Page 136 of Devoured

“Don’t say it.” She glares at me. “You are more than just a girl. You are a Truthseer. You are a werewolf with the ability to rewrite history.” A pointed glance at the field I broke only hours ago. “You are not just a girl. You’re… special.” Her lips pucker at the last, and she shudders.

A phantom grin ghosts over my own lips. “You look like you’re going to puke.”

“I might.” She sighs before elaborating, as if she’d rather not speak at all. “It’s cliché to be special, okay? But… there’s a reason for this, isn’t there? For the torture and the loss. If it’s not because we’re special, then it’s for no reason at all. And if it’s for no reason at all, I’ll burn the castle to the fucking ground with everyone still inside.” Her words sharpen into a blade, cutting through the gentle sound of rain and wind.

“Wow.”

“Tell me you disagree, Hart.” She raises a brow, waiting for my argument, but I have none. “You and I—we’re the same. And I hate saying that, so I’ll never, ever repeat it. But… we understand each other. I think maybe we always have.”

Evie the princess trapped in a tower so far from home. Evie the princess who lost everything and everyone at once. It feels pitiful to compare myself to her, to the enormity of her pain, but she smiles sadly as if she already knows the truth. As if there’s no more running from it. “We’re the same.”

“We can do this,” she growls. “I wouldn’t be here if I thought otherwise. I wouldn’t have talked to you at all if I didn’t believe in you. I don’t waste my time, Vanessa. On anyone.”

The admission steals what’s left of my breath. “You believe in me?”

“More than I believe in those assholes.” She slashes a hand toward the castle before meeting my gaze again. Fires blaze in those maroon eyes. “Yes, I do.”

My chest aches. My bones ache. I don’t know how I would have survived the past three months without Evie. “The Mating Rite is less than two weeks away,” I say carefully.

“Yes, and darling Kaax sent me his mother’s mating gown in preparation. It’s from the eighties. The sleeves are the size of a freaking cake.” Her expression—the severity of it—makes me cough out a weak laugh. “You won’t be chuckling when I’m stabbing you to death with one of our hand-carved cake toppers.”

“One of?”

“He likes to whittle.” She glowers, ripping at a patch of mud before flinging it away from us. She wipes her palms on her jeans before toying with her fingers again. “Stars help me.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” I say abruptly, “and I don’t think there’s any way around it anymore, Evie. I think the Mating Rite might be our only chance to stop Cora. It’s the one thing that’s kept her distracted this whole time. She thinks the rite is just her victory lap. Once it happens, she’s won.”

“I’ve had the same thought,” she confesses. “Cora will expect us to attack before we mate ourselves to those assholes. It makes sense to attack before—which means waiting until the rite will give us an element of surprise. That’s the only weapon we have left against Cora. The only way to defeat her is to catch her off guard when she’s the least prepared.” A pause. “But I’m not sure the others will like it.”

The others. Calix. And Portia.

“The stakes will be higher at the rite,” she explains, “especially without any allies here to fight with us. The Asian Court soldiers won’t be able to step foot on the North American coast without Cora sniffing them out. The same goes for the other continents. They’ll support us if we win, but they’re too afraid to fight now. After… after you…” She shakes her head, forcing the words out. “After you changed the events of that fateful supper, no one seems confident enough to do anything at all. Our last hope is convincing those already here to abandon Cora, which feels next to impossible, and if we screw up… then you and I are…” She grips her middle finger tight. “You and I are done forever.”

My stomach tightens, a fist clenching around my organs, and I struggle to inhale. God. When did living become so hard? “Sin will be vulnerable at the rite,” I say. “He’ll be surprised too.”

Evie nods before shrugging. “I still don’t love our odds. Cora is always five steps ahead of us.”

“So we’re probably screwed,” I say—a statement and a question.

“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe we never really had a chance of doing more than annoying the shit out of her.”

“You are the Princess of Asia—”

“I’m not, Vanessa. Not anymore.”

My heart breaks for her. I don’t see a way out of this. Darkness clings to my fingertips and lashes and bones. It presses heavy on my chest, weighing me down until I can’t move.

“This doesn’t help anything,” I say through numb lips, “but—I don’t think Evander is who he says he is.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something about him. It’s bothering me. Like I’ve met him before or I know him or… something. He evades my Truthseer abilities like Sin used to. He’s manipulative. I tried to kill him the other day, but I couldn’t. For some reason, I physically couldn’t.”

She blinks at me, startled enough that her eyes widen and her mouth pops open. “You tried to kill him?” Her head shakes, and she raises a hand between us. “No. You know what? I don’t want to know. Why couldn’t you do it?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think he knows whose side he’s on.”

Her throat bobs with a nervous swallow. “Wonderful.” She exhales hard, closing her eyes briefly before opening them again. “So that’s it. We plan to take Cora down during the rite.”