“Oh, you’re going to explain everything all right.”
“What does that mean?” She frowned.
“It means, I have a shit ton of questions, and you’re answering every single one.” Pushing her away from me, I ducked and grabbed the leash from around her ankle.
The room tipped upside down.
Buzzing returned in my ears.
My mouth went sour with the urge to be sick, and the headache that seemed to be a permanent friend swelled with pressure until I swore my brain would ooze out of my ears.
“Come,” I growled, thick and almost indistinguishable as English. “Move.” Tripping sideways, I kept my fist locked around the leash as I pulled her from the library. Each step required far more coordination than I currently had. Fables was no longer built on solid rock but on an ocean that bucked and rolled beneath my feet.
“Where...where are you taking me?” A feminine voice behind me, coming from a dark tunnel and unable to find my ears properly. I crashed against the banister, clutching at the spindles as I looked upstairs to the rooms where so much of my soul had been stolen.
Big mistake.
“Come, Kas, it’s time to play.” Mrs. Cox crooked her finger in my direction, swinging a crop in her other hand. She cocked her hip, smiling from the landing. “You’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you? Time for some discipline.”
Storymaker’s palm shoved between my shoulder blades, making me stumble up the stairs. “You’re the one who begged to take Jareth’s place. So go...be a good boy and fuck that woman raw.”
I blacked out.
I came to.
“You need to sit before you fall.” That voice again. A voice down a well, echoey and far away.
No.
I needed...
There was something important...
The garden!
Shoving off the banister, I tripped and stumbled the entire distance from the house to the veggie patch outside. I ignored the mess in the kitchen. Of pots used but not washed. Of knives waiting on benchtops and not in their usual home. Of crumbs—goddamn crumbs, on my pristine floor.
I didn’t let the swelling in my head overflow with anger. In keeping with her character, she’d messed up my church of cleanliness. Everything of mine she touched, she destroyed.
My heart lurched, and I fell out of the doorway, almost collapsing to my knees in the chef’s garden.
It was a massacre. A fucking massacre.
Earth lay scattered along my carefully tended pathways. Holes in the corn crop, the lettuce patch, the bean lattice—holes everywhere where mature vegetables used to be, waiting for harvest, their destiny to be jarred, dried, or frozen in preparation for months when nothing grew.
Christ!
I bashed against the wall as my balance threw me sideways.
“Please, you really need to sit down.” She wrung her fingers, coming into my eyeline. “Your head is killing you. You can barely stand. You’re gray and sweaty. You should be back in bed, resting, not...” Wafting her hand around the veggie patches, she scoffed—actually had the goddamn nerve to scoff. “Not dragging me outside for a cultivation lesson.”
I smiled, thinly, nastily. “Oh, this isn’t a cultivation lesson.”
“Then what is it?” She sniffed, her eyes going harsh.
“I had to see for myself what damage you’ve caused.”
“That damage kept you alive.”
“Did you have to pick so much?”
“Forgive me if I wanted to feed you as much as possible. Healing requires energy!”
“You’re a menace. And a goddamn fool.”
Her chest rose sharply. “If I’m a fool, then you’re an idiot.”
“An idiot who knows the struggles of blizzards and snow and knows you can’t just pluck food from the damn sky.”
She’d never suffered hunger. Never panicked over rations. Never learned the hard way on how to survive.
But I have.
I knew what starvation made a human become.
I know—
“So just plant more.” She huffed, crossing her arms.
“Oh, I’m sorry. How stupid of me.” I shook away the wash of sickness and vertigo. “Maybe tell the sun to stick around for another season then because whatever seeds you plant now won’t have time to hit maturity before the frosts arrive.”
“Well...I’m sure something can be done.”
I winced as I surveyed the mess she’d made. She’d used at least a month more than she should’ve. My head screamed in agony at all the work, the labor, and the tending that went into this. Not to mention the rationing on my dwindling seed packets. In my current condition, no fucking way could I replant.
“You’ll help me,” I snarled. “You’ll repay me for every crop you stole.”
“I didn’t steal them. I was providing for you!”
“Enough!” Reaching for the ivy-covered wall, sickly sweat ran down my spine. My other hand held the leash, jerking her to me for good measure.
“Oomph.” She tripped, landing on her ass as the pressure around her ankle swiped her clean off her feet.
“Stay down there.” I breathed hard, closing my eyes as the world continued to spin. “You’re going to help me. You don’t have a choice. Let me just...figure this shit out. We need to start today. Right now. Before it’s too late.”
“I’m not going to argue with you because that will never happen. We both know you’re in no condition to garden.”
“Shut it.”
“I know this isn’t you, by the way,” she muttered from the dirt. “I didn’t trick information out of you while you were sleeping, but you were more talkative than usual. You were nice to me—when you weren’t trying to kill me, of course. You were...kind.”
Nausea continued to squeeze my throat. I opened my eyes and looked down. She sat almost elegantly, with her hands looped around her knees and bare feet planted on the earth. She still wore the maroon leggings I’d dressed her in back at her car along with a black shirt I’m guessing she’d stolen from a wardrobe.
Her eyes flashed green and brown, earthy and honest, open and true. “You kissed me.” Her hand danced to her lips, touching them gently. “It was one of the best kisses I’ve ever had.”
I froze, all thoughts of gardening vanished as insane jealousy poured through me. She spoke of that kisser as someone she missed, someone she preferred. It didn’t matter that kisser was me. I had no memory of it. No recollection of whatever desire she’d manipulated in her favor.
Anger made me spiteful. “So, for all your persuasions that I can trust you, it turns out you’re just like them, after all.”
“What?” She blanched. “How could you—”
“You used me against my will. Against my knowledge. Did you fuck me, too? Did you strip me, touch me, ride me, all while telling yourself that I was awake; therefore, I must want it?”
An explosive cough shot from her mouth. I’d never witnessed a face switch from willing conversation to black with loathing. “Wow, you truly are a bastard.”
I shrugged. “Only to those who have no respect for people’s boundaries.”
“I do respect your boundaries!”