Page 40 of Devoured

And when she died, I felt everything.

When Eric died, I felt the moment his soul vanished. When my mother fell to the ground, her scream rattled through our bond. When my father joined her, my finger throbbed. But when Nettie died, our rings splintered through the center. As if I hadn’t made the rings strong enough. As if they couldn’t withstand the earth-shattering pain that exploded through me the second Cora’s werewolves tore into her.

I glance down at my hands now. To the common eye, I wear absolutely nothing on my middlemost fingers, but, in truth, I carry their deaths wherever I go. It makes it easier for me to plot revenge. It makes it easier for me to dream up a thousand ways to slit Cora’s throat in the dead of night.

I am not afraid of those dark parts of myself. I know my strength lies within them.

I want Cora Severi to suffer. I want the entire castle to break. It is the only way forward. Nettie, Eric, Mother, Father—Cora stole them.

I am going to make her regret it. I curl my hands into fists, the rings scorching as I prowl through the halls. Cora is going to regret it today.

Already, twenty of her werewolves have collapsed. Breathing but barely alive. Seeing but barely conscious. Paralyzed by ghostbane.

We are minutes away from Cora finding them. If all goes according to plan, Vanessa and I will be the last werewolves accused of treason. Although, when Vanessa and I originally planned on paralyzing half of Cora’s insufferable pack, she was meant to be distracting Cora and buying me the time I needed to finish the job. But I catch a whiff of caramel and lavender in the corridor when Mikayla comes barreling out of the library with her cart, and I realize Vanessa has managed to screw that up too.

Stars above.

Vanessa’s scent perfumes the cool air as mugs chatter and clink with every push of Mikayla’s rickety cart. Beyond the library doors, I count half a dozen werewolves on the floor. Legs limp, arms splayed wide, and bodies paler than the moon. They have all collapsed from the nonlethal dose of ghostbane coffee.

Vanessa, however, is nowhere in sight.

Thank the stars, because I really don’t have time to yell at her right now. Whatever her reason is for abandoning Cora early, it better be a damn good one. As it is, without Vanessa distracting Cora, I’ll only have five minutes to clean up any and all evidence of our schemes.

Maybe less.

If Eric were here, he would murder Mikayla and bury her body in the Realm of Superiority’s forest. If Nettie were here, she would plead with me to have mercy and compel Mikayla instead. But I cannot murder anyone confidently, not with Cora keeping a watchful eye over every single one of her precious werewolves, and I cannot compel Mikayla without endangering myself.

If Cora were to compel Mikayla, if the Wolf Queen were to undo my own compulsion, then she would know exactly which two wolves have been sabotaging her. Attempting to sabotage her—the records room heist didn’t help us much at all. I growl low, under my breath, as a grape rolls from Mikayla’s cart onto the obsidian tiles. I quickly squash it under my boot.

Convincing Mikayla to serve the coffee had been easy enough—a forged note from her queen, a threat, a pot of steaming, fetid poison—but now I have to stop Mikayla before Cora can smell the ghostbane, see the forged note, and interrogate Mikayla. I have to incapacitate Mikayla without her knowing I’m the one doing it. I have to be invisible—or as invisible as a werewolf can be when they don’t have literal powers of invisibility.

Difficult. A pain in the ass. But not impossible.

Hiding in the shadows now, hood pulled over my head and syringe tucked deep in my pocket, I creep along the wall behind Mikayla. She whistles a cheery, grating tune, her long dark hair swishing behind her. One of Cora’s newest werewolves, dragged in from the city of St. Augustine. Less than a month ago, Mikayla was a drug dealer. She set up shop outside of schools, luring impressionable mortal teens with her pretty smile and fluttering lashes. The kind of criminal who was too beautiful to ever be accused by the mortal police. The kind of criminal whose morals were so low, she didn’t give a shit about the lives she was ruining as long as money continued to line her own pockets.

I don’t know if Cora picked her—bit her—specifically because of that, but I refuse to believe it’s purely a coincidence. Nothing with Cora is ever a coincidence.

Mikayla reaches the end of the corridor and begins to lift the cart easily in her arms, turning toward the stairs.

I wait until she takes a step down the stairwell. It’s a tighter space. Too confined for her to fight. Not that I’m worried about a new werewolf overpowering me. I have trained in seventeen different countries. I have learned under the most renowned nobility. I am the daughter of Queen Jae and King Zhiyu, and that was Cora’s first mistake in leaving me alive.

I burst out of the shadows soundlessly.

Between one blink and the next, I pounce on Mikayla, one hand clamping over her mouth and the other driving the cold syringe into the exposed skin of her throat. Liquid ghostbane—boiled into a toxic concentration days ago—flashes silver in the low light before it disappears into her vein.

Mikayla jerks, a muffled scream tearing uselessly into my palm. “Why?” And then, “Stop!”

I don’t give a shit, however, not about her cries or her gurgled pleas or the way her limbs seize almost instantly. I simply release her and shove.

All at once, the cart lurches, and her body crumbles.

Metal shrieks as she hits the stairs wrong, her paralyzed body folding limply as the cart crashes over her, mugs shattering, coffee still steaming as they all barrel down. The sound is deafening as plates explode, and the entire staircase erupts in sheer chaos. Werewolves shout. Feet pound. Someone shrieks for the queen.

And then, from somewhere below, Cora’s voice rings out, furious. “What is going on?!”

The sound crawls under my skin, and my rings flare so hot it nearly drops me to my knees. “Why?” Mikayla asked.

Why? The answer is so simple, it’s written on my bones, in my flesh, on my rings.