Bitten

32 #2

A compulsion. My spine straightens. My chin darts upward, so harshly that my neck almost snaps. I keep my stare fixed on the skirts of her gown. Long layers of embroidered black silk struck through with silver thread. Powerful, to wear our very weakness on her body. A conqueror of death.

“Do you know why I’ve called you here, Miss Hart?”

I shake my head, and Queen Sybil snarls. “ Answer me. If I wanted you mute, I would have shorn your tongue from your throat.”

My blood runs cold.

It’s true.

I’ve seen proof of that in the dungeon. I’ve—words fill my mouth, then, and flee it. Unbidden. Uncontrolled. “You’re sentencing me to death.” No. No no no. I am powerless here. I’ll tell her the truth even if it’s the last thing I want to do.

“Now why would you think that, I wonder?”

I glance up before she can make me and speak so that she can’t compel me. Her tiara sparkles—a thousand diamonds formed into the phases of the moon rest on her graying hair.

“I am afraid,” I say honestly. Because what other option is there?

If she wants to kill me, I hope she does it fast. Swift. I don’t want to provoke her further.

“You are the least subtle person who has ever graced this court,” the Wolf Queen spits from painted red lips. “Your heart is worn on your sleeve for all to see. Why?”

“I—I don’t know.” The icy tile bites through my gown. I’m going to die, I think. I’m going to die, and my father won’t know. I’ll never find out who murdered Celeste. It’ll all be wasted. Every second here.

“Tell me the truth,” the queen compels with flashing, ebony eyes.

So I do. “I can’t control my feelings. They consume me. I’m sad. So sad and broken inside. And lonely. Everyone I love leaves me, and I—”

“That’s enough. Silence. ”

I shut up. My lips freeze into stone. I whimper—try to whimper. The sound doesn’t make it past my chest.

“Pathetic humans.” Queen Sybil throws her head into her hand.

“I expected strength from you, Miss Hart. After observing your secret touches and glances with the prince for months now, I thought you had begun to conspire a better life for yourself. But look at you. As weak as when we found you on the street.”

She snaps her fingers, and Lord Allard approaches. He carries a longbow on his back and a golden scabbard on his hip. From the sheath protrudes the ocean-blue hilt of a great sword. I shiver in terror. He’s going to kill me.

“Do you have anything to confess?” the queen asks. “Anything at all? Answer honestly.”

I shut my eyes, unable to fight her or her compulsion, and the hard evidence will condemn me.

Words rise. Build in my throat. No. I need to focus.

Oona said werewolves can bend their words to escape their own lies.

I need to do that now. I need to concentrate on another truth.

And not just any other truth, but one so harmless and innocent the queen can’t possibly think of me as anything other than a silly little Bitten.

“Well?”

“I… I…” My eyes open and find her black ones in the torchlight. “I hate cheese. Melted cheese, cheddar, provolone, Gouda—they taste bitter and sharp, and I hate the texture.”

“You hate cheese?” The Wolf Queen sits forward. She blinks furiously. “Cheese?”

Beside me, Lord Allard stills. His hand remains on his hilt, but he doesn’t retrieve the sword. Not yet.

“Yes,” I say innocently. “Very much.”

“Stars above. Show her the proof , Lord Allard.” The queen flicks her hand, and Lord Allard drops something heavy at my feet. I’m afraid to look. Maybe Lyra did turn me in—and why wouldn’t she? If we were both caught, she would be murdered too. If it’s just me, she lives.

I peek at the ground, but… it’s not proof of last night. It’s my journal.

My stomach churns. The rough brown leather mocks me while Queen Sybil smiles a bloodcurdling grin that raises the hair on my arms.

“Do you want to explain that?” the Wolf Queen asks.

I stare at it.

It’s not exactly proof of any treachery. While I wrote about Celeste and Evie, it was vague—random lists and bullet points. Most of the journal is filled with notes and research from my lessons. I’m not stupid enough to put my schemes into writing. “It’s just a notebook.”

“Is it, now?” Queen Sybil stands and meanders down the stairs from her throne.

She wanders the perimeter of her room, her heels tapping on the tile.

Her claws run over the surface of her desk, her private dining table, even Lord Allard himself, as she asserts her dominance.

She owns everything and everyone in this castle. Including me.

But I don’t understand. I left the journal with Oona. She was meant to hold on to it until I needed it next.

