What We Devour

by Linsey Miller

  The Door creaked. I cut my fingertips open and pressed five bloody prints into the earth within the Door’s boundaries. My blood vanished the same way it did when I sacrificed for my wrights. Pain scraped across my fingers. The dirt stuck to my hand.

  “Let me go and I’ll give you more blood,” I said, “but if you don’t, you will get nothing more from me, and I’ll starve you until we have to sacrifice someone. You’ll get nothing in between. I can imagine it now—a withered door too weak to change its appearance until finally we feed you again.”

  The dirt slipped away and settled on the ground.

  “Good.” I patted the earth, letting more blood drop. “What’s your number? There must be an end to your hunger. If you devour all the mortals to stay shut, what will you eat after?”

  Perhaps Alistair was right—the Door had opened something in me, and now the dark was spilling out—because I never would’ve had this thought of people as numbers before.

  Footsteps echoed in the cavern. I turned, hands still red. Alistair stood in the mouth of the cave.

  “This is dangerous,” he said. “Especially alone.”

  “Wrought are never alone.” I stood but didn’t move. “Are you you, or are you the Door?”

  Alistair chuckled and tossed me his glasses. I caught them, their solid weight familiar and comforting.

  “Did you speak to the council yet?” I asked, rising and brushing off my knees.

  He shrugged. “I will get to it tomorrow. Safia’s revelations were too tempting to abandon.”

  Getting him to do his job was as hard as cracking a corpse’s chest, but at least I knew the outcome would be good.

  “It’s been eating the cover and lock.” Alistair touched the glasses in my hand, careful to not touch me, and gestured for me to put them on. “Creek’s bones won’t hold it shut.”

  “They already weren’t. It just took some of my blood without any issue.” I dropped his glasses over my eyes and gasped. “Is it always like that?”

  “No,” said Alistair. “This is new.”

  Shadowy tendrils reached out from nowhere, as if parting a curtain we couldn’t see, and picked away at Creek’s bones. They pulled the pieces into whatever invisible space they came from and then vanished again. The air shimmered where they all disappeared.

  “Perhaps the lock only made it harder for it to accept sacrifices?” I handed Alistair his glasses and took a step over the boundary.

  Alistair reached for me, fingers brushing the back of my coat. I waved him away.

  “What’s it doing?” I asked.

  “The same thing,” he said, and part of me thrilled at the catch in his voice. “A few shadows reach for you, but they’re less substantial than the others.”

  “You couldn’t eat me right now if you wanted.” I tapped my toe against the dirt and backed away. “Let’s see how long it takes to break down the lock.”

  I had ignored the notes from Julian and Will. Mack, at least, was as troubled as I was. I didn’t know how to move forward when Will’s guilt was guaranteed, the contract bound me to Alistair, and his treason might have been justified. If we shut the Door, at least Will would live and we’d have time to untangle the mess.

  “I want to witness the next sacrifice,” I said, “and see exactly what the Door can and cannot do.”

  Twenty-Eight

  The night before the sacrifice, I couldn’t sleep. We had, by Carlow’s newest calculations, a little less than four months before the Door opened, give or take a few days. It was troubling, and we all figured it would open sooner unless we sacrificed a tenth of Cynlira to it. Already it was growing, and Carlow had to adjust the boundary line every day. It had broken down Creek’s bones within days. We couldn’t keep it shut.

  I threw my arm over my eyes, the dark of my room not quite dark enough, and tried to fall asleep. These days, it was more of a chore than a guarantee.

  “Lorena?” Alistair rapped on my door three times. “The Door’s changing. I have to get Hana. Meet me down there as soon as you can.”

  It was well past midnight. A hangnail moon hung in the sky, pale and yellowed. I pulled my greatcoat tightly around myself, the chill seeping in regardless, and stalked through the gardens to the stairwell that led to the Door. Pale swallowwort vines curled around my wrist and stuck to my sleeve. They’d grown through the wall.

  Carlow’s voice echoed up the stairs. I hesitated, vines tightening.

