Page 83 of Devoured

“No. It isn’t. Not yet.” His words are sharp. With jealousy? Or with loathing? I can’t decide which is worse.

“What’s two months when we have a preternatural lifetime ahead of us?”

“Sin,” Calix snarls. “Stop. With. The. Bullshit.”

“What you call bullshit, I call charm, Cousin.”

He stares at me. I stare back at him. And what I want to do most right now is ask if he remembers that night too. I want to know if he remembers the bear and the laughter and our voices echoing through a forest that no longer seems to exist for us. I would give anything to go back. But I can’t.

I broke this castle just as I broke Vanessa.

But I broke Calix—I broke us—the most.

“Cora almost paralyzed her,” Calix says. “Vanessa could have died.”

My feet hit the ground with a hard thud. “You think I don’t know that?”

Calix scoffs. A hard, angry breath. “I think you don’t care. Not enough to change anything. Not enough to do anything about any of this.” He glares at me, and those new red eyes pulse with detestation. Stars, I miss the gold. I miss when we were boys.

“Nothing would have changed with Sybil as queen,” I finally say. “You and I both know this castle was just as much of a prison before. No one was any safer.”

Calix shakes his head tersely. “If you believe that, then why didn’t you tell me about Cora, our parentage…” He runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the blackened strands. “I thought you were my best friend, Sinclair. We shared everything. We were basically brothers.”

My pulse roars. I have no way to calm it. “We were. We are.”

“Brothers don’t betray each other like that. They don’t stab you in the back while smiling to your face. I don’t actually know who you are anymore,” Calix says, uncrossing his arms and shaking his head again. “I don’t know which parts of you are real and which parts are fake. You never let anyone in. All those years, and you never let me in. We’re strangers, Sin. That’s it.”

I can almost hear my heart break. Can almost feel it snap like a rib as I lurch to my feet. “That’s not true.”

“Give me one reason to believe otherwise—to believe you.” His entire body remains locked, rigid, even as he takes a half step toward me. “Well?”

Truths swarm my mouth like a hive of wasps. Incessant and buzzing. Stinging. But I can’t release them. I can’t—because I still don’t know who to trust.

“That’s what I thought.” Cold disappointment hardens his expression as we stare at each other.

“Cora will convince the six other courts to join us,” I say. “Even if she doesn’t, she’ll still be strong enough to threaten them into submission. There’s no need for a bloody, drawn-out war, Calix. And once we’ve established the new world order, everything will calm down. People will stop getting hurt.”

He scoffs. “You think Cora will stop? You think she’ll just… leave the mortals alone? That’s ridiculous.”

My stomach twists as I think about Vanessa. As I remember watching Calix rip teeth through Arielle. I feel sick. “It’s a possibility—”

“And this is what you want? This is your happy ending?” Calix asks, so quietly I almost don’t hear him. “A mother who tortures your future mate? A queen who enslaves the entire fucking world? Come on, Sinclair. You’ve always been pretty, but you’ve never been dumb.” He glances at me with disdain. With pity. And I wish I could burn both from those red irises.

“Glad you can still admit that I’m the pretty one,” I joke—but my skin feels too tight. Too hot. I don’t have answers for him. I hardly even have answers for myself. “Cora swears it will be over soon. She swears it, Calix, and then we can go back to normal. Okay? Just you and me.”

“She is soulless, Sinclair.” His fist clenches once before he drops it to his side; then he inhales deeply. “Maybe there is still enough humanity in there for you to understand this: Cora will never bring peace. Even if she gets her way, even if the entire world bows to her, she will never be satisfied. She will never stop. Because she’s soulless. You need to admit the truth to yourself and realize that you’re probably the only person who can dig us out of this mess. The queen will damn us all to keep herself safe. She is a rabid animal afraid of a cage. She will kill anyone she deems a threat because she just wants to stay alive. That’s all this is. That’s all it’s ever been. The only way Cora can ascertain her survival is by conquering the world first.”

“And you know that because you’re a General?”

“I know that because this place tried to break me too.” He sighs, and the knife lodged in my stomach twists deeper. “But I had you, and you didn’t let it break me. I had you, and that is the only reason I’m still here. Cora wasn’t as fortunate.”

My breath feels like glass in my throat. “Maybe that means there’s still hope for Cora. She didn’t have Sybil, but she has me. I can change her.”

“That ship has sailed,” he says. “There is nothing of Cora left to help. Use your eyes, Sin. Look around you. She’s having us bite humans. She’s stripping us of our own humanity. She’s turning criminals because they’re the ones who will stay the most loyal—they’re the ones who will feel the most indebted to Cora for changing their lives. And she is manipulating you and Vanessa through each other. At the end of all this, you are both threats to her crown. Neither of you will survive this.”

Fuck. I’m going to be sick. “Calix—”

He shakes his head, already turning, reaching for the doorknob behind him. “I don’t care what you do anymore, Sin. If you had talked to me months ago…” His head continues to shake as he looks past me, through me. “But you didn’t, so here we are. Just—think of Vanessa. Whatever you decide affects her too. And you brought her here. You bit her and turned her into this. She’s yours to protect, remember?”