Page 17 of The Library at Hellebore

Sullivan, sighing, looked back to us and daubed at his mouth with his fingertips, then looked down at the jammy mess. “Well, that happens sometimes, I’m afraid.”

He ran his tongue over pink-tinged teeth. Cicadas gathered in his dark hair like a crown, like they were comforting him in his abandonment. They buzzed softly. “They try so hard,but my throat tears each time. They’ll fix it eventually, however.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Which part of the process?”

“All of it.”

“Always,” said Sullivan in a hiss, beautiful and terrible and holy, and I forgot to breathe until Rowan spoke.

“Did you have to kill himthatway?” he said.

“Worse ways to die in Hellebore.” Sullivan’s smile was pitying. You could describe it as kind if you wanted to, but only if you were willing to ignore how practiced it was. His attention swiveled and his eyes weren’t black as the cicadas burrowed back into him, but gold. “Did they tell you that when you enrolled? That you’ve come to a place of monsters?”

“Right where I belong then.”

“Do you remember being so confident, Miss du Lac? So full of joie de vivre?” His attention flicked to Portia and then back to me. A patina of honest amusement coated his smile. “Keep your innocence as long as you can.”

“I’m afraid that was lost a long time ago,” I said. He was agonizingly condescending.

He smiled thinly. “Then make sure you’re ruthless enough to survive the next few months. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories. The few rumors that have escaped Hellebore’s publicists. It’s supposed to be hellish in here.”

“Oh, leave her alone,Sully,” said Portia, and she wore no expression at all despite his jovial tone, her face no more than a death mask. She did not blink. She barely breathed. “She’s not yours.”

“Is she yours then?”

My heart lost a few beats in Portia’s answering silence.

Chuckling, Sullivan said after a moment, “You and yoursisters think you’re so different but we come from the same kind of gods. Mine are just more honest.”

“More cruel too,” said Portia with that same insect stillness.

“Perhaps.” Sullivan’s attention drifted to me again. “Sometimes, we do terrible things to survive, don’t we?”

I tensed. It was hard to tell who was the worst person to have my back to. Sullivan, in his awful glory. Portia, in her quiet. Rowan, in whatever the fuck you would call it, smiling broadly with his fingers steepled, a kid let loose in his favorite toy store.

“Fuck or fight. Who wants to start a betting pool?” Rowan chirped, breaking the tension like glass.

“Do youevershut up?” Portia hissed, reverting to animated humanity.

“No,” came the unrepentant answer.

Sullivan looked over to Rowan then, a certain wonder in his gaze. Surprise too, as if the two hadn’t already exchanged words, as if Rowan were a dead rat he had discovered in a shoe. His smile collapsed into an expression of pure incredulity.

“And who,” he said, “are you?”

“Rowan,” He bounced from one foot to another, gleefully clapping.“But Ialsohave questions. First off, do you or do you not think that Miss du Lac is very much goth mommy material and—”

“We should leave.” Portia’s voice in my ear, low and urgent, and it wasn’t five minutes ago when I might have let her tow me away to safety, but Sullivan’s words were branded into the marrow of my skull:We come from the same kind of gods.

“We could,” I murmured back. “But I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“Do you want to, though?” said Portia.

“I’m sure you have a million questions,” Sullivan said. “Unfortunately, I don’t want to answer them.”

“Fair.”

---