Page 64 of House of Hearts
The headmistress harrumphs. She goes rheumy-eyed in memory in memory. “You’ll learn soon enough that this curse, in its own sick and twisted way, is a blessing. It doesn’t look like one now. Trust me, I know that. Isaac begged me to stop. He pleaded, but I…I couldn’t stop myself, and damn it all if that memory doesn’t linger with me today. It took years to see through the fog and realize I was better off. With this girl…it’s a tragedy, I understand that, but perhaps a necessary evil. We need to ensure this sacrifice goes as planned and we dispose of all evidence afterward.”
“You can’t be serious,” Sadie argues, lowering down to help her brother on the floor. “What you’re talking about isn’t a curse, it’s premeditated murder.”
“This is survival.” And I think Headmistress Lockwell really means that. Conviction strikes in the harsh clatter of her drink against the counter. “Until the curse is lifted, this is our hand in life, so you’ll do well to play your cards right.”
Sadie blanches at her brother’s side on the floor.
“Calvin would never forgive you.” She speaks as if he isn’t there, and in many ways, he isn’t. “You know that, right?”
“I don’t need his forgiveness,” she answers simply. “I don’t need yours, either. I need your cooperation and your understanding that I know better than you at this moment. Hate me forever if you must, but know I’m the only one who has lived this before. It’s called a curse for a reason. The ramifications are ugly, but there’s no fighting the tide, so it’s better to swim alongside it.”
Sadie doesn’t get the opportunity to argue. In one awful moment, her eyes drop beneath the desktop and land on mine. Time stands still as recognition flares across her face.
“You’re right, Mom,” she admits with a solemn dip of her head. “I don’t know what this is like, and I guess I’m still reeling from Percy and now this. It’s a lot to process, but I actually know where Violet might be hiding.”
Shit. I come up with ten new curse words on the spot as I wait for her finger to lower and fall upon me. Headmistress Lockwell will haul me out kicking and screaming, and Calvin will carve into my chest with his bare hands. I’ll die here on her ridiculously overpriced antique rug, and then she’ll scrub me out of the fibers.
“I think she’s in the House of Hearts. She told Calvin she wanted time to look for a way to break the curse, so we’ll probably find her in the archives.”
Headmistress Lockwell nods sagely. “Good girl. I can always count on you to do what’s right. Grab your brother and let’s do our best not to make a scene on the way over.”
Sadie slings Calvin’s arm over her shoulder and half drags him through the doorway.
I wait for the door to click and their footsteps to soften in the distance before I breathe again, and I immediately scramble for the window latch of the office. I can’t be in here a second longer, not with the walls pressing in like a bruising exhale, squeezing me tighter and tighter until I’m perfectly coffin-shaped.
Lifting my body over the ledge, I topple over into a thorny patch of rose briars. They leave their mark in a dozen bloodied cuts, and with my still-bandaged hand, I know the picture isn’t a pleasant one. All I’m missing is an open knife wound to the heart now.
There are a million places I could go, but none of them would matter in the end. I can’t flee campus, and Birdie would innocently offer me up to the headmistress all over again. Sadie probably can’t save me twice. So instead of hiding anywhere, I head to that same elm tree Oliver and Amber sat under the first day, its canopy mostly skeletal, the colored leaves in large piles on the ground.
I didn’t know it was possible to feel like a pumpkin rotting on a porch, yet here I am. All scooped out. There’s no escaping now. Soon I’ll be one more dead body to join the rest.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I growl under my breath, letting my head fall against the hard tree trunk.
My hair snarls in the splintered wood, but I don’t bother to untangle it. I finally figured out what killed my friend, and I can’t do a goddamn thing about it because I naively thought I could outsmart a love curse. That I could use my brain against a matter of the heart. If I had understood the strange threads connecting me and Calvin earlier, maybe I would’ve had time to solve this, but here I am, resigned to die.
The tears come, one by one, and I can’t stop them. They multiply, and I burrow in on myself, heaving alone. Alone, alone, alone. I haven’t cried like this in ages. I’ve always lived in a black-and-white world, worshiped at the altar of knowledge and kept my heart in a box under lock and key.
It all seems so useless now. If Anastasia wants my heart so badly, she can have it. It’s not like it’s done me any good.
I bang my head against the trunk of the tree and debate what I’m even feeling anymore. Anger. I’m angry at the world. Angry at the shitty luck that got me here; angry at Emoree, who couldn’t have just listened to me and stayed home; angry at myself for opening up to Calvin; and angry at Calvin for seeing something beyond my prickly, uninviting exterior.
And most of all, angry at Anastasia, because some foolish part of me wishes this whole thing could blow over and I could show up at Calvin’s door and have an honest-to-God relationship with him.
That would never work, I tell myself resolutely, standing upright to stare at the maze. Even if there was no curse, there’s a world of difference between the two of us. Calvin’s an entire planet, and I’m only a moon trapped in his orbit.
I swallow and it hurts. I have no idea what to expect as the seconds tick onward, the threat of Anastasia’s wrath growing more real bythe minute. What’s waiting for me inside the maze? A monster stitched from scraps of stories, a jagged patchwork quilt of a girl with black eyes and a cavernous heart.
Undead and hungry for what she no longer has. The Queen of Hart’s.
I don’t have an heirloom key, but that can no longer stop me. It’s my life on the line. I have nothing else to lose, do I?
Divot by divot, I climb until I drop right into the maze.
Dear Diary,
I dreamt last night of Oleander.
That part wasn’t new. I have dreamt about him for the last several months, but never like this. Last night he wasn’t a man, he was a vine, twisting around me in tight, bruising spirals.
