Page 21 of Devoured

Victory lances my chest, but Amethyst is practically on top of us now. Evie pushes past me, opening the door smoothly and ripping me inside. It shuts behind us with another gentle click—I pray Amethyst mistakes it for her claws on the floorboards—and we wait. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Amethyst’s steps have either been muted by the door, or she’s there. Right there, behind the heavy iron hinges and wood frame, listening. I swallow a scream. Evie’s fangs curl into her lip. This moment reminds me of a dozen others in this castle. Nightmares and horrors—a full moon, a darkened beach, Evie’s neck between Cora’s jaws. Oh god. Fifteen breathless seconds pass. Twenty.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Evie finally allows herself to exhale with a curse and shuts her eyes, leaning against the wall. “That was close.”

My heart seizes as I clutch my chest, double over, and gulp down breath after breath. “I thought—we were—dead.”

Evie pats my back with all the warmth and concern of a prickly cactus. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it eventually.”

“Get used to what?” I lift my head an inch to glare at her. Despite her casual tone, her face has blanched of all color. “Breaking and entering? Espionage?”

“More like not being the world’s biggest liability.” She flicks her hair away from her eyes and spins on her heel. I rise if only to bicker with her, turning to face her, but my words are cut off by the sight before us.

“Is it… supposed to look like this?” I ask, blinking rapidly.

“No,” Evie murmurs. “No, it’s not.”

Seven high arches, ancient and moon white, encircle mounds and mounds of loose-leaf documents that stack in haphazard rows all the way to a fractured ceiling. Lichen and moss grow along the cracks, glowing a strange, phosphorescent green. There are even windows here and there, small portholes of fogged glass caked in ashen dirt, and tall, crooked arrows pointing deeper and deeper into the maze of parchment.

This place—it’s a labyrinth. Or it was. Before Cora got here. My heart sinks as my eyes begin to water and sting.

Now, it all is ablaze.

Black fire engulfs each stack. Ebony sparks crackle and pop in the stale air. Even the walls rumble, not as though they’re breathing but as though they’re breaking from the inside out, and the floors shake softly underfoot. I glance uneasily at Evie, who has yet to move. Her gaze has stilled on the roaring black fires, on the smoke choking the center of the maze. Plumes of it curl toward us as if sentient. They smell like decimation.

I shake my head, wiping my eyes and trying to understand. A bead of sweat trickles down my temple from the sheer heat. “You said the room might be full of traps. Maybe this is—is just a trap.” We planned for small explosives, maybe curses or alchemical weapons. Not an entire room of fire.

The history of the North American Court is almost burned to a crisp.

“No. No no no,” Evie whispers, stricken. She rushes forward, toward the first blazing pile of parchment, and reaches a glove into the flames. Instantly, the gloves begin to melt. Sticky black chars her burning fingertips. She stifles a shriek with clenched teeth and rips her hand back to her chest. “What the fuck?”

I try to ignore the nauseating stench of flesh cooking and race forward too. “Are—are you okay?”

Evie ignores me. Ripping off her hood, she smacks it against the towering stack of records in an attempt to extinguish the fire. “No. No. No.” The hood scorches on contact, fabric burning to ash between her fingers. Except—

I lean closer—as close as the heat of the flames will allow—to study the parchment, which should also have burned to ash yet remains completely whole. Untouched. My eyes widen as realization dawns.

The fire is burning everything except the texts.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Is it cursed? Is this a test?”

“It’s the enchantments,” Evie says, panting now. Spitting mad. “Werewolf historians have recorded our histories since the Age of Werewolves began—and protected them. Their gifts are supposed to make the documents indestructible.”

I stare at the smoking stacks with a feeble flicker of hope. “Maybe they are. The fire can’t seem to touch them—”

Evie whirls to face me, her loathing a dangerous storm in her gaze. “Don’t you get it, Hart? Cora is trying to break the enchantments. She isn’t burning the parchment yet because she can’t. She has to burn the magic off them first.” With another curse, she reaches her burned fingers back into the stack, gritting her teeth through the pain and snagging an illustrated map entitled THE REALM OF SUPERIORITY: NORTH AMERICA. But the second her fingers come into contact with it, the paper begins to burn. The edges char in less than a second. The ink blurs into an echo of smoke and fingerprints until I can only make out the elaborate tracings of a jungle.

“Cora is going to destroy our history, and then she’ll be free to rewrite it however she wants.” Evie crumbles what’s left of the paper in her hand until it disintegrates, staring at her blistered fingers all the while. They heal themselves slowly. Stitch by stitch. “There are tens of thousands of years of history in here.” She shakes her head, tipping her palm and watching the ashes flutter to the floor. “We’re screwed. The entire world… and they don’t even know. My people don’t even know.” Evie sucks in a breath. Then another. Her body quakes with rage as she clutches her head abruptly, her heart beating like a drum. “What are we supposed to do?” she hisses. “What am I supposed to do?”

She slides to the floor, continuing to hold her head as if she expects it might roll off her shoulders, and I don’t know what to do either. I don’t know how to help her. Evie was a princess, trained to navigate the treachery and machinations of court, while I played volleyball and went to the movies and clung to a teddy bear every night when I slept. What can I do?

I look from the pile of ash beside her to the labyrinth of flaming stacks, and anger stabs through my rib cage. This can’t be it. We can’t have come this far just to give up. Not this soon. Clenching my jaw, I glance back as ghosts slip from the walls—Oona, Shepherd, even Sybil with a gleaming crown atop her bloody head—and crowd Evie as if they’re smothering her. Their heads bend at unnatural angles. Their fingers stretch toward her.

I can’t take another second of this. Heat licks at my skin, everywhere all at once, until I can’t breathe. I can hardly think around it.

We are already burning, however. Evie and I are already in hell.