Page 38 of Devoured

“It’s not for you to understand.” Cora leans forward, bracing her hands on her knees, her gaze flashing. Darkening. Deepening. “I am the queen, and you are my sword, and now the world knows to fear us.” Her lips continue to stretch, twist, in that vicious smile, and acid burns hot on my tongue. Her hateful face blurs as I sway, another spike of pain lancing my temple. “Leave, Vanessa. I believe the princesses and I have a lot to discuss.”

“We do,” Valja growls, blinking now at the spot where the bishop existed only minutes ago.

I look at it too, even as my feet begin to move of Cora’s volition. Of Cora’s compulsion. Bright spots burst in my vision. And though I am confused, though I can barely remember my own name right now, I do know this: somehow, someway, I just killed a man.

I just rewrote his own truth and made it so he was never born.

15

VANESSA

I KILLED SOMEONE.

The thought threatens to destroy me, to wrench a hand through my rib cage and lacerate my heart even as my feet carry me out of the throne room, down an angular corridor. Suddenly, I’m no longer walking; I’m sprinting.

I don’t stop to look at the other werewolves who stare at me, who mingle in the halls and glance in my direction with aggrieved sneers or menacing growls. I don’t even stop to check that Sin isn’t here, watching me, witnessing my burst of madness. I can hardly stand, hardly think in this moment. Because I—I just killed an innocent man. Not one of Cora’s abusive werewolves. Not someone who slaughtered my friends. I killed a man who was compelled, who was forced to be here the same as me. A man who looked more human than anyone else in that throne room.

I have never killed anyone before. I wasn’t even sure I was capable.

And the memory of him—the gray of him—somehow lingers on my tongue and in my mind even though… even though he doesn’t exist anymore. No—that’s not possible. It makes no sense. I’ve never heard of such an ability, and I—I’m a Truthseer. Just a Truthseer.

With strange purple eyes.

With unknown potential.

I knock into the railing of a stairwell, dazed, and quickly climb it. Each step brings me higher, as if I might eventually break through the castle and then the clouds. My lungs squeeze painfully, my head aching as the world tilts. Acid washes through my veins. Potent. Flaming. I’m boiling alive, and it’s worse than that demonic spider, than the spider’s web and the venom and the burn marks that took days to fully heal. This is under my skin. It’s inside my brain. It’s in the hollows of my heart. And I can’t breathe.

My lips purse, as if to form a cry for help, but a sob lodges in my throat instead. I throw myself onto the fifth floor, shoving inside the first set of doors I see. Iron doors with colossal wolf-shaped handles. I don’t recognize the room, but I don’t care. I need to keep moving. I need to lie down. I need to think.

The heavy doors open, ushering me through a small crevice that slants orange firelight into the hall. It looks familiar enough, even as the world spins and I can only pick out details here and there whenever it slows. Orange flames roaring in a massive hearth. Gilded filigree and tall shelves. Books. So many books. Ancient parchment, cracked leather spines, illuminated texts, gemstones gleaming on obsidian covers. Books, books, books. Hundreds. Thousands.

It’s a library, I think.

I can’t breathe, I think.

“Are you okay?” A man presses a tentative hand to my arm, his gray eyes somber. Gray gray gray. “You don’t look well. Are you ill? Should I go get the queen?”

At the reminder of Cora, my spine straightens and, once more, gorge rises past the sob in my throat. “No.” I swallow the bile and pull away from his grasp, forcing my gaze to burn, forcing my voice to be a siren’s song. “Leave me alone, leave this library, and forget you saw me here.”

He blinks, staggering back a step before exiting swiftly.

I compelled someone. I made an innocent man cease to exist.

I don’t care.

Knees trembling, heart racing, I hurry toward those familiar mortal flames. A stack of pillows rests neatly beside the hearth, a ring of discarded blankets strewn in front of it. I sit there, curling toward the fire and shivering. Teeth chattering.

Snatching the topmost book from a nearby teetering pile, I throw it open—just so I don’t appear suspicious to anyone else currently lost in the labyrinth of shelves—and pretend to read. But the words blur on the page, a noxious mixture of blue ink and cream parchment and gray and gray and gray.

My gaze waters as I continue to choke on my breaths. I bury my left hand in a thin woven blanket, my nails slicing through the wool, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything.

The bishop was real. He existed.

I remember him clearly even now. I was only looking into his eyes. I was only digging deeper and deeper into his truths. No—not truths. A lie. The one lie he built his entire life around, and the small bitter truths that followed. He was so sad. Every night, he would wonder why he existed. Then he would wish he hadn’t existed at all. And I touched that thread somehow. I changed it.

My temples throb, panic coursing through me on another wave of adrenaline, until the doors open, and I know, deep in my bones, that I’m doomed.

A werewolf—a young woman with long black hair and whiskey-brown eyes—pushes an iron cart inside the room, the wheels squealing over cozy fur rugs. Shit. My heart leaps into my throat. What time is it? I glance wildly around for a clock, but I find nothing. Nothing but that woman and her cart. My pulse stutters, a beat faster than before.