31
I stumble through the doorway, up the stairs, down the hall. My steps are clunky and uneven, but I don’t worry about hiding them anymore.
I think of the child’s melting hands. The man’s missing tongue.
They were Bitten. Doomed to die or survive. But the queen—she’s not giving them a choice in that prison. Celeste wasn’t given a choice either.
It has to be the queen hiding them, torturing them. Condemning them. Why? The question sends me into a spiral. My hand finds purchase on the walls, pulling me forward even as my feet trip over themselves.
That could have been me. It was Celeste.
Why have I survived and not the others?
Worse than anything is the bone-deep agony of knowing— expecting —their deaths.
It’s hopeless. I can’t save them. I can only be aware of their lives snuffing out like candles in the darkness.
One, two, three of them. A child. Who knew how many there were before them; who knows how many will exist after them?
How am I supposed to fix this?
I can’t. I’m just… I’m just a girl. I can’t even solve my best friend’s murder.
I throw open my door and slam it shut behind me.
Let the guards come. Let them throw me away.
At least I won’t be responsible. My claws emerge, but I don’t feel the pain of the small transformation.
I don’t feel anything but self-loathing and disgust. I would cry if the tears would spill, but they don’t.
Sinclair lies on my bed, but I don’t startle when I spot him. I only fall to the ground and hug myself tight, trying to hold the pieces of myself together, but I’m too broken. I’ve been broken for so long now.
“Vanessa?” He slides off the bed and sits beside me. His hand rubs circles into my back, but it’s not enough to heal this. To fix any of this. It’s been days. Almost two weeks since I’ve seen him, since he compelled the princess and his mother probably locked him in his room and threw away the key.
What are we supposed to do?
“Vanessa,” he whispers again. “What happened?”
“I… I saw…” A whimper rises in my throat, but I stifle it. “I saw the dungeon, Sin. There are humans down there. Bitten humans. They’ve been… they’ve been tortured.”
“What?” He grabs me and pulls me into him, a hug fiercer than ever before. His arms encircle me, his steady heart beating against mine. And I notice—they share the same rhythm, our pulses. They share the same cadence. “Why would you go into the dungeon?”
“I heard screaming. I… I kept hearing it.” I curl into his lap and knot his shirt in my fists. “Sin, there is a child down there. He was Bitten, and h-he’s going to die.”
He curses, and his grip on me tightens. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.”
Lie. Lie. Truth.
My chest caves in. I feel like porcelain and glass. As if I’ve been thrown against cement and shattered. I am broken. So, so broken.
I can’t live like this.
Gore oozes from every pore of my memory.
Celeste’s death, my first time shifting, fighting with Evie, with Katerina, with Calix, being stabbed—but this, seeing a child down there, helpless and hopeless and mangled…
“We have to stop th-them. We have to… to…” To what?
I don’t know. I don’t know that there is a solution when the queen of this court is the one who locked them all up.
These werewolves didn’t care about Celeste.
They can hardly stand to let me wander amidst them.
They won’t help these humans. And the humans—they’re going to die. Oh god. I can’t breathe.
Sin lifts my chin with trembling fingers.
“Slow down, Vanessa.” But I can’t. I can’t slow down and I can’t fix this and I can’t help anyone.
Sin’s voice darkens, and his eyes glow. “ Inhale ,” he commands—compels me.
My lungs expand of their own volition. “Exhale,” he commands seconds later. I breathe out, blinking at him.
“Good girl.” He presses his head to mine, and I feel the hot wet of his tears on my skin. “Just keep breathing.”
I try. Even without compulsion, I try to follow his orders. But—“What are we going to do?”
His hair tickles my cheek as he shakes his head. “I don’t fucking know. I…” He looses a ragged breath. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“I can’t say it.” He gazes into my eyes, and the honesty of his words soothes some of the agony in my chest. “You’ll hate me forever.”
“No,” I argue, remembering the way he protected me when Evie hurt me.
I remember all the moments he’s checked on me, collected me, helped me.
I cradle his face in my hands and brush tentative fingers along his lips.
His eyes shut around a pained expression.
I’m broken, but so is he. “I couldn’t hate you.
You are… the only good thing about this court, Sinclair Severi. ”
Because he cares.
He always cares.
He laughs softly, sadly, as if he doesn’t believe me.
“Sometimes I wish the blood traitor hadn’t died.
