away. A boy with thorns for teeth and a taste for flesh. Just like the garden.

Not buried alive.

Dug up.

When Byron saw the thing in the garden worming up out of the soil, his first instinct had been to try to kill the little garden horror. What had he written in the field guide? Thorns are easily removed. He’d used pliers to yank them out of Evander’s mouth as a child, probably every time they grew back. He’d never, never seen him as a person. Maybe that’s why the field guide had been hidden in those sacks of soil in the greenhouse—Carrington probably shoved it there after Byron’s passing to make sure Evander never read it and started understanding what he is. Maybe that’s when the garden killed Carrington.

Laurie slumps against the massive pots, his head tilting to rest against the wicker throne as if it’s all that keeps him upright. His back is a bent sapling, his face gone waxy as his breathing continues to be too abrupt, too shallow. Fevered sweat trickles down the side of his face as he flattens his good hand over his bloodied side. There is way too much blood. It saturates his torso in lustrous red as if he is a painting only half-finished.

“That’s not the answer.” A tremor cracks his voice. “You don’t … d-don’t deserve a life like that.”

“Maybe I do.” The venom shocks even Evander. “I don’t even know what I’m doing—what I’ve done. What if I—” Try to kill you again. He can’t force it out in case that makes it real. “The garden is inside me.”

This can’t be real.

The smell of soil and fresh, vivid greenery intensifies to a choking level.

“No, it’s…” Laurie’s eyes close for a second. “You are the garden. It’s not like Carrington. The garden used his body as a tool, as a weapon. But for you, it’s…” He looks up at Evander with such desolation it hurts. “I think when you get overwhelmed, your brain shuts down to give you a break and the garden takes over. And the garden just really fucking hates Lennox-Halls.” His laugh is flat and breathy and pain slices at his mouth.

“But I don’t hate—” Evander starts, but the lie tastes tart. He does hate them, for what they’ve done to him, for what they might do next. So instead he whispers, “I don’t hate you.” Except the words stretch with unshed tears, because he used to.

He had seven years of hate grow through him like sharp-edged thistles while he blamed Laurie for trying to kill him. Who even told Evander that’s what happened? Byron? Another manipulation to keep him tamed and fearful and twisted up in ribbons of lies, not looking to Laurie for help because Laurie had been made the enemy.

Laurie tries to shift the pressure on his wound, but his face goes white.

“What did I do to you?” Evander whispers.

“I tried to reason with you, when—when the garden had control.” He’s struggling to speak, but he pushes on. “But it’s like you weren’t inside yourself. I had to run. We were mostly in the walls and then I crawled out this grate into the conservatory and—well, you caught up fast. The second you stepped foot in here, everything started growing like mad. You did all of this, just now.”

Evander stares at the soft green vines draped over his shoulders, the leaves drifting into his hair. The plants cling to him with worshipful adoration and buds open to flourish stunning flowers that seem to preen for his attention. He is their sunlight. He is their lost limb, their prodigal heart. Which explains why Byron had to keep moving him from room to room in the north wing. A particularly strong episode must have resulted in an explosion of vicious, botanical growth—poisonous plants growing up the walls and toxic flowers threaded through the carpet. It’s not the garden’s doing; it’s his.

All of this has always been him.

Evander lets out a low moan and digs his hands into his hair, shaking his head slowly and then faster. They let him out of his room and fed him bloody meat at meals and he shot up several inches almost overnight. His hair trails halfway down his back in a tangle of wicked, beautiful curls. He is a tender green shoot reaching for the light after years locked in darkness and it isn’t enough. Hunger crowns him like a punishment.

It’s too much. He is splitting under the weight of it, drowning with nothing to do but sink.

Yet none of this seems important when pain is bleeding through Laurie, his cornflower eyes gone dull as he folds in on himself.

“You need a hospital.” Evander surges to his feet, vines and leaves snapping as he moves away from the plants’ longing grip. “What if we get you help and then I—I lock myself back up? You’ll be safe. I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me before it was … too late?” He swallows rust and mottled dirt and ignores the way his own tongue scrapes against thorny teeth.

Laurie tries to smile, but a tear spills and runs in a clean line down his cheek. “My whole family is terrified of you and what you’d do if you took revenge for all the ways we’ve ravaged your garden.” His mouth trembles. “You know all the blood in the garden that day? Most of it was mine. I c-c-cut myself so bad to make the sacrifice and I think the garden thought it would have the rest of me in exchange for you. I got away with it somehow. I wanted you. I’m so … s-so sorry I didn’t tell you everything straightaway, but I was”—he seems to be having trouble talking now, his words slurring—“still s-scared of my grandfather, even after he was gone I couldn’t shake it. I’m—I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I thought if you found everything out too fast you’d freak out and hate me and never, never forgive me. But I’m not scared of what you are. I never could be.”

A lie; it must be. There is no way he can’t be sick with fear as he stares at Evander, who still wears Laurie’s blood around his mouth.

“I d-don’t want to be this,” Evander whispers.

A pulled-up root from an ancient, eldritch garden of horrors.

“It’s okay.” But Laurie’s voice has gone far too soft.

Evander will carry him to find help if he has to. He will scream down the world until someone listens and finds a way to knit Laurie back together.

But he only has time to take one tentative step forward as he tries to figure out if he can lift Laurie, where to take him, how much blood he’s lost, how to stop stop stop him from dying—before he hears the crunch of a footstep on broken ceramics.

Evander whips around, his pulse punching holes in his lungs. The sudden movement sends white-hot agony eating up his own torn-open chest, more sluggish red sap descending in a line to his naval, but he doesn’t care.

The locked door to the conservatory lies ajar.

Light filters in with the delicate hum of music and champagne glasses clinking together. He’d almost forgotten the wake the Lennox-Halls are throwing to honor—or probably celebrate—Byron’s passing. More people will be out there, conniving, backstabbing, greedy Lennox-Halls who will flash claws and beautiful smiles and lust after a garden that can make them wealthy beyond all imagination.

A shadow shifts in the corner. Evander steps quickly in front of Laurie, his long, skinny legs a pitiful attempt at protection as the shadow solidifies into a figure with hands in pockets, tweed jacket unbuttoned, hair artfully combed back, and tortoiseshell glasses framing his affable face.

Alarm ripples down Evander’s spine and suddenly he is glad for how terrible and unholy he must look, vivisected and bloody and grown through with vines. He bares his teeth.

“Whoa.” Dawes raises a hand in an easygoing gesture, a wry smile playing on his lips. “Just me.”

“Just you?” Evander’s whole body tenses. “The one who’s been lurking secretly in Hazelthorn? The one who poisoned the last lawyer? The one who’s been manipulating me this whole goddamn time?”

Dawes’s face shows no surprise, only wry amusement. He glances around at the wildness of the plants and batters a branch out of his face before prowling closer.

“Evander.” But Laurie’s voice is too soft to be a warning.

“Did you kill Byron?” Evander’s jaw clenches.

“Of course not,” Dawes says easily, and Evander hates him so much his vision speckles red. “However, I wasn’t going to sleep on an opportunity. I figured out how it all worked, by the way. The garden, the blood, the rubies. Took me an age to sort through dear Byron’s paperwork, but I must say it’s very useful that he was fond of journaling his insanity. Also, did you know all the plants from Hazelthorn die the moment they leave the grounds? Hard to start a new garden that way, let me tell you.”

“You’re trying to grow another Hazelthorn?” Confusion furrows Evander’s frown even deeper. “But you can’t.”

“Not with a normal cutting from the plants, that’s for sure.” Dawes’s smile is private and reserved, as if the joke is not worth explaining to someone as stupid as Evander.

Evander glances quickly back at Laurie, who has closed his eyes as his chin tucks low to his chest. His breathing has gone shallow, his grip on his wound loosening as if he’s on the cusp of passing out.

“He n-n-needs help.” Evander swallows back the rage and takes a fierce step toward Dawes. “You’re going to call an ambulance for him. Now.”

