Page 171 of Devoured

“You were the reason an entire station of officers was slaughtered,” I remind him. “If you had just helped me—”

“I knew the outcomes, Vanessa Hart. Rest assured that if I’d let you rip out Cora’s heart, this castle would have fallen. You would be dead. And as for those officers… some sacrifices must be made. Gods are never really benevolent.”

My stomach turns at his words. “They weren’t just sacrifices. They had lives—”

“I expected better reception after letting you and the Oracle blather about your emotions for the last hour.” He crawls up the web and onto a branch. “This is rather droll talk for an immortal. Life. Death. It’s all the same to me.”

“You’re an asshole,” I tell him honestly, unafraid of the consequences.

Thankfully, he simply laughs again. “Yes. I suppose I am.” He shakes the branch overhead, and leaves fall like confetti around me. “If you must know, most of it was a test. For you,” he adds, as if I’m too stupid to understand. “I was never really going to eat you. Flesh and blood has never been my preferred sustenance.”

“So you invaded my mind for nothing, trapped me in a giant web, and burned me with your venom—”

His dozen eyes blink, blink, blink. “I didn’t expect to be impaled by your Earthcharmer friend.”

“She killed you.”

“She can’t kill a faerie. Only a faerie can kill another faerie.”

“What a shame,” I say.

Lyra giggles beside me, even as Evander glowers. “I restored peace to Castle Severi, and this is how you repay me? With mortal insults and sarcasm?”

I grin at him. “Yes.”

He curses, and Lyra stuffs a rose in his face. “Here, Evander. Have a flower.”

Evander bites through it. Snaps it in half. “Get your damned bouquets out of my divine face.” Then, lower, “I should have haunted someone else tonight. At least those in the castle scream when they see me.” He leaps to the earth and transforms. In seconds, his body changes into a man’s. A fully clothed man with diamond eyes, pointed ears, and chestnut hair.

I huff at the sight. “Why do you get to keep your clothes when you transform?”

“Because I am the original Chamaeleon. I am a god, and I cannot believe this is what impresses you.”

“It’s far more practical than nudity.”

He reaches out, grasping my chin and sighing. “Kitten, nothing is more practical than nudity.” When I pull away from him, he frowns. “I’ll need to find someone fun to play with. If our future regent is as insufferably dull as you, the next few years will be quite difficult.”

“If there are fires everywhere you go,” Lyra sings, “then you are probably the one starting them.”

His nose wrinkles as he regards her coolly. And then—a second where his gaze falls to her lips. He tears those diamond eyes away before she can notice. “I’m tired of you too, Oracle.”

“Unfortunate for you, then, that I am the right hand of the future Wolf Regent of the North American Court.”

“Gods.” He groans. “I’m going to lose my mind here.”

“Are you certain you have much of a mind left to lose?” Lyra tilts her head, her eyes shimmering with mischief. “Your brain must be so tiny to fit inside that spider’s skull.”

He snarls. “If you insult me one more time—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t think of it.” She drops into a mocking curtsy, fanning her skirts out widely. “Insulting the first Chamaeleon? What a terrible crime for one to commit.”

He points an accusatory finger at her. “You’re insulting me now.”

“I am not.”

“You’re using sarcasm to do it.”

She smiles sweetly. Innocently. “Am I? How can you be sure?”