Page 177 of Devoured

Evie shrugs. “I needed something to remember this place by.”

“Next time, try jewelry. Or weapons.”

“Ooh, weapons—” Evie starts, her maroon gaze sparking to life.

Instantly, I jerk my chin. “Nope. You cannot get through TSA with luggage stuffed to the brim with medieval daggers.”

“What’s TSA?” Evie asks, and suddenly, I feel much more confident about my decision.

“Just compel them,” Portia says.

I continue shaking my head. “You are both horrible flight risks.”

But I know in my bones this is right. I’m leaving this place. I’m going with Evie and starting anew elsewhere. Maybe she’ll let me join a lesser pack. Or maybe she’ll let me live on my own now that I know I can’t ever be a Lone Wolf.

Thanks to Celeste, to her love, the future is mine.

Evie hugs us then. Throws her arms around us and crushes us to her chest. Portia laughs into my hair, and Evie curls an elbow around mine. She locks us in this one perfect moment.

I imagine Celeste and Nettie joining us too. Our parents. I imagine Sinclair watching from the corner of his bedroom with a smile bright on his beautiful face.

We’re going to be okay. We’re all going to be okay.

“Whatever tomorrow brings, we’ll face it together,” Evie whispers. “You are not alone. Not now. Not ever again.”

“Together,” Portia echoes.

And I don’t know what to say to them, or how to say it. I don’t know how to tell them that I never thought I would make another friend in my life until the day Evie appeared at the foot of my bed and kidnapped me from my room. I never thought I’d laugh until Portia forced one out of me. They saved me.

So I just say, “I love you guys.”

Portia whispers, “I love you more.”

Evie says, “I love you most.” Then she pulls away and wipes her nose on her arm. “Come on, Hart. If we’re leaving in six hours, you really need to start packing. Let’s take Sin’s sheets. Oh, and maybe his quills too. And the curtains—”

Portia, Evie, and I spend the next six hours rifling through the rooms of Castle Severi, pilfering anything we want. Anything to remind us of how far we’ve come. And then—hours later, hours too soon—Evie and I leave in a black SUV that weaves us through the St. Augustine traffic, all the way to the highway, to the airport, to first class on a massive plane.

When we board it, she takes my hand.

And neither of us looks back.

EPILOGUE

VANESSA

HOT WINDS BLOW VIOLENT WAVES AGAINST THE SHORE of Sipacate’s black sand beach. In the distance, the sea is vast. It floods into the sky, painting the entire horizon a serene blue unlike anything I’ve seen before. Clouds soar overhead, as white as icing, and the scent of yesterday’s storms clings to every palm tree, every bungalow, every towel and chair camped in the ashen sand.

Brine still sticks to my tongue as beads of sea drip down my arms and legs from my morning swim. I wipe salt from my eyes and hold a hand to my forehead, squinting against the bright Guatemalan sun. The weather said it would rain this afternoon, but I can’t bring myself to leave yet. Across the low tide, a gargantuan leatherback turtle soaks up the warmth. Beyond it, a school of dolphins crashes through the waves, their fins glistening as they glide over the waters. I even think I make out the gentle lashing of a siren’s tail. Of iridescent scales just beneath the churning surface.

I smile, and the letter in my left hand crinkles before I tuck it back into the pocket of my unbuttoned denim shorts.

Sin was right. This place is magical.

And I’m happy he asked me to visit it now. I don’t know if I would’ve appreciated this place all those years ago. Not in the way I do now.

When Arielle brought me his letter four years ago—when she packed up and moved to Castle Lee as one of Queen Evelyn Lee’s most revered courtiers and handed me the faded envelope herself—I thought she’d been mistaken. Why had she withheld it? Why hadn’t he given it to me himself? But now I understand.

I never forgot the way the waves seemed to swallow the shore, he wrote. I never forgot the way the horizon felt ever expansive. It seemed like, suddenly, there was so much more out there. Beyond werewolves and mortals. Beyond the entire world we knew. It made me feel like I could do anything.