Page 32 of Devoured

Oh god. I try to wrench up my hands, my legs, but I’m trapped. The meadow—this side of the meadow—is blanketed in thick webbing. This spider’s web.

“This forest used to be protected by the gods of old. The gods above and even some below. Do you know what happened the night this forest ran red with blood?”

I can’t stop scratching. Not even for a second; not even to answer the beast.

“The gods abandoned this place. They have left it to rot and to ruin. And now you are here, and I am here, and we are ever so alone.”

It blinks, and just like that, it releases claws from my mind. It frees me from its control. I glance around, blood oozing from my arms onto the web beneath me. There are lumps in it. Writhing, woven human-sized lumps, and—and I’m going to die here. I glance back at the spider, trying desperately to peel myself from its web. It watches me with a sick gleam in its eyes, crawling closer. Closer.

“Have you ever killed someone?” it asks. “Would you even be able to, I wonder?”

I don’t care about that. I need to survive this. I need to get that freaking flower.

“Wh-what are you?” Vomit burns my mouth. Vomit and blood. I must have bitten my tongue in my surprise, and now decay is all I taste. I’m going to die here. My legs, my ass, my hands—I’m ensnared in its web. I can’t move. I can’t even unleash my claws.

The spider chuckles, and the sound rattles my spine. “If you have to ask, it’s simply too late for you.” Its pedipalps twitch, and the reflections of me in its gaze break again. Splinter into worse deaths until I’m mangled. Barely recognizable beyond purple hair and purple eyes and blood. A sob wrenches from my throat, and the spider ekes out another dark laugh. “A few have called me Harbinger. Some call me Devil. There are other names, of course, softer and sweeter on the tongue, but they are not for you. I am going to eat you now, Vanessa Hart. Hold still.”

The spider’s mouth stretches into a hideous grin, and I sit here. Helpless. I might as well baste myself in butter and throw myself into a steaming pot.

“No,” I spit, the word uneven, ragged, but affording me enough momentum to begin tugging. Yanking. Wrenching any parts of me from the web that I can. I release a knee. Then an elbow. “I will not be eaten by a goddamned spider.” I suck in a sharp breath, reaching for that well of rage inside of me, as the demon rises on its hind legs. Venom leaks down its gruesome fangs, and I kick away faster. Harder.

The web knots my limbs. Tangles me and snags my waist. I rip my fangs through the bands around my wrists. Bit by bit, I free myself.

All the while, the spider laughs, and the cruel sound throttles the trees.

“I will not die,” I repeat, as if saying it might make it true.

“You are weak, Vanessa, and far too easy to kill,” it says. “And here I really thought you might understand the true depths of your powers. Shame on me, I suppose.” An indictment without any emotion, without any care.

I twist and shift, frantically trying to tear myself from the web with whatever supernatural strength I have left. Finally, I tear my legs out. My arms. I manage to crawl toward that goddamned flower.

Seven sapphire petals. Just as Evie said.

I shred through the webbing around me, desperate, until I reach the ghostbane and wrench it free.

Evie said she could brew it into a fate worse than death, but maybe there’s a way for me to use it now. To kill the demonic spider before it can kill me first. I roll over, brandishing it like a weapon, but I’m too slow.

The spider crashes onto my chest.

Crushes me hard beneath its heavy, prickly body. Its legs carve into my flesh, pushing me deeper and deeper into its web until I’m drowning in it. Suffocating. Another flash of fangs. And regardless of the flower in my hand, I am going to die—

A vine of ivy shoots out from the gate and plunges into the spider’s chest. Through the spider’s chest. The vine impales the demon, ripping straight through its heart like a sword. Black ichor oozes from the gaping wound, bubbles from its mouth, and drips hot acid on my flesh. My breath returns in a rush, all sense of reality shattering as I scream.

Through the web, through the sudden limpness of its body bearing down on mine, I scream, and I scream until my throat might split in two. The ichor—its blood—sizzles on my skin. Burns through me like flames. And that vine—it flicks the spider’s corpse aside and then turns to me. My heart thunders harder. Harder.

I still can’t move. The spider was right. I am just as worthless as I’ve always been, and I—I—

“Breathe, Vanessa.”

A soft, feminine voice.

I glance up as the vine cuts through me—no, it cuts through the web—and find Portia Montgomery staring down at me. She frowns, her golden gaze dull and empty. “Just breathe. It’ll be over soon.”

I think I might actually faint now. My entire body begins to tremble, and I don’t know if it’s relief or shock or something else. “You… Portia… what are y-you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you.” She raises a hand, and other vines join the first. They shred the web to ribbons at her behest. Earthcharmer. The realization dawns as pain creeps steadily up my limbs. Portia is an Earthcharmer, and one of only two people in this world with that particular gift.

“Our powers—whatever they may mean in the long run—set us apart. This court… It needs us,” she said in the autumn. She wasn’t wrong, and those powers are undoubtedly why Cora allowed her to survive.