Page 36 of Devoured

“Vanessa,” Cora barks. Helpless, I stand at attention. Helpless, I ignore my erratic pulse and glance at her with pure obedience instead of disdain.

“My queen?” I say, loathing those two words on my tongue.

She smiles sweetly. “Ask the bishop to lie to you.”

I glance at the man in front of me, torn between fear and a flicker of relief. That’s… it? That’s all Cora wants from me?

“Lie to me,” I tell him, unsure why my Truthseer powers would be pivotal to the princesses. To anyone at all. Truthseers are rare, but not that rare. I’d hardly be useful in war, nothing near a weapon or key.

After two tense seconds, the man’s mouth pulls apart as if I’ve pried it open with my own hands. “I like chocolate.”

As usual, a bolt of heat flames between my ribs. It tells me that he’s lying. “Okay,” I say to Cora, unsure if the word is a question or an answer. “He’s lying.”

She continues to smile, and my blood chills at the sight. “Look into his eyes and ask him to lie to you again.”

“Why?”

That smile falters. Her gaze narrows on mine. “Do as I tell you, Vanessa, and look deeply. Do not remove your gaze from his.” A silent threat cuts through her words.

Turning back to the bishop, I look deeply into his cloudy gray eyes. “Lie to me again.” The moment our eyes lock—something feels different. I feel different. My heart begins to pound, and a dull ache builds in my temples. I can’t tear my gaze away.

“I always wanted to be a priest,” he says, his voice a flat monotone. “I have never been in love.”

Those gray eyes seem to widen until I can count the lines in his irises. Until they unspool in my fingers like thread.

Heat flames my skin. It sharpens the ache in my skull. “He’s lying,” I say slowly, except I—I can’t seem to blink anymore. I can’t seem to move. My stomach churns when I try to look away, to step backward, and the ground wavers under my feet. I feel untethered, wrong. Something is wrong. “I want to be done,” I whisper—though my lips hardly move.

What is happening? The thought moves sluggishly despite how my pulse quickens, and his irises undulate as deep water.

Distantly, I hear one of the princesses laugh again. I hear the other murmur, “A truly horrifying weapon.”

“Look even deeper. See past his words. Search for that place inside him where his lies exist. Seek the truth buried within,” Cora compels, and my attention sharpens without my permission. My entire being seizes on the bishop in a new, terrifying way. On those eyes, and the lies sparking behind them.

“I always wanted to be a priest.”

“I have never been in love.”

“Please, Cora. Spare us this little performance,” someone says. “It’s clear she has no idea what she’s doing.”

I can barely pay them any attention, however, because now I am wading through gray, gray, gray. Plain, boring gray. Earnest, foolish gray. Deeper and deeper and deeper. Gritting my teeth at the unpleasant sensation, I sink further, and the gray of his eyes—it changes.

Suddenly, his irises unfurl. Not just into thread this time: into so much more.

They transform into the gray of springtimes beneath vaulted cathedral ceilings where the smell of incense is thick and everywhere. The gray of a woman’s laugh that slices through my chest and reminds me of hastily packed luggage and a letter thrown into a roaring fire. The gray of fresh wrinkles discovered in foggy bathroom mirrors and eternity contemplated on an altar with a full glass of cheap wine.

The gray of that woman’s touch, years ago, hot enough to still feel it now. To still feel it with every breath.

The gray of regret, sadness, grief, torment.

The shade bleeds through the rest of the room until it all falls away, until I feel myself fall away too, and I’m sinking, drowning, in its riptide. I don’t remember myself, where I am or who I am, because there is just bishop gray. There is just the truth, disguised with ugly, pathetic lies. Something wet slides down my cheeks, and then a voice says, “Do you feel his truth? Can you taste his essence?”

I think… I do.

The history of him unfolds before me like parchment, the ink dry and faded from age.

“His essence will be the easiest part of him for you to grasp,” the voice says. “His truth. You need to hold it in your hands.”

His essence. His truth. A faraway part of me—the part with a hand, with a name—recoils from the words, struggling to regain control. There is only the taste of regret, however, mulled and bitter like grapes. The feel of a small boy clutching the dirt beside a grave. And—