25
The next seven weeks are completely uneventful.
I scribble in my journal at night and hide it under my bed during the day.
I learn to shift in Combat and Conquest and research potions in Alchemical Designs, desperate to understand the one I found in Evie’s room.
I don’t miss another meal. I don’t skip any classes.
I don’t even sleep until dawn most mornings. All things considered, I’m trying.
So much so that I’m currently unraveling a spool of trip wire in front of my door before bed.
It’s not fancy by any means, but placing it when I’m alone or leaving my room has kept Evie out.
The threats have ceased. For now. Next, I set up a handful of nails that I’ve managed to steal from the wall where the werewolves haphazardly installed my malfunctioning television, arranging them so that the pointed ends stick straight up in the air.
The nails are gold and not silver unfortunately; they won’t cause any lasting harm to a werewolf intruder.
But they’ll hurt like a bitch, instigating enough of a commotion that I’ll hear it and react.
If Combat and Conquest has taught me one thing, it’s that a werewolf dies fastest via wolfsbane or silver to the heart, or by having their hearts ripped out or their heads torn off. I grimace. Exceedingly gruesome, like all things in this court.
The moon rises high outside my window. Full, glowing like a candle in the night.
I try not to notice it. Try to forget the feel of jaws clamping around my waist and blood slick on my hands.
I have no more room for error, and that includes losing control of myself.
My fingers tremble, but I suck down breath after breath as I turn away from the bright disturbance.
Once the booby traps are set, I slide into bed and take out my journal.
However, while I should open it and recite the list of facts I jotted down after Ancestral Archives of Superior Societies this morning, I can’t help flipping to the back of the journal to a list of names, a date, and a location.
ANASTASIA ISLAND BEACH, SEPTEMBER 12
Werewolves in attendance
Sinclair Severi—Alpha
Calix Severi—Beta
Eric Lee — Alpha
Evelyn Lee — Alpha
Katerina Aston—Beta
Antionette Cox—Beta
Myles Win—Beta
My heart aches. The journal feels like a casket in my hands.
The last tangible piece I have of Celeste’s life.
Her death. My rebirth. If only I had more evidence than just Eric and Evie being two of the only remaining Alphas I’ve not interrogated with my gift—if only I had saved the potion I found in Evie’s room and had a way to pin the threats on her.
There has to be more evidence out there.
Concrete evidence. I flick through the pages, but it doesn’t help, so I shut the journal first, and then my eyes.
Tears threaten to slip down my cheeks, but I don’t let them fall.
“It’s not over yet,” I whisper to myself, or maybe it’s to Celeste.
To whatever remains of her in this lifetime.
“There’s still time.” Five weeks before the Ascension.
Almost a month before Evie and Sin become engaged and she solidifies her place as the future of this court.
And even if I don’t meet that deadline, I have years before her coronation. There’s still time.
God. I wish I could hallucinate now. Just to see Celeste again.
To hear her laugh, to witness her smile, to remember it all.
I thought I’d never forget her. I thought I’d hold on to every piece of her for eternity, but the more enmeshed I become in this court, the less I maintain from before.
I promised her. I promised her, and I’m fucking terrified I’m going to break it and shatter that last true bit of her, of us.
Our love. Our bond. Once I lose that, I’ll have nothing.
Nothing left of my old life. Not my dad, not my house, not even school. Nothing.
My door opens then—a sudden creak and a gust of warm air. I leap from bed, extending a hand, summoning forth my claws from that bone in the center of my palm. The razors rip from my fingers, and I hiss against the pain, utilize the anger it ignites as I brace myself for the intrusion.
“Fuck. Shit. Ow. ” Sin steps directly into my trap, and three nails impale the heel of his fuzzy slipper, and the trip wire entangles his legs. He flails, nearly crashing to the floor before he catches himself on the door. The wood splinters under his furious grasp. “What in the stars is this?”
“Sin!” I can’t quite will my claws to vanish with the surprise of his appearance startling me away from pain and rage, but I try anyway. Only two recede. “What… what are you doing here?” I glance at the window. “It’s past midnight .”
“I’m aware.” Rather unbecomingly, he hops toward my plush armchair and sits down.
