Page 33 of Devoured

“It… hurts,” I manage through clenched teeth. Whole patches of my skin have burned away, revealing pink gore and the white of my bone.

“Venom,” she says simply. “There was venom in its blood.”

It’s the last thing I hear before agony curdles in my veins, and I pass out with the ghostbane still curled tight in my fist.

When I wake, I am inexplicably in the southern wing of Castle Severi, in the corridor outside my room. The ghostbane remains in my left hand, undisturbed, and I glance up to thank Portia. To beg her not to tell Cora anything. But confusion pounds a new ache in my skull—it’s not Portia I see.

It’s Calix.

It’s Calix in his wolf form.

I tuck the flower in my thigh pocket and stand on shaking legs, just in time to watch him prowl down the corridor. He stops, however, when I exhale his name. He cranes his neck toward me.

It doesn’t matter that my skin hurts. Or that, beneath the coat that’s been thrown over my shoulders, I’m still aching. It doesn’t even matter that I was almost just mauled by some kind of demonic spider. Because Calix—Calix looks like a wolf again.

He looks like the wolf that murdered my best friend.

Monstrous and black. Glowing red eyes. A savage glint in his gaze.

“C-Calix?” I murmur.

I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. Memories assault me, fresher than any I’ve experienced since. Before I can breathe, the wolf tears into her neck. Blood spurts. I lunge with my knife out and stab the wolf between its ribs, gripping its fur for leverage. A whimper slips from my lips, and he glances at me. Glares at me.

This is the truth of the boy who cleaned my wound. This is the truth of the boy who danced with me. This is the truth of the boy who carried me out of the castle to save his cousin.

Blood mats the fur around his mouth, and smoke curls from his nostrils. He looks as if he’s just eaten someone else, and I want to ask who. I want to ask why. I want to tell him about the spider, and I want to show him my wounds, and I want to pretend none of the last few months ever happened just so I might have someone to be vulnerable with. Really and truly vulnerable.

Amethyst. The records room. The forest. The spider.

It’s too much. It’s all been too much, and I’ve been not enough, and I need help. God, I wish I could ask him for help.

I wish I didn’t hate him.

He exhales once more, a low growl rumbling from his chest. It almost sounds like a threat. Or a question. But he doesn’t transform, and he doesn’t speak. Instead, he turns around. And he simply stalks away.

The moment he’s out of sight, I throw myself inside my room and sob.

13

VANESSA

I NEVER KNEW MY MOTHER. I DON’T REMEMBER HER beyond a fragmented thought here and there: golden-brown hair, a honeyed laugh, a glint of amber like captured sunshine. But you can’t hold sunshine, just as you can’t hold the fragments of a toddler’s memory. So what I know about her—really, truly know—comes from my father.

“She used to be nice,” he once said, drunk off a few too many beers after a particularly grueling shift. A gas station robbery. Two fatalities, I later found out. “Your mother used to be so damn nice. I worked all day just to come home and see her. To hold her. No matter how hard the day was, she would be here, she would console me, and everything would finally feel right again.”

“I know.” I stood frozen in the kitchen, unsure, at thirteen, how to handle a crying father. “I—I know.”

“She got me through years of this shit. We were happy. She was happy.” He cursed this, spat it like venom.

“I’m sorry.” The fridge opened with a creak, and I grabbed a bottle of water from the back. Behind a stained Tupperware of leftover spaghetti. Behind a six-pack of Bud Light, only two cans remaining. “Here, Dad. Drink this.” I padded into the living room, feet away from the kitchen, and then handed him the water. But he just stared at me. Stared, and cried.

“She was so nice,” he wept. Over and over, until I noticed old blood the color of rust on his hands. I grabbed a towel next. Soap. I knelt at his feet and washed off his palms, but he didn’t stop. “She was so nice. So sweet. And she left us. How could she do that? How could she abandon her baby? How—how could she abandon me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t. You didn’t know her. Not like I did. And now…” He blinked down at me, seeming to finally notice that I sat between his feet with a dirtied yellow dish towel and a bowl of bloody water, and winced. “You’re nice, Vanessa. You’re—you’re like her.”

That was the moment I knew my father telling me I was nice wasn’t a compliment. He didn’t mean it kindly. He said it to remind himself how quickly nice things could wither and love could die, how fast a person’s intentions could change. He said it so he could prepare himself for the day I broke his heart. Just like my mother.