“You are oddly assertive sometimes.” Dawes sounds almost reflective. “See, I didn’t understand exactly what you were when I got here. I thought you were just some spineless brat Byron was doing god knows what to, but that worked for me. Pretend you inherited this estate and it would send this entire psychotic family into a frenzy bickering amongst themselves trying to get their cut. It all gave me the time I needed. Then I figured out what you are.” He tilts his chin at Laurie’s crumpled form. “Especially when left unchecked.”

There is a scream of frustration unraveling in Evander’s throat and he thinks he will surge forward and sink his thorn teeth into Dawes’s arm—but that won’t help. He has no idea where Laurie’s phone is and if he tries to find a landline, then he’ll have to leave Laurie alone, and he can’t do that either. Panicked tears crowd behind his eyes and he can barely hold back the cry of overwhelming frustration.

“I have a tidy stack of evidence against Byron,” Dawes adds. “Links to dozens of missing people in this area who were last seen entering this estate. It’s all with a third party, so if Byron tried to kill me, it would be instantly released and his whole serial killer kingdom would come crashing down.” His blackmailing cleverness clearly pleases him, but then his smug smile dips as he glances up at the heavy weight of foliage pressing down on the conservatory ceiling.

Blood pounds in Evander’s ears and he is too caught up in the grim understanding punching through his chest to note the lack of urgency, the casual chatting. As if Dawes has been buying time.

Three more shadows drift into the conservatory and the door closes behind them, the light chatter and frolicsome music cutting off with a snap. They pick their way through the maze of overgrowth, all dressed in elegant, black evening wear that seems better suited to a party than a funeral, and they all sport a sickening amount of bloodred rubies set in gold.

Oleander strides forward in a dress that looks like the midnight sky, the train speckled with rubies. White gloves reach to her elbows and her white hair has been bound in a high bun. Bane is next in a lavish Italian suit, the flower in his lapel crafted from rubies. Azalea picks her way more carefully than the others in delicate stilettos, her strapless black dress as tight fitting as a glove, a crystal flute of champagne in one hand. The blood spattering the floor seems to disgust her and she lifts the hem of her dress, her nose wrinkled.

Evander backs up, but there’s nowhere to go without stepping on Laurie. Moth wings beat inside his rib cage, trapped and terrified, and the urge to run is shredding him. He can’t. Not without Laurie.

He has to fix this.

He has to make this all stop.

“Right, so here we all are.” Dawes spins on his heel and waves a hand gallantly in Evander’s direction, like he’s serving up a platter of something delicious. “Our agreement still stands. I’ll destroy my evidence against your family and leave you in peace, and you’ll give me a clipping from the garden. Can I get my piece in a to-go bag or—?”

Barely concealed rage sits behind Oleander’s austere elegance, and she steps forward stiffly to gesture toward one of the work-tables scattered with floral cuttings and small flowerpots. Evander is struggling to keep up with what’s going on, his heart sledge-hammering its way out of his chest while his eyes dart between them all. Dawes just said the plants in Hazelthorn wouldn’t grow outside the grounds, so what the hell is he doing?

Bane prowls carefully toward him, his eyes blotted into dark pits, and Azalea stands to the side looking put out as she sips her champagne.

“You’re a psychopath.” Evander’s voice shakes. “You all are.” But then he sees what Oleander is pointing at.

Dawes picks up a terra-cotta pot. The stick planted directly in the center must be an attempt at propagation, though it’s barely developed any shoots. It looks dead. The ivory color is at odds with the flaking bark texture, but worse is the way looking at it makes Evander feel—

Split.

Severed.

Violated.

Bile rises in his throat and his whole body starts to shake as he watches Dawes set the pot down with a dismissive, “Eh,” and pick up the next one, twisting it this way and that as he checks to see if it’s sprouted yet.

Those are rib bones.

There are dozens of pots here with the same ivory sticks in various stages of flowering.

His palm presses to his chest, to the cavity still open and spilling dribbles of mud and sap at each pulse of his frantic heartbeat.

The only thing that stops the scream building up in his lungs is Laurie’s careful hand wrapping around Evander’s ankle. He rubs a thumb in slow, soft circles. Grounding him. Saying, I’m still with you.

But he can’t hold on forever either.

“Honestly, I’m not convinced.” Dawes sets down the pot with a shrug.

Oleander stares at him with burning hatred. “What do you mean, ‘not convinced’? A piece of the boy is exactly what you wanted.”

Azalea makes a face, careful not to spill any of her champagne. “I still can’t believe he fooled us for so long with that fake will reading. It’s embarrassing actually. Are you sure we’re just letting him walk?”

“Yes,” Dawes says, his smarmy smile turned to flint. “Unless you want to lose everything.”

Azalea sighs and rolls her eyes. “Well, since Father’s buried and this nasty business is all tied up, I’m on a flight out of here tomorrow.”

“Good riddance,” snaps Bane. “I can have some peace.”

Oleander’s lips curl. “Bold of you to think I’ll let you stay, son. But I suppose there is an opening for a butler.”

“What—” Indignation splutters from Bane and his face twists, but Oleander ignores him.

Laurie’s hand feels so, so cold against Evander’s ankle. “Run,” he breathes.

Evander keeps looking between them all, repulsed and stunned, too terrified to think. But this has always been his life anyway: being trapped, being used. Byron had been cutting out his ribs and experimenting with them for years, telling him the surgeries were for his own good while choosing bones Evander wouldn’t be able to see he’d lost so he wouldn’t understand what was happening to him. Keep him confused, disorientated. Keep him quiet.

“You said his ribs grow back, right?” Dawes is saying. “What about other parts of him? I want something with fresh roots.”

The noise that escapes Evander is strangled and terrible.

“The ribs flower just fine,” snaps Oleander. “And might I remind you that Byron was only in early stages of his attempts to propagate a second Hazelthorn.”

“I read his papers,” Dawes says coolly. “It’s different when the roots are straight from the boy. He said so. He wouldn’t have sunk the last seven years into this if it wasn’t going to work.” He waves vaguely at the pots of rib bones. “Let’s just hope starting from scratch gives me a blood garden with a little less attitude.”

“Take the rib and go.” Bane looms closer to Dawes in an attempt at intimidation.

“But I want a guarantee,” Dawes says, cool. “Don’t give me an old stick. I want fresh roots.” He looks straight at Evander. “What about a hand?”

Molten terror unspools in Evander’s gut. His hands have begun to flutter before he clenches them into fists and folds them hard around his heaving chest. “St-stop. Stop talking like this. St-stop all of this.” It sounds so pathetic. A child’s plea.

But this needs to stop.

He can’t do this.

He doesn’t want to be in this nightmare anymore.

wake up wake up wake up

None of them look at him, all focused on bickering semantics about his flowering bones.

Laurie’s fingertips are tugging at Evander’s ankle now. “You h-h-have to run.”

But Evander can’t do it. He has always been drawn to Laurie, addicted to him, and it is only now that he understands why.

He belongs to this boy in the way a flower belongs to its god.

With a choked sob, Laurie tries to push himself upright, his struggle made worse by the blood-slick tiles beneath him. Evander instantly drops into a crouch to try to steady him, his trembling hands hovering above the ravaged open wound, unsure what to do.

“You all are going to-to stay the—the hell away from him.” Laurie sucks in an uneven breath, but there is blood on his lips.

“For god’s sake,” Oleander snaps. “Azalea? Deal with your nephew.”

Azalea blinks rapidly, her hand pressed lightly to her throat. “What, me? This dress costs thirty thousand dollars, Auntie. I couldn’t possibly.”

Oleander almost growls and then storms forward with a muttered “I must do everything myself.”

Evander’s focus is so consumed by Laurie that he misses the moment Bane slithers forward and grabs a fistful of his dark, tangled curls. He yanks so hard Evander’s legs go out from under him and his cry is a cutoff garble as he’s dragged backward across the floor.

