Page 15 of Devoured

“I know.” She crouches before me, and part of me thinks she’ll snatch one. Steal it. Part of me doesn’t know if I can trust her—if I should trust anyone—but the only person whose life was ruined more than mine is Evie. She is my sole hope.

She offers me a hand and helps me to my feet. “I’ll keep making the draughts so long as I have the ingredients. But we should be prepared for Cora to cut me off. She knows I’m an Alchemist, and a damn good one at that. She won’t want me to have that sort of power.”

Her words are strange. Not inherently dishonest, but something in my chest flares at her words. I study her face, but she meets my gaze without flinching. Her pulse remains even.

A half-truth. But why?

Tucking the potions into my own pockets, I wipe my palms on my pants and cross my arms. “I’ll make sure you have them.”

Evie nods. “Good.” A moment passes. “There were nearly twenty werewolves watching our fight in that small corridor.”

“I counted seventeen by the end,” I confirm.

“Cora’s getting stronger because her pack is growing. We have to start cutting off heads of the hydra.”

“Isn’t the myth of the hydra that they keep growing more heads?”

“I don’t know,” Evie says, exasperated. “I learned faerie history, not human mythology. But the best way to weaken Cora is to start slicing at her arteries. We need to bleed her dry.”

“Turn her wolves against her?”

“At least make them realize they can’t trust her. Show them she isn’t perfect. Show them their god can bleed. It’s not about her wolves. It’s about weakening her.”

“Y-you want to go after Cora already?” My blood chills to ice in my veins. “We talked about this. We can’t. We’re surrounded, without any allies, and we aren’t prepared. If we try to slaughter her and we somehow miraculously succeed, someone else will just slaughter us.”

“I know. I know.” She crosses her arms and raises her brows, suddenly looking every bit devilish in the dim light of the antechamber. “But we won’t have a shot at succeeding if we don’t know what her weaknesses are. If we’re going to take her out eventually—and we will—then we need to know exactly who we’re up against.”

“So what do we know about Cora?” I chew the inside of my lip anxiously as Calix’s story echoes in my ears. “She had a human lover, and Sybil almost killed her for it.”

“Almost, but she didn’t. Sybil cast Cora out so she would become a Lone Wolf.” Evie stares at me, unflinching. Anger simmers hot in her gaze. “There is only one rule to being a Lone Wolf. Surely you remember enough of our lessons to know—”

“You go mad,” I say without a hint of irritation. “You go mad, and then you die.”

“Exactly.”

The ice melts to acid in my veins, and a violent shiver racks my spine. Cora never died. In fact, she had enough strength to grow her pack larger than the world has ever seen before. The newest Wolf Queen auctioned off bits of her soul to bite and transform every single wolf beneath her—which shouldn’t have been possible.

Because Cora Severi should’ve already been dead.

“Why didn’t she die, Evie?”

Evie’s gaze flares hotter still. A molten, smoldering red. “That is exactly what we’re going to find out.”

My stomach turns. “Why do I have a feeling you’re about to suggest something that might get us killed?”

“Because this is war, Hart. Death is a prerequisite.” She inhales deeply, and in her gaze, I notice the darkened silhouette of Nettie. Of Oona and Celeste too. Of our ghosts and the bloody trail left in their wake. “So do you want Cora Severi to destroy the world, or do you want to help me kill her?”

I’m not looking at her when I respond. I’m looking at our ghosts.

“We kill her.”

6

VANESSA

EVIE AND I PLOT OUR NEXT MOVE FOR HOURS, SCHEMING how we’re going to pull off a dangerous midnight heist without dying or implicating ourselves, but as I walk through the halls of the new Castle Severi, I push it all from my mind. Our plan won’t happen until tonight anyway, and werewolves lurk around every corridor. For all her talk about loathing the stars, Cora bathed each of her werewolves in the moon pool already. I don’t know what their powers might be. I don’t know if they can read my thoughts or smell my deception. So I raise my chin, keep my mind blank, and force my steps to remain even.

“Lavender,” sneers Jasper. He guards the entrance to the southern turret, where shimmering cobwebs drip like icicles from the ceiling above him and candlelight paints his ashen hair a moonlit silver. “Hiding any knives?”