Page 3 of Devoured

“I can learn how to wash my own shirts, Vanessa,” he says abruptly, tugging a platter of bacon from the center of the table and throwing massive strips onto my empty plate. He follows up with three sausage links, four hard-boiled eggs, and so much yogurt it floods over the side of the porcelain and onto the velvet table runner. “I can learn to become domestic.” He throws a spoonful of granola atop everything, and suddenly breakfast looks like a charcuterie board of indigestion.

“Sin…”

“Yes?” he asks.

And then he looks at me.

For the first time today—this week—he actually looks at me. My heart stutters to a sudden, painful halt. His gaze dips to my nose, to my lips, tracing a familiar path before rising back to my eyes. And yet again, I can’t breathe. His burgundy gaze darkens, nearly black now, though pinpricks of bright red stars dance around his pupils. Looking at him hurts. It always hurts.

But, regardless of what he believes, he is no longer mine.

I blink at him, trying to diffuse the image before me. Only then can I manage to say, “You’ve ruined my breakfast.”

He blinks right back at me, as if he’s startled by my words. As if he expected a different sort of fight. “What?”

I gesture vaguely to the yogurt curdling around hot bacon. “I’m not sure domesticity is a valid career path for you.” Then I shove the whole plate away from me, knocking it against a gilded platter of green grapes and ripe berries. “Anyway, I’m not hungry.”

“You’re never hungry anymore.”

“No.” I drain the rest of my wine in one gulp before pouring myself another glass. Celeste would be proud. But she’s not. Because just like everyone else, my best friend is dead. They’re all dead, but for some cruel reason—“I’m not.”

And if I allowed myself to sleep, if I allowed myself to dream, he would know that. He would enter my mind just as before and read my innermost thoughts. He would know how I feel. And this entire ruse would be destroyed. I do not sleep anymore because I can’t. I won’t let him—let anyone—have that power over me again.

“Vanessa—” he starts.

I don’t care. I don’t care what he says after that. Nothing he says matters now.

Sinclair Severi is worse than an enemy, and I am going to kill him.

I have to kill him. Revenge is all I have left.

2

VANESSA

QUEEN CORA SEVERI ARRIVES TO BREAKFAST APPROXIMATELY ten minutes late. Wearing a black lace gown and balancing a sparkling black diadem on her braided salt-and-pepper hair, she glides through wide double doors and into the Great Hall with a twisted smile on her loathsome face. Her gaze, her nails, even the lipstick painted on her thin lips—all black. Just like her soul. She has not mourned the loss of her sister. She has not seemed to regret the bloodshed for even a second. She only ever smiles, dark and snarled, as if she’s just returned from some wild, cannibalistic feast.

I track her movements from behind the rim of my glass, forcing my posture to relax. Forcing my muscles to stop tensing as she nears. I barely manage a slouch when her gaze flits to mine. She smiles harder.

“Apologies for my belatedness,” she coos, still staring right at me. “There was a little mishap with fire on the third floor. But it’s sorted now.”

I stiffen, although her gaze moves elsewhere and no one else so much as reacts.

My jaw tightens. I thought Cora would at least seem stressed by the fire. I thought she would care if her wolves were burned. Apparently not.

Behind Cora, the doors open again, thrown wide to reveal two of her dearest werewolves yanking thick chains in their permanently curled claws. Amethyst—a young woman with bright yellow eyes and braided black hair—and Jasper—a middle-aged man with a thick Russian accent and an ash-white widow’s peak—saunter inside with twin smirks.

Her newest wolves all had different names before their transformation. Different lives. But Queen Cora claims to believe in fresh starts; she believes in renaming her pets, baptizing them in the waters of her court, and remaking them anew in her image. And they seem all too happy to do her bidding in turn.

Lyra stumbles in after the pair, the chains wrapped around her throat, her wrists, even her ankles as Cora’s werewolves drag her inside with vicious force. A whimper passes Lyra’s pursed lips, but she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t reveal the true depths of her torment. Though—I can smell it. We can all smell it. Rotten as a red tide, foul and smothering in the Great Hall. The Oracle lifts her chin, her blue eyes glowing with resilience, even as she trips over a purposely outstretched foot. Even as she hits her knees with a sickening crack. Even as Jasper and Amethyst marionette her back to her feet and haul her forward faster, until Lyra is sprinting on feeble, bruised legs.

They force Lyra to the floor as if she’s an unwanted pet, and it takes everything in me to keep from lunging toward her. From trying to save her when we’re surrounded by enemies.

“Oh, hurry up, now!” Cora demands, her voice echoing through the hall. “I would think an oracle would be able to stop herself from falling so much. Clumsy, foolish girl.”

“Mother,” Sin starts—and he always starts. He always tries to appeal to Cora. But she never listens, and he never tries harder.

Which is why I can predict Cora’s vexed sigh, followed by the abrupt wave of her hands. “She is not one of us, Sinclair, and she does not belong here.” Cora pulls out her chair—the middle of the table, right beside Sinclair and far too close to me—and gracefully picks up her luxurious lace skirt before sitting down. “She should be grateful we are keeping her at all. If we tossed her on the streets, she would probably die within a fortnight. No one knows what happens to oracles outside their respective courts.”