Laurie snatches for him, his eyes blown out with fear. “NO—”

Evander writhes, trying to grab Bane’s wrist to loosen some of the pressure on his head, but Bane only shoves him to his knees so he can crush an arm around Evander’s neck. Air is severed. He’s choking, clawing at Bane’s arm.

Bane tightens his fist in Evander’s hair and jerks him around so his back is to Laurie and Oleander. He can’t twist free. Can’t see. Oleander swoops past in that voluminous navy gown, every ruby sharp and glittering, before Bane shifts and blocks all view.

“Laurie. LAURIE. Don’t touch him.” Evander’s voice tips so high it cracks and then he is nothing but a hoarse gasp, almost soundless as he keeps trying to scream despite the crushing pressure on his esophagus.

A low wail pulls from Laurie’s throat. It is a terrible sound, bone-chilling and animal, and it escalates fast. Too fast. The sheer panicked pain of it cuts through Evander like a knife and stokes a terrified rage in him so brutal his world shifts to a bloodied red.

He roars, throwing himself so hard against Bane that they both stumble backward and crash into the table.

Bane swears. “Would you just—Dawes. Stop standing there, you goddamn idiot.”

Dawes had been focused on Oleander, his expression complicated, but he shakes himself and picks up a pair of pruning shears from amongst the flowerpots.

But all Evander can focus on is Laurie’s cry and the way it turns to gasps, short and muffled and—

Cuts off with a crisp finality.

It will live in him forever, that cry, the desperation in it, the sheer undiluted fear. He will be forever haunted by that pain.

But more than that, he is haunted by the silence.

He screams for Laurie, his eyes blurring, but he can see nothing except Oleander walking back into view looking calm and unhurried. She flexes her hands as if, only seconds before, they had pressed down so very tight and hard around a throat.

“Get on with it,” she says. “We have a dinner to attend in my brother’s honor and I want you off my property for good.”

“LAURIE. What did you do to him? What did you do!” Evander tries one more time to fight free, but Bane twists his neck at a terrible angle. All he can do is choke on his own hoarse sobs as Dawes grabs one of his arms and forces it straight.

Evander’s struggle is feeble, his vision so blurred he can barely see the pruning shears clasped in Dawes’s hand.

“Nononono—” His sob falls from his mouth, sickened with bile, his moan inhuman. “I’ll b-b-b-be quiet. I’ll be quiet.”

They’re just threatening him.

They won’t actually do it.

They won’t.

They—

Dawes snaps the pruning shears closed over Evander’s wrist. The pain is so excruciating, so monstrous, that it is impossible to quantify. There is only this hysterical scream that trips through him as everything inside him shatters.

The worst part is how there is no clean severing.

The pruning shears are blunt.

TWENTY-NINE

He has become the garden.

It is all up and through him, soft green tendrils coiled along optic nerves and tiny rosebuds and roots entwined through his jawbone. Wildflowers blossom under his tongue and thorns have burst from the tender flesh of his gums to line his mouth in a second set of teeth. Moss grows slow and steady behind his eyelids so that he no longer has to see the world if he doesn’t want to. The garden fits itself around tendons and nerves and moves his body for him.

He can go away. Someplace where it doesn’t hurt anymore.

The space where it begins and he ends is impossible to outline, though he wonders, perhaps, if he should have kept hold of some part of himself.

His lungs have blossomed with delicate florals and he cannot breathe in without tasting it: bloodberry and King’s Sleep and belladonna.

If he lets go, he could be made of poison so vindictive he becomes death to touch.

If he lets go, he can’t find Laurie.

His eyes open.

Thickened ivy and violets stems clear from behind his eyelids as he blinks, slow and sticky. The garden holds him tenderly, the anxious weight of it pressed up against his spine with an offer to take back over, should he want.

Tears slide silently down his cheeks as he takes in the room around him and the way he’s been roughly crammed into a three-piece suit. One of Oleander’s valets is dressing him like a doll, a hurried nervousness to their movements as they button his cuffs and adjust his collar. Whatever room this is, Evander doesn’t recognize it. Dust sits thickly in the air, furniture draped in ghostly sheets. A porcelain basin lies on the carpet, water pink and frothy with soapy blood. Dark coils of hair litter the carpet, his curls chopped back brutally short. He has been made respectable, normal.

The valet fixes the bow tie.

But they made a mistake by uncovering an ancient, antique mirror, the brass rim stamped with grapevines and dryads. Evander stares at himself with fascinated disgust, mapping his elegant cheekbones and bruised mouth, the wicked green of his eyes so vibrant it hurts. This is why they hid all the mirrors in Hazelthorn.

He doesn’t look right. He is the uncanny copy of a human, the best the garden could do. A boy made of otherness and green wood sticks and wicked hunger.

“That will have to do.” Oleander hovers by a crystal decanter of brandy in the corner, looking sour and displeased as always. She splashes it liberally into a glass and swallows fast.

“Did you know Byron refused to communicate with me for decades?” She doesn’t look at him, and there is an unsteady quality to her voice that says this isn’t her first drink. “If he had shared Hazelthorn, then maybe this would all have played out differently. He refused my calls, my letters, my gifts.” Her laugh is a bitter rasp. “I sent him a bloody deer’s heart as a threat once and that box never made it through the gates. All I wanted was a piece to try and grow my own Hazelthorn since he wouldn’t share this one. That miserable bastard wouldn’t give me a scrap.”

A riotous scream pounds inside Evander’s sealed mouth, growing stronger and stronger until he is shaking. It seems obvious she never sent Byron poisoned tea now, since she never even got close to him. But she wanted a piece? He wonders if Byron would have given in eventually, carved off part of Evander and packed his bones in soil to send to her so she could grow her own Hazelthorn and leave him alone. Will he be able to feel the new blood garden that Dawes grows? Maybe it will always be part of him, a phantom limb that pulls him toward it even as he rots here locked in an airless room, waiting for his bones to be harvested again and again and again.

Because he’s not human. So it doesn’t matter what they do to him.

He is bleeding rage and murder and fury all over the floor.

But he stays quiet.

He stays so perfectly quiet as he looks at the stump of his left hand, bound and bandaged, so he no longer can see the fine white roots that protruded from the ragged flesh.

In his other hand lies the key. He’s confused how it made it out of his pajamas—unless the garden took care to be sure he didn’t lose it.

He pockets the key in his new pants.

When the leaves rustle and stretch behind his eyelids again in a tentative attempt to soothe him, he lets them black out the world again. This time, his fall into the undulating dark is suffocating, earth pressed up against his lungs so he can barely breathe. He is underground, he is choking, but when he tips his head sideways, Laurie is there beside him, his arms cold ivory as they twine around Evander’s neck. His eyes have been gouged out and filled with dirt and flowers.

Silt begins to spill from Laurie’s cracked lips.

“They buried me alive,” he whispers.

Evander begins to scream.

He pulls back into himself by accident, a whimper in his mouth as tender green vines tighten around his spinal cord. But something catches his attention and he pauses, dizzy with the effort of flitting in and out of his own skin. Fevered sweat soaks his underarms, plasters his roughly hacked curls to his cheeks, beads on his forehead and upper lip. When he licks it, his tongue stings with salt.

Pain has become a thing he wears, a thing he is. He cannot look down at the place where his hand was. His suit jacket has been pinned at his left cuff, but it’s still obvious what is missing. Blood leaks through the bandages and slowly saturates his cuff while a throbbing, monstrous agony devours his whole arm. He is sick with it. But the fact he is upright and walking settles a different kind of dread in his core.

Maybe he is just a tree that has been pruned.

Maybe it shouldn’t hurt.

monster monster monster

It isn’t even real blood, like he always thought. His fingers touch his empty cuff and come away tacky with tree sap.