Did Oona… Did she turn me in?

I swallow hard, and Queen Sybil ceases her cutting path. She spins toward me, snatching a bronze letter opener from her desk and pointing it at my head like a dart. “Open it,” she orders.

“I swear, there’s nothing—”

“ Open it ,” she compels. Then, to her First General, she says, “I am sick of disobedience.”

Lord Allard nods. “It must be broken out of them.”

I hate them. Both of them. But I have no choice other than to flip open my journal and—no. No , this isn’t right. It’s filled out. Each and every page is chock-full of foul words and loathsome curses.

Fuck Queen Sybil and her court…

… will destroy them. All of them.

I, Vanessa Hart, will be the Wolf Queen’s Court’s undoing.

“It’s not true,” I blurt out, even as the flesh pricks along my arms and an icy chill throttles my spine. “It’s… it’s not.” I look up at the queen. “I swear I didn’t write it.” But who did?

She sneers. “Unlike you, Bitten one, I do not have the ability to see lies.”

“Compel me,” I beg.

She hurls the letter opener at my head, and I barely dodge it by an inch.

It lodges in the ground beside me. “Do not order me.” Queen Sybil stalks forward and kicks the journal aside with her heel.

“Whether you wrote the damning evidence yourself makes little difference to me. Either you are involved in treason, or you have betrayed a member of this court enough that they have involved you themselves.”

No no no. I suck in a breath, and it quakes through me until I’m trembling at her feet. “I… I…”

“Stutter one more time, and I will take an eye.”

I inhale again. Exhale. Breathe until I have further control of my voice.

“Okay,” I whisper, forcing myself to sound more certain even though I’m not.

I’m not certain at all—about anything. I don’t understand what’s happening here or why it relates to my stupid journal or who…

who sabotaged me. My heart aches. It couldn’t be Oona. She would never do that to me.

“Explain,” the queen commands.

I speak slowly so as to not mess up. “I don’t know who wrote that incriminating stuff.

I used the journal to keep track of my lessons and…

” Her eyes burn through mine, watching for any sign of a lie.

Honesty. The best course of action is always honesty.

“The night my friend, Celeste, died, she and Evie fought on the beach. Evie hurt her— clawed her.”

The Wolf Queen hisses. “Evelyn Lee transformed in front of humans?”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, it was a split second, and it was only a claw.”

Queen Sybil frowns with a glance at Lord Allard. He nods once more in response. Whatever they’re thinking, it doesn’t seem good.

“Continue,” she commands.

“I thought… Evie might have been the one who killed her.” But with the new evidence of the Bitten humans, I’m not so sure. And I certainly won’t condemn Evie without that evidence in front of the queen. I don’t care if she stabbed me. “I was wrong,” I say. “I don’t think Evie did it after all.”

“Hmm.” Queen Sybil’s eyes narrow, and she snaps her fingers at Lord Allard. He leaves the room at once.

He leaves us alone .

I almost scream for help, but not even Sin could save me from his mother.

“We do not do well with schemers and liars in this court, Miss Hart.”

“I know,” I whisper.

“The information in that notebook would not be useful to even the finest detective. Between the ravings of a treacherous rebel, you have scribbled nonsense, as fueled by your emotions and not an ounce of logic. Evelyn Lee was gifted her place— my place—since her very birth. I had a pact with the Lees from when I ascended the throne. I promised to pass my crown to their second-born child. Can you imagine what it’s like to have the legacy you’ve built tossed to another?

Let alone to another who believes they deserve it more than you? ”

I shake my head, though I understand more of her story than she might think.

The Lees must have been her spies in court—or at least helped orchestrate the findings of Cora Severi’s treason.

And now Evie has been promised the crown and court, and Sybil is pissed .

This noble, loyal werewolf who is so adept at bargains wants out of her own.

She wants to break the law and shatter the deal. She is desperate for control.

“When we came upon your journal, I thought it might be useful,” Queen Sybil states.

“We can all see that you have had it out for Evie since your first day in this court. The men on the moon would be able to see it, Miss Hart. But you’ve enjoyed flirting with the prince, and I assumed you would enjoy mating with him one day as well.

With your untapped potential, you would be good for this court.

” Her lips twist into a devious smile; she is not paying me a compliment.

“But I will not train someone to their full power in order to pass them elsewhere.”

Untapped potential.

Full power.

I swallow hard.

