Page 75 of Devoured

Portia sighs. “Oh, Vanessa, I’m so—”

But Evie’s voice cuts through hers like a blade. “Don’t apologize to her. She’s withholding something.” Glaring at me, she says, “You realize our lives are on the line, right, Hart?” She rises to her feet in one quick, fluid second. “If you’re keeping secrets, then you’re as expendable as the rest.” Her fangs rip from her gums, but Portia leaps after her. She grabs Evie’s arm to hold her back.

“Stop, Evie. Let her speak.”

I glance between them, and my stomach hurts. In a perfect world, I’d simply lie. But I can’t look Evie in the eyes and lie to her now. She’s been through too much. She’s just a girl who is afraid.

She can’t trust anyone anymore. Not all the way. Not even me.

“Well?” Evie hisses. “You have five seconds before I—”

“She had me kill someone.” I force myself to breathe through the words, to continue when I’d rather cut out my own tongue. “Before the poisoning. She—she had me kill an innocent m-man with my… my powers. My gift.”

Evie blinks. Her body relaxes in Portia’s grasp, so much so that Portia releases her. Evie staggers forward, and her fangs vanish. “I don’t understand.”

I drag my knees inward, curling up as small as possible. “Cora wants to use me as a weapon. She had me… She told me to…” I choke on the words as that dull ache builds in my skull, just as it does whenever I think about the bishop. I can’t tell them. I just can’t.

“And?” Portia moves toward Evie. Toward me. They both stare with wide eyes, waiting.

“What is it, Vanessa?” Evie implores.

I’ve been trying so hard not to recall those moments: the unending gray, the pain ripping through me, the way he disappeared in a flash. But I can’t ignore them any longer.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him. I remember him, even if no one else can.

“Please,” Portia whispers. “Please tell us, Vanessa. I promise you that we can handle it. We can help you.” And then, firmer, “You are not alone.”

It’s the last that makes my chest sting. It’s the last that makes me finally admit, “I’m supposed to be a Truthseer, but something is wrong with my power, and only Cora understands it.”

I glance up pathetically and force myself not to be sick all over Portia’s beautiful floor. “Cora brought out a bishop, and she made him lie to me. She made me look into his eyes and feel his truth. But it—it was different than usual. Something was wrong. It’s like I wasn’t me anymore. I could feel everything. Every truth he lived. Every lie he told. I could feel him, touch him, taste him.” I shake my head, the movement pained as the ache in my skull builds with every admission. The bed seems to waver beneath me. “Cora told me to rewrite his truth. To change his past. She told me I’m the beholder of the truth, and I can make any lie a reality. Then she said… She made me…”

“What?” Evie breathes. “What did you do?”

My voice cracks. Breaks. “I was trying to make him happy. I just wanted to take away his sadness. He was so—so sad. But he’d been sad for so long, and the only way to undo it was to change his existence. It was to make him never be born.” I recall his mother’s screams, so vivid it’s as if they still ring out around me, but hazy too. As if there is a filter over them now. As if I’m remembering them wrong. “In that second, he disappeared. Somehow—someway—I made him vanish. Just like that.” I snap my fingers weakly, praying they’ll understand. But how can they? I changed history all because of Cora. “I could see into his brain one moment, and the next… he was gone.”

“But that’s not possible,” Portia says, exchanging an incredulous glance with Evie. “I’ve never heard of that happening. Ever.”

Evie lowers onto her knees and sets a cautious hand on my leg. Her touch is ice cold but comforting all the same. “Was it a dream? Did you fall asleep?”

I blink at that.

Did I?

A pitiful sort of hope flickers in my chest as I reexamine the memories in a new light. I hadn’t considered the possibility. Maybe it was a dream Cora implanted in my head. Maybe Sin—no. That hope vanishes in a spark of pain. Dalla witnessed it. Valja witnessed it. Cora’s werewolves witnessed it, and they haven’t let me forget it since. “It wasn’t a dream.”

Portia shakes her head. “Are you certain—”

“Yes.” I urge Evie to read the truth in my gaze. “Cora watched me. They all watched me. But I don’t think any of them remember it now. It’s like—they remembered parts of it at first. They remembered that there was a man, and he no longer exists. But they can’t remember the bishop at all anymore. Only I can.” Tears burn hot in my gaze. “Somehow, I was inside his brain, and now he’s gone.”

“Stars.” Portia closes her eyes briefly.

Evie continues watching me as though trying to find some clue hidden on my face. “Do you think this has to do with your eyes?”

“Maybe?” My frown deepens, and I lift a helpless shoulder. “I’m not sure.”

“Have you tried… re-creating it?”

“Re-creating it?” My head pounds. My pulse races. I taste bile on my tongue. “No. No, it made me sick. It hurt.”