18
I wake on the floor of my brand-new room to an ear-piercing scream.
With a start, I lurch upright. Sunlight streams in through my window, a kaleidoscope of lavenders and lilacs from the reflective stained-glass flickering along my exposed legs.
The obsidian rug beneath me scratches, and my head throbs from the hard ground, but a single glance at the luxurious bed behind me turns my stomach.
A reminder that not only am I unfit for this place, I’m also unsafe here.
Another scream, and I curl deeper under my violet blanket.
I can’t quite pinpoint it exactly, but I know it’s beneath me.
The sound echoes, burrowing first into my eardrums and then into my skull.
I shiver. This court is more ferocious than I could have ever imagined, and I have no power. Not even as… whatever I am.
Those screams should belong to me.
Yesterday’s threats linger in the air, same as the stench of the maid’s blood.
Whoever sent the threats must be stronger than me.
Faster. Deadlier. Everyone in this castle fits that profile.
Everyone in this castle is a monster. And I—I can’t make a single claw grow straight.
I can’t even get my fangs to lengthen outside of a fight.
What am I going to do if Evie decides to go for another round? What will I do if the threats turn into attacks? The answer rings out as clear as the last and final scream.
Nothing. Right now, I can do nothing .
I hold my head in my hands and feel Celeste like a ghost at my back as her phantom voice whispers, “ If you die here, so do I. ”
My chest aches. My eyes burn. I miss her. I miss her, but I can’t avenge her like this. Some pathetic, out-of-control half nightmare.
What the hell am I going to do?
A gentle rap on the door pulls my attention upward, and I swallow my fear and regret with a hard gulp before climbing to my feet. “Oo-Oona? Come in.”
“Unfortunately, no.” Sinclair opens my door—just a crack. Wide enough to slide inside and shut it softly behind him. “Though I’m more than happy to bathe and dress you if you so require it.”
I glare at him, arms crossed tight over the chest of my thin chemise while he smiles. It’s not his usual smirk, however. It’s kinder. A delicate hitch of his lips on his supernaturally beautiful face. Lie.
“You’re looking chipper,” I manage, voice quivering slightly from fear. Did he hear the screams? Does he care? “For someone who enjoys pretending I don’t exist outside of the walls of my own room.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic.” Sin untangles a slender crown from his blond hair and tosses it onto a shadowy corner of my new black dresser. The woven gold clangs against the painted wood, immediately forgotten as he pulls a hand through his newly freed hair. “I waved to you at least once.”
“Sure. After Evie offered to dump a boiling cup of tea on my head if I came to supper.”
“You and Evie don’t like each other. Who am I to intervene?”
I shake my head and turn away from him; I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Sin and Evie have probably known each other their entire lives, and I’m… I’m nothing to them. I’m just a Bitten werewolf thrust into their world. “What do you want, Prince Sinclair?”
His burgundy eyes narrow, glowing redder by the second in my soft, purple room.
Gossamer curtains drape from wall to wall, and wisteria cascades in a waterfall above my fluffy bed.
Violet roses bloom from the cracks in the roof, while a black-framed television hangs beside a gothic wardrobe and plays the comforting soundtrack of white noise.
It doesn’t get any channels yet. Oona said she has to try to fix that.
Sin takes in the latest decor before dropping onto a plush black armchair and kicking his legs over the side.
If not for the casual way he sits, he could be the renaissance portrait of an angel, all gilded muscles and satin hair, but those eyes…
They betray his strength for what it truly is—lethal.
“Using my title isn’t having the adverse effect you’re hoping for, darling. I enjoy being called prince .”
I huff. “Of course you—” I say, but a burst of heat in my chest stoppers the rest of the insult. That familiar heat flares between my ribs and shoots all the way to my toes. Lie.
He’s lying.
I stare at Sin. He stares back at me. Dares me to speak the truth with a tilt of his head and the direct threat of his darkening eyes.
And maybe I’m stupid—maybe I do deserve to die without a single chance of bringing Celeste’s murderer to their knees—because I don’t stay silent.
I say, “Isn’t the whole woe is me; I’m so privileged, and it’s ruining my life thing a little cliché? ”
I wait for a flash of the violence everyone else in this damned castle has shown.
