27
In the darkness of the unlit classroom, there is only the gold of Calix’s eyes.
Only the sound of our alternating breaths.
He doesn’t move, and neither do I. Just like the other werewolves, he could have me flat on my back in seconds; it would be stupid to flee or fight.
In fact, I don’t see a way out of this. Every path forward leads to my death.
Still, I refuse to flinch away from that gilded gaze. I am so tired of being afraid.
“She stabbed me,” I say, clutching the stem of the wolfsbane between my stinging fingers. It’s my lifeline right now.
“I know,” Calix says, tracking the blood leaking from my hand to the floor. Blood from the wound Evie created with a silver dagger. I will not heal soon.
“So charge her with treason!”
“Vanessa, there is order to our laws. She is a princess, and Sinclair is intended to be her future mate. She was within her right to harm you because you invaded her territory. You challenged her future authority. The only crime committed here was yours, and she did not turn you in to the queen and demand your head. She simply punished you.”
Simply… simply punished me? I can see through my hand. I can smell the rot of flesh where silver cut through my skin.
“Sin isn’t her territory,” I snarl. “She doesn’t even want to be with him!
” A rabid animal claws free from my chest, and I clamp down on a scream of fury.
None of this is fair— none of it—and Calix and his order and his laws can all fuck themselves for all I care.
I will not play by their rules any longer.
“Evie killed my best friend ! What about the punishment for that ?” Why doesn’t he understand?
Why can’t I make him understand? “I lost my sister, Calix. My soulmate . Do you have any idea what that’s like?
Have you ever felt that sort of pain? No,” I sneer before he can answer.
“You haven’t. You’ve never cared about anyone other than yourself, have you?
You’re too hard, too cold, too—too cowardly to ever love someone like that. ”
I want him to rage at me. To lash out, to attack . Instead, he simply nods. “I know.”
“Stop saying that!”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I—I—” The wolfsbane trembles in my grasp, and my body—it shakes uncontrollably now.
Red edges my vision. “I don’t know .” Hatred spins a toxic web beneath my skin, boiling my veins to pitch-black loathing.
“Celeste did nothing wrong. She was just a girl. She was just a girl at a party, and she should have gone home to her bed. She should—she should— exist .”
She should exist.
None of this would’ve happened if Celeste were still here.
If she hadn’t died, I never would’ve learned about werewolves and faerie realms and moon pools.
I never would’ve known Evie—not truly, not beyond her cruelty at the beach—and I never would’ve felt this overwhelming hatred.
This all-consuming need to wound her, to hurt her the way she hurts me.
She’s still dead —roadkill on that back alley, splattered on the grill of a semitruck.
And here is Calix, standing in the doorway with that maddeningly calm expression. His arms crossed. His head cocked. As if he knows exactly what I’m thinking, what I’m planning, and finds it unimpressive, if not vaguely amusing.
The entire situation is too much. Has been too much for far too long.
Celeste, Sin, Evie, Calix— Calix and his stupid face.
His third strike. It all crashes through me like a tidal wave until I’m drowning in my own grief and rage.
Until my body is moving, lunging, leaping to tackle him to the floor the way I want to tackle Evie—
He sidesteps with exceptional speed, and I hurtle into one of the benches instead. It hits the floor with an earsplitting crash. I don’t topple after it, however. Not this time. Rather, I catch myself, crouching and spinning almost as quickly—blood roaring in my ears—to kick at his knees.
He seizes my foot before it connects, jerking it toward him. That simple flick of his wrist sends me sprawling on my back. “So you’re going to kill Evelyn Lee?” he asks, looming overhead. “That’s your brilliant plan?”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
I reach frantically for something to use against him, anything, before realizing I still hold the wolfsbane in my hand.
Snarling, I thrust it toward his face, and he recoils instantly, dropping my foot as those golden eyes harden, and vicious satisfaction courses through me.
Though a small voice in my head warns attacking Calix is reckless— so reckless —I don’t care. That’s strike three, Hart.
According to him, I have nothing else to lose, and in this moment—I can’t think beyond this moment. There is only me, and there is only Calix.
So I swipe at him again. Again. I force him backward against Instructor Bhat’s desk.
When I lunge this time, determined to drive the wolfsbane into his eyes, he catches my wrist in one hand.
