Page 164 of Devoured

“It’s not destiny, you know? It’s just the choices we make, and the consequences that devolve from them. That’s all life is. We live, and we make mistakes, and we hope we have time to learn from them. Time to do better.” My voice cracks, but I don’t let myself cry again. I can’t bring myself to cry anymore. The tears have dried, and that hollow feeling in my chest throbs with familiar anguish.

“I wish it could have been different,” I breathe. “I wish Celeste could have lived. And I wish you could have survived, along with your mother and your father and your cousin. I wish you could all be a big happy family now. You deserve that, and I’m sorry you didn’t get it.”

“I was never supposed to be here at the end.” He presses his head against the wall, closing his eyes at what might’ve been. And what isn’t. “It was always supposed to be Sin. I was Protector of the Crown Prince, and I failed him—”

“No, you didn’t.”

“He died—”

“Stop, Calix.” I reach out, brushing his arm lightly. He shudders at the touch. “I wish there was a better resolution. For both of us, I wish I could say anything right now to give Sin’s death meaning. But he was just a boy who was taken advantage of by his biological mother.” I exhale hard. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him.”

Calix ducks his face, his head hanging low, and he looks broken. He looks like a fallen angel freshly torn from heaven. “It’s not your fault, Vanessa.”

“Yes, well…” My throat thickens with grief, and maybe I’m not done crying after all. “It isn’t yours either.”

He glances at me from the corner of his periphery, a self-deprecating grin on his lips. “Which is why we’re both out here, I guess.”

I shrug. “To not feel guilty at all?”

“Whatsoever,” he agrees.

“Exactly.”

He slides to the ground and sits in the dewy, ashen grass. His suit wrinkles, but he doesn’t seem to notice as he offers me a hand to join him. I stare at his outstretched palm, swallowing roughly.

“Unless you’d rather be alone,” he says. “I’m not going to force you to stay if you’d prefer to go.”

But leaving is the last thing I can handle right now.

I can’t go inside, into our shared rooms, and smell Sin all over everything. I can’t sit in my bed and stare at the doorknob, wishing with every fiber in my pathetic body that it might turn.

Before Calix can rescind his offer, I slowly slide my hand across his palm, and I let him help me onto the grass. Bunching my lace skirts around my knees, I move closer to his side. Heat rises from him and warms me to the bone. I rest my head on his shoulder; he rests his cheek on my head.

We fit like this, I realize. I only wish I had noticed earlier.

“Were you at… the funeral?” I manage to ask.

“I watched from the window,” he admits. “I couldn’t bring myself to be out here and watch him burn. I want to remember him the way I always knew him, not how they would see him. No one else understood him. No one else loved him at the end. Everyone thought he was cold and sadistic—except you.”

I wrap a hand around Calix’s forearm, nails nearly biting through the thick wool of his suit. “I didn’t want to see him like that either.”

Calix laughs again, and it sounds wet. Sad. “You know, if he could see us right now, he’d mock us to death. He’d be sitting in front of us, throwing rocks, telling us to get the hell up and stop ruining our clothes.”

I nearly grin at that. “I wore this dress for him. I found it in his wardrobe with a piece of paper attached to it. It had my name on it. He put it there for me. As if he knew…” I glance at the low bodice, the delicate black lace over my milky skin, with a scoff. “I thought—Sin is the only one who would appreciate a true mourning gown. He’d make some inappropriate joke. I’d have to smack him on the arm to shut him up. It would only make him laugh harder because he’s such a rotten bastard.”

Calix’s body quakes against mine. A more genuine laugh. “I wore the suit he had Sybil’s Weavers make for me. He gave it to me last year as a birthday present. But I hated it. What kind of asshole wears a brocade suit?”

“Sin.”

“Yeah.” Calix clears his throat with fondness, with sadness, with a little more that I can’t quite place. “Sin.” Then he lowers his voice and whispers, “If you’re out there, asshole, just know we’re pissed you left us.”

“Pissed,” I agree, a lone tear slipping free. “We’re going to kick the crap out of you whenever we see you next.”

And in that moment—one of those stars in the sky shines brighter. It seems to wink at us.

Maybe he can hear us. Maybe it’s as Portia said, and Sin is everywhere around us. He is the wind rustling the grass now. He is the moonlight cutting through the turrets. He is the night.

Calix and I stare off into the distance, at the remains of the pyres and those few stars in the lustrous sky. Calix shrugs off his jacket when I begin to shiver. He slides it over my shoulders to keep me warm. Other than that, we don’t move. We listen to crickets chirp and owls cry and wolves howl. We just exist, and it’s easier this way. It’s easier together.