Page 87 of Devoured

“That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Your silly little boys and their silly little hearts.” She licks her lips. “Perhaps tonight, you will finally learn to behave yourself.”

The hidden object creaks, a sudden rattle that threatens to send me leaping out of my skin.

“Please.” My voice thins. My vision distorts. I don’t hallucinate, but I don’t need to. Because those shadows are still moving toward me somehow. Like gnarled hands stretching, reaching for me. And now I smell it—a faint hint of blood. Not nearly as strong as it should be, but my sense of smell has been weaker ever since the sleepless draughts.

Someone must be under that silk. Someone is bleeding.

“I’ll obey you,” I blurt. “I’ll do whatever you ask. Please don’t hurt him.”

Cora runs a hand over the object with a soft purr. “Don’t ever disobey me again.”

The room tightens around me. My vision narrows on that covered object until I’m certain the shadows behind me will crush me in their blackened fists.

No. Please, God, no.

The Wolf Queen removes the silk.

And there—centimeters away from me, locked inside a cage—sits my father. Bound and gagged and shaking with fear.

Not Sin. My father.

“Dad!” I lunge forward, unable to stop myself, but Cora slides in front of him. She blocks him entirely from my view. With a small chuckle, she slides a claw through my hair, nicking my scalp in the process. A droplet of blood slides down my face, just past my ear.

“Either you test your powers on him, darling, or I’ll kill him.” Her smile widens further still. “One way or another, Vanessa Hart, you will hone your gifts. You will allow me to use them.”

30

VANESSA

A CLOCK TICKS SOMEWHERE IN THE DISTANCE. I CAN’T see it, can only hear it, as though Cora has hidden it in the walls. The sound fills the room, each tick a small hammer against my ribs.

“Best hurry,” Cora says. “I won’t give you all night.”

And that’s when I understand—the Wolf Queen is timing me.

Cora steps aside, and I stare, unblinking, at my father. He hunches inside the cage, his uniform shredded into ribbons and his skin broken, bleeding from shallow lacerations. As if he’s been whipped.

Duct tape covers his mouth to stifle his mutterings as he gazes up at me with wide green eyes. I haven’t seen him in months. His beard has thickened, his forehead punctuated with deep-set creases of worry and fear. He shouldn’t be here. He should be safe at home, on his recliner, watching old movies and eating frozen lasagna and falling asleep as soon as the sun sets.

I fall to my knees before him.

The impact knocks the remaining breath from my lungs. Reaching for the door of the cage, the silver scorching my fingertips, I bite down on my tongue. Against the pain. Against my fear, his fear. It doesn’t matter that my wrists blister with the memory of chains, or that my fingertips begin to bleed.

My father is here.

“Dad?” I say, the word almost strange now. “Dad, you’re okay. I’m—I’m going to get you out of there.”

“Are you?” Cora purrs. “I’m not so sure that was our agreement.”

My gaze snaps to hers, but… no. No. Dad can’t die here. He can’t die. “Please, Cora—”

“Test your powers,” she repeats, moving beside the cage, “or I’ll rip out his heart.”

Dad fights against his binds, struggling with his arms duct-taped behind his back, his words far too muffled to understand. I can’t bear to see him this way. In all our years together—even in all those moments when he grieved his separation from my mother or cried after a hard day of work—he has never appeared so hurt before. So broken before.

“Then, open the cage,” I plead.

Cora shakes her head. “I don’t think so, darling.”