He spins my body, spins both our bodies, until my chest crashes upon the desk, knocking the breath from me.
Though I thrash—upending bottles and papers and even the rack of wolfsbane—he pins me against the wood with the length of his heavy body.
One hand still clenched around my wrist. The other seizing my nape.
“And then what, Vanessa?” he says low in my ear.
Treacherous goose bumps lift at my neck.
“What happens after you’ve killed me? After you’ve killed her ?
Don’t tell me you’re stupid enough to think you and Sin will go sailing into the sunset after you’ve poisoned his intended. ”
“She isn’t his intended,” I hiss. Not yet.
“Ah. You really are that stupid.” His fingers tighten as I writhe beneath him, and he drags his nose down the length of my neck.
His teeth graze my throat. One large bite, and I’d be dead.
As if sharing the thought, he growls, “It’d be a kindness to kill you now. I’ll be much faster than the queen.”
I drive my head backward, but he moves like an extension of my own body, too quickly for me to break his nose. “So do it, then—”
But he won’t. I know he won’t. To kill me would break his precious law .
He flips me in his arms instead, and our new position puts our faces much too close—so close I can see the rings of molten gold around his pupils.
His eyes blaze as they meet mine. “We do not kill fellow wolves. Queen Sybil tries criminals; she delivers their death sentence. Not us. We do not kill our packmates, our court, or our brethren. Under any circumstances.”
I quake with rage. “Are you so afraid of your traitorous mother’s crimes that you refuse to see the nuances of justice? I took you for an asshole, not a coward hiding behind a baby blanket and calling it the law .”
His expression softens, the shadows darkening his face fading into pity. Into regret. He doesn’t release me, however. His hand remains around my throat. “I didn’t have to be your enemy, Vanessa. I didn’t want to be your enemy.”
A truth.
“But?”
“It is the law,” he repeats. “Civilization demands order. Without order, there can only be chaos.” His eyes drop to the wolfsbane still clutched in my hand. “I have to turn you in.”
I look at him, from his black hair to his deeply tan skin to the curve of his lips and the sharp cut of his jaw. Beautiful. Brutal. Terrifying. “What if I compel you?”
“Go ahead.” His lip curls, revealing the tips of his fangs. “Try.”
“Let me go ,” I say, unlocking that part of me I’d almost forgotten—that strange power buried under layers of my roiling anger—and turning my voice melodically deep.
With my free hand, I seize his jaw, thrusting my face even closer.
Our lips almost touch now, and his entire body hardens against mine. “Let me leave and tell no one .”
His pupils dilate in response, and for just a second, I think it might’ve worked. Then he shrugs. “Is that the best you can do?” Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “A good effort, I suppose.”
I buck my hips, determined to free myself, but he only shifts his ironclad grip. I use the adjustment to lift my legs, attempting to wedge my knees between us for leverage. “I hate you—”
“You’re wearing my shirt.”
I stiffen in realization, in humiliation .
My knees clamp on either side of his hips, and before I can correct the newly intimate position, he snarls and shoves me backward.
I slide against the desktop, away from him, blinking at my sudden freedom.
His gaze flicks up from where his shirt rode up my thighs, and he glowers at me.
Furious. “You should’ve stayed away from him. ”
He extends his claws and fangs. My cheeks flush. Breaths lodge in my throat, along with a sob that won’t shake itself free. My anger is withering, and my fear is growing through the cracks. I don’t want to die.
“Wh-what if I had evidence?” I stutter, still moving backward. I knock into another desk, and it blocks my path. Calix prowls forward. Inches away. Claws at the ready. Shit. “What if I… if I can prove she did it?”
“Do you? Can you?”
No , I think. He knows it too, but not as much as I do.
I’ve spent weeks ruminating over the lack of substantial evidence.
Circumstantial bullshit scribbled in my journal.
Not enough not enough not enough. In this court, evidence is everything.
Without it, no one would be convicted. And I— wait . I inhale sharply.
Evidence. Is. Everything.
I glance at the wolfsbane in my hand. The drying petals. Remember Calix himself reducing my father’s baton to plastic confetti. My chest heaves. My throat burns. It’s a stupid idea, but it’s an idea all the same.
“Vanessa,” Calix warns.