“I wasn’t seducing Sin for sport,” I say. “I… I don’t want power.”

Queen Sybil scoffs. “That is the problem with you, Bitten one. You could be so much more than you are, but you have given me nothing to work with.”

Could be—could be . I lift my head. With trembling lips, I ask, “Aren’t you killing me?”

“I should. I really should.” Sybil Severi scrapes her claws down the side of her throne, and they squeal over the solid gold. A shrill, earsplitting sound ten times louder to my supernatural hearing. I clap my hands over my ears and gasp.

“However,” the queen says, silencing the noise and waiting for me to look back at her, “I do not think that is what I wish to do with you. The first werewolf in history with a purple gaze. Lyra has learned much about your future potential. The stars won’t stop whispering about it.

It seems you will be powerful one day, Miss Hart, whether you want it or not.

You only need to be broken first, like a dog. ”

Behind me, the door to the chamber opens. Two separate pairs of footsteps echo—one pair a stomp, and the other a fumbling trudge.

“The key to breaking you is not with your own pain. You’ve endured that well enough already. It is the pain of others. Is it not?”

My chest seizes as the Wolf Queen nods behind me. “Now, Lord Allard,” she says.

He shoves his prisoner in front of me. With silver chains around her ankles and wrists, Oona is forced before me.

“No!” I rush forward—a split-second decision. A horribly stupid decision. Lord Allard seizes my hair and wrenches me backward, throwing me onto the ground.

“You will watch, silent , or she will die,” Queen Sybil says.

I tremble uncontrollably. Oona won’t look at me. She stares at the wall behind my head. Her eyes swollen, her face red with previously shed tears. How long have they had her? And I didn’t know. I didn’t know.

“Please,” I whisper, rising onto my knees, my hands folded as I beg the queen. “ Please don’t hurt her for my mistake.”

“The maid was caught harboring a treasonous journal. She will be punished for it. Now, I won’t ask you again. Silence, Miss Hart,” the queen demands—but she doesn’t compel me. She wants this to be my choice. My responsibility. And it is.

Lord Allard retrieves a silver arrow from the pouch on his back.

Metal tipped and sharp as a knife. Oona glances down, right as he looses it into her left calf.

I can’t cry out, but she does. Each arrow—all four of them—tear a fresh sob from her throat.

She cries and cries and cries. All the while, I bite my tongue so hard, blood floods my mouth.

Pain is the least of what I deserve.

The Wolf Queen watches with that sinister smile mangling her beautiful face. “Broken like a dog,” she repeats. “If you do not learn to obey, Miss Hart, it won’t be your death that awaits you. It will be the death of your friends.”

Lord Allard finishes his assault, and Oona collapses. Her left leg gives out, breaking beneath the rest of her. She won’t heal from four silver arrows anytime soon. I glare at the queen, at the lord. Rage burns through me, brandishing my claws and fangs even as the rest of me shudders.

But Queen Sybil keeps smiling. “It’s good to know you have some fight left in you. See yourselves out when you’re through sniveling.” She and Lord Allard leave, and the torches magically snuff out behind them. I don’t get up. I can’t get up. My bones crack.

I hate them. I’m going to kill them.

Oona takes my hand in the darkness, her touch clammy and cold. “Please, Vanessa. I need… I need the infirmary. I’m hurt.”

Just like that—my rage vanishes.

I find my calm at the center of her soft Irish accent. Oona needs help. She’s bleeding everywhere, and all I can see and smell and hear are the screams of Celeste from when she died in my arms. The screams of Oona when she was shot because of me.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I scoop up Oona, surprised by how light she feels, and race to the dusty infirmary near the Combat courtyard. A slender nurse takes Oona, fixes her onto a gilded cot, and immediately begins tending to her wounds.

No one asks how it happened, but maybe that’s because they know. They all know. They’ve had to live in the terror of this court for years, and they either don’t care enough to change it—or they’re too powerless to do so themselves.

I hold Oona’s hand at her bedside, and she assures me this isn’t my fault.

But she’s lying. Even though she thinks she’s telling the truth, I know in my heart that she’s wrong.

I was stupid enough to take that journal out of my bedroom.

I thought no one would see. I thought no one would care.

But all this time, the Wolf Queen was watching, waiting for her chance to strike.

I will never be safe here. No one is safe here.

I’ve been a goddamned fool to think otherwise, but no more. This can’t happen again.