Page 45 of Devoured

I can’t stop picturing that line of corpses, broken like dolls.

Ghosts haunt me day and night, as if the nightmares weren’t horrid enough when I first experienced them. I keep reliving them. With every blink, devastation flickers in a montage of gore and grief like an old movie projected on a bloodstained wall. No matter how strong I try to be, no matter how much Evie and I plan, it’s as if I can’t escape the panic. As if I can’t escape myself.

My chest caves in. My organs snarl in knots.

I glare at the draught in my hand, at the woodsy liquid that has become more of a compulsion than a salvation, and hurl it at the wall.

The glass shatters on impact.

Amber splashes against the wallpaper before sliding down in crystalline beads. My heart leaps into my throat as I watch, the potent stench of the elixir strengthening with every second. It smells like relief. It smells like freedom. Oh god. What have I done? My bones break again. Re-form until the wolf is gone, and I am entirely human once more. But I don’t pay attention to the transformation. I’m already moving.

Scrambling forward, glass cutting into my palms and knees, I try to collect the remaining liquid in my hands. The droplets slide over my fingers like tears. “No. No.”

“What are you doing?” A hard, angry voice.

I turn and slam the chest closed.

Glaring up at Calix, who looms in my doorway like a harbinger of darkness, I hide my healing palms under my arms and rise on trembling legs. A red rash mottles my skin, however, and my room smells only of the elixir’s musk and my own fear. Calix regards my face, the shards on the ground and in my knees, before cursing under his breath. He kneels abruptly then, and I don’t understand what’s happening until he plucks out the glass and tosses it aside.

“What are you doing, Hart?” he repeats, his voice deep and simmering with rage as he rises.

I slide the teak chest out of sight and pivot away from him, pretending to be fascinated by the corner of a tapestry. “I’m busy. Unless you need something—”

“There was glass in your leg,” he growls. “Clearly something happened. I could smell your terror from outside Sin’s room.”

I grit my teeth, fervently trying to steady my pulse. “Like I said, I’m busy.” I don’t look at him. I don’t want him here. It hurts to be around him, to remember. It makes me weak to remember, and I am so tired of being weak.

He doesn’t seem satisfied by my answer, though. Seizing my wrist, he whirls me toward him. Too close to him. He drops my wrist almost immediately, but it’s too late. He’s right there. His red gaze blazes through mine.

It’s too much. Feeling this way, being sick and twisted up inside, hurts. Everything hurts, even though it shouldn’t. Calix and I were hardly friends before the winter solstice. I shouldn’t care this much. I shouldn’t care at all.

My voice flattens to a dull monotone. “Who was she? Arielle?”

His jaw clenches, and his fists tighten at his sides. He doesn’t like my pretending not to care. Good. “I’m not discussing her.”

“Sure.” I shrug as if I still don’t care one bit, relishing how his body coils tighter. Harder. Maybe if I push him enough, he’ll erupt. Then it’ll be his rage incinerating everything. His pain instead of mine. “I’ll keep my secrets, and you keep yours.”

“So you care about my secrets now?”

“I care about the truth, Calix. I’m a Truthseer, remember?” Thinking of the title—the title thrust on me, the title I never asked for—sends a bolt of rage through my chest. I let that bolt anchor me, wash over me, until I feel mildly in control again.

“Is that why you won’t look at me?” He steps closer, and I step back instinctively. “Why you won’t speak to me?” Another step. “Is that why you won’t listen to anything I say?” He continues stalking forward until my back hits the wall. “You hate me, Vanessa. Why the hell would I tell you anything?”

When my body stiffens, he sets a hand beside my head as if expecting me to flee. He traps me so I have nowhere else to go.

Heat floods me at his nearness. I glance at the wardrobe on the other side of me, debating whether I should smash through it to escape. But something in me doesn’t want to escape just yet. It wants to fight.

“Yes.” I glare up at him. “I hate you, Calix. I have always hated you. So why are you here?”

“You know why I’m here.” His breath fans over my face in cinnamon-scented fury. “Stop acting stupid. I can see you, Hart. You’re playing at games you don’t understand, and you’re going to lose. You can’t outwit Cora. You can’t poison her fucking werewolves and get away with it.”

God. I want to throw a fist into that perfect jaw. I want to feel his bones crush under my hand. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Calix.”

“And you’re going to die, Hart.”

Truth.

But I don’t care whether he believes this. Calix is always honest—until he’s not. “Am I still a threat for you to remove?” His gaze darkens at the question, but I don’t let him speak, rising up on my toes and invading his personal space for a change. “Or perhaps you’re looking for a different best friend of mine to murder. Unfortunately for you, they’re all dead.”