Page 26 of Devoured

“How are you?” I ask quietly. “Is there anything I can do?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“If you have any contact with the stars.”

I startle at that, though I shouldn’t. It’s exactly the sort of request Lyra would make. “The… stars?”

“Yes.” Lyra’s eyes open, and she peers at the fathomless sky. “They’ve been moving. Haven’t you noticed?”

I follow her gaze. “There are no stars. It’s just black tonight.”

“You haven’t changed much, Vanessa. You still don’t see beyond the present.” Her nose scrunches with her frown, and she winces. “I suppose that will change too, soon enough.”

I stiffen, my stomach churning, and stare at her. The sleepless draught in my gut turns over. Burns anew. “What do you see?”

She licks the rain from her lips. “I can’t tell you that. There are no words in this language to translate it.”

“But you know? What will happen to me—to us?”

“I know everything and nothing. I am a mouth for the universe and a tongue for the stars.”

I don’t know why, but a flicker of rage ignites in my chest. “So you’re a puppet?”

She sits up, splaying her stained and dirtied skirt around her slender legs. “We are all puppets in one way or another. If calling me that makes you feel better about our current predicament, then fine. You won’t offend me, Vanessa, and perhaps that’s what you needed to hear all along—you can just exist. It’s okay to feel what you feel, to know what you know, and to just be. If you are angry, then be angry. If you are sad, then be sad. Do not stifle yourself.”

My teeth grind. I dig my fingers—my claws—into the earth. The cold does nothing to numb me, and that’s what I really want. I want to stop feeling. It’s too much. Sadness. Anger. Regret. Self-loathing. I’m sick of it. I’m sick with it. My claws retract slowly. Painfully. “I was emotional enough before.”

“Before? As if this is an after?” Lyra squints against the onslaught of rain, her gaze roving my face. “Are you really so different now?”

“Yes,” I hiss. Because I have to be. Because the person I was—she wasn’t enough. And if we’re all going to survive this, I need to change. I need to be better.

“Ah.” She inclines her chin as if she understands me. As if she understands everything. And I guess she does. “You know, when I first became the Oracle, it wasn’t easy. The moment I opened my eyes, the world bled into a thousand colors I had never seen before, and my mind was assaulted with flashes of pictures. My ears were pierced by a hundred voices. It took weeks before I learned to decipher them all, and then—” She hesitates, and her knees curl inward. She sighs. In a second, lightning strikes between us—right where her knees had been only moments ago.

“And then?” I ask, desperate to wring the curiosity from my voice.

Of course, she senses it. And she smiles. “I started to blame myself. As the Oracle, I was somehow a fixture in every atrocity I predicted. I wanted to stop them. I tried so hard to avoid the terrors. I would warn people of tragedies. I would offer advice as subtly as possible. I would even enter the dreams of young wolves.” She gestures to me with delicate fingers, and a chill racks my spine. I shiver. “The unfortunate truth, however, is that the more I tried, the more solidified the future became. Our world is a tapestry woven by those whose powers we cannot comprehend. The actions I was taking were actions stitched in thread long before I was ever born.”

A horrible feeling sinks low in my chest. Evie and I can never win. “So it doesn’t matter what we do?”

“I wouldn’t say that. It matters,” Lyra says. “It matters more than anything else. But oftentimes, life is out of our control, and we cannot blame ourselves for the mistakes of others. I could never stop a tragedy because the choices that preceded it—and the consequences that followed it—were not my own. Just as you are not at fault for a massacre wrought by a tempestuous queen.”

“You knew,” I whisper. “About everything, didn’t you?”

She tucks a lock of black hair behind her ear and suddenly looks far younger than ever before. I can almost see the flush of her round cheeks again. Almost see the twinkle in her eye. Until she frowns, and her gaunt cheeks carve downward, and her sapphire eyes dim. “There were pathways of time, stitches in the tapestry, where the massacre did not occur. Where others made different choices and there were different outcomes. It didn’t have to happen, but the more time ticked on, the more it became clear the tragedy would not be rewritten.”

“Did you… Did you see what happened earlier tonight? Can you see me and—”

“Evie? Yes.” Lyra tilts her head. “Fresh wounds cannot heal old scars.”

“You know I don’t know what that means.”

She glances at me, looks deep into my eyes—and the blue of her irises vanishes. Her eyes smolder white as snow as her voice drops into a haunting echo that chills me, once more, to the bone. “You will either save us all or damn us forever, Vanessa Serafina Hart. You will either stop the madness or become the madness yourself.”

I freeze.

Lyra rises on her feet before I can process the words, process their weight and meaning, and lifts her hands to the night sky. “The stars have fallen, Vanessa, and I can no longer keep you from your set path,” she murmurs, and I don’t know if she realizes what she’s saying or if something else has taken control. Her eyes still shine brilliant white. “It is time. The castle will be clear tomorrow at sunset. I know your plan. If you want to save us, make your escape then. Do what Evie knows must be done.” And then, a breath. “The rules have broken. The game has changed. It is time.”