35 #2
I recall the words spoken to me in the SUV. On the off chance you complete the transition, you will be brought before the queen and given the honor to complete the First Rite.
“But they locked you up down here?” I glance at Sin and ask, “Why? Why would they treat them differently?”
His gaze roves over the cells, halting on the spill of blood in the child’s cage. Sin shakes his head. “I’m not certain. Unless it was clear they might not make it. Whoever turned you would’ve been stronger at the time. Who knows how many humans have been down here since then?”
I gnaw on my lip. It’s not enough to be conclusive evidence. Not enough to be anything at all. I wrap a hand in his tunic, leveraging him for support. Thank god he’s here. I couldn’t bear this without him.
“I can’t.…” The woman shuts her charcoal eyes. “I can’t tell you who bit me. I can only tell you that the woman who grabbed me was not alone. She was joined by another—a man. Sickly pale skin. Yellow eyes. Brown hair. He… he…”
My blood runs cold. That night returns to me in a crimson wave. Not just the car, not just the pain, but Lord Allard and Calix and the syringe.
“He stabbed you,” I whisper. “Didn’t he?”
“In—in the neck.” A cry wrenches from her throat, and she fists her gray hair.
The bite at her throat has deepened into a brutal black web, sticky and damp with blood.
She’s not going to make it. Bile stings my tongue.
I want to help. So badly I want to help.
I glance at Sin, but he frowns. There is no hope here. No solution.
However, the kidnappings line up. Even if they did not end the same way, these people were taken exactly as I was taken.
They were stolen from their homes, their loved ones, their lives.
They were left here to die. The Wolf Queen knows something.
She has to be involved in not just the kidnappings but the bites themselves.
“I’m going to find who’s behind this,” I tell the woman. “I will bring them to justice, I promise.”
“You can’t win here.” She hums sadly, and more tears spill over her cheeks. “No one can win here.”
As she devolves into a bloody coughing fit, Sin takes my hand and leads me back to my room.
Up the stairs, down the hall, and through my door without ever making a sound.
I don’t either. I don’t know what can be said or done.
But my bones tremble, and my claws break free the second I step foot in my room.
“We have to learn the truth . There must be a way to change this and—and save them. If not them, then whoever is next.”
He pulls me close, burying his face in my hair and inhaling deeply. His arms encircle me, protecting me, and I snuggle deeper into his grasp. “We don’t have much to go on,” he admits, his voice soft and low.
“But the queen is at the center of it. What if she’s the one behind the bites?”
He hesitates, withdrawing so that he can gaze down at me and smooth the waves away from my face. “Implicating her in this would be—”
“Stupid,” I finish for him.
“Dangerous,” he corrects. “Unless we are one hundred percent certain and we have the right powers backing us, we will lose that war and die.”
“The right powers?”
He moves to my bed, tugging me along after him.
“My mother has never made a political move in her life without the proper alliance protecting her. Evelyn’s parents ensured that Queen Sybil would have the crown.
She even chose Lord Allard as her First General because Lord Allard’s family offered her an alliance with France.
” He pats a hand on the comforter, and I sit beside him.
He grabs my feet and peels off my satin slippers, then massages my ankles.
So caring—so loving—that it hurts. We can’t exist like this anywhere else.
We shouldn’t even exist like this here. “If we had the proper alliance, and we had the right evidence, we could overthrow the Wolf Queen. There’s no reason she’d do this if it wasn’t for more power.
For some sort of world domination. Trying to amass an army of Bitten humans…
That’s dark. Real fucking dark. And, most of all, against the law.
” His eyes redden. “If it’s true… we have to stop her, Vanessa. ”
Fuck.
My heart pounds, faster and faster as the seconds tick by, and my claws burrow into the mattress. This seems like the queen’s fault. Seems as if we finally might have a true suspect.
Celeste, Oona, the prisoners in the dungeon—instinct cracks in my chest. Listen to your bones , Celeste said, and I finally am. My bones know this is the right path.
The Wolf Queen.
Maybe Evelyn spent my months here torturing me with her alchemy and even potentially framing me for treason, but…
she wouldn’t have killed Celeste. She couldn’t have Bitten me.
Evie may be heinous, but she isn’t missing her soul.
No. I think about the girl in Nettie’s stories, the girl who stabbed me in the throne room.
Evie protects her friends and her place in court.
They are all that matter to her. Evie is a bully, not a criminal mastermind.
Queen Sybil, on the other hand, condemned her own sister to death for power. She didn’t even seem to grieve our instructor—“Alvarez,” I say abruptly. “Do you think—”
“Not a coincidence,” Sin agrees immediately without needing to hear more. “Instructor Alvarez loved running along the beach. He was killed on the beach. He must have witnessed part of this plot.” He turns to face me on the bed. “Do you think this is it, Vanessa?”
My bones scream yes , and there’s an intensity to my pulse as it roars in my ears.
All the humans have been grabbed from the beach, and each and every time the queen has been there in some capacity.
I’m the outlier, but the rest of the cases…
She threw them in the dungeon. Perhaps to cover up their wrong transitions from the rest of the court, or perhaps because she wanted us to hear their torture.
The queen uses us like puppets. Me included.
We are all just pawns in her game. Only—“The court won’t care about the humans alone.
” I worry my lower lip, thinking. Piecing together what I can.
“The instructor’s death, however… We could implicate her with that.
The court cares about him, about losing one of their own. It’s one of the main laws.”
“It is.” Sin nods tersely, as if what’s done is done and we’re on our way out. “We just need to find evidence, and we can convict her. We should do it at winter solstice, when a majority of the world’s nobility will travel here to witness our Ascension Rite.”
“Are you sure?” I ask him. “She’s your mother, and it might not work out how we plan—”
“It will,” he says, and the words wrap around my heart in the most intense truth yet. “We’re better together. Stronger. We can do this , Vanessa. After all these years… I might finally have what I need to save the world.”
He believes what he’s saying so much that I have no choice but to believe him too.