Page 51 of Devoured

We never could get the television in Vanessa’s room to work, I think abruptly, stricken by the image of her in my mind. All those months ago, locked in her room and terrified. She believed in me. She loved me.

She is my worst crime.

She is my worst crime, but I’m going to fix this. I am going to prove to her that our love is real.

“You couldn’t have dressed normally?” Evie asks, her voice dull.

“I am dressed normally.”

“You’re wearing loafers.” She points to the window beside my head. “In a jungle.”

“I prefer my shoes to be comfortable.”

“I hope you also prefer them splattered in mud. We have to cross a river, Sinclair.” She shakes her head. The crease in her forehead—a shallow wrinkle slicing straight through her calm facade—never relaxes. The veins in her neck throb.

She hasn’t mentioned the reason behind her malice in the day since we left the castle. But if she doesn’t want to discuss it, I’d rather she fight me. Anything to move forward, past the guilt lodged like a stake in my chest. Unlike a stake, however, I can’t pull it out. It’s festering there. And yes, I understand that a self-inflicted wound deserves infection, but that doesn’t make me want to stop clawing at it.

That list is here, in the forefront of my mind, every second of every day. I pick and pick and pick at it. I reopen the wound over and over. I bleed and bleed—but it’s nothing compared to the ocean of blood spilled at my mother’s hand. At my hand.

In short, I’m fucked. It’s one thing to be an evil villain. It’s quite another to be a sniveling, pathetic weasel of a villain who weeps over the havoc he’s wreaked.

So I don’t let myself cry. I simply acknowledge the tragedies before filing them away and forcing my gaze forward.

Plucking a pair of gold aviator sunglasses from the pocket of my beige button-up, I push them up the bridge of my nose and stare out the window. The bus rolls forward as far as it can, to the end of a plot of farmland. I had to compel the driver to take us here, where there are no roads, no pathways to Cancuén; I had to compel the tourists to remain calm and stay on the bus too. I’m exhausted, but this journey has only just begun.

“Come on,” Evie says, though I’m the one who rises first. She exits swiftly, followed by twenty more werewolves. I’m the last to leave.

My stomach somersaults with hours of pent-up nausea. Sweat beads down my abdomen as I stretch my forearms. Through cracked windows, mosquitoes begin to buzz. One lands on my hand, but I can’t bring myself to smack it. Instead, I shake it off, run my fingers through my hair, and stroll past the compelled tourists who still take pictures of the surrounding scenery. One aims their phone directly at me. They move to snap a picture, but their alarm blares. Their ringtone wails at the same time. They curse and drop their phone on the floor. I shrug with an apologetic smile and reach the front, where I tip the bus driver with a thousand Guatemalan quetzales. Without looking back, I descend the stairs and finally step onto solid earth.

The Guatemalan jungle greets me with a sickening squelch.

My loafers sink into a puddle of wretched mud, and Evie laughs.

Tenamit Xol—known elsewhere as Palace Xol—sprawls wide across two dozen courtyards and a thousand rooms. Tiers of engraved limestone stack one atop the next like extravagant cakes, balconies open and spilling over into the jungle’s canopy while pools and caverns gleam with jade starlight between each building. A market slices through the very center of the palatial city, a hundred stalls long, boasting enchanted items, faerie fruit, magic tonics and cures, and aromatic food. A few werewolves weave in and out of crowds, claiming to read fortunes or tea leaves or even the stars. They scream about faeries, the return of the apocalypse, and the darkness of midnight. Somehow, they claim all three are connected.

Tenamit Xol has always been like this. Vast. Grand. Beautiful.

And far livelier than the North American castle could ever hope to be.

“Sinclair Severi. The golden prince,” the Duchess of Guatemala announces, as though she’s surprised by my arrival. As though we haven’t exchanged a dozen letters leading up to this. “Come forward. Let me get a good look at you.”

Duquesa Balam Xol hobbles toward me with a pyrite cane in one hand and a howler monkey leaping through the market around her. Dark silver hair clings to her glittering crystal crown, her brown skin even more wrinkled than when I first met her almost ten years ago.

Balam has ruled over her country for the last ninety-five years. Though her golden Beta eyes have dimmed to a murky yellow with age, she still peers through her jade-rimmed spectacles as though she can see straight into my chest. Straight into my soul. She moves forward, closer still, before lashing out with her cane and hitting me square in the abdomen. The power behind that thrust almost sends me sprawling on my ass.

“Golden prince,” she repeats with a scowl. “Golden traitor.”

I clutch my stomach to stop from spewing my lunch all over the Realm of Superiority’s jungle. “Duquesa Balam. Good to see you.”

She whacks me again. This time upside my head.

It’s less than I deserve, so I don’t make a sound of protest. Even as Jasper cracks his knuckles behind me, begging for a fight. “I missed you too.”

“Bah.” She pivots on wobbling knees. “Move your asses. I assume Cora sent you here for a reason, and I’d much rather hear her drivel before dinner.” To Evie only, she adds, “I don’t like to sully mealtimes with these sorts of monotonous plights.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Evie kindly loops her arm through Balam’s and leads the duquesa through the rest of the market. Neither glances back at me. Neither sees my face fall. I will not be sniveling. I will not be that weasel of a villain. Yet I can’t help pressing a palm to my still-churning stomach and wondering what would’ve happened if I’d made a different choice. Any other choice.

But this is the grave I’ve dug, and I must lie in it. I must try to fix it while I still can.