When he looks up, he’s in the kitchen entrance, his back pressed hard against the archway while Bane stands in front of him and argues with the waitstaff. They must have been going somewhere—Evander remembers nothing—but the kitchen is bursting with activity as chefs and caterers bustle around preparing dinner. The clash of pots and utensils and sizzling oil ring dully in Evander’s ears, and he can smell rosemary and yeasty bread and seared steaks. Oleander has vanished and Bane looks pissed, though for once not at Evander.

“—saying he cannot open the gates.” The waitstaff looks apologetic. “The gentleman has become quite agitated and seems to want to leave the property immediately.”

“Goddamn Dawes.” Bane sounds annoyed. “The gates work. They were open for our guests just a few hours ago. Tell him to get out of his pretty little car and open them manually.”

“I’ll pass on the message,” the waitstaff says, “but I think perhaps something has grown through the locks?”

Hazelthorn won’t let Dawes leave with the stolen piece of Evander. A sick, awful smile spreads slowly over Evander’s mouth until Bane gives him a rough shake and his head snaps back and forth.

“Stop it.” Bane snarls in his face. “Wipe that smirk off your face before I do. Spent way too much time around Laurie, didn’t you? Absorbed his attitude problems real quick.”

Evander does nothing but stare unblinking until Bane looks away with an unnerved shudder. He steps away to argue with another valet who has appeared with a nervous apology to say an irate Dawes is now at the front door, demanding someone unlock the gates.

“I already said,” Bane is nearly shouting, “they’re not locked! What the hell is his problem?”

The back door is just there. Evander could make it. Once in the garden, he wouldn’t be easily caught. The garden would hide him, swallow him, tend to him with joyful adoration as it has longed to do all this time. It’s he who has unwittingly fought every single attempt it made to reconnect with him. Did it ever try to hurt him or did he just hurt himself refusing his roots?

He didn’t know. He didn’t know.

A sweet coppery tang fills the back of his mouth and he glances down to see scarlet droplets hitting the carpet in steady pats beside him. He sways, his stomach tipping, and when he forces himself to look up again, the busyness of the kitchen seems to have magnified, sounds crashing through his head as if he is right in the midst of it instead of standing to the side. He flinches as someone calls out an instruction and flame leaps from a burner and dishes clatter in the sink. Along the counter sits a selection of wines, corks popped so it can breathe.

Evander stares.

When he raises his stump lightly, the steady patter of bloodied sap ebbs and simply trickles in a line down his sleeve. Beneath the bandages something shifts, throbs. He thumbs at his jacket just enough to see thin tendrils poking up through the layers of bandages, dotted with tiny red buds.

He recognizes them from the field guide.

Heart Rot—highly toxic, both to touch and taste, the closed buds resemble the shape of an anatomical heart. If consumed, will cause shortness of breath, blurred vision, swollen throat, and rapid heartbeat that escalates into the organ imploding within the chest.

Maybe it’s the pain leaving him delirious and slippery inside his own head, but he doesn’t even care that his wound is growing toxic flowers. It feels right, somehow.

From here, Evander can smell the sickly sweet odor of the plum wine, can almost taste it.

“—of course not,” Bane snaps, his back to Evander as he throws his hands in the air in exasperation at the staff. “Tell our guests to shut up and sit down. We said we’d be serving at eleven p.m., so start serving. Do I have to spell everything out? Dawes can learn how to use a goddamn gate or sit out there till morning…”

Evander closes his eyes.

Leaves unfold and the world turns black.

Moss grows beneath his tongue.

His eyes open.

Close.

open

He sits in the dining room at the head of the table, staring down and down into his distorted reflection in the ebony hardwood. Hundreds of candles have been lit, the chandeliers polished to a stunning sheen, and the table stretches on forever, lined with place settings decorated with rubies and saltwater pearls. He doesn’t recognize most of the faces. There are half a dozen new Lennox-Halls whispering and tittering, their silver cutlery scraping plates arranged with elegant swirls of spiced steak tartare. Blood drips off the tines of forks.

His plate lies empty.

A dull throb spreads from his severed wrist up to his shoulder, and he can feel the fever eating through his neck, his collarbones, his swollen mouth.

A single drop of sweat hits his plate.

Conversation continues, glib and light, compliments dancing back and forth about the austere wonder of Hazelthorn, how magnificent it is to finally step foot inside after all these years. Their greed slips down their chins like saliva, and their eyes are black pools of lustful want, and they seem to have forgotten they are here to mourn Byron.

Oleander sits to his right, her expression sour as she surveys her bloodline, no doubt seeing them as her brother once did—leeches only here to suck her dry. Her food remains untouched, but she has one elongated claw on the table, close enough to snatch Evander if he tries to bolt.

But he has no plans to run.

He reaches for his wineglass, fumbling to grasp it with numb fingers, and then he stands abruptly.

Oleander hisses and snatches for his jacket, but Evander quickly raises his glass in the air.

“A toast to our beloved Byron Laurence Lennox-Hall.” His voice is hoarse, and around him, conversation simpers into silence as everyone stares.

Oleander’s teeth clench. “Sit down.”

“No, I want to say wordsssinhishonor.” Evander sounds drunk, slurred, and he must look it, because there are a few wry smiles passed between the guests. Because of course they don’t care about the truth of what’s been done to him. They choose not to look too closely.

Bane has been sat several seats down the table and looks in a sour mood about it, and he stares at Evander with glittering contempt.

Only Azalea seems serene and unbothered as she also reaches for her wine. “Oh, what a lovely idea.”

“Let him speak, Ollie!” an older gentleman calls out, and the look in Oleander’s eyes is volcanic.

She retracts her claws from Evander’s jacket, but her teeth remain bared in a dangerous smile as she watches him closely.

“I’m grateful for all of you coming here today in memory of his passing.” Heat burns behind Evander’s eyes; he is molten, he is burning up, he is delirious with pain. “He was an innovative, dedicated m-man. He was a father to me. I—I—I am so grateful to inherit the legacy he left behind. I’m so grateful”—his head pounds, his mouth is full of rocks—“to be left here with all of you.”

“All right, that’s enough, sit down,” Oleander hisses.

Because he is meant to be a trophy shown off, a symbolism of her win, not a puppet who speaks.

“A toast.” Evander raises his wineglass, his hand trembling so hard liquid sloshes out the side. “To Byron. To his garden. To all of you having a true taste of Hazelthorn.”

Several glasses are raised, though a few Lennox-Halls seem bored of his theatrics.

He throws back his wine and the others do the same.

The plum wine slips down his throat in a rich, vibrant stain.

“Thank you for coming to eat,” Evander says. “And be eaten. Long may you rot.”

The first person puts a hand to their throat, their polite cough turning into a gagging sound. Then the next person stands abruptly as they wheeze for air. Amusement turns to alarm as people reach for each other, asking what is wrong, what is happening. Then another, and then another. A wineglass tips off the table and shatters on the floor. A shriek rings out.

Panic breaks over them as chairs screech backward and fear plays through their shouts.

Oleander’s brittle gaze whips to Evander. “What did you do?”

Evander flops backward into his chair and wipes his mouth, smearing blood up his cheek. When he laughs, it is a wretched sound. It all makes sense now; he should have thought of it before. After years of being poisoned just enough so that he stayed sick, he has grown up horribly, terribly immune.

They should never have left him alone in the kitchen with the wine.

“I think I did it,” he says as the room folds into hysterical chaos. “I think I killed Byron Lennox-Hall.” He pauses, poisonous petals unfolding in his throat, before he whispers, “And the rest of you too.”

THIRTY

Once upon a time, a door was unlocked and a monster slipped out of its ivory tower. The garden did not step into him, but rather stepped out of him.

The facts seem raw and livid now, a bruise purpled with old blood, how that first night he escaped his room could easily be pockmarked with holes. What if the garden took over his body? It could have sent him into the kitchen to bite the stems of poisonous blooms growing from his own wrists and crush them into Byron’s waiting tea while Carrington was in the parlor with Laurie. Then Carrington served the tea none the wiser. All this time, maybe Evander should have been accusing himself.

His memory has always been full of a thousand neatly cut holes. He can’t trust himself and he can’t be trusted.

