43 #2
A barely connected pile of skin and bone and hair lies limp on the ground in a sea of blood, in the broken shape of my best friend.
I always thought my life would end in a riot of noise—the booming of a crash or the guttural horror of violence—but this… It’s nothing. It’s the faint whisper of a sob. It’s the feeling of my knees hitting the ground. It’s my heart breaking in my chest without even being able to see it.
“No, you didn’t,” I say to the floor, even as his honesty impales me, and a tear trickles over my cheeks and drips beneath me, onto the stone.
He killed Celeste.
“Evie said…” My voice cracks painfully. “Evie said it wasn’t any of you. She said you were so worried about the fight that—that everyone took off. You’re… you’re covering for the queen.” Please please please
Calix kneels, though he doesn’t touch me again.
“Queen Sybil sent us there to scope it out, and I… I did what I had to do. I snuck off during the fight. Evie didn’t know.
The queen wanted to brush it under the rug without alarming everyone in the court.
We made her death look like an accident, and with your transformation… It was a good distraction.”
An accident. Her death.
Her death.
My head snaps up, and a low snarl reverberates between us. My bones begin to twist and pop, but I force down the magma of my rage. Repress the explosive heat of it. Instead, I focus on the betrayal. His betrayal.
“She was a person,” I say slowly. “She was my best friend.” I glare at him, and the intense violet of my own eyes reflects off the onyx bars. “Say her name, you fucking coward .”
And he does. It sounds like damnation.
“Celeste,” he says, refusing to flinch away. “I’m sorry, Vanessa. It was my job.”
That’s all it takes for me to lunge.
I tackle him, throwing him onto his back and slashing open his chest with my claws.
All the way to the bone. He doesn’t fight.
He doesn’t raise a single hand as my chest heaves and I cry harder.
I weep over him like the sky opening up during a hurricane, and I can’t stop it.
The grief, the anger, the betrayal, the sadness…
It’s swirling into a lethal vortex. The world rotates with it. Faster, faster.
He killed her.
Calix killed Celeste.
“How could you?” I slice his arm. His shoulder. I am going to kill him. I have to kill him. “How could you?”
Blood spills between us, but it’s not enough. It will never be enough to make up for what I’ve lost. Celeste. Her laughter. Her smile. My home . He hurt her. He murdered her.
“Monster,” I cry. “You fucking monster .”
“I know,” Calix breathes. “I know.”
Just like our fight on the field, he lies here, allowing me to hurt him. Allowing me to gut him the way he did to her. I plunge my claw under his ribs, and he stares up at me with resolution burning bright in his scarlet gaze. He doesn’t retaliate. He doesn’t speak. What more could he say?
I’m going to rip out his heart.
It was my job , he said.
He’s a liar. A filthy, disgusting traitor . My claw squeezes the warmth of his rapidly beating organ. He gasps now, whispering my name as if it’s a promise. But I don’t believe it. I don’t believe a single word he’s ever said.
He stole Celeste from me. He stole everything —
“Vanessa! What the fuck are you doing?” Sin tackles me to the ground seconds before I can rip out Calix’s heart.
Calix turns over, gasping, as blood pours from the crater in his chest. He can barely clench the wounds closed, though he tries. Blood covers his fingers, his arms. So much blood. So much red .
Sin presses me into the stone, using the full weight of his strength to bear down on me.
“Get off,” I hiss, struggling beneath him. “He killed her. He killed her!”
Tears pour. Trickle over my cheeks, into my hair. Down my gown. Stupid fucking dress. Stupid fucking castle. I hate it here. Calix, the queen, all of them—they can die. They can die, and it is more than they deserve.
“Vanessa,” Sin murmurs, trying to remain gentle even as his touch hardens. “Vanessa, you have to stop. The others will hear. They’ll come.” I thrash beneath him, wild and rabid, but he doesn’t relent. “Vanessa, please , don’t make me compel you.”
“You wouldn’t dare—”
“You’re going to murder my cousin .”
I glare at him and snap my fangs at his nose. He growls, gripping my cheeks and forcing me to remain still as his gaze flashes and his voice deepens.
No.
I wrestle a knee between our bodies and move to kick him in the groin, but—
“ Stop moving ,” Sin whispers, and a tear of his own falls onto my lips.
I freeze. The tension inside me unknots, thread by thread, until I’m limp. And my thoughts—they catch up to the present in a wicked spiral. Sin. The golden prince. So beautiful above me. The boy I love.
How could he compel me?
Sin shudders, agony unspooling from him in a bitter, minty gust. He turns to his cousin, and the hold he has on me loosens. “Go,” he orders Calix. “Back to your room. Sleep. Prepare for the rite.”
Calix stumbles to his feet. His wounds are healing, but blood splatters his skin. “She—”
“Go.”
