Page 123 of The Stars are Dying

He simply chewed.

I blinked from his hand to his face, but nothing happened. The apple remained black, though inside was an ordinary, glistening pale yellow-white.

“I didn’t know you held such regard for me,” Drystan said casually, tossing and catching the apple. “I’m touched.” He stepped closer.

Too close.

“Try it.”

I shook my head, but it didn’t seem like he would accept that. “What are you—?”

An arm slipped around me, bringing our bodies flush, and my blood roared against it. I tried to strain, but his grip was firm. His other hand held up the dark apple, and I balked at the proximity of the false allurement. I didn’t know how he ate it with no affliction, but everything in me was screaming it would not have the same mercy on me.

“Just one taste,” he said with a low, seductive edge.

My lips parted, almost willing to oblige if it would get him to release me. I almost closed my eyes as the apple came close enough to bite, until it slipped from his hand, and instead his mouth came down on mine.

Wide-eyed, I braced flattened palms against his chest. Drystan held me for a few more long, torturous seconds before yielding to my push.

My hand rose to my mouth in utter shock at what he’d done. Then helaughed.

Anger boiled in me, and I spun to him with a deadly glare, uncaring if it was Nightsdeath instead of Drystan I saw after he’d made such a deplorable mockery of me.

It was neither.

The last of the prince’s form caught as black smoke in the wind, and I stumbled at the sight of it.

A trick.

Drystan hadn’t been here at all.

On the ground lay the apple. Missing one bite.

I shook my head to pass a wave of dizziness. A bitter, ashy taste filled my mouth, and I pulled off my glove to raise a hand to my lips. “Shit,” I breathed, smudging the black soot-like substance between my fingers. It was poisonous. My mind had been played with to have eaten it.

The trial’s timer was now set with the need to find the antidote.

I focused on my steps, my breathing. Why did it have to act so damn fast? I thought the stark roses were crying. Soft wails carried through me, and I mourned with them, not knowing what for, but I became so weighted with sadness. Their vines grew, reaching to share their condolences, and I leaned toward them.

“They are beautiful,” the ghost of Drystan observed with me. “The black rose blooms when death lingers near.”

The first scratch pierced my skin. I gasped, snapping out of the illusion to stumble back, and their sorrow turned to merriment, so overwhelming and eerie it cut through me.

I broke into a run away from them.

At least I tried to. Fatigue turned my shoes to lead instead, until lifting one foot in front of the other became a heavy burden. I almost gave in to the wobble of my knees until I came across a bench.

I needed to rest. Just for a moment.

My breath frosted the air desperately as I slumped down. I rubbed my eyes, trying to rally some focus. I couldn’t fall asleep. I had to find the antidote.

“Something made from the same place,” I thought out loud through a labored breath. I tried to calculate. “Another plant.”

Movement caught at the edge of my vision, and I leaned back, jerking away from the long black stalk that grew from the bush beside me, thinking the roses had followed me.

Until it stopped reaching. A black flower bloomed magnificently, more like a lily of death. I blinked as though the illusion would vanish or turn into another cruel trick. It stayed still except for a flicker dangling from the top of the stem.

I reached for the dark paper tentatively, reading one word:

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