It had to have been him. No one else makes sense.

Benedict Dawes would have gloated, if he’d been the killer. Bane couldn’t even get inside thanks to the garden. Oleander never sent any tea. Azalea wasn’t in the country.

As the dinner party descends into terrified chaos, Evander hurls his empty wineglass at the wall and surges from his chair. No one stops him. Hands are at throats. Pressed over hearts. Blood runs from their eyes like tears. Screams echo off the walls and chairs are knocked over. Someone is shouting about calling an ambulance.

Evander doesn’t wait to see if their hearts will punch through their chests.

He bolts into the kitchen and through the back door.

Move fast, fast.

Don’t let him be too late.

Night hits like a cool shock to his burned-up skin, and he gasps at the relief of it as it sweeps his sweaty hair back from his forehead and tugs him in deeper toward the inky depths of the garden. Cicadas and night birds double their songs. Trees tilt toward him. Plants burst from the ground and stroke at his legs as he passes.

His hoarse scream through the dark is broken and raw.

“LAURIE.”

He bolts over low garden walls and plunges through hedgerows that catch in his hair. The garden doesn’t stop him, rather urges him on, fast and faster, only snatching at his collar once when he is about to take the wrong turn. A long, supple branch spins him around and pushes him left instead. He staggers a bit, regains his footing, and starts running again.

“Thanks,” he breathes.

Don’t let him be too late.

Not after all of this. Not after he finally understands all of the rotten secrets.

Ahead, the red door looms like a bloodshot eye and he slams into it, a murderous roar tearing from his throat. “Don’t eat him. Don’t you dare eat him. DO YOU HEAR ME?”

He fumbles for the key, drops it, has to feel about in the heather grown thickly over the cobbled path before he finds it and then jams it into the lock.

Old dried blood flakes off the door as he shoves it open. The smell of freshly turned earth greats him, the gentle hum of growing things and heady toxic floral perfumes from flowers blossoming under the silver moon. His heart pounds so hard against his ribs that he feels bruised and breathless, staggering forward before he falls to his knees at the garden bed left empty to devour bodies.

He starts digging with his only hand, clawing as hard and fast as he can.

“Laurie, Laurie, Laurie.” His tears hit the soil and he is furious at how slow he is without both hands. He cries out in frustration before staring at the throbbing bandages of his stump. Maybe—

He starts clawing off the bandages, hurrying as fast as he can with shaking fingers and a heart stuttering in his chest. The bloodied cloth unravels.

A small, green branch has begun to sprout from his stump, the promise of fingers told amongst thin sticks with knots curved like knucklebones. Even as he grits his teeth against the splintering pain, it grows, shaping itself into a new hand of bark and leaves.

This is him. This is what they hid from him.

He starts digging again, wild and frenzied, and his hands hit something soft. But he has no idea which bed he should be digging in and he feels it like a fist to his gut, that this is the wrong body. Not Jessica’s, from that day Bane murdered her.

This can only be his guardian.

Even with moonlight spilled like glossy milk all around him, it’s hard to tell what’s left of Byron Lennox-Hall. Roots have dug through his chest and half his side is already gone, earthworms writhing in empty eye sockets and beetles scurrying along the edge of a white jawbone. But there is enough skin left to see the surprised rictus of horror that shaped his mouth as he died.

In those last moments, he would have realized all his worst nightmares had come true and the garden was taking its final revenge. The monster was loose.

After all his hoarding of the garden, his family fed him back to the soil the first chance they got. It would be ironic and circular, if Evander had it in himself to care. But he spares only one second looking at the decayed wreckage of the man who tortured him and then assured him that this nightmare was love.

With a garbled cry, Evander lunges for the next bed and starts digging faster, harder.

He’s whispering words through poison-smudged lips as he digs; a plea or a prayer, tied up in a ribbon of salty tears.

“I don’t want him to be dead. I can’t. I can’t do this. I c-c-c-can’t. Please please please—”

All around him, vines pull from the soil, slow and elegant, and grow toward the moonlight. It’s always been like this, he understands it now; his riotous emotions make plants bloom toxic, violent, and beautiful, as if they can’t help but respond to his heartbeat.

Then his fingers hit skin, soft and supple.

He rakes dirt from a face, grit and loam jammed up under his nails and ground into the knees of his suit pants.

Nothing matters but this.

His hand cupping Laurie’s cold, muddy jaw. His fingers digging into the limp mouth and gouging out loose soil to clear the airway. His lips pressed to Laurie’s temple with fervent, delirious agony.

“Don’t leave me, please, don’t leave me. I am worse without you.”

The earth is soft, the garden abashed as it relinquishes its grip, and it doesn’t take long to pull Laurie from the ground and drag him over to the grass. Dirt cakes his limbs, his face. Evander is on his knees, whispering soft reassurances as he uses his sleeves to wipe dirt from Laurie’s cheeks and brush off his hair and then prop him upright as best he can. He is too heavy, his head slumping on Evander’s shoulder. Around his ankles, roots grow, tentative, as if unsure why their feed has been interrupted.

Evander snarls at the earth, feral and vicious, and the roots sag in submission.

Not too much damage has been done yet. The garden has crept into the open wound of Laurie’s side, weaving amongst Evander’s teeth marks as if by invitation. Soft, green shoots grow from Laurie’s body and roses black as old blood have sunk thorny vines into his skin. It’s not too hard to yank them off. To hurl them away. The sounds coming from Evander’s mouth feel alien: jagged breathing, dry moans, his own thorny teeth tearing open his bottom lip until he tastes tree sap and earth and fairy foxglove.

One root has plunged so deep into Laurie’s open wound that it takes several moments for Evander to yank it out. He pulls, and pulls, watching the root slither free covered in viscid gore and flop on the ground like a wretched snake.

All around him the garden leans forward to watch, a nervousness flittering about its leaves.

wait wait wait

Evander snarls, so animal, it scares even him.

But he is beyond thinking, beyond anything but this need to gather up fistfuls of shattered stars and moonbeams and bright blue skies, and fit them back inside Laurie.

He places a palm over Laurie’s wound, but it’s barely bleeding now.

“I’ll t-take you to a hospital.” Evander’s teeth chatter. “They’ll fix you. I—I don’t know how to use a phone, though, so-so you need to wake up. Wake up for me. Laurie? Laurie. I want you. I w-w-want you. I’ve d-d-done something terrible. I didn’t—mean to.”

But he had meant to.

And it terrifies him.

There is no line between him and the garden anymore. There is nothing but the both of them tangled together in rage and justice and the hysterical despair of feeling trapped.

He’s crying so hard he can’t breathe, his tears pattering down on Laurie’s face. His skin isn’t too cold; the dirt kept him warm. Laurie’s mouth parts easily when Evander presses two fingers to his bloody lips and he thinks, maybe, he could breathe life back into him.

“It will be okay, just you see.” His voice breaks and he is almost soundless as he whispers, “I’m only a monster because they made me monstrous.” He picks up Laurie’s hand and presses it to his own wet cheek.

And he pretends that it is

Laurie
who whispers, “It’s okay.”

THIRTY-ONE

All that’s left of him is a howling thing that runs through the garden with a scream torn from his unraveling skin. He runs fast, wild, mad. There is a rush in this, a horrible pleasure that is so deeply entwined with a starving need to consume that he has lost all ability to hold on to himself. He has let go.

He screams.

and screams
and screams.

The midnight sky snaps in half, or maybe the snap comes from inside him, a cracking open of marrow so that anger can suck at his bones. Vines grow from his wrists and wrap around his forearms, and his dinner jacket tears as roses blossom between his shoulder blades. The cavity in his chest becomes a cradle for briars. Mud fingerprints his jaw, and his skin flakes to show tree bark beneath.

And the garden matches his screams.

He isn’t even sure where he’s running, just that he can’t stop. If he twists his fingers, fresh foliage bursts forth on barren branches and saplings sprout from the ground. Somewhere along the way, he lost his shoes, and now clover grows wherever he steps.