Lifting his slipper in the air, he winces and peels the wool from his skin.
A nail squelches. He curses a few more times, his blood leaking on my floor.
“Were you out to ruin my favorite slippers, or is this simply a kink of yours?”
I shake my head and force the rage to sink back beneath the surface. Finally, the rest of my claws disappear, albeit more painfully than when they’d emerged. “I… no. No. How was I supposed to know you were going to show up?”
“Were you waiting on another suitor?” His lips twist in a grimace as he plucks another nail from his foot, and then he throws the stained slipper on the floor. “Luring my cousin to you with sharp objects and trip wire?”
I frown at his poorly concealed jealousy. “Your cousin?”
“Calix?” Sin flicks the last offending nail onto the ground. “Tall, dark, and handsome? Anger issues? The stubborn loyalty of an ass—”
“I know who Calix is; my question was directed at the utter stupidity of your own. I set up booby traps, not a summoning circle.”
“Summoning circle,” Sin echoes. “Someone’s paying attention during lessons.” He heaves out a great sigh as his skin knits itself back together. “Stars above, sometimes I think you were sent here to kill me.”
I roll my eyes but—warmth floods my chest. He’s telling the truth. I raise a brow. Surely, he’s just being dramatic. “Why are you here, Sin?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
Another truth.
“You’re bleeding on my rug,” I say. “The sooner you speak, the sooner I can clean it before Oona blames me for the stain.”
But all he says is, “You don’t like blood.”
I cross my arms, suddenly feeling too bare in my long black shirt.
I can only be glad Sin hasn’t seemed to scent to whom it belongs.
Although, I’m not wearing Calix’s shirt because of him; I’m wearing it because it’s the only thing in my wardrobe that feels…
pure. Free of the grand eccentricities of the werewolf court.
It’s just a shirt. A plain, boring shirt. I miss home.
“No one likes blood.”
Sin laughs, his red eyes brighter than the moon’s cruel glow.
“If you believe that, then you haven’t spent long enough in this asylum.
” He smiles, but a flare of uncomfortable heat blows through my ribs.
It’s a lie. His facade is crumbling. He slouches in the chair, picking torn trip wire from his sweatpants.
Seems I’m not the only one who enjoys human simplicities.
“You should be meaner, Vanessa,” he declares suddenly. A truth. “I don’t speak to you outside of a few words here and there, but you let me sit on your chair and bleed on your floor.”
I rub my hands up and down my arms, trying to warm myself from the chill in his voice. “It’s my fault you’re bleeding.”
He glances up, and my hands fall limp at my sides. His expression is so unguarded—so wholly, lethally him —that my heart aches. I move toward him.
“Sin, wh-what’s wrong?” I whisper. “Did something happen?”
“Something is always happening here. That’s the problem.” He wipes a hand down his face in frustration. He doesn’t look like a prince right now; he looks like a man. A young man, broken and bleeding in more ways than one. “Something is always wrong .”
“Tell me.”
He blinks away tears and reaches out, taking my hand and tugging me onto his lap.
For a second, I freeze, unsure of myself—of us entwined like this.
But then he breathes, his heart pounding against me, and I ease into the feel of his protection.
His arms wrap around me, and he fists a hand in my hair, pressing my cheek to his chest. I hug him fiercely, my own hands curling into his hair.
Even though a part of me is still drowning in grief, I allow myself this moment. Allow myself to live.
“Vanessa,” he murmurs. Just my name, as if it’s a plea. A prayer. “Do you know what I like most about you?”
Alarms ring in my head. They cry out warnings of danger. We can’t talk like this. Even in the dark. Even when I’m in his lap . I attempt to lighten the mood. “That I’m consistently the worst in our lessons? That I don’t know which fork to use at supper?”
Sin refuses to be distracted from his thoughts.
“I’ve never met anyone like you before. You care.
You care about everything, and you’re not satisfied with simple answers.
You demand the truth. You demand justice—moral, righteous justice.
You are good .” He shakes his head, still tethering me to him.
“You should hate me. You should kick me out and never speak to me again. It’s what I deserve. ”
“Sin—”
“Use your gift. You know I’m being honest.”