  It felt like the wall leading to the Door. It was cool and hard, damp gathering at my fingertips, and when I scuffed my feet, the sound and feel of leather against stone was real. There were no doors between the Door and me, so there was no way to trick me into opening it. Creek’s ghost drifted past me, a trail of blood in its wake, and paused at the bottom. He looked up at me.

  “Can good ends come from bad means?” asked Creek, blue eyes unblinking.

  “Are you my guilt or the Door this time?” I yanked away from the vines. “Or am I to ask Will that when I see him next?”

  Alistair had set me up. Will had set me up. Julian had set me up. Was there no one who wouldn’t use me to thrive?

  “Open the Door,” said Creek’s ghost, “and find out.”

  I breezed through him and into the Door’s caverns. “Clever. You didn’t have to reuse words Alistair had already said. You’re learning.”

  The cavern rattled as if great feet stomped above me, the utter petulance making me roll my eyes.

  “You’re arrogant.” The Door creaked, and the charred scent of my mother’s sickroom clogged my throat. “Do you think memories can’t haunt you once they’re sacrificed? I’m not some vilewright bound to a mortal soul. I am everywhere, with everyone, and I can see all your little secrets, my vile pet.”

  “Hush,” I said, standing at the chalk line Carlow had drawn. “I’m not opening you.”

  “Maybe you’re the one I want to open.” Its voice was softer. The words were a familiar rasp that made my heart ache. I couldn’t remember it, but I recognized it. The Door creaked again, as if laughing at my pain. “Gift me your noblewright, and I’ll shut. I haven’t tasted Noble in so long, Lorena.”

  My name in that voice stung. “Never.”

  My noblewright curled about me, a protective weight about my shoulders.

  “Not even to save everyone?” it asked, the sickroom door stretching like a close-mouthed smile.

  I shuddered, but I knew myself. My wrights were my oldest friends. They were my only friends.

  They knew how selfish I could be.

  “You wouldn’t keep that deal anyway,” I said. “I’m not trusting something hiding behind my worst fear. Show me your teeth or stop barking.”

  A hand I couldn’t see grabbed my chin. Another grasped my shoulder. A finger, too long to be mortal, pried open my mouth, digging into the soft flesh at the back of my teeth. I flailed, but it wouldn’t let go. My hands passed through the air as if there were nothing there. It opened my mouth wider. I clawed at my face. There were no hands there.

  “What are you to think you could do anything to me? I am always with you wherever you go,” it said in my mother’s voice, walking fingertips along my teeth. “I could pry those wrights from your soul, eat my fill of the Noble, and reclaim what mortals stole from the Vile.”

  My wrights whined within me, unable to move with a prayer, but I couldn’t think of anything we could do against the Door. I was nothing. I didn’t have power like it did.

  My vilewright yowled, and stillness settled over me.

  “Who’s hiding now,” said the Door, yanking at my back teeth, “vilewrought.”

  But I was the legacy of those who had feasted.

  Show it who we are.

  I bit down hard. It dropped me, whatever I’d bitten off still in my mouth. I scrambled back, my teeth crunching through what tasted like old bon
e and how lightning smelled, and the Door to my mother’s sickroom slammed shut. My wrights unfurled from me and hung between us. I swallowed.

  “I will give you nothing,” I said and wiped my mouth, licking the remnants of the Door from my fingers. “Especially not my wrights.”

  My noblewright cooed. I stumbled back, curling up against the cave wall. The only evidence of what the Door had done was five holes in the shoulder of my coat and a weight in my belly. My vilewright rippled across my hands and plucked at them. It was like walking through a spider’s web.

  “What do you want?” I whispered. “Do you need a sacrifice?”

  They had acted on their own. They had protected me.

  I closed my eyes and thought of my house in autumn. Before it grew calendula orange as a hunter’s moon and hydrangeas of rain blue and midnight purple, bright spots against the old brown wood. A tapestry so familiar it hurt.

  My first memory of home. Take it and answer my questions honestly.

  “Are you there?” I whispered. “Do you understand me?”

