Page 152 of Devoured

“I screwed up, okay?!” He snatches my wrist, yanking me backward. “I screwed up when I let them take you, but I’m not abandoning you again. I’m getting you out of here whether you like it or not. That’s what a dad does, Vanessa. I would give my life for yours, and I should have before, and I’m sorry.”

The battlefield doesn’t pause for our reunion.

A claw slides through the throat of a human officer—Cora’s claw—severing everything but his spine. He dies with a savage scream, and Cora grins over at me as his body slumps to the earth. She licks the blood on her claws and smears it across her chin.

This is just the distraction she needs to slip away. My pulse silences the chaos around me, and my vision tunnels on her.

Cora Severi cannot be allowed to survive this. She has to die.

I shove my dad against the side of the castle. “Stay here,” I compel him, my eyes flashing. “Don’t shoot unless you’re about to be attacked.” His mouth falls open as he realizes he has to obey my every command.

He blinks at me, and I release him.

But by the time I whirl back toward Cora, she’s gone.

Across the field, I catch sight of those charcoal eyes first, the darkness of her hair, and race toward her. But there is a flash of blond hair. A glimmer of burgundy.

Sin beats me to it.

He whirls on his mother with lightning-fast reflexes. He throws her on her back, her head smacking hard on the ground. I race toward them in case he needs me and hear his words flicker through the cries of battle. “Was it ever true? Did you ever really love me?”

I dodge a bullet. A spray of blood. Two faeries encircle one of Cora’s werewolves, blocking my view, but I can still hear them.

“What do you think?” Cora snarls.

Sin’s voice cracks. Or maybe that’s the sound of a bullet that impales itself in the wall beside him. “No,” he says. “I don’t think you did.” He braces his claw over her chest. He moves to wrench out her heart.

But he hesitates.

He pauses as if he’s not sure he can do this.

My pulse kicks up. I leap across the divide. “Sin—”

Cora is speaking now. She leans closer into him, almost daring him to kill her. “You know, Sinclair, I only kept you alive because I needed Vanessa, and you made it so easy. You’re as desperate to be loved as Sybil was to be respected. It’s pathetic.” She glares up at him, colder than ice. “You have no one to blame for any of this but yourself. It’s always been your fault.”

She reaches out. She grabs him by the throat.

A scream of rage shatters my ears—mine—as I try frantically to reach them. My throat burns. My chest heaves. There are too many others in my way. Too many bullets. And Cora leans forward, opening her jaw as if to sink her teeth in Sin’s throat.

She doesn’t.

She doesn’t bite him at all.

Instead, she whispers a compulsion, her gaze still flaring, and Sin’s body slackens in her grasp. His expression empties.

No. “NO!”

Not my own scream this time, but Calix’s. He bolts toward them, faster than I’ve seen anyone move before, and Cora smiles. She opens her claw and drops Sin on the ground. He lies motionless for a moment before rising. Stiff. Rigid. His eyes find mine through the crowd, and that familiar burgundy gaze runs colder than his mother’s.

It’s too late.

My heart plunges at the realization. Whatever she whispered, whatever she compelled him to do, has already wormed its way inside his brain. The Sin who watches me now isn’t the boy from the Mating Rite. Isn’t the boy who took my hand and apologized.

That boy is suddenly gone.

Bile rushes up my throat as I skid to a horrible, heartbreaking stop. Cora slips back into the chaos of the field, and I pivot to find her instead. She can break the compulsion. I can force her to break whatever compulsion she put on Sin by ending her miserable life. Quickly, quickly. My lungs work in panicked, erratic bursts as I whirl, searching wildly. Calix will hold off Sin. Calix will buy us the time we need to find her, slaughter her. But—

Calix screams again, and my blood runs cold.