Page 37 of Devoured

“Who is Luann?” I ask abruptly, even though I can hardly hear myself, can hardly speak as that gray clogs my throat. “Who was she to you? You loved her, but you didn’t marry her. Why? Why did you let her leave when you loved her? You told her it was for the best, but you lied.”

He doesn’t speak. I don’t think he can. Or perhaps I just can’t hear his response.

“Good,” that voice purrs at me. “You’ve found his essence—his pain. And now you can take it away. You can do so much more than feel the truth, Vanessa. You can weigh it. Measure it. Shape it, change it, create something new—and what you speak into existence becomes the truth. So do it.” The gray thickens, churns, unable to be disobeyed. “Rewrite his past. Change his history. You are the beholder of the truth, which makes you the beholder of his life too.”

I don’t understand the command. I don’t understand anything—not who I am or why I’m here or how to rise from the sea of gray misery. But that parchment unravels again, and this time the ink is wet.

The truth is that Luann left. She left, but she was not the first. The father was first. And after the father, there were grandparents, buried side by side in matching graves. The gray blames itself. It stares up at the night sky every single night and breathes its questions with tears in its gaze.

Why do I exist? Why do any of us exist?

And I feel that question. Not as myself—whoever I am—but in the gray depths. Decades of sadness, mutable now. Changeable.

“Rewrite his past. Change his history.”

Fire blazes. “You are the beholder of the truth.” Heat licks through the gray. Why do any of us exist?

That gray of regret, sadness, grief, torment—it does not need to exist. It shouldn’t exist. It would be better, surely, if it had never existed at all. Take away his pain. The gray spirals into a vortex of emotions, of blood, of birth and death—and I can no longer tell up from down. I can no longer tell truth from lies. Here, there is only creation.

The voice says, “He never existed, Vanessa.”

And I must be Vanessa. I must be because something bursts beneath my skin in answer. I don’t think. I don’t move. Still, something inside me explodes.

All of a sudden, all at once, the gray vanishes. I force myself to blink. And the man in front of me disappears.

Gone.

As if… as if he never existed at all.

In a split second, my brain ruptures, and I collapse with a scream. My vision distorts, blackens, as my skull shrieks with agony. I clutch it between my hands, curling in on myself, but it doesn’t help. Something is wrong with me, and the pounding quickens, sharpens to a tender point as bile floods my mouth. I vomit.

All that gray—and now it’s gone. There was a man in front of me seconds ago, but there is nothing now.

I can still see him clearly in my mind. An older man, hair gray and receding. Skin wrinkled and pale. His eyes a deep, unending gray. He had a father who abandoned him, and grandparents who died, and a love that burned out like a candle. But those memories crackle in my chest, like logs on an open flame, and the truth, it rises over the rest. A new memory.

A new reality.

The bishop never existed. The bishop was never born.

No no no. Pain rolls through my skull again, bursting and sharpening and pummeling me. That can’t be right. I saw him. I can still see him. His past. His choices. His regrets.

The world divides in half. On one side, there is only black and white and gray. I know that gray. I’ll remember it forever.

“Wh-what was that? Where is the bishop?” I barely manage to ask, lifting my eyes to find Cora on her throne. Her smile nearly splits her face in two.

“I told you,” Cora purrs. “You are special, Vanessa Hart, and together, we’ll do so much more than you can possibly imagine.”

Her previous words echo between my ears: “You can do so much more than feel the truth, Vanessa. You can weigh it. Measure it. Shape it, change it, create something new—and what you speak into existence becomes the truth.”

Everyone in the room stares. They stare at me. Even Dalla and Valja have lost their sneering looks of disbelief, eyes now wide with horror as they turn to glance at each other. With each passing second, that horror grows.

“What… what just happened?” Dalla murmurs.

“There was—a man there. Wasn’t there?” Valja blinks rapidly, lifting her fingers before her eyes. Twitching them as if she doesn’t believe reality anymore. “Why can’t I remember?” A curse. Her fangs lengthen.

“That’s enough.” Cora snaps her fingers at me. “We’ll return to this soon, but for now, you are dismissed.”

I shake my head, gritting my teeth against the onslaught of pain. Forcing myself to stand. I’m going to vomit again soon. I can feel it rising up my throat. “But I don’t understand.”