  A cool night breeze settled over my shoulders, and the hair near my ears ruffled. A sigh. Pressure touched my chin, and I knew somehow that it was my noblewright. My vilewright touched the top of my head. They moved my head up and down in answer.

  My memory of home remained.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Pale-pink scratches appeared on the back of my hand, blood welling along the lines.

  We.

  “Of course it’s ‘we.’ I’ll never leave you.”

  They nodded my head again.

  I sniffed and rubbed my thumb across the marks. “And you’ll never leave me.”

  I waited in the cavern and watched the Door. It didn’t speak to me again or try to trick me. If anything, it looked paler. The wood of the door it was imitating was bleached by the sun, and a notch had been taken out of the top right. My wrights prowled about me and stayed alert. An unnatural awareness shuddered through me. I didn’t stand till I heard Alistair’s footsteps.

  He walked in and paused, eyes glancing at the Door. He dropped his glasses from his forehead to his nose, looked me over, and nodded.

  “Are you well?” he asked.

  He still stayed away and didn’t come close enough to touch me.

  I beckoned him so I could check his coat. The Door could make us see and hear things that weren’t real, but it couldn’t change how the world felt.

  “I’m fine.” I rubbed his coat between my fingers and stepped back. “The Door was playing with me earlier. How long until the sacrifice?”

  “Not long.” He hummed and tilted his head back. “Did something happen? Your vilewright is…agitated.”

  “Yes,” I said and ran my fingers along my lips. My stomach growled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “All right. So long as you are certain you are well.” He moved as if to touch me and yanked his hand back. “Come. I’ll show you where to stand.”

  The trial had already taken place for the sacrifice this morning. He had confessed, been determined guilty by the court’s noblewrought, and then found guilty by the council. He’d no family, so a courtier and councilor had come to see the deed done, and hopefully seeing the Door would keep the court and council on Alistair’s side for longer. We needed more time with the Door.

  More and more, I worried it would open no matter what we offered it or what we did.

  Carra Shearwill swept past me in a breeze of blue silk and perfume. Her shirt was low-cut to show off the sigil of Order carved into her chest, the cuts clean and small. It was nothing like the large, ungainly binding on Carlow’s chest, and I glared at her, since Carlow wasn’t here to do it. More people entered the cavern, three of them courtiers I didn’t know, and each bore a different sigil on their chest. Alistair kept well away from the one with Chaos’s red ink, and I peeked at the green sigil of Life carved into the white-skinned woman next to me who arrived last. Shearwill didn’t bow to her, only inclined her head. This was a councilor then.

  There was one with each god’s sigil here—two councilors and three courtiers. With so few vilewrought and one dualwrought, the courtier with Death’s white sigil had to be the only one of his kind. Were there even any wrought still bound to him now that Hyacinth Wyrslaine was dead?

  Alistair cleared his throat and raised his head, red glasses black in the flickering light. “I prefer concision. Do you have last words?”

  The sacrifice shook his head. Lank hair covered his face, and the steel shackles about his wrists were a rusted red. What hypocrisy. I’d let Will escape this, and he was guilty. He’d let me bargain my life on his innocence while in the wrong. All the sacrifices now might’ve been ruled guilty or confessed, but who’d been killed unfairly? Who’d suffered while Will plotted? Cynlira had failed them.

  “I will not draw this out,” said Alistair. “Stand here.”

  Hana placed the man before Alistair, right at the boundary to the Door, and his feet sunk into the dirt. The Door was my mother’s sickroom again. I hadn’t noticed the change, but it looked as it always did. Alistair glanced at it once and drew the needle from his sleeve. Hana retreated to stand behind him.

  “Feast,” said Alistair.

  He jammed his steel needle into the man’s chest, between his ribs, and withdrew it in one smooth motion. The man gasped and flinched. Alistair pushed him toward the Door.