He is a wild thing, a ravenous thing, an untamed thing, and there is no one to tell him to be quiet.

When he howls, the garden responds by putting a fist through the walls of the Hazelthorn manor, punching stone and brick and plaster as tree boughs slam inside. The seething, furious garden that has so long scratched at the windows finally has permission to break through. Glass shatters. Walls crumble. Roof tiles crash to the ground below as oaks explode through the chimneys and birches grow into the walls. The garden eats through the manor with riotous joy.

He should share that, should be fueled by it.

They’re both getting what they always wanted, he and the garden.

Escape, revenge, freedom, veneration. Nothing can cage them back up; all the walls are down.

But somehow, when he stops running, he just feels like crying.

The garden has him back, it is finally whole, yet he feels emptied.

It isn’t for a boy he barely knew, he tells himself fiercely. It shouldn’t mean anything, those years of watching Laurie out a window, of obsessing over him, hungering for him, of imagining his fingertips pressed against Evander’s hot skin as he kisses him senseless. It could’ve been anyone, really. It just happened to be Laurence Lennox-Hall.

Except, deep down, he knows that’s not true.

Only Laurie stood in this garden as a child and cut himself open and wished for a friend with full understanding that it would be monstrous. And he didn’t mind.

Something crumples in Evander’s chest and he drops into a crouch, hugging his knees to his chest and sucking in lungfuls of summer night air. Tears cut furrows down his muddy cheeks. He is shivering, his lips moving in a soundless plea that has long since stopped making sense. Around him, the garden pulls roots from the ground and trees step over him as they trundle toward the mansion to surge into the walls and grow branches in all the parlors, twist holly and ivy through the carpets, fill the beds with hemlock and roses and larkspur.

Evander wipes his mouth, his nose. He feels like a silly child, sobbing like this, desperate and thick and heartsick.

Stop.

Just stop and—
listen

Feet scuff the pathway just ahead, and there is the choked gasp of someone witnessing the impossibility of the garden’s vengeance.

Evander looks up slowly, his dark curls hanging limp over his eyes.

Dawes has frozen on the path ahead, a flowerpot clutched under one arm, his face waxy with terror as he takes a step backward, then another.

When Evander rises from where he’s crouched, he knows he must look nowhere near human. His bark hand hangs at his side; his face is stripped of emotion.

For a long minute, their eyes lock and the panic in Dawes’s expression intensifies under the weight of Evander’s deadened scowl.

“Wait.” Dawes swallows. “I’m not—Just—Just stay back.”

Evander screams.

It pierces through the air like a whiplash and Dawes recoils in visible pain as he looks for somewhere to flee. He must have been trying to find another way out of Hazelthorn, since the gate is locked with ivy, but he should never have come back here.

A tree snatches Dawes’s legs out from under him.

He goes down with a petrified shriek, all his smug, suave confidence gone as he scrabbles across the dirt, his fingernails clawing for purchase as the garden drags him backward by the ankle. The flowerpot hits the ground and cracks, but Evander looks away. He doesn’t want to see the severed part of him.

What he wants is to stop being hungry.

He comes forward with measured steps, picking his way through thickets and thorns as Dawes tangles amongst plum tree roots. He is messy and hysterical, babbling pleas and bribes and threats all at once. One root punctures through his calf muscle and he screams.

“Wait waitwaitwait. No, god. Wait.” Dawes is reduced to a sobbing smear on the ground, trying to drag himself away while the garden plays with him like he’s a sightless worm. Roots coil like pythons around his middle. “Just unlock the gates and let me out. Let me out. I’ll give you anything. Anything!”

Evander’s head is empty as he crouches down by Dawes. He places twiggy finger bones on Dawes’s skin and lets them scuttle in eerie, inhuman ways toward the lush sound of that throbbing heartbeat.

Hunger splits open his belly in a roar so terrible that his vision speckles.

Dawes’s frantic babbling tips up a notch. “I don’t know why they ever let you run around. They’re crazy. You’re all crazy. How did they ever think you were human, I can’t—”

Saliva fills Evander’s mouth. “Be quiet.”

He has become a nightmare from the dark and there doesn’t seem any point in pretending he could ever have been something else.

“EVANDER.”

He catches himself, hovers, the thorns in his mouth an inch from sinking into Dawes’s cheekbone as he lies trembling like pinned prey.

“Evander. Look at me.”

But the voice is coming from behind him, not from Dawes, who has started weeping piteously.

A sob catches in Evander’s mouth, spills, and when he twists his head at an uncanny angle to look over his shoulder, he is sure he looks nothing like himself. Evander is a name that no longer fits him. He is—

“I said, Look at me, Hazelthorn.”

He stands, shaking, and he looks.

The impossibility of Laurie standing there feels like having his soul split open all over again. Of course it isn’t real, just his imagination digging a boy out of the ground to hold him together when he is falling apart.

But the mirage stands firm just beyond a low garden wall smothered in yellow roses and ivy. He leans against it, breathing hard, dirt and blood matting his clothes to his skin and his side spilling greenery and vines.

It makes sense, in a wild, hot rush—the garden isn’t eating him, it’s mending him. Those vines have stitched his side, moss has soaked up his blood, tiny violet roots have sprouted from his busted lip to suture ragged flesh.

“You’re not this,” Laurie says, his voice firm. “This isn’t you and you don’t want it to be.”

For a second, Evander can do nothing but stare, blinking to clear the mussy confusion. He wavers, unsure. It could be the moonlight, playing tricks on him.

Laurie is still a few feet away, but his glare is ferocious. “You really lose your shit when you’re left alone for five minutes, don’t you?”

“You’re—No.” Evander steps back. “You’re not—”

“Check for a goddamn pulse next time,” Laurie says, but his mouth is wobbling and his eyes are bright and he takes a shaky step forward.

He’d probably fall if not for a sudden shoot of greenery bursting from the soil to leap up and grab his wrist to stabilize him. The garden, helping. The garden, tending.

Because however deep its rage runs, it hasn’t always been a blood-soaked monster. It has been unmade and remade that way by Lennox-Halls who bled it for riches and glory.

Maybe it hungered for something else before they fed it blood and flesh relentlessly; maybe it simply slept in deep, cozy darkness, and enjoyed soft birdsong and warm golden sun.

“Come here.” But the traitorous way Laurie’s voice bends says he is pretending to be made of flint while, inside, he is crying.

Evander steps over the sobbing, babbling wreck of Dawes, and picks his way carefully, slowly, toward Laurie. He stops while Wolflock and Bloodberry petals blossom between them and when he reaches out a hand, he wonders how toxic he’s become, with Heart Rot vines coiled about his wrists.

“Did the garden bring you back?” A tremor runs through Evander’s voice.

“I think it was holding me.” Laurie doesn’t come forward, doesn’t reach out. He seems to respect the wary distance of the feral creature before him, pacing back and forth with fairy foxglove all through his hair.

“What if you’re wrong? What if this is all I am?” Evander hates the way the words tear from him, unsteady and wet and so close to a snarl. “What if the worst of us is the only part that’s real?”

But Laurie doesn’t hesitate. “I won’t let you be.”

“What did you call me before?” Evander’s bark hand curls into a fist.

Laurie touches two fingers to the blood still crusted over his mouth. “I’m sorry I named you after my imaginary friend. It’s just—you were meant to be mine and I never wanted to lose you.”

“I said—” Evander takes a brittle step forward. “What did you call me?”

“Hazelthorn,” he whispers.

With a broken cry, Evander runs forward and slams into Laurie like a thunderstorm finally wearing itself out.

His face is pressed to Laurie’s neck, and Laurie’s arms go tight around his ribs, and there is no room for anything between them except for soft, broken agony. Laurie presses his mouth hard to the side of Evander’s head and his fingers dig into the disheveled dinner jacket until his knucklebones go white.