I don’t know if Calix is compelled or merely chooses to obey, but he hurries out of the dungeon without looking back. And I… I can’t breathe.
Calix.
It was Calix .
I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop breaking .
Sin wipes away my tears, his voice raw and rough as he says, “I have to carry you to your room now, Vanessa. Please be quiet.”
And I know what he’s asking. He’s asking me to stay alive. Because if I scream, if I kill, they will murder me too. No matter who does it, it will be their job. Just as it was Calix’s job to murder my best friend.
I glance up at Sin as he lifts me into his arms and carries me up the stairs. He’s strong. Protective. Loyal. But something… something still isn’t right. He’s not shocked. He’s not surprised.
I did not kill your friend , he said. So many times. Always honest. I did not kill your friend.
He races us through the castle with preternatural speed and throws us into my room. Before I can scream. Before I can react.
Before I can figure out that Calix wasn’t alone in this betrayal.
My heart beats an excruciating rhythm. Sin sets me on the bed. He wipes the dirt and the blood and the tears from my body. And I stare at him. I can only stare at him.
“You can move now,” he whispers, releasing me from the prison he erected of my bones.
When you bite a human, the life you gift them must come from somewhere. One’s soul .
My claws vanish with the pain of another break, followed by my fangs, and I almost can’t even speak.
If I voice it, I can’t take it back. I can’t unlearn the truth.
But Sin gazes down at me, and his fingers are so familiar against my skin, and our hearts…
our hearts beat in unison. Our souls beat in unison.
I used to think it was coincidence, that we just happened to be made for each other, but it’s not.
“It was you,” I whisper. “You bit me.”
I’m desperate for him to say I’m wrong, but he can’t. I’ll know he’s lying.
The second wolf rushes out from the shadows, snaps me up in its jaws, and…
… and bites. He stops touching me and straightens. My ribs fracture between its teeth, its fangs shredding the flesh of my waist.
Tell me I’m wrong , I want to scream, to beg. Tell me you didn’t ruin my life .
“I couldn’t let you die,” he says instead.
“The options were to let Calix kill you, or to bite you and maybe save you. I asked the queen for a pardon after it happened.” He doesn’t flinch away from the truths, even though I do.
“That’s why no one else could know. The queen didn’t want them to learn I’d been given special treatment. That I had been the reason you lived.”
I curl inward, trying to hold myself together. Sin bit me. Calix killed Celeste. And I—I trusted them. I believed them. Especially Sin. I blink up at him through tears. More tears. Maybe I’ll drown in them. “You knew,” I breathe. “There was never a second where you didn’t know.”
He retreats. One step. Another. Until his back hits the wall. His head hangs low, his gaze seeking the ground. “Vanessa,” he murmurs, and my name is a ragged plea. A devastated confession. “I didn’t want you to hate me.”
“You… you lied to me,” I say. And it shouldn’t be, but that’s the worst part. How could he? With my ability, my gift, it shouldn’t have been possible. “You manipulated me.”
His hands clench into fists. “I withheld the truth.”
“You played me for a fool every single day since.”
“No.” He glances up then, at the venom in my voice, and his gaze darkens.
“I love you. I’ve loved you every day since.
I’ve done everything in my power to keep you safe.
I saved you. And you can hate me for it, Vanessa.
You can hate me and curse my name and wish death upon me—but you’ll be alive to do those things, so I don’t regret them.
I would do it again.” He rips the crest from his neck, a seven-pointed star overlayed atop the silhouette of two entwined snakes, and brings it toward my bed.
He drops it on the pillow stained with my tears.
“I would do anything to protect you. You are the other half of my soul.”
I don’t know how it’s possible to hate him and love him so much at the same time, but I do.
He crouches, his face closer to mine, and I want to pull him in for a kiss.
I want to wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze the life out of him.
He lied to me. He saved me. “You only think that,” I breathe, “because you bit me. Your soul is part of mine now.”
He grips the bedsheets roughly, and his claws slice through them. “You’re lying to yourself now, darling.”
I ignore it, the comforting warmth in my chest at his words. The fire engulfing the remnants of my heart at my own. Sin bit me. He knew. He withheld it from me.
“I love you, Vanessa,” he repeats, his lips inches from my own now. It takes all my resilience not to arch into him. “Everything I do is for you.” He pauses then, and a breath passes between us that tastes like mint and honey. His gaze softens, and hurt curls like smoke in his irises. “I’m sorry.”
Truth.
He brushes his lips along my temple, and my eyes shut. I hold my breath. “I will see you at the rite,” he says, and then he leaves.
Just like that, he vanishes, and I shiver. The absence of him is worse. It’s always worse without Sin. But how can I exist alongside him anymore?
I spend the rest of the night crying.
When I fall asleep, I don’t dream at all.