  It opened. A shiver ran through me, clenching at the base of my spine. I had asked Alistair how he knew when the Door needed to be fed, and he said the Door let them know. It slammed shut, the old wood rattling and raining down splinters, and I gasped. A want so deep I nearly doubled over opened up within me, my wrights twisting about my hands. I clasped them behind my back.

  “Not today,” I whispered. I couldn’t fight the Door again.

  The Door shook as if something knocked on the other side, and the courtier stepped back. The leg of the sacrifice rose into the air, upending him, as if a great hand had lifted him up, and the door opened fully. The squeak of the hinges was the exact one of my mother’s room. The invisible hands picked up the man and slowly pulled him through the open Door. Blood dribbled from his chest, vanishing the moment it hit the red earth.

  There was no crunch. No violence. No revelation about where the Door led or how to keep it shut.

  “Feast,” Alistair said again, “and fasten.”

  “Coward,” I muttered, and my wrights growled happily. “Go back to hiding.”

  But the Door shut with none of us the wiser.

  Twenty-Nine

  I held Alistair back after the sacrifice with a look. He sent Hana on her way with the courtier and councilor, cleaning the needle on a white handkerchief the whole while. Red streaks crisscrossed the white and smeared against his black gloves. They were all the better to hide the blood, and he kept cleaning long after the needle was spotless. We all had our tells.

  “Alistair,” I said, “did you think I would run?”

  “I’m not completely oblivious. Of course you would have.” He scoffed and slid the needle back into its hidden holster. “But then you gave me the perfect way to keep you. I didn’t even have to suggest the deal.”

  “No, I blurted it out and handed you the knife for carving.” I rolled my eyes, and from the Door, I heard a squeak of hinges that might have been laughter. “All that’s left is to live with the consequences of what we’ve done. Do you know why Will Chase wanted you dead?”

  “The usual reasons, I suppose.” He raised one shoulder and slowly let it fall. “Who doesn’t want me dead?”

  “I don’t want you dead,” I said. “Right now.”

  He chuckled. “Fair. No, I do not know the particulars of his reasons. You will have to ask him. The vilewrought girl was one who’d disappeared several years ago, and my mother had a bounty out for her. She made mo
re money for the folks she fell in with than they would’ve earned turning her in. Her vilewright was no match for mine, but I had never met another. I hadn’t really met her; I’d only felt her trying to destroy me.”

  “So you gave chase?” I moved around him to glare at the Door.

  It was my mother’s sickroom door again, the cracks filled with watching pale-brown eyes.

  “I did,” said Alistair, following my gaze. “I wanted a vilewrought, but instead I found you.”

  “And your would-be assassin,” I said.

  “I knew she was returning to who hired her.” He inclined his head to our long worktable and placed himself between the Door and me. It was the closest we had been in over two weeks. “Willoughby Chase was the only councilor in Felhollow.”

  “Perhaps his treason is justifiable.” I smiled as Alistair frowned. “There aren’t enough sacrifices left to last us two months, much less the three Carlow predicts we’ll need.”

  “Perhaps it is,” he said evenly. “Yes, what is something you would do to solve this? Volunteers?”

  I could already imagine the courtiers promising to fund whole families so long as someone volunteered.

  “No, it’s far too easy to make someone volunteer,” I said, but the answer needed to be logical. It needed to suit Alistair’s hunger for order. “Drawing lots would work so long as we ensured no one cheated.”

  And it would infuriate the peerage. Luck was the only thing they couldn’t control.

  “If we can’t shut the Door or create a new one, what do we do then?” I asked.

  He frowned, eyes crinkling at the corners of his glasses. “Die.”

  “I would hope not,” I said. “Could we move everyone to consecrated ground? The Formet district could work.”

  “It wouldn’t be large enough.” He tilted his head back and forth. “Noblewrought would be the best defense against the Vile, but not for long.”

  “We will try.” I stood on tiptoe to stare him in the eyes. “If it comes to that, we will try.”

  “Agreed.” He held out his hand to seal the deal and didn’t flinch when I took his hand. “Or a nonbinding contract? You are passionate about these things, Lorena Adler. You won’t be satisfied with only my word.”