Page 69 of Devoured

“And I’m supposed to believe you didn’t say anything to Arielle, or she didn’t hear your thoughts—”

“I’m not the one constantly putting you in harm’s way. Last time I saw you, you cut yourself with glass. Now you look like someone tried severing your limbs. You know what my first thought was when I saw you in bed with my cousin? I was worried you’d done it to yourself. I thought I was going to have to lock you up. Why can’t you just be safe?” I wince, and he swears, unable to stop himself from continuing. “Then I realized, it wasn’t your doing at all, and Sin was protecting you. Why—why can you talk to him and not to me? Why are you always fighting me?”

I shake my head. “Y-you’re always fighting me.”

“Because you infuriate me!”

“You infuriated me first!”

He stalks toward a mahogany dresser rather than the unmade bed and perches me on the edge. My gaze only reaches his chin, so I have to crane my neck to look up at him. He hasn’t taken his eyes off me once. His fists curl around the wood beside my thighs. “Do you understand how hard it is to exist in this fucking place when you are always in danger?”

I think back to Arielle’s declaration and bite my tongue. “He is mad at himself for not realizing and saving you first.”

If that’s true, then we have no reason to fight at all. Other than his presence igniting a raging fire deep in my chest, and my being unable to look at him for minutes at a time without aching, Calix and I should be amicable. Right?

“I’m not trying to die. Believe me, I’d love nothing more than for everyone to stop dying.”

“Then, quit.” He lowers his head, resting his forehead against mine. His scarlet gaze blazes like the sun. “Go lock yourself inside your room and let me figure everything out—”

“Calix, your way of handling things is to run headfirst into a forest fire. You’re not going to repair this court by bickering with Cora. She’ll kill you the second you go too far.”

“I’m aware.”

I laugh sharply. “So you’re worried about me dying but not yourself? That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m trying to save you—”

“Maybe there’s nothing left of me to be saved!” I turn my cheek away from him, but he forces it back, his palm hot on my skin.

“That is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard,” he says. “Your injuries will be healed in a few days.”

“This isn’t about my injuries.” Gently, without twisting my wrist, I take his fingers in mine and move his hand to my chest. To my heart. He sucks in a sharp breath as it beats wildly against his touch. “I’m not whole anymore.” I want to tell him more. I want to tell him so badly how I feel hollow inside, empty where there aren’t jagged broken pieces. I want to tell him that there is something wrong with me.

I erased a man’s existence. I killed a man with a power I don’t even understand, and Cora is going to use me as a weapon unless we find a way to defeat her first. “I’m not good,” I whisper. “I can’t be saved.”

He snarls. “That’s a lie.”

“No,” I say, feeling the warm honesty curl around the hollows of my heart. “It’s not.”

He seizes my forearm in a hard grasp, forcing my own hand to his chest. His heart beats even faster than my own, rapid and erratic and completely out of sync. “Do you feel that?” he breathes. “Do you feel me?”

He’s too close. He’s everywhere. His touch, his gaze, his breath. “Y-yes.”

“If I know one thing in this world to be true, Truthseer, it’s that you’re good. Not me or Sin or anyone else in this miserable castle. You. Vanessa, you’re strong. You can survive this. One day…” He shakes his head and draws closer still. “One day, you’ll go to the beach, and lie in the sun, and you’ll know you’re safe. Truly, irrevocably safe. All of this will just be a distant memory, and you’ll finally be happy.”

His honesty suffuses my chest like a soft implosion of sunlight, and I blink at him. In confusion. In wonder. “Calix—”

“I’m not intending to rescue you like you’re some damsel from a fairy tale. I just want you to have the life you deserve—the life you would have had before I…” His eyes close. He can’t say it, however, and I don’t blame him. Not right now. I slide my hand tentatively from his heart to his throat to his jaw. His muscles only tighten beneath my grasp, until I work my fingers against them, and he relaxes. When his eyes open, they blaze through mine. He withdraws an inch. “But I can’t do any of that if you’re staging a revolution.”

My cheeks flame. It sounds so juvenile when he says it. Revolution. What the hell do I know about revolutions? “I’m not.”

“You’re lying,” he says simply.

“So are you.”

He straightens at that, the dresser groaning as his claws burrow deeper into the wood. “And now you’re fighting.”

“I want your honesty,” I plead. “I feel like I’m losing my mind. I—I have this aching suspicion you’re not telling me everything about Arielle—”