Page 13 of Devoured

5

VANESSA

I STARE DOWN AT THE ETERNALLY STILL WATERS OF THE antechamber’s moon pool.

It’s the only part of this castle Cora hasn’t burned, and that’s probably on purpose. It was here I met the dream version of her. It was here I fell for her and her son’s manipulations. Which is why I don’t allow my gaze to wander to that narrow crevice where the real dungeon lies. Right where I found out Calix and Sin had been lying to me for months. I almost ripped Calix’s heart from his chest. I felt his blood on my hands, and I—

I should have done it.

And then I should have killed Sin.

Counting the rays of sunlight on the water, I try to steady the raging beat of my heart. I can’t breathe. I haven’t been able to breathe since the Ascension. Emotions and memories and pain burst beneath my skin like blood vessels. I’ve tried so hard to ignore them. To stifle them and hold my head high and walk around this castle as if every waking moment isn’t pure agony.

“You should have died,” Evie said. “Not them. You.”

She’s right. I should have died first. A long, long time ago. Before Celeste, even. I should never have come here. I wasn’t meant for this—for any of this. I am too weak. I am not enough. Fast enough or strong enough or smart enough.

How am I supposed to fight Cora? How am I supposed to gain my footing against an emotionless, power-mad queen? How am I supposed to share a wing with the boy I once loved or this castle with the boy I thought was my friend?

I lean farther over the moon pool and dangle a toe over the waters.

It would be easier to fall. To leap into this pool and let the magical waters claim me. It would be easier to carve out this hollow ache in my chest. I thought I could handle it. I thought I could become more than who—what—I was before. But what if I can’t? What if I’ll always be that sad, pathetic girl who couldn’t save her best friend?

I can’t breathe. I can’t sleep. And the water looks so, so calm.

I am so, so tired.

“You bitch.” Two words whispered from a razor-sharp voice. An echo.

Without turning around, I know who that voice belongs to, same as in the corridor upstairs. She followed me here. I don’t have the strength to look back at her. “Evie,” I murmur.

Her hand wraps around my wrist in a bone-crushing grasp, and she spins me around to face her. Anyone else would assume she’s here to continue our fight to the death, but—we’re alone now. And the wild rage has left her features. My gaze falls down, past her flushed cheeks, to the two faint fingerprints just barely still marring the slender column of her neck. My fingerprints. From when I almost killed her only minutes ago.

“Come on, Hart.” She exhales coolly. She inclines her chin to the crystal surface of the water, her gaze not leaving my face. “You’re better than that.”

And I know she means jumping. Fleeing this all. Vanishing into the pool.

It’s the nicest thing she’s ever said to me. As if the sentiment has made her uncomfortable, she releases me and strolls backward, leaning against a rough stone wall. She crosses her ankles, flicking her hair behind her shoulder. “For a second, I thought you were really going to kill me.”

“For a second, I thought I was too.” I glance back at the pool, at the waters I know are more of a Band-Aid than a true cure, and sigh. “We said we had to make the fight look real, right? The only way for me to slip under the radar is for them to believe you’re the only threat left.” I drop to the floor and curl my knees into my chest. Running my hands down my face, I try to wipe away any trace of our fake fight.

Evie hums softly in response. She doesn’t speak often. No more than a few words here and there, schemes strategized through half sentences and grunts.

When we first met a single day after the massacre—when she pulled me from my room in the middle of the night, cloaked head to toe in black, and snuck me down here—I thought her silence was about being cautious. But now I recognize the creases under her eyes. The exhaustion in her slumped frame.

She has no reason to speak anymore. Unless it’s to me. Unless it’s to scheme beneath the castle in the one place Cora wouldn’t think to ever check. Because Cora knows I am weak and emotional and afraid. Because Cora knows this is the last place I would ever want to come, just as she knows Evie is the last person I would ever work with. At least, I hope she thinks that now. After our performance.

“The stake was a bit much,” I say lightly. “Carving it in front of everyone at breakfast.”

She shrugs, but the movement is half-hearted. It holds none of the bluster of her public bravado. “I’m the main threat, but I’m also the one she can’t dispose of until she manages to wrangle the entire continent of Asia in her favor.”

“We don’t know that she’ll do that.”

Evie glances at me, her red eyes frigid. “Yes. We do.” Her head hangs low, and she rakes a single claw across the stone floor. “The Asian Court will be fighting for power now that my family is… gone,” she barely manages through a shallow breath. “The nobles will be divided. They probably don’t even remember that I exist—or they want me dead too. Cora will let them fight one another for the throne until someone turns up king, queen, or regent. She’ll reach out to the other packs in the meantime. The lesser packs. She’ll bolster her numbers that way, and then she’ll use them to win the Asian Court’s favor. The second she has Asia fully on her side, she’ll either sell me to the highest bidder, or she’ll kill me.” Evie doesn’t shirk away from that truth. Her voice hardens into ice. “For now, however, I’m safe.”

Safe.

The word drops like a pebble between our feet, and then it blazes through my chest. A lie. I don’t even need my Truthseer abilities to discern it. No one is safe in this court.