Page 44 of Devoured

At least it wasn’t Evie. My ears ring. I can’t help the wave of sickness that washes over me.

We knew where ghostbane was most common, and we knew that our best moment to poison Cora’s unsuspecting werewolves would be when the Antarctic envoys were visiting. We knew that someone would be blamed, and as long as that someone wasn’t us, we would be fine. We would survive.

This doesn’t feel like survival, though. It feels like hell.

I stumble forward a step as if to—to—

I don’t know. What can be done now that a princess is headless and bleeding everywhere? What can be done now that their soldiers have been seized? I glance at Evie, one quick look, but she doesn’t see me. She blinks away tears, her upper lip trembling, and hugs her arms tight to her body.

What have we done?

Calix wrenches me backward as the werewolves crowd the dais. I don’t pull away this time because Cora isn’t done yet. She beckons a copper-haired girl forward with a bloody finger and, when the girl is close enough, pulls her up the steps, through the pool of gore. Tensing, his gaze rapt on the throne, Calix unleashes his claws.

Sin puts a hand on Calix’s shoulder. “Breathe.”

I glance between them, entirely confused. Entirely sick. They’re hiding something from me. Keeping secrets. But I’m already untethered. What more could happen tonight?

Cora wipes blood on the girl’s trembling arm before turning to glower at the newest prisoners of Castle Severi. Valja fights against a white wolf’s hold, sobs racking her slender frame. Cora only grins wider in turn. “Poison is cowardly and has not affected this court or my power in the slightest. Isn’t that right, Arielle?” she says to the girl in her clutches. “Time is the cure for ghostbane. Seven moon phases until my werewolves return to me.” Then, to Valja, “Did you really think this would stop me?”

“I don’t know about any of this!” Valja spits through her tears.

“No matter.” Cora shrugs easily, hugging that girl—Arielle—closer to her. “You see, you simply can’t paralyze or even kill my courtiers faster than I can create them. In this week alone, sixteen new wolves walk among us. By next week, it will be forty. In a month, it will be a hundred. No one can defeat me.”

My vision bleeds black, then red, then gray. Gorge rises on my tongue, but I can’t swallow it. I can’t speak around it. Cora is creating wolves too fast. Faster than Evie or I could ever manage to incapacitate them. What are we going to do? How can we ever win a war against such a soulless monster?

Cora pinches Arielle’s cheeks with a soft, crooning, “Good girl.” She doesn’t look at Arielle when she says it, however. She looks at Calix.

He doesn’t peel his eyes from the girl’s face, his entire body trembling as if his muscles are thrashing just beneath his flesh. And Arielle watches him, helpless, her warm brown eyes wide with fear. As if they know each other. As if they’re… connected somehow.

Cora knows it. Sin knows it.

Everyone knows it except me.

I break away from Calix—away from Sin, away from the rest of the chaos and death of this horrible court—and stagger back toward the doors. Calix turns to me, those deep red eyes blazing with secrets, but I shake my head. He’s lying again.

He’s lying, and I’m responsible for two deaths today.

Two deaths. Twenty-five paralyzations. And that same throbbing ache in the hollow of my chest where my humanity used to be.

18

VANESSA

WHEN THE DOOR TO MY ROOM SLAMS, I DROP TO MY knees and crawl toward my bed. Shallow breaths rattle my rib cage, remorse pounding hot through my veins. My left wrist cracks. Breaks. Fur pushes through my flesh, melts through my flesh, as a claw emerges. A wolf’s paw. The rest of me boils alive.

I don’t feel so hollow anymore. I feel as though I’m erupting, emotions bursting like blood vessels just under the surface, and I can’t take any more. The death, the scheming, the lies, the betrayal, even my own secrets—I’m boiling alive from it. My right elbow begins to contort and snap. I’m seconds away from transforming.

But I don’t want that right now. Transforming has never brought me comfort.

Only one thing has, and I need it. I need it the way I need water.

Reaching under the slats of my bed, I jerk out a dark teak chest. It scrapes heavy along the floor, sharp corners snagging Cora’s rugs, pulling at the crimson threads as if they’re tendons. I shake my head, desperate to erase the memory of Dalla’s headless body. Of the bishop’s gray eyes. Tearing a fang through the skin of my thumb, I draw a bead of scarlet on the pad of my finger and slide it across the chest’s lock. It pops open instantly. I suck in a sharp breath.

A note flutters atop tidy rows of amber vials. Evie’s note. Evie’s sleepless draughts.

only in case of emergencies

Now. Now is definitely an emergency. I pluck up a vial and force the cork out. The scent of forest musk and wet soil permeates the cold air, the elixir roiling inside as my hand shakes.