Page 10 of Devoured

I clench my teeth together, so hard they might crack, and swallow the keening wail that builds in my chest.

I believe her.

Whatever Cora has been through, she’s lost enough of herself that she will do anything to get what she wants. Unless I find a way to stop her myself.

She slides the knife from my bone, and I manage to stay silent. I only flinch for a second. One brief moment when I glance at her, and I see the fathomless malevolence in her dark gaze. She licks my blood from the blade, cutting her own tongue in the process, but it doesn’t faze her. Nothing fazes her. The realization creeps like ice through my consciousness, and suddenly, any hope I have of defeating her feels brittle, thin. Already cracked, just like the bones in my hand.

“Go.” She tosses the knife on the table with another exaggerated sigh. “I think I’ve made my point.”

I blink at her, torn between leaping from my chair and running away or collapsing in on myself like a dying star. “You…” I suck in a breath, and my voice hardens. Thank god my voice hardens. “You’re a monster.”

“Yes.” Cora smiles. “I am.”

I don’t waste another moment before rising and exiting swiftly. The echo of her sharp cackle follows me out of the hall as my head swims. I’m going to vomit. I’m going to scream. I’m going to set this castle ablaze, every brick of it, until Cora is ash.

My bones shift under my skin, a transformation brewing deep inside my gut while the flesh of my knuckle stitches itself back together. As that ice solidifies into steel, unbreakable and unyielding.

My claws slide free from my fingers as I allow the transformation to take hold, but before my fur can rise, before I can truly shift into a werewolf, a firm hand on my wrist stops me. The heat of the touch sears straight through my rage.

“Vanessa,” a boy says darkly, deeply. I turn to find Calix behind me, a wall of muscle and light brown skin and Alpha-red eyes. “I need to talk to you. Now.”

4

VANESSA

I COUNT TO TEN IN MY HEAD, BUT IT TAKES FIVE MORE seconds than usual for my claws to vanish and my pulse to ease. Snapping my wrist from Calix’s grasp, I back up into the hard stone of the castle’s new northern wing.

Vivid white flames dance from candelabra sconces, casting long, eerie shadows on hideous crimson rugs. There isn’t a hint of the previous decor left. Only mirrors—as far down the corridor as I can see—made from every sort of metal and crystal possible. Behind Calix, a diamond mirror bordered in obsidian splits his reflection into twenty distorted versions. Beside me, smooth cobalt blue reflects only the red of his eyes. It almost makes them look purple.

“I don’t want to talk,” I say, still trying to slow my breathing. To erase the scents of terror and fury that must be pouring from me. “I’m busy.”

I continue down the slender corridor without glancing back.

“Doing what?” He storms after me, quicker than I could ever hope to be, maintaining my pace effortlessly. “Planning your eternal mating bond to—”

My gaze flicks to him, beside me now, and it takes everything not to dagger him in the chest with my nails. “If you want to talk, mocking me isn’t the way to go about it.” It’s as many words as I’ve said to him in a week. Since I found out he was the one who murdered Celeste. “Just leave me alone, Calix.”

His expression softens, a flash of hurt cutting through his gaze, and his steps slow. “Vanessa, listen to me—”

“I am busy.” I don’t know what else he wants from me. To say that I thought there was a chance we were actually becoming friends? To say that I trusted him? To say that my world has flipped upside down so many times I don’t know which way is up anymore?

Sinclair helped his mother murder everyone, but Calix—

Calix killed Celeste. Calix stole my whole world and then stole me. Even though Sin bit me, Calix is the one who threatened my father. He’s the one who shoved me in that car. He’s the one who brought me here.

For better or worse, it all started with Calix.

I glance at him now—at his devastatingly beautiful face shaded in dark shadows and darker regrets, pitch-black hair and full lips and bloodred eyes—and it hurts. Deep in my chest, in my bones, it aches to look at him. Those red eyes don’t belong to the Calix I knew months ago, the boy who protected me even when it went against the precious laws of his court.

No. Those red eyes belong to the boy who slaughtered my best friend.

I thought the massacre would help me forgive Calix. Or, at least, help me forget. But the wounds Sin inflicted didn’t stanch the ones made by Calix. They only made me bleed faster. And I’m hemorrhaging now. Looking at him. Hearing his rough voice so close to my ear. Feeling the heat of his skin blazing near my own.

I step around him. I don’t speak again, and neither does he. Though he still winces as if I’ve slapped him, his feet remain rooted to the floor. Good. I don’t want him to follow me. I don’t want to be around him at all. I have more important things to deal with. His gaze tracks me as I stumble down the corridor, where I stop walking and break out into a sprint.

The back doors to the old Combat field are just around the corner, and I can’t stay in this castle for another second. I don’t even want to stay in my body right now. But before I can reach the doors, I slam into something hard.

I fall on my ass.