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As I follow Lucy outside, my melancholy deepens. The man I was mere weeks ago would not give a rat’s asshole about the feelings of someone else. Especially those of a beautiful woman whose sole purpose is to manipulate and seduce. I should know better after all that I have endured. So why do I have this heavy weight on my chest and this sickening sensation in my stomach? Why do her tears upset me so?

“And these roses were carried in by three carriages, then replanted with soil from Ever Graves.” Lucy has been rambling about flowers for a healthy thirty minutes or so now. I have mostly tuned her out except to nod and respond with an ooh or an ahh every so often.

The gardens of Graves Estate are sprawling, luscious and fruitful. There are thousands of varietals of buds, both toxic and non-lethal. If only this arrogant little woman knew that I have ingested more of them than she has. That I know more about their compounds and their strains than any of these pathetic landowners. For the ones who tend to their fortunes know better than the ones who grip it with an iron fist.

“Am I boring you, Lord Erebus?” She smiles demurely at me.

I feign a cough. “Not at all. Forgive me. I believe the fumes are starting to get to me,” I lie.

Her grin deepens. “Is that so? How peculiar…”

Something is off. If I have to murder this woman and bury her in the garden, I will in a heartbeat. I will protect my secrets at all costs.

“You look just like her,” she murmurs.

Fuck. My chest tightens. “Who?”

“Your mother. You have her eyes and her nose.” Lucy gazes at me as if she has done so before.

As tempting as it is, I cannot risk everything to satiate my curiosity. “You’re mistaken. I have no mother.”

Lucy plucks a vine of hemlock from the ground and rolls it between her fingers. “Oh, but you do. Her name is Willa Harker. And she was very sad to let you go.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about. I am Bellamy Erebus the Sixth from the North.” My ruffled shirt suddenly feels like a noose around my neck. I unbutton the top with trembling fingers as sweat pools at the base of my throat.

“No. You are a son of Evigheden. Well, Ever Graves is what we call it now… Your necklace. It’s from the Wishing Tree. The spot where you were conceived. My apologies, but you never should’ve been.”

I feel the cold touch of the darkness on my back and in my loins and pulsing through my fingertips. That familiar self-loathing permeates. “Well, that we can agree on.”

Her eyes well with genuine sadness. “Forgive me. I don’t wish to be cruel. But if you understood… if you knew the truth about your father…” She sighs as she twists the hemlock vine around and around. “It was my fault. I lured your mother to him. But I had my reasons.”

A possessiveness unfurls within me for a mother I’ve never known. She abandoned me, and yet, the thought of her being tricked into having me pisses me right off. “If you would like me to snap your neck, by all means keep talking.”

“Ah, there he is. That is no idle threat. You are indeed his son. You inherited your darkness from him and your beauty from her.”

The fact that Lucy has known my parents and I haven’t, boils my blood. I can’t figure out why she is being so forthcoming, or why she hasn’t screamed my true identity to the others. I’m sure she will soon if I don’t pay some sort of price. Which is why I need to know everything. “What is the Wishing Tree?”

She looks off into the distance. “A place I wish I’d never seen… It’s a veil. A door to the other side. That’s how he comes through. He forced himself upon your mother while she was betrothed to another. And when you were born, she could no longer pass you off as her husband’s anymore. Not with that forked tongue of yours.”

All of my blood rushes to my feet. Fuck. She knows about my tongue. My fingers twitch at my sides. I fight the urge to strangle her. This could ruin everything. “Who is my father?” I growl.

“Isn’t it obvious? You’re the son of the devil. The reason he created the nightmare men who haunt women’s dreams. He cursed us all. Because your mother refused to love him. And so you were born with all of the devil’s darkness and rage and lust for violence. That was his revenge.”

“I don’t believe you. If you wish to oust me, at least come up with a story that sounds less like a fairy tale.” In my bones, I know she tells the truth. But I fear that if I accept it, I will fully transform into the monster I’ve always suspected myself to be.

“It took about a year, but once her husband Enzo realized what you were, he insisted she give you up. Willa was already pregnant with Ophelia, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing Enzo. So they dropped you off at Wickford Hollow Orphanage without a name so you could never be traced back to them. But your mother tucked a piece of the Wishing Tree around your little wrist to make sure you would find your way back someday.”

“Did I ever have a name?” My cheeks heat, and my lungs burn with panic. I have imagined many scenarios over time, invented stories in my head as to why my parents would abandon me. But in my wildest imagination, I could never come up with a tale as twisted as this.

“Yes. She named you Bram, after her great-grandfather. I’m told he was a sweet, pious man. Perhaps she thought giving you his namesake would cancel out the devil’s dark traits.”

I hiss. “Well, it didn’t work. I’m quite a foul bastard.”

She smirks at that for some reason. “Irony is a bitter cunt, is she not?”

“I met a Vlad Harker at Icarus’s viewing. Any relation?”

“Yes, that is your uncle. Willa’s brother.”