All he says, his voice soft and reverent and broken all the way through, is, “God was stronger than me when he made Adam and didn’t fall in love with him.”

Behind them, a plum tree root plunges through Dawes’s chest and his mangled cries cut off as his body is slowly folded down into the soil. The snap of bone is muffled by the soft rustling of leaves and it is almost possible, in that moment, to pretend the plum tree chose this on its own. And Evander had nothing to do with it.

THIRTY-TWO

Moonlight turns the world to a softened silver as they lie in the grass inside the poisonous garden. The red door remains open and the low calls of night birds and cicadas filter through. The world feels empty except for them, but it is a soft kind of loneliness. It feels like peace.

Their heads are close, tilted against each other, their legs entwined and fingers threaded as they count stars bit deep into the dark sky. Dawn will come soon and Hazelthorn will have to see everything he has destroyed, but for now the dark smothers most of his guilt and he’s grateful for it.

The wreckage of the mansion still feels unreal. It sags in the middle, trees grown through it and wrapped around it in loving strangulation, and it doesn’t seem as if they want to come out. Most of the garden has settled its roots back into the soil, but a new, fervent life thrums through all the leaves. As if it feels happy. As if it feels avenged.

Laurie did a quick circumnavigation of the mansion by himself since Hazelthorn couldn’t bear to look. Maybe the garden was in him, pushing him toward a steep, dark edge, but he could have tried harder to stop and he didn’t. Now it seems safest to tuck himself back behind the red door and wait for Laurie to come back and flop onto the grass beside him.

This is the place Hazelthorn was taken from, severed, where he lost who he was and tried to force himself to fit a skin that was never his. He thinks, perhaps, he is meant to be feral and loud and sharp and angry. It feels nice to lie in the dew-soaked grass and let the truth of himself soak through his skin, to feel the dread slowly stop throbbing through his gut and his heartbeat slow and limbs loosen. He is almost at peace with himself; he has almost let go of that fallacy that he should try to be something else.

His fingers trace the heart line on Laurie’s palm and he rolls over to press his mouth close to Laurie’s ear. “I killed them. I killed them all and I—I—I couldn’t stop. I can never stop myself when—” He cuts off and lets out a long, shuddering breath.

“Not all of them.” Laurie absently runs fingers through Evander’s curls, picking out thistles and twigs and flicking them away. “I looked when I was in the house. I’m not sure … I think some of my relatives might’ve run. The staff look like they climbed the garden wall and got out. Not sure about Dawes, but I think those roots might’ve pulled him underground. Bane and Azalea and Oleander are…” He seems to pause for a moment as if he’s wrestling with his own feelings and doesn’t quite know how to compact them into a shape that feels ready to hold. “I think they’re dead.”

They say nothing for a moment, both of them focused on the comforting warmth of the other while the weight of what has been done steeps in the air around them, sharp as holly leaves. Hazelthorn isn’t sure if he, alone, is to blame or if it could have been different if only they’d hurt him less.

“What will happen to the gardens now?” he says quietly.

Laurie lets out a small huff, something caught between laughter and loathing. “Maybe nothing. I have a feeling no Lennox-Halls are ever going to touch this place again. You’re kind of terrifying in monster-mode.”

Hazelthorn tilts his head back to give Laurie a proper glare, but Laurie just smiles innocently and pulls him back close to keep playing with his hair.

“I don’t know what they expected.” Laurie yawns, exhaustion crowding him toward the edge of sleep. “The garden was always going to bite back someday. Also, the front gates are so smothered in ivy now it’s like there’s no entrance at all. Maybe everyone will forget there’s anything here.”

“I’ll tell it to open for you,” Hazelthorn says. “When you leave.”

Laurie pushes up on one elbow and looks down at him, laid out there on grass soaked in moonlight, and the look on his face is pure desolation. He must be beyond exhausted, biting back pain and fear, and yet he places one thumb over Hazelthorn’s lips and does nothing else but drink him in with aching, fond tenderness.

No one should look at a monster like that.

With such unashamed adoration.

“You should never have unlocked my door.” Hazelthorn sounds raspy after all the screaming. “None of this would’ve happened.”

“Want to know why I did?” Laurie leans in until their mouths are close enough for words to fall from his tongue onto Hazelthorn’s. “I overheard my grandfather in the conservatory talking to Carrington. About you. About how best to cut you apart, and if—” Anger burns his eyes the coldest blue. “If you’d survive it. They decided it didn’t matter this time if you did or not.”

“I hate them,” Hazelthorn says softly.

“I know.” Laurie sighs and then lowers his head to rest on Hazelthorn’s chest. “I used to spend every summer trying to figure out a way to talk to you, to get you to trust me so I could get you out. But I figured the garden wouldn’t let you get far, so how could we escape?” His voice takes on a shaky fierceness. “That night, I had to act fast to distract them from whatever they were going to do to you. So I dosed his tea and then unlocked your door. It wasn’t a great plan, I know, but I didn’t have time to think.”

The tea.

Hazelthorn sits up fast. “What.” He can hardly force the word out as he stares at Laurie.

A hesitant guilt blossoms in Laurie’s eyes and he looks away.

“No,” Hazelthorn says. “No, I killed him? I poisoned the tea. I must have when—”

“I didn’t mean for it to be a lethal dose.” Laurie sits up and draws his knees to his chest, resting his chin against them. “I just wanted him to be sick. Vomit and headaches or whatever, like he always gave you. Like, I literally used the poison they put in your milk every night because it was just there in the kitchen, but I guess you have built up a massive tolerance or it just doesn’t affect you the same way. I only wanted him to be sick, I swear, so he wouldn’t hurt you. I didn’t mean for—” He breaks off and sits there, breathing too fast, his mouth gone white around the edges. “I never wanted him to die. That’s such a Lennox-Hall thing to do, kill whoever is pissing you off. And I didn’t want to be like them.”

So Hazelthorn didn’t poison Byron.

It wasn’t him.

He didn’t slip out of his skin that day, didn’t lose himself. He isn’t always monster of atrocities and vengeance, a creature uncontrolled.

The dark, mountainous dread that has been crushing his chest all this time suddenly unravels and he can feel the loss of it, the weightlessness, feel how easy it is to breathe as his rib bones stop bending under gangrenous guilt. Around him, small flowers bloom in a dozen shades of gold.

“That’s why I didn’t want to help you find the murderer.” Misery fills Laurie’s voice. “Give you another reason to hate me. I mean, you should hate me, but I just … I thought if anyone could like someone like me, maybe it would be you.”

“I don’t hate you.” Carefully, Hazelthorn brushes his fingers down Laurie’s side to tentatively check the wound. The garden’s stitched vines have held. It has been gentle as it heals him with leaves of witch hazel and petals of comfrey, and his face looks less pallid, the pain ebbed.

Hazelthorn carefully picks up Laurie’s damaged wrist and turns it to face the moonlight, running a thumb over the sunken flesh that should feel tight and gnarled after the traumatic, botched surgery. But his wrist has loosened. He can stretch it now and there is an obvious absence of pain behind his eyes. Tiny holes in his flesh show where the vines have slid in and they are likely, even now, growing new wrist tendons for him that will be supple as green wood. The absence of pain must be shocking, wonderful, though Hazelthorn has no idea what the cost will be. What it means for Laurie to be twisted up in the garden like this.

Then it’s Laurie’s turn to pick up Hazelthorn’s newly grown hand of bark and leaves, to turn it this way and that as he inspects the too-long, twiggy fingers and the wooden whorls in the knuckles.

He kisses it, softly.

“When you leave”—Hazelthorn is careful as he places the words down, making sure none of them tremble—“I want you to lock the garden door on your way out.” He pulls the key from his pocket and places it in Laurie’s hand, curving his fingers over it. It hurts, in a way, to feel that warmth of his skin and know this is the last time.

“No—” Laurie starts, but Hazelthorn glares at him with such fierce vehemence that he goes quiet.

