Page 114 of Devoured

“Yes.” He grins softly, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’re not dreaming. This is real.”

38

VANESSA

THE LAST TIME I SPOKE TO SIN ALONE WAS IN MY DREAMS when I forced him to think I love him and he loves me and everything is okay. He watches me now as if he believes that implicitly—and perhaps he does, since he didn’t invade my unconscious dreams again. Perhaps he really is trying to do better.

Unfortunately, it’s too late. For him and me and us all.

I messed up tonight. I might have made an irrevocable mistake, and now all that’s left is this migraine, the roiling pain in my gut, and the thought that we’re doomed. Less than one month until the Mating Rite. Less than one month until Cora binds me to her and Sin forever.

The walls are too close, and I can’t breathe.

“Do you know where you are?” Sin asks slowly. “Can you tell me your full name?”

He sits with his knees tucked tightly to his chest, leaning a shoulder against my mattress. His gaze blazes through mine as he picks invisible lint from corduroy pants.

“Of course,” I rasp, my throat burning with each syllable. “Castle Severi. Vanessa Serafina Hart.”

“Good.” He nods. “You were… mumbling a lot in your sleep.”

Blinking rapidly, forcing myself to sit up, I slide the sheets down to my chest. The same plum bodice from dinner sticks to my curves, stained from my sweat. “What was I saying?”

He glances away quickly, his gaze falling on the tapestry behind me. In the flickers of candlelight, the images change as they always do, from docile settings to death and gore. He watches the castle burn. He watches the werewolves die. But he doesn’t comment on them. I wonder how long he’s examined them.

“Sometimes, you were listing names,” he says. “Repeating them over and over. Celeste and Lyra and Oona—” He breaks off painfully, with a curt shake of his head, as I tense. It takes a moment before he speaks again. “Other times, you were whispering that you don’t know what’s real. That you don’t know who you are. You started thrashing and groaning, and your fever worsened.” He swallows roughly, emotion thick in his voice as he glances back at me. “I was afraid you wouldn’t wake up.”

“I’m sick,” I say, though it comes out more like a question than a statement. I don’t remember anything after the throne room, and the more I think about it—about before or after—the more my head pounds. I press a clammy hand to my cheek, my skin hot to even my own touch.

“I believe so.” Sin relaxes his legs, letting them fall to the floor as he leans back on his hands. His fingers tear at threads in the rug, fraying the crimson, as if he can’t remain still. “No one knows what’s ailing you, though. Except for my mother, who said you’ll be fine with time.” He searches my face for an answer. “Is that true, Vanessa? Will you be fine?”

I stare down at my lap. “I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m going to die, so I—I must be getting better.”

“She’s pissed, of course.” He continues talking, almost to himself, as if he doesn’t hear my answer at all. “Cora is always pissed about something these days. But—she keeps seeking you out. I’ve intercepted three of her messengers, including the infuriating Evander. They won’t tell me what she wants with you, even if I compel them, but she must want something. She says you’ll be fine. She doesn’t care that you’re ill. But she wants something. Just as she must have before she threw you in the dungeon.” A low growl rumbles between us as his fangs sharpen. A smoldering sort of anger, acrid like smoke, perfumes the air. He looks at me expectantly. “Well?”

I clutch the sheets around my waist, tangling my fingers in the silk until my claws threaten to shred through them. “I don’t understand the question.”

He stares at me, unblinking, so reminiscent of an avenging angel. All gilded righteousness and holy retribution. “Am. I. Right?”

“Sin…”

I close my eyes in defeat. What the hell am I supposed to say to him? Does Cora want me? Yes. Obviously, she does. Why else would I be here, in this bed, alive? But that doesn’t mean I can tell him that. He’s his mother’s son. He’s a traitor and a liar and a murderer. And, more than that, he’s been forbidden to know about my powers.

If Sin finds out, he’ll storm out of here. He’ll cause another huge scene, and Cora will retaliate and kill someone this time. Doesn’t he understand the repercussions? Doesn’t he see how we’re all tangled in this damned web together and it’s because of him?

My eyes flutter open again to find Sin still watching me.

A muscle tenses along his jaw, and he lowers his voice. A shade darker, more dangerous. “I discovered you in the throne room—alone, collapsed on the tiles—four days ago.”

“Four days?” The words slip out, unbidden, as I lurch forward. The compress on my head falls to the mattress. I was unconscious for four days? And in all that time… I didn’t dream? Or did I dream and not realize? Did Cora invade my head? Did Sin?

Shit.

“Your temperature is only a few degrees above normal for a werewolf, so you don’t seem in any imminent peril,” Sin explains, all while he tracks my every movement with hypervigilance. He even appears to track my pulse, his eyes sliding to my throat and counting the beats that mimic his own. “I think you sweated most of the sickness out this morning. But I don’t understand why you’re ill, or what you were doing in the throne room, or why…” He stops himself abruptly, dragging a hand through his hair. “You’re keeping secrets. Cora is keeping secrets. I can’t get the stories straight anymore.”

I wince at the hurt in his voice, but he doesn’t stop. It seems as if he can’t stop, unleashing every one of his thoughts until they’re open and exposed between us, like a funeral for all our dead. He lifts the lid of one casket, then the next, then the next, until the smell of rot and corpses permeates the air, and we can’t avoid any of it any longer.

“That last supper has been so disjointed in my head. Sometimes when I remember it, I recall it ending in a goddamned catastrophe. Other times I think it ended fine. It’s all been so topsy-turvy that I started recording my own memories in a journal. So far I’ve written more than a dozen different variations of the night. Something must have happened, because half the ambassadors left, and Cora is furious. She’s become obsessed with you. So what is it?” He rises to his feet and begins to pace the short length of the room. Every hard step spears my chest. I want him to stop. To settle. To shut up before everything is ruined.