That she’d taken revenge on her sister—on Queen Sybil.
” He spits his mother’s name. “Queen Sybil is regarded as having saved this castle, but you know why she did it, don’t you? You know why she let Cora die?”
I shake my head.
“Sybil wasn’t always the queen, Vanessa. She was never the one destined for the throne. Born as the youngest sister, she was meant to become third-or fourth-in-command. She’d exist below at least two others in the royal pack order.” He scoffs. “Sybil Severi was the spare.”
My heart stills, and I glance up at him in confusion. “She was?”
Sin nods. “Cora was queen, and Sybil was jealous. That’s why Sybil sent her spies to watch Cora.
This court… It doesn’t believe in true loyalty.
Only obedience. And only if they gain something from it.
Sybil caught the blood traitor in bed with her human lover and dragged them both in front of the court for a swift death and even swifter ascension into power.
As soon as the treason was spoken aloud, Sybil was declared queen. ”
I’m unsure what to say. The information makes my head spin. And Sin—he sounds crushed. Defeated. “You’re better than her, Sin. I—I hope you know that.”
“I want to be,” he responds, and his honesty is as bright as the sun. “One day, I want to build this court into something right and just and good. No more lies. No more murder. No more fear.”
“Sin,” I whisper. Because it’s all I can think—all I can say. He is right and just and good. He is worth more than the rest of the werewolves combined.
My gaze captures his, and eternity stretches before us.
With me in his arms and him holding us both together.
He’s as broken as I am, and he’s hesitantly laid those pieces before me, waiting to see what I’m going to do with them.
But what can I do? Sin will mate with Evie one day.
The girl who stabbed me will become his wife and the queen of his court. And I will always be just Vanessa Hart.
Sin must see the thought written plainly on my face because he knots a hand in my hair and pulls my face closer to his. “You are fucking extraordinary,” he growls before kissing me.
We shouldn’t be doing this. In so many ways, it’s wrong, and guilt sits in my stomach like wood for kindling—but he feels so…
so good . I moan into his mouth, immediately straddling his lap and slipping my hands beneath his tunic.
He tastes like mint and candy tonight. He tastes like heaven .
His heart pounds against me, a steady comforting beat as he stands, picking me up and carrying me to the bed.
Our pulses synchronize again. And this kiss—it’s not the heated rapture of our first, it’s a slow fusion of body and mind and soul.
His soul. My soul. In this moment, with him laying me down and trailing kisses from my throat to my breasts, they are the same—they feel the same.
I could love you , I think abruptly. I could love you, but I’m not allowed.
“Sin,” I whisper, shivering as he gently eases the sleeves of my nightgown down my arms. Lace lowers over my breasts, grazing the most sensitive parts of me. “Sin, we could die for this.”
His red eyes scald in the darkness, but when he looks up at me, he doesn’t respond.
Our actions answer for the both of us. He seizes my lips in a fierce kiss.
I rope my hands in his shirt and yank him lower, closer.
Right now, he is the light. He is the sun.
I need him. I need this reprieve from the darkness and death.
There is nothing we can do about it. There is nothing we can do to save anyone.
“I don’t want anyone else, Vanessa,” he says, his voice dark and hot against my skin. He cups my breast, his fingers wickedly playing my nerves like a piano. He knows the right keys, the exact melody, to drive me wild. And his honesty—it’s a flame, and I am the moth. I am burning.
“Tell me what you want,” he pleads, his tongue laving the hollow of my throat. “I’ll give it to you. Anything you ask for, I will give you.”
Lie.
There’s one thing he can’t give me, no matter how much I might want it. But this… tonight … It’s enough.
Emboldened by his lips, by the heady pleasure searing my veins, I whisper, “Touch me.” If this moment is our last, I don’t want it to end. Not yet. “Please.”
His eyes nearly blacken. He pulls me to the edge of the bed. “Vanessa Hart,” he murmurs against my lips, “it would be my pleasure.”
My thighs clench around him, nightgown bunching indecently at my waist, but his gaze doesn’t leave my face.
He growls—the dangerous snarl of a werewolf prince on the brink of losing control.
His lips punish mine, unforgiving and sweet and sinful , his tongue sweeping inside my mouth and devouring what’s left of me as his fingers curl into the center of my desire.
I’ve never felt like this before. So beautiful. So loved.
I might not feel like this again.