Page 39 of Devoured

“Coffee service!” she calls, only sounding the mildest bit annoyed. “Come on. Hurry up. I’m not staying in this library for long. Cora is about to release the rest of the pack from the throne room, and they’re bound to be ravenous. Not to mention, I have about a thousand dishes to clean after. Coffee! Scones! Sandwiches!”

Sure enough—just as I feared—half a dozen werewolves slink out from behind the library’s shelves. They don’t glance at me as I shove my face behind my book. Rather, they’re too busy focusing on the cart and the young woman and her rattling mugs of coffee.

A young woman—Sera—sniffs openly before scrunching her nose. “What’s this about? We’ve never been given coffee service before.”

“Queen Cora wanted to gift us a moment’s reprieve as a reward for our loyalty and strength,” the cart woman says—recites.

“Weird.” Citrine arches a brow without accepting a mug or plate. “And it was meant to be handed out now? When our queen is currently locked in negotiations—”

“Take it or don’t,” the woman snaps, jostling the cart slightly. “Just get out of the way so I can serve the others and leave.”

The other werewolves don’t have any reservations about accepting the rather mundane gift of coffee and pastries. They snatch plates, tussle over the ripest grapes and fattest sandwiches, slurp up coffee as if it’s liquid gold. I peer around the wrinkled pages of my book and hold my breath. Maybe this is nothing. Maybe they won’t see me. Maybe—

“What about her?” Citrine juts her chin in my direction. My stomach sinks even lower than before. “Does the precious princess require a coffee? One sugar or two, Vanessa? Shall we feed you some grapes, Your Highness?” The werewolves beside her chortle as my hands ache from clenching the book too tightly.

It’s not supposed to happen this way.

I’m supposed to be locked with Cora in those negotiations, not hyperventilating upstairs and drawing attention to myself. Yet there’s nothing I can do to stop it now.

Evie’s plan is in motion, and I’m about to bear witness to it all.

Pleased with herself, still smirking at me, Citrine snatches a mug and drains it in one long gulp. Instead of placing the mug back on the cart, however, she hurls it at my head. “Spoiled brat.” Porcelain shatters against the stone mantel, raining down inches from my head. I don’t move a muscle. I don’t even breathe.

“I’m going to have to clean that,” the cart woman complains.

“Make her do it,” Citrine growls. “She hasn’t lifted a single finger to help us. She’s hardly a part of this castle, let alone our pack and court.” She glowers at me, her gaze flashing a dark, cruel gold. “She’d be better off dead.”

My bones shift beneath my skin, and the honesty of her words—the truth of her hatred—only riles me more. But I don’t need to take vengeance myself. I don’t even need to move. Evie has already done the work for me.

Once the cart woman leaves, once Cora’s werewolves drink and feast to their hearts’ content, it takes minutes before they fall to the ground.

Minutes before they collapse. Conscious but paralyzed.

And just then, the faintest hint of a scent rises above their bodies. Fetid but sweet. Rotten corpses in a winter’s meadow.

“Ghostbane,” Evie called it. “A flower I can brew into a fate worse than death.”

16

EVELYN LEE

WHEN MY BROTHER AND I WERE VERY YOUNG—ERIC SIX to my four—my mother and father crafted us rings.

They seemed unremarkable at the time, slender bands of adamant that had been forged in a blackened fire of my father’s alchemical creation. The rings slid onto our middle fingers, too big at first, then too tight, before conforming perfectly to our flesh and bone. Invisible to all but the wearers.

Eric complained, of course. He fought and hissed when they forced him to wear it. He said it burned as if he could still feel the fire on his skin.

I felt that fire too, but I was my mother’s daughter. I never spoke a word of protest.

Instead, I let my mother take my hand as she brushed a soft kiss to that blistering finger. “This is where family belongs,” she said, “in the center of it all. You are a Lee, Evelyn, and one day you will become a queen. Never forget what forged you.” My mother wore the same ring. So did my father. So did his parents and their parents and their parents even before them. The rings were a Lee family secret. We could communicate through them. We could feel one another through them. No one else ever knew they existed.

Except Nettie.

I told her about the rings after she’d transformed, and she didn’t let a single day pass without reminding me that she wanted a pair for us. She always was obstinate. Stubborn as hell.

She felt like my whole world.

It took two months to oblige her, and only because I had to learn how to forge the ring myself—how to cloak it with meteor dust, how to burn a perpetual flame with true volcanic ash. I made us a matching pair for our left hands. Black. Slender. Always burning just enough for us to stay connected.