Page 70 of Devoured

“You can’t seriously be asking about her again,” Calix growls. “Vanessa, she is a sixteen-year-old orphan! She’s from some foster family who didn’t even notice she went missing. She’s no one.”

Flames scorch my ribs. “Liar,” I hiss. “You’re lying.”

“You already know that she’s a Mind Reader—”

“There is something else!” My voice breaks.

Calix shakes his head, tearing away his gaze with a vicious curse, and it makes me feel even worse. The least he can do is look at me while he’s lying.

“I’m not crazy, Calix. There’s something you’re hiding.”

His nostrils flare on a harsh exhale. “Maybe I don’t want you to know.”

“Why?”

He shakes his head harder, faster, still refusing to look at me. His neck cords as words seem to build in his throat, but he clenches his jaw against them. Fighting them. Fighting me.

“Why, Calix?” I repeat furiously, resisting the urge to shake him.

“I bit her, Vanessa. Okay?” Those scarlet eyes flash to mine as he pushes away. He can’t seem to settle in his skin, instead turning, stalking, pacing the room. “I bit Arielle. I bit an innocent girl because Cora ordered me to, and now she’s a werewolf. Because of me.”

The wave of fury in my chest crashes abruptly. “Oh.” I blink at his rigid back, his restless profile. I wish he’d stop moving for a second and talk to me. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me?”

“Because I don’t want you to keep looking at me like I’m the boy who murdered your best friend.”

And there it is. He said it, and neither of us can take it back.

I swallow roughly, unsure what to do with the strange emotions stuck in my throat. I wanted to talk to Calix, but I can’t—I can’t talk about this. Not now. Maybe not ever.

I clear my throat awkwardly and search for something to say. “Do you… and Arielle… do you feel—”

“No, Vanessa, I don’t love Arielle. Biting a human and transforming them into a werewolf doesn’t mean you automatically fall in love with them.” To my surprise, he doesn’t berate me for the question. He doesn’t snap at me again. He pivots to look at me, finally, with a blistering gaze. “Do you still love Sinclair?”

Oh god.

I stare at him. He stares at me. And I—I don’t know what to say to this either. I don’t know how to tell the truth when I’m so tangled up in it. Do I still love Sin? I swallow hard. No. Yes. Maybe.

Maybe it’s my curse to love him and hate him in equal measure forever.

“I don’t know,” I whisper.

“Yeah. I figured.”

He retreats another step, and it feels as if a gulf divides us now. I can’t think of how to fix it, to make this better, so I change the subject again. Like a coward. Toying with the hem of the curtain around my waist, I say quietly, “Sin loves you, you know. More than anyone else. You need to talk to him, Calix. You’re the only one who will get through to him.”

He sighs, dragging a hand down his face, and sinks onto the edge of the bed. “It’s complicated between Sin and me. I don’t know how to talk to him anymore.”

“He healed me. Cora locked me in the dungeon and shackled me in silver for days, and the only reason I’m alive now is because Sin healed me. And do you know what he told me?” Calix glares down at his hands, but I force him to listen anyway. “He told me he only knows how to heal people because he learned it for you. He said they used to abuse you.”

A curt shake of his head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Calix—”

“No, Vanessa.”

“We can’t keep fighting. We have to start talking.”

“Why?”