Page 9 of Devoured

The whisper of a grin ghosts Cora’s lips. “You can’t have revolution without war, Vanessa Serafina Hart.”

Goose bumps creep up my arms and down my legs at the use of my full name. Of course she knows it. Cora knows entirely too much about me, though I’m still unsure as to why. I clear my throat, my mouth suddenly dry. “Is this a revolution?”

“Of course it is.” Cora sits taller, looking down her nose at me as her eyes narrow into keen slits of black. “Revolutions can’t succeed unless the army in question is united and every soldier knows their place.” Her gaze roams my face. Her tone drops then, and her words slow. “Do you know your place, Vanessa?”

Do I?

It certainly isn’t where she wants me. Not on her side or in her army or even at war at all. I’m merely playing a game. Moving pieces around a board. No—whatever happens, this can’t end in war.

“Next to Sinclair,” I lie. “His fiancée now, and his mate soon enough.”

Cora’s grin widens in earnest. “My son adores you very much. Sometimes I think he would even give his life for yours. It’s… cute, how easily he falls in love.”

I stiffen at that, every word falling from her lips feeling like a bullet shot at too-close range. “Is this the part where you threaten to kill me should I ever break your son’s heart?”

“Oh, no. Of course not. Sin is… He was a means to an end. He helped me reclaim this castle. He is a very loyal boy. And as a soldier, he did his part well. Better than I could have imagined, undoubtedly due to you lighting the fires of justice within him. But now…” Her gaze sparkles with mayhem. “Now he isn’t quite so necessary in this war.”

My blood runs ice cold. My pulse stops entirely.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

She picks up the same knife I threw at Amethyst, examining the serrated edge in the candlelight. Examining the blood left on the blade. “Sinclair is not the one I care about, Vanessa. He is expendable. You, on the other hand, are not just any soldier.” Her eyes flick to mine as she calmly, deliberately, unloads the last shot in her barrel. “You are the key to this whole war.”

I exhale harshly. “Me?”

The idea is laughable. She’s lost her mind. No, she’s lost her soul. Biting so many humans, turning so many werewolves, has made her lose too much of herself. She’s… mistaken. Horribly and humiliatingly mistaken. Does she not remember how easily they manipulated me? Does she not remember how Sin compelled me to stand still and watch as her wolves methodically slaughtered the entire court?

Oh, yes. I must be the key to everything.

Even as I roll my eyes, however, a sliver of doubt cuts through my gruesome memory of the Ascension. Because Sin compelled me to stay still, but… I didn’t. Somehow, someway, I broke free of an Alpha’s compulsion, but in light of everything else that happened, I haven’t allowed myself to dwell on it. I haven’t wanted to dwell on it.

Now my heartbeat stutters to life at the knowing gleam in Cora’s gaze, the icy tap, tap of claws on a frozen windowpane. “Yes,” she says. “You. Our purple-eyed Bitten with untapped potential. Sybil didn’t know what to do with you. She wanted to hide you, blossom you in secret, but I have always been smarter than my sister. I will not let you go to waste. I have plans for you, Vanessa. Very large, very life-altering plans.”

Bile stings the back of my tongue. Every bite of food I’ve eaten, every sip of wine, churns a riotous storm in my gut. She’s wrong.

She must be wrong.

Tentatively, I manage, “Do you know—”

“What you are?” Smiling anew, she lifts a shoulder. “Of course I do. And you shall learn with time. I have a great feeling about you, darling. About your powers and how they will come to help me conquer the world.” Her black gaze sears straight through mine, until the room around me weeps with the color. Until it’s all I can see.

A truth.

Her words lodge in my chest, permeate all of me, and I ache from the weight of her honesty. From the weight of her black, black gaze. She stares at me as if she’s staring at the sun, and she’s not afraid of the consequences.

Another wave of sickness crashes over me. I ball my hands into fists on the table, desperate to steady myself, to not succumb in front of her.

I don’t care if it does cost me my life. I will not help Cora Severi destroy the world.

Maybe she can read my thoughts, or maybe they’re just written plainly on my face this time, because she twirls the knife around in her hand—casual, too casual—before stabbing it straight through my middle knuckle. Bone crunches. A tendon snaps. Sharp, breathtaking pain radiates through my hand, but she doesn’t react in the slightest, merely watching me with that same keen stare. Merely waiting for me to cry out and beg for her mercy. But I won’t give her the satisfaction. I can’t.

“I am not my sister.” Cora eases back in her seat, examining a smear of blood on her index finger as I fiercely blink away the haze of pain. “You would do well to remember that you don’t have the laws of the traditional court protecting you. I do not feel sadness nor empathy nor pain. If you step out of line again, if you do not help me win this impending war, then I will kill everyone you have ever loved.”

My hand starts to shake; the knife rattles in my bone. But I do not cry or shriek or even glance at her. I stare directly at the point where her blade disappears beneath my skin.

She continues with a sinister glee, “I will drive a stake through your father’s heart. I will sever the head from Portia’s shoulders. I will burn your old school to the ground with your classmates inside, and I will peel Sinclair apart slowly—limb from limb—if you so much as breathe wrong.” She swoops low, sickeningly close, and speaks right against my ear. “I am watching you, Vanessa, and I am not so stupid as to believe this little act of yours. You’ll need to do better to convince me, or else it will be more blood on your hands. Do you think I could have conquered this castle so easily without invading your mind and stealing all those bits and baubles of information from you? You are and have always been a part of this revolution.”

I still refuse to look at her, even when she leans back abruptly and adds, “Do not fight me, darling, because you will lose. And I will make that loss more painful than any you have experienced before.”