Hazelthorn’s eyes are glassy as he says, “I need the door to stay locked. You d-don’t understand how…” His voice drops. “How hungry I am.”

Not much different lies between this walled garden and his bedroom, except this is where he truly belonged, caged down here amongst the moss and flowers.

They are quiet for a moment, the earth pressed warm and solid against their bones, before Laurie finally pushes to his feet. Exhaustion mars his walk as he limps for the red door. He doesn’t look back.

It’s better this way. No lingering, no overthinking. They both understand what needs to be done when a monster has all its teeth out. This is the kindest option. Hazelthorn is a hungry, cavernous gouge that nothing can fill, and he can’t be trusted, can’t even trust himself. He will stuff his mouth with dirt and leaves as soon as Laurie’s gone to quench some of the pain tearing his stomach in half and then he will curl up in the soft soil, the earth pressed to his achingly sharp shoulder blades, and he will rest. He already knows what it is to be buried alive, but maybe he was never scared of it. Maybe he missed it.

He just wishes Laurie had kissed him, one last time.

Laurie stands at the red door and fits the key into the lock, scowling with concentration against the shadows. Then he pauses, his hand rested against the flaking, brown bloodstains, before he glances over his shoulder.

“I don’t think my blood was actually enough of a sacrifice,” he says. “Not to make a whole person. I think that’s why … the garden has been so ravenous. Like it needs to eat and eat to make up for losing you, and it was never enough because it just wanted to be whole again. That’s why it’s been raging the last seven years and hardly giving my family any gems.”

“It wanted me back.” Hazelthorn feels the garden lean into him, tender and gentle and peaceful, finally whole again.

The corner of Laurie’s mouth tilts up in the saddest smile. “Everything is kinda my fault.”

“Yeah, it is,” Hazelthorn says. “Useless boy.”

The ocean shine of Laurie’s tear-filled eyes is so beautiful it hurts.

Then he takes a deep breath and slams the door.

The key turns in the lock with that familiar thunk.

Silence pours over the garden, broken only by the gentle shift of the wind through the laurel hedgerows, poisonous as their namesake should have been. But somehow Laurie grew up fierce with kindness.

Hazelthorn sits cross-legged on the grass, staring at the closed door with a dull hollowness carving a place for itself between lungs and rib cage. He is trembling, but he isn’t sure whether it’s rage or relief.

Laurie flips the key up and down and then tosses it as hard as he can into the garden, where the ivy swallows it.

Hazelthorn glares at him. “You’re meant to be on the other side of the goddamn door, Laurence.”

“Don’t ‘Laurence’ me.” Laurie strides back over and then, with a sudden burst of speed, runs at Hazelthorn and tackles him hard to the grass.

They go down in a tangle of limbs, their hearts pounding against each other in bloody ecstasy, their kisses missing mouths and hitting cheekbones, jaws, necks.

Soft, warm joy spreads through Hazelthorn and he cups both hands around Laurie’s face and pushes him down hard into the ground. This is what it is to kiss a wretched boy of a god down amidst the soft green rot of a locked garden.

“I’m staying until you feel in control of yourself,” Laurie says simply. “I don’t want anything out there in the world anyway. We can still live in the house—I know it’s wrecked, but I don’t mind sharing my room with a tree.”

“Am I the tree?” Hazelthorn’s voice is a little flat.

Laurie grins, suddenly impish. “Maybe. I know we can’t access any of my grandfather’s fortune anymore, but we don’t want it. We can grow stuff to eat—you could probably grow us anything, right? I have it worked out, you’ll see.”

Hazelthorn ghosts his kisses over Laurie’s collarbone while he lets out a long, soft sigh. It won’t be hard to find the key again, with the garden’s help, but he can’t think of that now. A slow, bloody pulse has begun behind his eyes.

Laurie murmurs something that sounds like “I told you, right from the start, I wanted Hazelthorn.”

But it is hard to hear him through the drunken thrill devouring Hazelthorn until he can’t think, can’t focus on anything but the way his mouth meets Laurie’s in a litany of worshipful kisses.

“You should leave me here. I’m not … not safe.” But his fingers are twisted into Laurie’s hair, his body pressing him to the ground, and he doesn’t think he could let him go even if he wanted to.

Laurie’s throat tilts toward the sky, his murmurs soft with anguished desire as Hazelthorn kisses him, ravenous and adoring.

A distant part of him whispers, Stop, as the tip of his tongue traces the curve of Laurie’s jaw, but he is all heat and reverence and want want want as hunger pulls him in half. His mind has emptied and is grown through only with lovely, bloody flowers, and this feels so much like love, this need to devour.

He thinks it is true, what Laurie said. Once the garden has a taste, it wants the rest.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Hazelthorn is an unmitigated, out-of-control spiral, and when the fall ends and you hit the ground, it’s meant to hurt. I’m leaving you choking on a mouthful of rotten grave flowers, but I wanted this book to have thorns for teeth. I chased this story through a litany of 1:00 a.m. writing sessions because I could not let go of this idea of riotous flowers and crumbling garden walls, and that claustrophobic, suffocating gothic imagery of being trapped behind glass with your jaw unhinged in a silent scream. Many of us know how it feels to lack choice in life, to feel palpitating rage at unfairness, to not fit in and ask what is wrong with me. I grew up autistic without the word to understand myself, and some of that bled into this book. This is a story of monsters, but the only monster Evander finds in the mirror is self-hatred, and maybe one day he’ll accept the truth of that.

Maybe you, too, will someday be kinder to yourself.

My deepest gratitude goes to my editor, Emily Settle; this book is a hundred times better because of you, and I’m so grateful we get to work on more monstrous stories together. To my agent, Claire Friedman: working with you is such a joy. All my thanks to Jana Heidersdorf for your amazing art, and to Meg Sayre, Gaby Salpeter, Tatiana Merced-Zarou, Jacob Sammon, and the entire team at Feiwel & Friends.

And always, my thanks to Maraia Bonsignore, Melissa Robles, Kelsea Yu, Samantha Newnham, and Laura Samotin for reading my wild early drafts and encouraging me through it all. I promise I will calm down and sleep someday. (Maybe.)

And to my parents, thank you for everything.

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HAZELTHORN
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ALSO BY CG DREWS

DON’T LET THE FOREST IN

About the Author

CG Drews is the award-winning author of The Boy Who Steals Houses and the New York Times bestseller Don’t Let the Forest In, which is also a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, Indie Next Pick, and Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Pick. Their work has been translated into eight languages, received a nomination for the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal, and won the 2020 CBCA Honour Award. CG lives in Australia, never sleeps, and is forever buried under a pile of unread books.

Visit her online at CGDREWS.COM, or sign up for email updates here.

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Contents

1. Title Page
2. Copyright Notice
3. Dedication
4. Epigraph
5. Author’s Note
6. Chapter One
7. Chapter Two
8. Chapter Three
9. Chapter Four
10. Chapter Five
11. Chapter Six
12. Chapter Seven
13. Chapter Eight
14. Past
15. Chapter Nine
16. Chapter Ten
17. Chapter Eleven
18. Chapter Twelve
19. Chapter Thirteen
20. Chapter Fourteen
21. Chapter Fifteen
22. Chapter Sixteen
23. Chapter Seventeen
24. Chapter Eighteen
25. Chapter Nineteen
26. Chapter Twenty
27. Chapter Twenty-One
28. Chapter Twenty-Two
29. Chapter Twenty-Three
30. Chapter Twenty-Four
31. Chapter Twenty-Five
32. Chapter Twenty-Six
33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
35. Chapter Twenty-Nine
36. Chapter Thirty
37. Chapter Thirty-One
38. Chapter Thirty-Two
39. Acknowledgments
40. Also by CG Drews
41. About the Author
42. Copyright

Copyright © 2025 by CG Drews. Illustrations copyright © 2025 by Jana Heidersdorf.

A Feiwel and Friends Book

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First hardcover edition 2025
eBook edition October 2025
eISBN 9781250376282

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