A glimpse of the wolf beneath the boy. But Sin only sighs and relaxes deeper into the chair.
“Isn’t the whole woe is me; I’m so sad that I’d rather waste away in my room as a victim than talk to anyone or go anywhere thing a little cliché? ”
I swallow hard, but there’s no swallowing the anger that throttles me to my core. Something wild and barbaric claws at my bones, and I hate it. I wish it would stop.
“I’m not playing victim,” I manage to say quietly. Almost composed. “My best friend died . And you… you left me to fend for myself.” My dad left me too. Everyone leaves me.
Sin watches me through hooded lids and long lashes. As though he’s sitting in the VIP booth of an exclusive club and not in front of a werewolf ready to burst out of her own flesh. “Do you think your friend is the only one who has lost her life to the wolves?”
Whatever I expected him to say, it’s not this. “I… no . Of course not.”
“Do you think our kind is exempt from the perils of our own transformations?”
I glare harder, wishing I could stitch his lips shut. “ You are less of a peril to your court than you are to humans.”
“ We are a danger to everyone ,” Sin says.
“A month ago, during a visit from the Duke and Duchess of the Mexican territory, Queen Sybil and her current First General, Lord Allard, decided the nobles were hiding too many assets and funds from the crown. They were quickly dispatched within these very walls. Duchess Angel Martinez and her husband, Duke Santiago, had their tongues ripped out, their hands torn off, and their skin peeled from their bones. The countesses and baronesses of their territory were made to watch.” His gaze moves to the floor. “As was I.”
Acid rises in my throat. But I refuse to be sick here, in front of him. Refuse to show any more signs of weakness. “Wh-why are you telling me this?”
“Because”—his eyes slide back to mine—“if you’re going to partake in a game, you should at least know the rules.”
“And what are the rules?”
“Don’t forget that your life lies within a wolf’s den now, and only the strongest survive here.
Don’t let anyone antagonize you to the point of breaking.
Don’t forsake traditions. Follow commands, and never let them see your loyalties falter.
” His voice lowers, losing any trace of humor that might have remained.
“I can’t protect you, Vanessa, as much as I might want to do so.
My loyalty will always have to remain to the throne. ”
Beneath his mother now , I think suddenly. One day, with Evie.
I should get stuck on that, on thinking about his future wife and the court they’ll rule together. But another word snags my attention first— protect .
I can’t protect you. I study him closely, from the crisp lines of his linen pants to the starched collar of his purposely untucked shirt.
It’s an admission that he cares. Even if he can’t do anything about it.
An admission that… maybe he’s different.
My loyalty will always have to remain to the throne.
“What do you want, Prince Sinclair?” I ask, focusing on the chamber of my heart that locks onto a lie like a heat-seeking missile.
“I’m not here because of what I want,” he says. And there it is. Another spark of embers, like touching the beginning tendrils of a wildfire. A lie. “I’m here for you.”
I raise my brows. The fire sinks into my blood, stretching itself into a luxurious blanket of warmth and comfort. It feels safe. Secure. He’s telling the truth now. But how can that be? He’s here for me and here for him?
He stands, fingering the buttons of his shirt until another is undone, as though he’s loosening the more severe parts of him, forcing himself to shed the court hierarchy as if it’s a second skin he can take off and hang up in his wardrobe when he chooses.
His eyes crease in the corners. His lips fall into an easy smile. Too easy. Too beautiful. Too perfect.
He said he made his first kill the day after his transition.
Said he has to witness the horrors of court again and again.
Who would I be if I’d grown up here? If I hadn’t had a father who spent his early mornings trying to braid his daughter’s hair and a best friend who caked her polished nails in mud every year?
When Sin relaxes his shoulders and says, “Queen Sybil noticed you weren’t at supper last night.
You’re needed at breakfast, lest you want her to employ a guard to watch over you.
And I can’t promise that said guard wouldn’t be Calix, although I’d be remiss if I didn’t volunteer myself first,” I let him crack his smile open wider and wink at me.
“Sin?” I ask, needing an answer for this one thing. A truth.
“Yes, Vanessa?” He picks up his crown, pausing before setting it back atop his perfectly imperfect hair.
“Why do you want to protect me?”